Deborah Daniels: The increasing price of winning at any cost

I have always disliked the tendency in political races to “go negative” against one’s opponent.

In the closing days of a campaign, we often see the parties begin to attack each other, often with misleading ads. They do it because unfortunately, it works.

I’m accustomed to this technique, if not fully inured to it. But when did we cross the threshold to today’s win-at-any-cost mentality?

It just seems that in many cases, both parties have discarded even the pretense of running principled candidates and persuading voters based on merit in favor of using whatever it takes to gain congressional seats.

The obvious example is mid-decade redistricting, which the Republicans started in Texas for the clearly stated purpose of creating more Republican seats in order to maintain their U.S. House majority. The Democrats immediately jumped on board in California with tit-for-tat redistricting.

The Republicans have been more successful at this and are ahead in the added-seats tally. But both parties have adopted the win-at-any-cost approach, with no effort to pretend that the goal is anything other than keeping or gaining power.

Both parties are running some seriously flawed candidates because they think those candidates can win in the fall, or because, if Republican, they please the MAGA base.

The Texas Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, has been accused by his own aides of bribery and abuse of office. He has been indicted on felony securities fraud charges. He was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives, though acquitted by the Senate.

The state of Texas had to pay millions of dollars to settle a wrongful termination case against him based on his firing of whistleblowers. But he defeated a highly accomplished, principled incumbent in the primary.

In Maine, while Democrats have known for years about his Nazi tattoo and have learned recently about serious misconduct allegations including infidelity and domestic abuse, Graham Platner has been selected as the party’s nominee
for U.S. Senate.

Why? Because the Democrats think he can beat moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins, and many have made it clear they don’t care how they win, just that they win.

In Alaska, Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan has a primary opponent named Dan J. Sullivan. What are the odds?

Dan J. Sullivan entered the race three days before the filing deadline, employing a logo that looks virtually identical to the incumbent senator’s logo. He has no apparent record of political involvement — except that he previously donated to the current Democratic candidate for the office.

Will the incumbent senator win his primary? Probably — but Alaska has a ranked-choice election system which means that the top four vote-getters in the two primaries advance to the fall ballot. That could enable a situation in which confused voters split the Sullivan votes and the Democrat wins the office.

Indiana may represent another aspect of the phenomenon.

We all knew about the various allegations surrounding Secretary of State Diego Morales well before this year. But he was on track to breeze through the Republican convention, with endorsements from the Indiana attorney general and U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, despite multiple allegations of mismanagement, nepotism, abuse of his office, sexual assault and even illegal voting — until developing circumstances caused the Republican officeholders concern that he risked losing the general election.

Calling it a “final straw,” they used the most recent controversy, his hiring of a non-citizen, as the basis for shifting their endorsements to a new candidate — an employee of Sen. Banks.

Morales vows to fight in this month’s convention. We’ll see what happens.•

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Daniels is a retired partner of Krieg DeVault LLP, a former U.S. Attorney and assistant U.S. attorney general and former president of the Sagamore Institute. Send comments to [email protected].

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