In this week’s gubernatorial primaries in Florida and last month’s in Georgia, both Republicans and Democrats picked certain losers. Or so would’ve gone the conventional wisdom in previous years.
In the past, had the GOP picked candidates for governor that were Donald Trump clones, the assumption would’ve been it had gone off the deep end and thrown away any chance for victory. By the same token, had the Democrats picked African-American “progressives” to run in these two southern states, pundits would have said they’d conceded any chance of victory in November.
But the matchups in Georgia — between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams — and Florida — between the GOP’s Rep. Ron DeSantis and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum — mean you can throw out the old rules. Both pit extremely conservative Republicans against very liberal Democrats.
It’s not just that all four are poorly positioned to claim the center. All of them are acting as if the center — the place where conventional wisdom has always told us that elections are won — no longer exists. And in a moment when President Trump is on one side and those dedicated to “resisting” and impeaching him are on the other, they may be right.
Both primaries demonstrated anew that Trump and his supporters now wholly own the Republican Party. Kemp and DeSantis won not only on the strength of presidential endorsements but also by campaigns that were self-consciously Trumpian.
Kemp’s campaign ads might have been an attempt at humor but his boasts of using his pickup truck to round up illegal immigrants and to threaten one of his daughter’s suitors with a firearm made (as his defeated primary opponent Lt. Governor Casey Cagle noted) the race seem to be about “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck and who could be the craziest.”
DeSantis’ ads featured him reading his children stories about the president firing people and “building a wall” with blocks in order to portray himself, albeit with tongue in cheek, as a Trump zealot.
That shouldn’t make sense in states that are trending purple due to demographic changes. But in both states Democrats haven’t taken advantage of the Republicans’ rush to identify with Trump. In the recent past, the party has won victories in the South by nominating so-called “blue dog” centrists. But neither Abrams nor Gillum can credibly appeal to the center. Instead, they are counting on distaste for Trump and the hope that their fellow African-Americans turn out in the same numbers they did for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Abrams is not just interested in being the first African-American woman to be elected governor of a state. She’s running on a progressive platform that is in keeping with her identity as a member of her party’s liberal wing.
Gillum is even more closely identified with the left. He upset the party establishment’s preferred candidate with the help of an endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders and with the financial assistance of left-wing sugar daddies George Soros and Tom Steyer.
What happens when the hard right collides with the hard left in the changing South? Early polling is inconclusive and understandably so since there have been no comparable elections like these in recent memory.
Yet there may be more at stake here than who governs these two states. Both Florida and Georgia appear to be perfect stand-ins for a national contest two years from now that will probably pit Trump against what will not only likely be a liberal but also possibly a woman and/or a minority — especially if Democrats pick a relative newcomer like Sens. Kamala Harris or Corey Booker.
If the political climate in Georgia and Florida has tilted far enough to the left to enable Abrams and Gillum to beat Trump wannabes like Kemp and DeSantis, than it may be safe to assume the president’s chances of re-election are doomed. But if Kemp and DeSantis win because of Trump’s lingering appeal and because the Democrats’ lurch to the left will have squandered their chances for victory, then despite the Manafort and Cohen verdicts and threats of impeachment, no one should write off Trump’s chance for a second term.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review.
