As the Democratic Governor and Lt. Governor of Virginia insist on staying put despite scandals involving, respectively, racism and sexual assault, Republicans in the state are breathing a huge sigh of relief. For a decade, Virginia has been moving from purple to blue. In a cycle where Donald Trump managed slim wins in Florida, the Midwest, and Pennsylvania, Virginia still went for Hillary Clinton by more than 5 percent. And yes, a portion of that may have been the Tim Kaine factor except … was there really a Tim Kaine factor? Anywhere? For anyone? Democrats have held every state wide office in Virginia for over five years and that looks like a trend that’s only solidifying.
Now Politico reports that Republicans are feeling extremely excited about the troubles of the two Democrats at the top of state offices. They’re even flipping around their 2020 funding priorities, looking to make Mark Warner’s seat a target for a possible GOP Senate pick-up. According to Republican officials, the political climate in Virginia “is is totally and completely different,” than it was just two weeks ago, and Republicans stand to benefit.
Well… Missouri begs to differ. On January 20, 2018, published accounts indicated that Missouri Governor Eric Greitens was under investigation by the FBI. With word that a local television station was about to launch a story, Greitens admitted to an extramarital affair with his hair stylist, declared it a mistake, and claimed that it was something he and his wife had already dealt with “privately.” But as more reports emerged, they included accusations of bondage games, nude photos, and plain old blackmail. In February came an indictment. Greitens denied it all, and above all refused to resign. He held on through February, through March, through April, all the time with the news blaring revelations and tawdry details of his actions every day. It took until May 29 before Greitens walked in front of the cameras again to announce he was leaving.
This was just six months before the 2018 election. The one in which Claire McCaskill lost her Senate seat, Republicans handily kept all their House seats, and the state legislature remained solidly under Republican control despite a blue wave that tumbled House seats and legislatures across the nation.
Missouri is a state that, like Virginia, was previously purple. But as Virginia has been trending left, Missouri has been sliding ever more to the right. Greitens’ problems didn’t seem to affect that movement one iota. But why? Why did the spectacle of a Republican governor foundering in office, complete with stories of handcuff-play, blindfolds, and extortion fail to move the results?
Because from the beginning, there was very little division among Missouri Republicans — they wanted him to go.
Greitens was the most Trumpy candidate imaginable; a noted scam artist whose campaign ads literally showed him shooting at targets with a machine gun and blowing things up with explosives to represent his anger at government. He came into office not as the leader of the Republican Party in the state, but as an outside force who was as unfamiliar with, and sometimes hostile to, Republican legislators as he was to Democrats. Like Trump, Greitens’ agenda hugged the far right wall. But also like Trump, he rubbed everyone the wrong way — and Greitens didn’t have millions of Twitter followers and all of Fox News to make legislators in Missouri bend over.
So, when Greitens got in trouble, no one was in a hurry to throw him a rope. Republicans made some noise about Democratic prosecutors, and the mostly out-state Republicans threw predictable stones at the Sodom that they consider to boil around St. Louis. But they were quick to join in calls for Greitens’ removal. Greitens did have a few supporters among the most hardcore of the alt-right newcomers, but not many.
Republicans in Missouri weren’t hurt by Greitens’ fall because they didn’t buckle themselves to Greitens. They didn’t turn his resignation into a left vs right struggle. They piled on. By refusing to let the party be split over the question of whether Greitens should resign, they smoothed over his resignation to the point that by the time he left, he was standing on a very tiny little ice flow, all alone.
Democrats can take a lesson.