Dem
53
Ties
2
GOP
45
On Wednesday, when we promised this item was coming, we did not know that a big ratfu**ing story was just hours away from being published in The New York Times. Either we were prescient, or... ah, let's just assume we were prescient.
In any case, since the news broke that the Senate campaign of Mary Peltola (D) was behind the recruitment of the Dan Sullivan who is not a senator, with an eye toward costing the Dan Sullivan who is a senator some votes, there has been much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by Republicans. Donald Trump, ever the fan of democracy in action, wants Peltola to be thrown off the ballot and criminally charged. The leadership of the Department of Justice, which knows full well what its main job is (see below), has issued a new wave of subpoenas. Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R-AK) has launched an investigation. House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) said he will launch an investigation, as well.
Readers don't need us to tell them this, but we'll say it anyhow: This is all grandstanding. It serves at least three purposes: (1) to further get the word out to Republican voters in Alaska to fill their ballots out properly; (2) to get the message out that Democrats cheat during elections and (3) to distract from other stories, like how the Iran War is killing Republicans at the polls. All of these people (well, maybe not Trump) know full well no law was broken here.
Now, the scheme certainly was political malpractice. It is improbable that the scheme will cost the real Dan Sullivan a meaningful number of votes. Obviously, whatever campaign staffer was behind it expected that both Dan Sullivans would be listed on the ballot in a similar fashion, which is not what happened. But even if the scheme had worked to perfection, it depends on Republican voters not only making a mistake, but also being too lazy or careless or dumb to finish filling out their ranked choices. Was it really plausible that a decisive number of Republicans would have done so? And the potential benefits of such a scheme have to be weighed against the potential costs, namely "What happens if the scheme is uncovered? How will people react?"
And that brings us to a letter we got after we first wrote up the Peltola story:
You wrote:Parties often recruit candidates. In primaries, it is not unusual for parties to (financially) support someone on the other team who they think would be a weak general-election opponent. This kind of stuff is actually the original use of the thing we call rodent reproduction. Republicans did it this year in a couple of Democratic House primaries, for example. It is scuzzy, but perfectly legal, to contribute to a candidate who you think is a weak opponent to your candidate. In fact, there have been many primaries where a Democrat switched his or her registration to Republican in order to vote for a crazy fringe candidate, and vice versa.Do you sincerely believe that what the Times uncovered is nothing more than the "original use of ... rodent reproduction"? Seems to me that there is a major difference between spending money to boost the chances of a weaker candidate in the opposing party's primary and actively recruiting/engineering a campaign that is designed to confuse voters/frustrate their intent. I know that Alaska has put some guardrails in to mitigate that confusion but whether they succeed in their goal is beside the point. The issue is whether this crosses the line from ratfu**ing to... rat necromancy? Ratattouing?
Either way, playing it off as just something both sides do hits my ear as a blue-hued version of red-hat cognitive dissonance. I hope you'll address it less reflexively and more reflectively in a future post.
We are not including the name of this author, in part, because they did not include it. And in part, because we are about to argue the entire complaint is nonsense.
To start with, the "two candidates with the same name" thing is an old bit, one that antedates the emergence of the term "ratfu**ing" by multiple generations. Perhaps the most famous example is a House election in 1946, where the Republican candidate was a man named Joe Russo. The Democrats really, really wanted to win that election. That includes, in particular, the campaign manager for the Democrat who was running. That manager had the idea that his candidate had a very bright future ahead of him. So, the campaign manager recruited another Joe Russo to run as an independent. The second Russo was compensated handsomely for his... efforts, we suppose? It didn't end up mattering, though, as the fake Russo got 1,000 votes and the Democrat ended up winning by 22,000 votes.
Readers who took note of the year, and perhaps who know that Massachusetts was long-notorious for dirty tricks, might have guessed by now that the campaign manager was Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and the candidate he was boosting was his son John F. And Joe learned the trick from his dad, who was also John F., and was known as "Honey Fitz." You don't get a nickname like that without being a slimy operator, and Honey Fitz often recruited same-name candidates to make sure his machine-backed people won their elections.
And while the Kennedys are the most famous example, there are plenty of others involving same-name or very-similar-name candidates. It's happened a lot in New York City, including several cases within the memory of people reading this. There have been citywide elections with John C. Liu and (fake recruit) Jay C. Liu, Vito Lopez and (fake recruit) Victor Lopez, and José Rivera and (fake recruit) José L. Rivera. There was also a House election with José E. Serrano and (fake recruit) Jose E. Serrano (note missing accent from the faker's first name, which was just enough to allow him to be listed under that name). Just a few years ago, there was a state Senate race in Florida with two Alex Rodriguezes (and neither of them were the famous baseball player, though A-Rod's former teammate, Mark Teixeira, is about to be elected to Congress). More recent still, there was a House race in Pennsylvania with two Mike Doyles.
More importantly, we cannot accept the assertion that the "same name" bit is a different level of dishonesty than other such shenanigans. When the Nixon flunkies first coined the term "ratfu**ing," they used it to refer to dirty tricks in general. But today, it is generally used to refer to a very specific kind of dirty trick, namely a person or group posing as something they definitely are not, in order to try to get unfriendly voters to withhold their vote or to waste their vote on a non-viable candidate. We're going to run down some of the ratfu**ing of this sort that is taking place at this very moment, and we do not see any sort of meaningful distinction between these tricks and the stupid stunt Peltola's campaign pulled. They're all trying to achieve the same basic thing in the same basic way.
