The Daily - A Scorched-Earth Strategy in Ohio

Episode Date: August 7, 2018

Republicans have found themselves unexpectedly scrambling to hold a House seat in a special election in Ohio on Tuesday. The race has become a symbol of what may lie ahead for the party in the midterms. Guest: Alexander Burns, who covers national politics for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Republicans have found themselves unexpectedly scrambling to hold on to a House seat in Tuesday's special election in Ohio. It's turned out to be a symbol of what's ahead for the party in the midterms. It's Tuesday, August 7th. Alex Burns, tell us about this election in Ohio today.

This is sort of an accidentally important election. this election in Ohio today? This is sort of an accidentally important election. We're only having this vote in Ohio today because the previous congressman, Pat Tiberi, long-serving Republican, quit in the middle of his term to go take a lucrative job in the private sector. This wasn't supposed to be a competitive race.

It's a solidly conservative district to the north and east of Columbus, Ohio, voted for President Trump by 11 percentage points and voted for other Republicans by a great deal more than that. But the race has gotten shockingly competitive and in a way that is pretty revealing for the larger landscape of the midterm election. And you have this battle waged between two candidates who are themselves very conventional politicians. You don't have a rock star on either side of the race here. The Republican's a state senator named Troy Balderson, former car dealer. The Democrats, a 31-year-old county official, Danny O'Connor.

They are basically generic Republican, generic Democrat. And so in spite of the fact that they are both basically boring candidates, and despite the fact that the district is basically a conventionally Republican district, it's a very, very close election. And this is all about the enthusiasm on the Democratic side, the divisions within the Republican Party, the sense of basically being demoralized that you hear and see from so many conventional Republican voters. So it sounds like we've got an interesting race here

because it's a Republican district that could flip to Democratic control with two kind of plain vanilla candidates that stand in for their parties more broadly. That's right. Plain vanilla is a much nicer thing to say about them than boring. And in some ways, it's more accurate. You don't have a larger-than-life figure in this race.

And you don't really have a larger-than-life issue in this race. You get to see really a snapshot of what the Republican message is going to be and what the Democratic message is going to be and who that message resonates with. So it's very much a race about the two parties and their strategies. Just a few months before the general election, it kind of feels like it's a perfect Petri dish version of what November's midterms will look like. It's pretty close to an ideal test. If you wanted to test the mood and the messages in this campaign nationally, you would want to do it in a district that was a little more moderate, a little more diverse than this one. It's overwhelmingly white and solidly conservative. But still, this is as close to a

good test as we're going to get before the final stretch in these next three months. Does the fact that this district is very white and pretty conservative mean it's even more important to Republicans given their constituencies? Yes. It means that this race approximates the Republican Party better than it approximates the country. And it will tell us more about the state of the Republican coalition in the midterm elections and the effectiveness of the Republican message than it tells us about the mood of the country as a whole. So how are we seeing the Republicans approach this special election? How are they campaigning? Well, at the very beginning, Republicans thought that if they nominated a mainstream conservative. If you want something done, call Troy Balderson, a conservative champion. Troy Balderson's bold leadership helped eliminate Ohio's staggering deficit.

And ran on a message about taxes and the tax cut bill that made its way through Congress. That would just be enough in a district like this one. As state senator, Troy Balderson voted to cut taxes by $5 billion. In other words, look what we've done. We've done a good job. We've got a good candidate. Keep us in power. Exactly. And they thought that that message would resonate with the kind of moderately conservative suburban voter that sent Pat T. Berry back to Congress over and over and over again.

The National Republican Party worked actively to get Troy Balderson through the primary. He beat back a candidate who was much further to the right because they banked on mainstream conservative message. This shouldn't be complicated. Troy Balderson, an Ironman athlete. He has grit, conservative grit, the kind Senator Balderson used to eliminate Ohio's budget deficit without raising taxes. They ran some ads about the tax bill. They ran some ads about Troy Balderson being a good neighbor, a good family man. He knows about hard work.

Balderson worked the family farm and ran the family business. And Troy Balderson knows about walls. He'll build Trump's wall and defend Christian values. But it just didn't get the job done. Meanwhile, the same old politics in Washington just aren't working. Danny O'Connor, the Democrat, has run a very hard-charging campaign. We need new leadership in both parties. About shaking up Washington, about bringing new leadership to the Capitol,

about protecting health care benefits, and about protecting Medicare and Social Security. Let's fight back against drug and insurance company greed. Let's protect every dime of the Social Security and Medicare benefits seniors have earned. I'm Danny O'Connor, and I approve this message. And so the race tightened and tightened and tightened, and pretty quickly— Dishonest Danny, O'Connor wants to take away your guns. Dishonest Danny supports open borders and sanctuary cities. You saw national Republicans switch from a positive message about the economy to just the most relentlessly negative campaign you will find.

