Jul.13

electoral-vote.com

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GOP 53

How Do Replacement Candidates Do?

The most recent party to switch horses in midstream was the Democrats in the 2024 presidential race. You know how that turned out. If there had been a normal primary process and Kamala Harris had simply beaten all the other contenders, she might have won the general election because some of the opposition to her was that party insiders in a smokeless room picked her without consulting the voters. Maine is trying very hard to avoid that trap now. The Maine Democratic Party is working on a way to run the whole show in 2 weeks, give every Maine Democrat who wants to have a say have their say, and be done on time. Counties will probably run caucuses or something like that and elect delegates to the state convention. The 600 delegates at the state convention will elect the Senate candidate.

But the Biden/Harris swap is not the first time there was (or almost was) a candidate swap late in the campaign. How did that work in the past? Let's take a look:

• 2004 Illinois: In 2004, incumbent Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R) decided to retire instead of running for reelection. An ambitious young politician named Barack Obama won the Democratic primary. A businessman named Jack Ryan won the Republican primary. As a part of its campaign reporting, the Chicago Tribune convinced a California court to release records relating to Ryan's divorce and custody case. The records showed that Ryan had pressured his then-wife to perform sexual acts in public. This might have been related to her decision to file for divorce. Four days after the Tribune published its story, Ryan dropped out.
  
  Republicans spent 6 weeks flailing around, trying to find a replacement. They tried every play known to man to convince Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka to run. But he punted instead. Even Iron Mike knows that he can't win diddly squat without Buddy Ryan doing the heavy lifting. In desperation, the GOP state central committee gave the nomination to a prominent Black conservative, Alan Keyes, despite the minor detail that he lived in Maryland. Obama won 70% to 27%, a 43-point landslide that launched Obama on the path to the White House.
  
  Result: Replacement lost
  
  
• 2002 New Jersey: In 2002, Sen. Bob Torricelli (D) was unopposed in the Democratic primary. He expected to cruise to reelection. Businessman Doug Forrester won the Republican primary. When the Republicans discovered that Torricelli had accepted illegal campaign donations in 1996 and improper gifts, they made this the centerpiece of Forrester's campaign. The Democratic Party wanted to dump Torricelli but he didn't want to go. Eventually, under public pressure and bad polls, Torricelli decided to go and dropped out on Sept. 30, long after the drop-out deadline. The Democratic Party went to court and the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled they could replace Toricelli.
  
  Now they had to find someone to run with only 5 weeks left before the election. It had to be someone already well known. It wasn't easy. Former senator Bill Bradley, Rep. Frank Pallone, and future senator Robert Menendez all refused. Finally, they convinced former senator Frank Lautenberg, who had retired in 2000 at 76 after three successful terms in the Senate, to go for one more hurrah. Lautenberg really didn't want to, but as a good party loyalist, he offered himself up and filed to run. Forrester's lead in the polls vanished instantly and Lautenberg won easily, 54% to 44%. Then-majority leader Tom Daschle (D) reneged on a promise to Lautenberg to let him keep his seniority, which upset Lautenberg. Despite his demotion, he decided retirement was not all it was cracked up to be and in 2008, at 84, he won his fifth and final Senate race.
  
  Result: Replacement won
  
  
• 2002 Minnesota: This is probably the case that most readily occurs to readers. Sen. Paul Wellstone (DFL) was a rising star on the left, and seemed to be on a glide path to defeat Norm Coleman (R) in his reelection bid. However, 11 days before the election, Wellstone died in a plane crash.
  
  The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party had the good fortune that one of the nation's most famous Democrats lived in Minnesota and was available. So, Walter Mondale got the nod. The Party had the bad fortune that Wellstone's memorial service, held a week before the election, turned into something like a Mondale rally, which left a sour taste in the mouths of many voters. Pre-memorial polling gave Mondale a 5-ish point lead, but he ended up losing by two points.
  
  Result: Replacement lost
  
  
• 1990 Minnesota: In 1990, two-term Gov. Rudy Perpich (DFL) decided to go for a third term and got the nomination. The Republicans nominated businessman Jon Grunseth as their gubernatorial candidate. On October 14, allegations came out that in 1981, while Grunseth was swimming naked with his daughter at his home pool, two of his daughter's friends, 12 and 13, came by. Grunseth told them to remove their bathing suits but they refused. Grunseth then tried to rip the girls' bathing suits off. Witnesses at the pool party corroborated this. On Oct. 28, the local paper reported that Grunseth had an affair in 1989. That was too much and he dropped out.
  
  On Oct. 30, the Republican central committee met to decide what to do, with the election in a week. They concluded that they should go with the runner-up in the GOP primary that year, state Auditor Arne Carlson. Carlson won handily and was reelected by a 29-point margin in 1994.
  
  Result: Replacement won
  
  
• 1978 Virginia: Incumbent Sen. William Scott (R) declined to run for reelection in 1978. Democratic AG Andrew Miller won his primary and Republican Richard Obershain, who was chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, won his primary. On Aug. 2, 1978, a Piper Seneca carrying Obershain home from a campaign rally ran into a tree at night. Obershain was killed immediately.
  
  A team of 78 state Republicans got together, scratched their heads, and decided to go with the runner-up in the GOP primary, John Warner, a former secretary of the Navy and then-current (and sixth) husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor. Warner won by a mere 4,721 votes, but went on to have a 30-year career in the Senate.
  
  Result: Replacement won
  
  
• 2012 Missouri: There was a near-miss in the Missouri Senate race in 2012. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) was running for reelection. She dabbled in a bit of rodent reproduction in the Republican primary, spending $2 million to call Rep. Todd Akin (R) "too conservative." That helped him across the finish line in the Aug. 7 primary. Akin was a fanatical opponent of abortion, even in cases of rape. On Aug. 19, 2012, Akin said: "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Many people took this to mean Akin thought there were two types of rape, legitimate and illegitimate. That didn't go over so well, to put it mildly.
  
  If Akin dropped out before September, the Republican Party could replace him. McCaskill understood how wounded he was and wanted him to stay in and tried to stop the Republicans from forcing him out. She did this by leaking fake polling data showing him winning anyway. The Republicans thought he could win and didn't force him out. On Nov. 6, McCaskill crushed Akin by 15 points.
  
  Result: Guy who should have been replaced lost

So what's the score here? In three of the five races where there was a replacement, the new candidate won. In Illinois, the replacement lost, but against Obama, any Republican was going to lose. In Minnesota, who knows if the insta-polls were out of whack, or if the Wellstone memorial really was decisive, but 11 days is so short that any semi-close election is converted into a crapshoot.

The message here is that a late replacement is not necessarily hindered if that candidate is otherwise a good candidate. In Maine, it is important that voters see that the replacement was chosen by the voters, not the party bosses, and that the new candidate has broad support. If the Democrats indeed pick Troy Jackson, as our readers have, and all the progressive pooh-bahs line up behind him, he probably has a decent chance.

Now that Lindsey Graham has gone off to the true Upper Chamber, that race will also involve a late replacement candidate. South Carolina is fairly red, so any Republican is favored, but at least we will know later if the replacement does as well as Graham did last time. (V & Z)