SURRENDERED SEATS
Another straw in the wind also evoked little or no comment. It was that the GOP, for the 2018 midterms, chose not to contest 38 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. It was one of the highest such rates in recent history.1 (In 2016, they bypassed twenty-two races, against the Democrats’ twenty-four.)
True, both parties have lists of seats they sense they cannot win. Today’s districts tend to tilt heavily in one direction. If gerrymandering is one reason, spontaneous social clustering is also in the mix. Even so, the parties often make a try against harsh odds, as a way of proclaiming they embrace the entire nation.
One might think Republicans would want to convey an air of confidence in 2018, if only as a warmup for 2020. If appearances count, forsaking one in eleven of the House races doesn’t auger a self-assured party. Among the thirty-eight were six in New York, eight in California, plus four in Texas, one of the Republican Party’s flagship states.
The seats they gave up were revealing in another way. In twenty-three of the thirty-eight, the incumbent Democrats listed other than European origins. That the GOP is overwhelmingly white is no secret. (CNN’s 2018 poll had that figure at 88 percent, against 54 percent for the Democrats.) What’s less clear is whether the party wants to alter its racial ratio. It likes to showcase Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson, as well as its two senators of Cuban lineage. It would not have taken a huge effort to find some African American, Hispanic, and Asian conservatives to make the run. A $100,000 campaign chest for each would total $3.8 million, a sum the party could easily provide.
By my count, these empty ballots brought a 2,473,998 dip in the GOP’s overall 2018 tally. As some citizens opted to stay home, a whole party was seen sitting out much of a national event. It betokened a lack of resolve, in many ways surprising for Republicans. In their 2010 sweep, they fielded candidates in 430 districts. At the time, that was the highest number ever.
The Democrats, in a notable move, decided to contest a record of 432 House seats. It signaled an urge to show the flag, no matter how forbidding the terrain. In an upcountry Texas district, an intrepid Greg Sagan notched 17 percent of the tally, with a total budget of $28,701. In its way, his 35,083 votes contributed to the turnout that gave Democrats their historic midterm margin.
Of course, not every seat is winnable. But impressions can be deceiving. Like an apparent Republican stronghold in Virginia, where a challenger named Dave Brat displaced Eric Cantor, the House minority leader, in a 2014 primary. In the ensuing election, Brat swamped his Democratic opponent by twenty-four points. Two years later, with Donald Trump on the ticket, Brat still led by sixteen points. Yet in 2018, a New Jersey transplant named Abigail Spanberger bested Brat by 6,784 votes. It was not the only constituency where a Trump connection had become a liability.