Cantor Loses Primary , Democrats Find 11th Hour Candidate for 7th District

Back when everyone thought Eric Cantor was a shoe-in for re-election, the 7th District Democrats decided they would not run a sacrificial lamb.  But it appears the 7th District Democratic Committee had second thoughts and nominated John "Jack" Trammell two days before the GOP primary.  Trammell is an associate professor at Randolph-Macon College, the same place that employs Brat.

Reading news clips and listening to talk radio this morning, much is being made of the "historic" nature of Cantor's loss.  There is also a lot of talk about Brat's Tea Party connections and how the "Tea Party Roared."  It's likely less due to the Tea Party and more along the lines of what an unnamed "GOP strategist" told the Roanoke Times last night during a conversation at the Cantor election party wake and reported by the Times this morning:

“This is what happens when you don’t tend the weeds in your backyard,” the strategist said. He went on to question Cantor’s decision to go on television — a strategy that may have raised Brat’s profile and let more voters know about the race. “Six weeks ago, Brat was an unknown. The question will be: Did the campaign overreact?”

Something happened between 2012 and 2014.  Jim Geraghty noted on the Campaign Spot that in 2012, Cantor took 79of the vote in his primary.  He also notes turnout wasn't the issue.  It was higher than 2012:

Cantor and his allies can’t blame low turnout for this one. My old colleague Derek Willis noted that the 2012 primary turnout was surpassed with only 71 percent of the precincts reporting. “People who ran David Brat’s turnout operation are gonna be getting some phone calls, methinks.” 

A perfect storm appears to have been created in the last year that led to last night's surprise upset.  In full disclosure, I have known Cantor for years.  I also personally know many of the former Cantor supporters who were supporting Brat and, who in my opinion, made this more personal toward some of the players than it should have been.  And, I know Cantor's consultant.  Cantor became the target for the anger caused by events that began in the run-up to this year's GOP mass meetings and state nominating convention, orchestrated by Cantor's consultant, and likely with the approval of Cantor.  They were tactics that were regularly used in the 80's when I was cutting my teeth in politics.  They served only to tick off people and had for the most part been tossed in the waste can, until this year.  Bearing Drift does a good job of explaining those events in this post.  In short it can be summed up like this:

Don’t piss off the grassroots.

John Fund confirmed this when he wrote on National Review Online:

Primaries are often criticized for low voter turnout. But they are also expressions of the grassroots sentiments of political parties. The lesson tonight is that establishment candidates ignore their most ardent voters at their peril. As political analyst Stuart Rothenberg put it tonight: “The GOP establishment’s problem isn’t with the Tea Party. It’s with Republican voters.”

So, Brat is to be congratulated on his win.  He energized grassroots and it paid dividends.  But now he has to figure out how to raise money for a general election because you can bet the Democrats would love to try and make this a race.  The district is drawn to favor the GOP, but if you can't raise money to get your message out, that advantage may evaporate.

Bob Marshall Makes National Review's Bad Primary Candidates List

It's primary season and National Review Online had this article by John Fund yesterday on a couple of tea party aligned candidates that Fund considers to be disasters for the GOP if they win their nomination contests.  Virginia's own Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Prince William) makes the list.

Marshall is currently one of several candidates hoping to replace retiring 10th District Congressman Frank Wolf.  The so-called GOP establishment has circled the wagons around Delegate Barbara Comstock.  But Comstock is no RINO (Republican in Name Only), which is usually who Tea Party aligned candidates target.  Comstock has an "A" rating from the NRA, and beat back a Bloomberg funded candidate to win reelection in Northern Virginia in 2013.  She has also secured the endorsement of conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin, no fan of the GOP establishment and a big fan of the Tea Party, and movement conservatives like Morton Blackwell.

There is a "fire house" primary scheduled for Saturday, April 26 to decide the GOP nominee.  While not a party convention that usually only the most dedicated activists attend, a fire house primary still has lower turn out than an actual primary.  Fund notes that Marshall has performed well in these low turnout environments in the past, like in 2008, when he lost a U.S. Senate primary to former governor and NRA Board member Jim Gilmore by just 66 votes out of more than 10,300 votes cast at a state GOP convention. And that could be the problem.  If he wins there will be a lot of past statements that Democrats will use against Delegate Marshall:

Marshall’s problem is that his extreme rhetoric marks him as easy prey for Democratic attack ads in November. In my view, he is a dead-weight loser — and I almost never reach such a conclusion about a conservative candidate in a competitive district.

Last Thursday, the Washington Times did an analysis of his record and noted that “Marshall has said disabled children can be God’s vengeance against women who have had abortions.” Indeed, in 2010, Marshall spoke at a rally calling for an end to state funding of Planned Parenthood. “When you abort the firstborn of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” he claimed. “This is a special punishment, Christians would suggest.”

After an uproar, Marshall waited five days to offer a quasi-apology, saying he had been misconstrued. But days after this walkback, he took to the House floor and claimed his statement had “been repeated endless times in print and in the electronic media without anyone producing the smoking-gun tape.” In reality, his words had been posted on YouTube for several days and can still be found there.

“He’s Todd Akin on steroids,” adds one Northern Virginia conservative activist who has endorsed no one for the seat. He noted that after last year’s Supreme Court decision striking down a gay-marriage ban in California, Marshall said, “For all I know, [Justice Anthony] Kennedy is a homosexual.” When asked by the Washington Times about his comment, he defended it: “Clearly, some of the people making these decisions must be rationalizing their own bad behavior.” Justice Kennedy, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, has been married for 51 years and has five children.

Marshall has support from the Tea Party in his home county.  The fact that tea party booster Mark Levin is on Comstock's side, may be what she needs to overcome Marshall's claims that she is not conservative enough.  Anyone who has listened to Levin knows he is not going to support a squish.  In the end however, she has to turn out more people than the other candidates on April 26.