I'll end sanctuary cities to stop illegals from taking our jobs. Fight alongside Trump to implement his agenda and use conservative grit to build the darn wall. I'm a Christian conservative who's been endorsed by Right to Life five times and have an A rating from the NRA, so Nancy Pelosi and her gang of liberals won't like me. I'm Republican Troy Balderson, a conservative with grit, and I approve this message. And why is the strategy shift that you're describing notable from your perspective as someone who covers politics? This is the kind of strategy that you normally see at the very end of a midterm election when an embattled political party feels like it has no option but to go all

negative on the other side. And what you have right now is three months before the general election, the end of the national campaign, Republican Party leaders pointing at this race and this strategy and saying this is how we're going to keep the House. In other words, the party isn't waiting until the last few weeks of the upcoming midterms this fall to go this negative, as they are doing in this district in Ohio. They're viewing it as the strategy for the rest of the mentors. That's right. This is not the last resort. This is their best hope. And what does that tell us?

It tells us the Republicans are in a lot of trouble and they know it. So you went to Ohio to check out what's happening in this race? I did. Well, he supports what Trump supports. And what do you think of the vice president in general? Oh, excellent. Excellent. I don't know anything in particular. No, he's a Christian man.

He's got moral values that differentiate what I think. And what about the Democrat? Well, I think they're off in left field myself. So what's the situation there for the Republican campaign, Balderson, a week out from the election when you were there? When I was there, their big concern, and I think it's still their concern today, was just about getting voters on their side engaged and energized. That their concern is that in polling, frankly, for both political parties, the voters who are paying the most attention to this race, who know the date of the election,

who are planning to show up, tend to lean towards the Democrats. There are many more Republicans in this district than there are Democrats, but by and large, they're just not that focused on this race. And that's a problem for especially Balderson. It's a huge problem for Balderson. Democrats wake up every morning looking for opportunities to send a message to the president and to do something about the state of things in Washington. Republicans in this district, maybe some of them will show up to send a message to Washington. But by and large, you're asking a group of people who are relatively complacent to turn out on the first Tuesday in August. Is that enthusiasm gap you're describing typical in a midterm election? It is. Normally in a presidential race, you see partisans on both

sides really show up because the national election, it's a choice between the two parties. Midterms are often just referenda on the president and the party that is angrier at the president tends to show up more. We saw it for Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama. We're seeing it for President Trump. But the Republican Party's challenge on that front is compounded by very, very serious divisions on the center-right. coalition in a district like this one is just unstable because those folks in the suburbs who love your more moderate Republicans, like a Pat Tiberi, like a John Kasich, aren't so hot on President Trump. And folks in the more rural part of the district,

they love the president. But whether either group shows up is an open question. So you just mentioned the rural Trump voter in Ohio. It feels like that kind of Republican is more or less a guaranteed voter in today's election, that they would be happy with how things are going. Is that what you found? They're definitely a much more likely voter than your suburban soft Republican. But even for your more hardcore Trump Republican, this is an off-season election. It's the only thing on the ballot. Many of these folks have already voted in primary elections, which Ohio held earlier this year. Many of them may be planning to vote in November, but asking people to vote three times in a year is a pretty big ask.

So what's the approach with this kind of voter, with this negative strategy that you're describing? Is it to kind of go after what the Democrats would take away from them or would change for the worse the same way that President Trump does? So immigration, guns, the kind of culture war stuff. That really is the approach that you're seeing with your hardcore Trump conservative voters in the more rural parts of the district. The liberal resistance is demanding open borders. They want to eliminate the law enforcement agency that enforces our immigration laws, opening America's doors to more crime and drugs. And they want Danny O'Connor's help. You see a lot of ads, a lot of political mail pieces about immigration, about guns, about Nancy Pelosi.

Nancy Pelosi and Washington liberals are dangerous. They can't be trusted to uphold Ohio values. Liberals in Washington want to repeal the middle class tax cuts, implement socialized medicine, and hike taxes on working families. Danny O'Connor is just as dangerous. Hike taxes on working families. Danny O'Connor is just as dangerous. Just trying to hammer home to conservative voters that there's an important election on the ballot and the Democrats are coming.