When we promised this item was coming, we put out a call for reports from readers. And we're going to start with the example that we got more e-mails about than any other. Many Ohio voters have gotten this flier in the mail; it appears to come from the campaign of Socialist Party U.S. Senate candidate Greg Levy:
Levy is furious about the flier because he is not behind it, and he says it mocks him and misrepresents his positions. The actual source of the flier is Enough Promises Ohio PAC, which is affiliated with Donald Trump's MAGA Inc. PAC. In total, Enough Promises Ohio has spent over $1 million to promote Levy's campaign. The actual Levy campaign has spent a little over $100,000.
There's also at least a little bit of ratfu**ing going on in the state's gubernatorial race. One of Vivek Ramaswamy's (R) biggest media backers is Buckeye Bulletin, which has published many flattering items about Ramaswamy, and which has vigorously defended the sleazy Amy Acton ad. The outlet bills itself thusly:
Buckeye Bulletin is about strengthening local connection. Inspired by Ohio's identity and resilience, we strive to reflect the perspectives and experiences of the communities we serve. As we grow, we remain committed to reliable journalism, strong editorial standards, and a distinctly Ohio-driven voice.
Not hardly. The Buckeye Bulletin is actually funded by the Lincoln Club, a conservative advocacy group based in California.
There is a slightly different strategy in use in the Michigan U.S. Senate race. For several months now, a group called Democrats for Mike Rogers has been producing fliers and airing commercials in which people claim that Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed is a dangerous radical, with the result that while they (the people speaking in the fliers/commercials) might be Democrats, they are going to have to vote for the Republican Rogers. Democrats for Mike Rogers is, in fact, a Republican PAC, funded by one prominent local Republican, and several other donors who reside in Tennessee. The "Democrats" in the ads are actors and/or stock art.
Maybe it's something in the water, but there's a similar scam going on next door, in Wisconsin. There, the responsible PAC is the Progressive Alliance of Wisconsin. It's been sending out lots of copies of this flier, which is meant to enrage lefty voters, and cause them to skip the gubernatorial election rather than vote for Democrat David Crowley (since there is no third-party option on the ticket):
Funding for this one actually comes from a group registered in Chicago, and funded by The Classen Group, a Republican organization based in Oklahoma.
And since we just mentioned Oklahoma, let's move south to Texas. Latino voters in the Rio Grande valley are up for grabs. The area used to be highly Democratic, but many of the residents of the area voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Now many have soured on him on account of the deportations. One of the House races expected to be the closest, despite the mid-cycle redistricting, is in TX-34, which always included Brownsville and McAllen but now also goes north to the conservative Corpus Christi. Currently the incumbent is Vicente Gonzalez (D). The district used to be D+9 but the redistricting this cycle made it R+3. This is a typical potential dummymander district.
Gonzalez is being challenged by Eric Flores and it is getting nasty. One of his ads shows Gonzalez at a backyard cookout, handing out meager portions to disappointed guests to emphasize the high price of food.
Here is where it gets ugly:
You might think that Flores paid for the billboard to show off Trump's endorsement and his support for ICE. Actually, no. The Democrats put up the billboard—to show off Flores' endorsement by the exceedingly unpopular Trump.
We'll end with another example from Texas, this one (fairly) statewide, and going in the opposite direction. Over 3 million mailers like this one have arrived in the mailboxes of Texas voters in the last few weeks:
It's a little hard to read, but it is meant to look like helpful advice for trans teenagers, giving them some resources for support, but also some information about how to transition without their parents knowing.
The mailer uses a lot of information purloined from the Transgender Education Network of Texas, which is a real and legitimate organization. But it actually purports to come from the Texas Transgender Student Union (TTSU). TTSU is not a real and legitimate organization. It is a PAC headquartered in Wyoming, and run by Republicans.
We write above that all of these tricks, starting with Peltola, are equally sleazy. That's not entirely correct. We would say that of everything addressed here, the one thing that is in a different category than the rest is the trans mailer. All the other stuff is basically misusing information to try to fool (mostly) low-information voters. The trans mailing, by contrast, could cause anti-trans parents to do some very problematic things if they believe that the mailer was somehow instigated by their kid. Various forms of abuse, not to mention expulsion from the household, are not at all out of the realm of possibility. Similarly, if a closeted trans kid incorrectly thinks they've been outed, there is a risk of running away and/or dying by suicide. Remember, 40% of trans people have attempted suicide at some point in their lives.
We'll finish up by noting that this item is not exhaustive. We don't want to beat folks over the head with too many examples, but there are also ratfu**ing fliers or ads in wide circulation in Nebraska, Massachusetts, Kansas, Florida, Mississippi, and other places.
Notice that the ratfu**ers are mostly Republicans (and this statement would not cease to be true if we included the other states). From this, we draw two conclusions. First, consistent with the overall theme of this series, the GOP is feeling desperate right now. Ratfu**ing is not always an act of desperation, but it usually is. Second, all the pearl-clutching, from Donald Trump on down, is a load of bull cookies. They have absolutely no objection to dirty tricks, except when the trickster is a Democrat.
Finally, our thanks to readers D.M. in Cleveland, OH; D.T. in Columbus, OH; E.C.F. in Somerville, MA; E.J. in Columbus, OH; J.E. in San Jose, CA; R.B. in Cleveland, OH; R.H. in San Antonio, TX and T.K. in Akron, OH for their help in putting this item together. (Z, V & A)