My schedule is a bit annoyingly irregular in the summer, and I can pretty well guarantee that I will be out of town on the day of the August primary. We don't have early voting, but we do have absentee. So I went to the county courthouse and voted today.
I live in Missouri, in a rural county that is not as blisteringly conservative as some of the surrounding area, so they redistricted us to be split into two parts, both of which are subsumed in larger rural districts to our east and west. A Democrat won in 2006 and 2008, and we had really good representation in the state House of Representatives. But in 2010 she lost, and although she ran again, in the 2012 redistricted district, she could not beat a very very conservative farm guy. This year there was no one to pick up her mantle, and we have no Democrat running.
That does not mean there is no choice, even for me. The representative we have had for the past two years, while conservative, anti-choice, anti-Obamacare, and against raising taxes. But he is not conservative enough, and he is being hit hard by the well-funded don't raise my taxes groups, both in-state and from out of state as well. I have never seen as many television ads on a local race as we are having these days leading into the August primary, at least one per half hour, and more than one per break on the local news. What did he do so wrong as to have someone who calls himself "the true conservative" run against him? Follow me below the fold.
This rural district has one big industry, and that is education. We have both a university (the largest single employer in this quarter of the state) and both medical and dental schools. When the statehouse folks decide to cut the budget because "we can't afford this any more" (i.e. I don't want to have to answer to someone whose income tax was raised to pay for it), and the governor vetoes a crazy budget, the Republicans have a veto-proof majority if they hang together. But last year they didn't hang together, because some of their caucus broke ranks. My representative was one of those. He clearly looked at his constituency, at his district, and thought "this is crazy for my district -- we will lose lots of funding and that is not a good thing for such a poor district" (that "where are the poor people?" map showed my county much much brighter than those around us). So he bit the bullet and voted against the override, and with the Democrats and the governor.
This year he didn't -- he voted to override and we are back to hearing about "the Kansas Miracle" (huh?) and how we should emulate Kansas's economic policies (double huh?!!!!). But his vote last year was enough to put a huge bull's eye on his back.
But it wasn't just that. My representative (Republican, conservative, remember) came to the city council discussion last summer to support a non-discrimination ordinance which came up twice before the city. The first time it was defeated, but the second time it was passed, and my representative showed up to argue in public that it should be passed. Not because he supported or was interested in that lifestyle, mind, but because this is the way the state and the nation is going and it would be bad for our city's (town's) competitiveness if we were known for promoting/allowing discrimination in housing, employment, etc..
Double shock. So he was not conservative enough fiscally (in other words, he wasn't crazy) and he wasn't conservative enough socially (he lived in the real world and allowed himself to be a pragmatist). I have not gone as far as "friending" him on Facebook, although some of my most lefty friends have done just that. If a Democrat were running against him in the November election I would vote my party and my heart. But there is no competition in the fall, and the real election is this primary next month.
So before I lost my nerve, I went in and asked for a primary ballot and when the woman behind the counter asked me what party ballot I wanted, I took a deep breath and told her "Republican". Then I laughed a little and said I couldn't believe I was saying that. She smiled and said "We had signs up yesterday so people could just point and didn't have to say it." I know I am not the only person who is planning on voting in the Republican primary, but it was nice to know I was not the first.
Even if I hadn't taken the Republican ballot and had to face a series of non-contested races (or empty slots) on the Democratic ballot, I would have voted. There are a bunch of constitutional amendments that are either annoying or really scary. I voted "no" down the line for those. And I voted for the least crazy of the candidates for the state house. I couldn't bring myself to make any other marks, express any opinion, on any other contested primary races. It was, after all, the Republican primary ballot.
But I voted for a Republican today. I don't feel too terrible about it.
But I wish I had a choice that I liked better.