Dangerous Danny O'Connor. I'm Troy Balderson and I approve this message. When I saw Vice President Pence there with Troy Balderson, he was all in. The other side talks about this blue wave thing that's supposed to be coming. And you know what they want to bring with the blue wave? You see Danny O'Connor join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat majority on Capitol Hill.

You're going to have fewer jobs, fewer opportunities, more government and more taxes. Danny O'Connor is going to raise your taxes. We need to build the wall. We made history in 2016 and we're going to make history in 2018 when we elect Troy Balderson and reelect Republican majorities in the House and in the Senate. So get out and tell somebody. And talking to folks in the crowd, you heard people essentially welcoming that message that, yeah, we need to go. We need to elect a Republican. We need to protect President Trump was verbatim what one of them told me. Wow. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Ohio. I love Ohio. What a victory. And at Trump's rally on Saturday night, it was really just total war on Danny O'Connor. You ever see this? I mean, do you see Pelosi, who, by the way, again, controls Danny O'Connor, whoever the hell that is,

but, you know, Danny O'Connor, whoever the hell that is, but, you know, Danny O'Connor. It sounded a lot like his 2016 rallies. He was like a low-level person that did nothing. Danny O'Connor, that's a beauty. He's another beauty. This is what we're fighting. They will take away your taxes. They will destroy so many things that we've given.

He did talk about Troy Balderson, but he went after Danny O'Connor as, you know, a Nancy Pelosi liberal, as a guy whose vote in Congress is going to create more crime and more illegal immigration. A vote for Danny Boy and the Democrats is a vote to let criminals and drugs pour into our country and to let MS-13 run wild in our communities. And you know what they do once they're there? We're going to protect our law enforcement, not just ICE, all of our law enforcement. So for the Trump voter in Ohio, in this district, it's just kind of 2016 all over again. Right. For the Republicans, the challenge in turning out Trump's base is giving them the same sense of urgency that they felt in the presidential election. And what about the voters in this district who aren't Trump supporters, the more moderate Republicans? Well, this is what makes it so complicated for Republicans because all those more moderate Republicans, your sort of John Kasich Republicans, they are probably the most important group of decision makers in this special election.

And I found them sounding pretty indecisive and pretty ambivalent about their options in the race. I spoke to one woman outside of Barnes & Noble in Dublin. Can I ask you just what you think of the president? He needs to keep his freaking mouth shut, quit twittering, quit being so juvenile and petty. But I like that he's doing what he said he would do. She's a loyal Republican. She voted for President Trump. She wishes he would knock off a lot of his antics, but he's delivered what he said he was going to deliver. And she asked me, by the way,

what are the names of the candidates in this special election? That's not a good sign for the Republicans. It's not a great sign. That woman is probably not going to show up for Troy Balderson if she doesn't know his name a week before the election. That is what makes Republicans so nervous about this group of voters.

Sorry, I got really big dogs. Spoke to another woman at her door. I was going door-to-door canvassing with the Congressional Leadership Fund, big Republican super PAC. Spoke to one woman at her door who said she's a Republican, she votes Republican, her main concern is taxes. What do you think of the president? I think he sucks. I'm not sure I can put that. But I knew that before he was elected, so.

And she thinks the president is lousy. You did not vote for him? I did not, no. She didn't vote for him in 2016. And she's paying no attention to this election. So in some ways, even more emphatic than the woman in the parking lot, that she's just not paying attention and she almost seemed resentful of the implication that she should. Resentful of the implication that just because she's a Republican, she should care

about the special election and vote for the Republican in it. People have heard a lot from these campaigns, so maybe it's just exhaustion. But there also seems like a sense that, no, you can't demand my vote right now. So it sounds like Republicans in this district have an apathy problem on the one hand with kind of loyal Trump Republican voters and kind of a deeper problem with moderate Republicans in this district who are not happy with the president and don't seem engaged in the race at all. That's exactly right. And Republicans are trying to solve both problems at once with some remedies that could undermine each other. You bring in President Trump to fire up his base, you risk disillusioning anti-Trump Republicans even further. And the bottom line is that in both cases, with the Trump supporting voters and not, this strategy in this race is scare Republican

voters to the polls with a very dark vision of life under Democrats. It is exactly to scare them to the polls and to disqualify Democrats as an alternative. It's to make sure that voters who like the president see his political legitimacy at stake. And it's to make sure that voters who don't like the president don't see the Democrats as a viable option. So the strategy that we're talking about, this kind of relentlessly negative tactic, why is that necessarily a bad place for Republicans to be in?

