ICYMI: Republicans suppressing their own voters in Arizona and Georgia [National Journal]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

National Journal: Republicans suppressing their own voters in Arizona and Georgia
By Josh Kraushaar
July 7, 2021

Key Points:

The party’s Trumpian turn is complicating its chances to unseat freshmen Sens. Mark Kelly and Raphael Warnock. Their struggles in the two states could be a preview of the long-term political damage that the party’s devoted attachment to the former president is causing.

Arizona and Georgia have been at the center of the election conspiracies that have distracted the GOP since last year’s election. Trump single-handedly suppressed Republican turnout in this year’s Georgia Senate runoffs by raising the false specter of election fraud. That was enough to hand both elections—and control of the Senate—to the Democrats.

The problem is that the GOP litmus test is strictly about loyalty to Trump himself, along with his increasingly deluded election-conspiracy theorizing. That’s starting to become an issue in the battle for the Senate.

Earlier this year, Trump endorsed former NFL star Herschel Walker to run in Georgia, immediately freezing the field and prompting other top candidates to pass on the race.
Trump’s support of Walker guarantees he’ll start out as the Republican front-runner, assuming he gets in. But he will enter the race with lots of political baggage.

He’s also staring down some friendly fire on the right: Former Senate candidate Doug Collins, once seen as a leading contender before opting out of the race, sounded skeptical about Walker’s candidacy on his radio show. In a subsequent interview with National Journal, Collins added: “I was expressing thoughts that a lot of people have on his race, but that they hadn’t expressed publicly.”

“I’ve yet to find a single person who’s worked in the vineyards of Georgia Republican politics who’s excited about the prospect of a Herschel Walker candidacy,” said one national Senate strategist. “The perception is that he’s someone who’s far from the state, doesn’t have a lot of political curiosity, and there’s concern about what a deep dive in the opposition research bank might pull up very rapidly.”

The dynamic is similar in Arizona, where Republican leaders haven’t seemed to absorb any lessons from Democrats’ statewide victories in 2018 and 2020.

The party is imposing even more reckless litmus tests for their nominees. Gov. Doug Ducey passed on the race after receiving sharp criticism from Trump for certifying the state’s election results for Biden. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, one of the early front-runners, has drawn Trump’s wrath for not doing enough to champion his baseless allegations of voter fraud. “We’re asking [Republicans] to vote for us in an election system they don’t believe in anymore,” lamented one Arizona-based GOP strategist.

While Republicans would prefer to focus on other issues, Trump’s engagement has all but guaranteed “voter fraud” will be an issue in next year’s primary.

Meanwhile, amid the GOP bickering, Kelly raised an impressive $6 million in the most recent fundraising quarter.

If Republicans miss opportunities in Georgia and Arizona, their path to the majority looks a lot tougher. […] There’s little margin for error: Democrats also have several credible opportunities to flip GOP-held seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.

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