Dem
47
GOP
53
There is some dispute about the real deadline for Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) to decide whether to withdraw from his reelection bid. Some sources say it was Sunday, others say Monday. Either way, it does not matter, because he stayed in. He will be a name on Ohio ballots, and a possible anchor around Republicans' necks, for the remainder of this cycle.
Reportedly, the White House intervened here, and told Republicans to stop pressuring Miller to drop out. This is not necessarily because the administration wants an accused abuser on the ticket, but because it was convinced that Miller would never drop out, and so did not want to give the Democrats ammunition to use against him. The problem here is that both Ohio senators, Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted (both R), called on Miller to leave the race and resign from Congress. One imagines that fact may come up once or twice during the campaign of Democrat Brian Poindexter.
Once it was clear that Miller would remain, RNC chair Joe Gruters was asked if the RNC would support the Miller campaign. Gruters semi-demurred, but said that "[We] will support our nominees." We can understand saying something vague, like "We will evaluate each race on a case-by-case basis." And we can understand taking a pass, and saying, "We have concerns here, so Rep. Miller is on his own." But we don't really understand lending milquetoasty support, which seems the worst of all worlds. Certainly, it sets a contrast with the Democrats, who made very clear to Graham Platner that if he stayed in, he was getting cut off from all resources, financial and otherwise.
There was a somewhat disturbing poll last week, one that hints at why Miller (along with the RNC?) thinks that his candidacy might still be viable. That poll was from Politico, and found that two-thirds of self-identified MAGA Trump voters said that they would still support a Republican accused of sexual assault, while 72% would still support a Republican accused of domestic violence. By contrast, less than 40% of non-MAGA voters said that an accusation of sexual assault and/or violence might be tolerable under the right circumstances.
We're not so sure that the numbers from that poll are actually generalizable to all Republican candidates. There's no way to be sure, but we suspect that what many respondents were really doing was resolving the cognitive dissonance of supporting Trump, who was not only accused, but convicted, of sexual violence when people voted for him in 2024. That might be "OK" for those voters with that particular Republican, but not for all Republicans.
There is one new poll of the Miller-Poindexter race that supports our thesis. It is from co/efficient, and it says that 86% of voters in the district have heard about the allegations against Miller, and that Poindexter now leads Miller by a staggering 14 points, 47% to 33%.
Under normal circumstances, given that OH-07 has a PVI of R+5, we would dismiss a poll like that out of hand. But the previous co/efficient poll of the race, taken a week earlier, reported that just 52% of voters were aware of the assault allegations, and that Poindexter was leading by 5, 48% to 43%. So, greater awareness of the claims made against Miller appears to correlate pretty directly with the state of the race. And note that as more voters become aware of the claims, it's not really boosting Poindexter, it's just hurting Miller. If some of those folks who are deserting the Representative cannot bear to vote Democratic, but vote third-party, or skip that line on the ballot, then that will torpedo Miller.
One other quick data point. Cook Political Report has been watching this race closely. For most of the cycle, they had the seat as "Likely Republican." As of yesterday, however, they have moved it to "toss up." From Miller's perspective, that is known as "moving in the wrong direction." He's lending himself $1 million to try to keep his job; $500,000 now and $500,000 later. The way things are going, he might want to think about investing that second $500,000 in lottery tickets, or Beanie Babies or TMTG stock. By October, all of those things might be a better bet than the Representative's reelection campaign.
There was also some other "drop out (or not)" news yesterday. First up, North Carolina Republicans have chosen a replacement for Rep. Chuck Edwards, who is also enmeshed in a misconduct scandal, and who fell on his sword, unlike Miller. The new candidate is going to be state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom. She was a Libertarian in the early 2000s, then a Democrat for a decade after that, and then became a Republican. She's a little bit MAGA, but is mostly Southern populist.
There was no time for a campaign announcement ad spot, but she did release a brief statement on eX-Twitter, which you can read here. It would seem that she feels her main selling point is that she's an eighth-generation North Carolinian. That means her relatives most certainly fought to preserve slavery, which might or might not be a problem with the voters she's after. The Democrat in the race, Jamie Ager, does not say on his website how many generations of his family have lived in the Tar Heel State. It does say that he was born there, however, and that he's a fourth-generation farmer.
Balkcom's current district, SD-117, overlaps with NC-11, the R+5 district she'll be running in. Still, most people don't even know their own state representative, much less the one next door. And she's only been in office since 2023. So, name recognition will be a little bit of a problem, particularly given the late start date. Still, Balkcom has the magic (R) next to her name, and she's not a known sleazeball, so that will probably carry the day in this purple-red district.
There is another Republican woman, by contrast, who might have some sexual misconduct issues, as of yesterday. That is when news broke that Tyler Boebert, the son of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), has been charged with sexual exploitation of a child, and with other crimes. He's 21 now, but when he was 18, he allegedly recorded himself having intercourse with a 17-year-old girl, and then posted it online.
We haven't any idea how this will affect Boebert's reelection bid, or whether it will affect it at all. Will voters hold her responsible for the misdeeds of her son? Or will those misdeeds be discounted, because they are not hers, or because they are only accusations right now, or because the gap between 18 years old and 17 years old is pretty different than the one between, say, 23 years old and 14 years old? Boebert's current district, CO-04, is R+9, so she's got a fair bit of margin for error.
And finally, we'll end with a Democratic woman. That would be Alani Bankhead, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Montana. As happened with Miller, her party put enormous pressure on her to drop out. And like Miller, she let the deadline pass with no withdrawal, so she's in until the end. Here, the problem is not that Bankhead did anything untoward. It's that the Democrats' real candidate in the race is Seth Bodnar, who is running as an independent, and the blue team does not want Bankhead to siphon off votes from Bodnar.
In every poll of the race, the combined support for Bankhead and Bodnar has been equal to, or greater than, the support for Republican Kurt Alme. However, neither Bankhead nor Bodnar, by themselves, comes close to Alme in terms of support. Most polls have Alme around 46% and the other two at around 24% each. If Bodnar can open up a clear lead on Bankhead, making clear that a vote for her is a wasted vote, he might have a shot here. But it's a long shot, at best. (Z)