Because that was a pretty effective for Republicans to be in? Because that was a pretty effective strategy for Donald Trump in 2016. It's way too early to say if this strategy is going to work nationally. We'll get clues today to see whether it works in Ohio. But the fact that they need to spend so much money to defend a district like this one, Republican outside groups have spent nearly $4 million trying to bail out Troy Balderson. That is greater than what the Democrats have spent by a factor of five or six. They can't have that kind of spending advantage in every race around the country in November. They want enough money.

There's not enough money in the House campaign in total to put that into all the competitive races. A district that the president carried by 11 points should be a district that's responsive to a message about keep the progress, keep up the momentum in Washington, reward us for the things we've done so far. That message didn't connect. So what would you call this strategy being practiced at this moment in Ohio? I think you have to see it as kind of an apocalypse now strategy, right? That this is every piece of ordinance that Republicans have lobbed with incredible funding behind it

at this basically unremarkable Democrat. And what's the significance of what happens today in Ohio? Look, I think most people involved in the race think that Balderson is more likely than not to win by a little, which would give Republicans maybe a little bit of confidence that this is a strategy that can work in much of the country. If the strategy fails, then you are really in a break glass in case of emergency situation for the GOP. They've used everything they had here to try to get their people out. If it doesn't work, there's no fallback plan right now. Meaning, if the apocalyptic now strategy fails, then it's just the apocalypse. That's certainly how it would feel to the Republican Party to have 90 days left until the election with no strategy that can keep even a district that the president won by 11 points in their hands.

Right. If you can't save the district that the president won by double digits, then you're in trouble. That would be most alarming for Republicans. Also alarming for Republicans is if they hang on to this district by one point, two points, three points. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of districts that are much more closely divided than this one. And if the slash and burn strategy can only save this district by a point or two, there are certainly enough districts for Democrats to take the House that are well to the center of this one. So a win for Republicans today in this special election in Ohio could still feel like a loss. There are going to be very, very few Republicans in Washington reassured by a one

point win in this district. So, Alex, is it accurate to say that that after a Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, won on a relentlessly negative and polarizing strategy in 2016 and then governed pretty much the same way, his Republican House majority now requires a relentlessly negative and polarizing midterm campaign to defend its power? And what does that tell us? I think that's exactly accurate. And it makes a lot of Republicans extremely uncomfortable and nervous that this is not the campaign they envisioned a year and a half ago. They thought they'd be able to run in the midterm elections on an upbeat, forward-looking message about economic

prosperity, about having kept their promises on issues like health care and immigration and taxes and national security. And instead, they have this relatively demoralizing slog ahead of them of essentially having to tear down their opponents all over again. And by the way, this time they don't have Hillary Clinton to help them. Right. And I guess what I'm wondering is, once you go that negative, are you kind of stuck campaigning that way as long as you've got that same president in power? Does that become the message of the Republican Party? There is no separating the Republican Party from President Trump in the eyes of voters at this point. We have seen that so consistently in the elections since he took office, and we're seeing it in this one, too. That's part of why Republicans have decided to take the risk of bringing in the president,

bringing in the vice president into a district where they are polarizing because they are making the bet that the polarization will work for them. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. At 12.01 this morning, the Trump administration reimposed 20-year-old economic sanctions on Iran that had been lifted by President Obama as part of the Iran nuclear deal.

President Trump said the sanctions would encourage Iran to renegotiate the 2015 nuclear deal, which he pulled out of in May. But the most immediate consequence has been to infuriate America's allies in Europe, including Britain, Germany, and France, who fear the sanctions could severely punish domestic companies that do business with Iran. On Monday, the three countries announced a plan to block the U.S. from punishing those businesses, as the sanctions require. And, just like the Bible says, it's basically an intergalactic invasion into this space through people. I'm telling you, it's what all the ancients said, it's what they warned of, it's what we're dealing with. After a lengthy debate about free speech, censorship, and fake news,

four major platforms, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and Facebook, have removed content from Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist whose site has falsely claimed, among other things, that high-ranking Democrats are pedophiles and that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax. They're demons. They're freaking interdimensional invaders, okay? I'll just say it. Make fun of me all you want on CNN or wherever, but everyone already innately knows this. These people are not freaking humans, okay?

Hillary Clinton is a goddamn demon. Each company said that Jones' work had violated their policies. Apple does not tolerate hate speech, the company wrote in a statement. In a message of his own on Twitter, Jones called the removals an attack on his politics, asking, quote, what conservative outlet will be next? That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.