The Delaware GOP establishment went running to the David Frum to find a friendly outlet for venting. The establishment blames Christine O’Donnell for its shellacking in November.
The FBI is investigating whether Christine O’Donnell misused campaign funds during her Senate run. While we wait to find out whether she’s guilty on that count, we already know that she is guilty in another way: for destroying and cannibalizing the Republican Party in Delaware. Despite the media’s continuing fascination with O’Donnell (to the point where even Chris Coons is still asked about her) less attention has been paid to O’Donnell’s negative effect on the down-ticket races in Delaware, or to the fact that the damage she did will last for several election cycles. There has also been no attempt to hold accountable the conservative media figures who endorsed O’Donnell.
O’Donnell had a consistently negative effect on the close down-ticket races in Delaware. Republican Party officials in the state who spoke to FrumForum on and off the record expressed great frustration with the damage she caused. O’Donnell did this in several different ways. She cost the GOP several candidates in the Delaware State House, giving the Democrats a super-majority. She hurt the campaign for the Republican nominee for State Treasurer. She boosted a Democratic party which has been growing stronger in the state, and solidified in the minds of many voters the view that the Republican party was an atavistic and unserious party, which the mainstream had rejected. In a year when Republicans had a wave to take advantage of and the opportunity to grow across the entire country, O’Donnell failed her party and brought it down.
I think some of this is true but Christine O’Donnell is only a symptom of what ails the Delaware GOP. The Delaware GOP has moved further and further to the right and the establishment failed to fight it. If the Delaware GOP expects to come back they are going to have to start being honest with themselves. This next part doesn’t help:
The election results show several close Delaware State House races where Democrats won by incredibly small margins. Not only were the percentages that separated these races very small, they were also small in absolute terms. The closeness of these races speaks to the success of the Democrats’ get out the vote efforts, which were driven largely by motivating voters against O’Donnell.
There were seven State House races where the Democrat won by less than than 1,000 votes. In three of those races, the Republican candidate had been recruited to take on a Democratic incumbent. The power of incumbency is hard to defeat in any election cycle, and a wave election is a rare chance to counter it. Yet in the races for the 6th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 18th, 32nd, and 41st districts, the GOP candidate lost. The vote margins were very small: 407, 282, 734, 879, 438, 296, and 939 votes respectively. (The race for the 7th was also close, decided by 1,364 votes.)
Do you see what he did here? He’s pretending that <1,000 votes means it was close and that a Republican challenger came close to upsetting a Democratic incumbent. That’s not true, if you look at the data.
The 6th Representative race was incumbent Republican Tom Kovach vs. Debra Heffernan, which she won by a comfortable 5% margin – 51.9% to Kovach’s 46.9% (the Libertarian John Flebbe got 1.2% of the vote).
The 9th was was an open set (Cathcart), which was won by Rebecca Walker by a 2.6% margin. The 10th was actually an incumbent D Dennis Williams against R challenger Robert Rhodunda. Williams won by a comfortable 9.2%, 54.6% to 45.4%. The 14th was Schwartzkopf vs. Weeks, which Schwartzkopf won by a 7.4% margin.
The 18th district was the Barbieri vs. Spence rematch, which was won by Barbieri by a 7.5% margin. Brad Bennett “squeaked by” Beth Miller in the 32nd district by a 6.5% margin, despite a DUI scandal. In the 41st, R-turned-D Atkins barely beat back Greg Hastings by a 10.6% margin.
So, they’re right that Republicans almost won, if you believe a >6.5% vote margin is a winnable race. If Republicans really want to win, they need to do a little more soul-searching. O’Donnell is only a symptom of the Delaware GOP’s disease.