The very first vote Barry Loudermilk made as a member of Congress is now one of the main reasons he faces not one, but four opponents in May’s Republican primary.
His GOP colleague, Doug Collins, voted the same way on the House floor and also has four primary opponents, including former U.S. Rep. Paul Broun.
In the open race for Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District, this one vote is being held up as a kind of litmus test for many voters.
Their blunder? Voting for John Boehner to be re-elected speaker of the U.S. House in January 2015. Now their challengers want to make them pay.
While statewide incumbents such as U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson escaped the anti-incumbent surge, congressional members closest to the electorate have quickly learned they are squarely in the cross hairs of this cycle’s anti-establishment groundswell, despite in some cases top ratings from right-wing blue-chip groups such as the National Rifle Association, National Right to Life and FreedomWorks.
“What we’re seeing now is that some of these incumbents who themselves at one time … challenged what was then the Republican establishment are now seen as part of the establishment and therefore subject to being challenged by more conservative ideological purists,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University.
Fueled by the runaway candidacies of outsiders Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the voter frustration extends beyond the Boehner vote and includes any action perceived to be supportive of the status quo. Even routine spending bills, which incumbents used to hold up as proof they were bringing back bounty for their districts, have become fair game. The political opening has compelled a litany of challengers to run on the basis that incumbents have been out of touch and insufficiently conservative.
“Overwhelmingly, the message that I hear in the 11th District is that we’re tired of people who promise us one thing here and then go up to Washington and vote in a completely different way really to help their own political careers and to support the establishment and the Washington, D.C., economy,” said Daniel Cowan of Kennesaw, a business executive and first-time candidate running against Loudermilk.
In particular, the primary season is showing the pressure facing many of Georgia’s officials to remain ideologically pure in a legislative body that often calls for political compromise.
Crimson electorate
The general dissatisfaction about the Republican Party’s direction that led to the runaway 14-percentage-point victory of Trump last month in Georgia’s presidential primary has seeped down into the state’s congressional races.
The anger has particularly boiled over in the congressional districts that are the deepest red, with voters’ discontent often focused on how much incumbents have been perceived to compromise with Democrats or cave in to President Barack Obama.
“I think that’s what driving the Trump and Cruz events this year is that much of the Republican base is unhappy and has been unhappy for a while. You’re getting a lot of people who aren’t real happy (about) their representatives, even if they are pretty darn conservative,” said Kerwin Swint, a former GOP activist who is now a political science professor at Kennesaw State University.
As it translates to congressional races, Swint said it is no longer enough for incumbents to vote the party line.
Voters are “tired of the compromise, the budget deals and caving in, as they see it, on Obamacare, and they want somebody who’s going to say no and like Cruz shut down the government if that’s what it takes,” Swint said.
In the eyes of many conservatives, no one is seen as a bigger symbol in that capitulation than Boehner, who stepped down at the end of October after months of mounting pressure.
The decision of Georgia's members not to join their 25 House colleagues who voted against Boehner on the House floor in January 2015 has become a core component of the campaigns of challengers such as Cowan and Broun.
Even in open congressional districts such as Georgia’s 3rd, similar dissatisfaction with the status quo has set the tone even without an incumbent to blame.
“You can go up and vote a particular way and you can get the skin taken off of you. It’s not so much the vote, it’s because it’s not changing. People expect change and they expect results,” said Drew Ferguson, the mayor of West Point and a dentist running in the crowded contest.
Even if these primary races become bloody political battles, Adam Stone, a political science professor at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College, said they won’t harm the party given how deeply red the districts have been drawn.
“Fundamentally, what’s going on is a battle within the Republican Party and in Georgia about what it means to be a Republican, which is interesting because they’re so strong in the state they can afford the battle,” Stone said. “Previously, it might have cost them something.”
Tough votes
The anti-incumbent fervor can be tricky for incumbents to maneuver around, since they often require defenses that don’t fit neatly into a sound bite. That holds particularly true for decisions that require sensitive political calculations, such as the December omnibus spending bill that challengers have framed as a vote to continue funding for Planned Parenthood and the implementation of Obamacare.
For sitting lawmakers such as Loudermilk, the response has required a dip into the wonky world of Georgia's water wars with Alabama and Florida. (Most members of the delegation opted to leverage their clout as a bloc to force leaders to strip out what they perceived as harmful language concerning Georgia's water rights in the bill, which in turn required their support.)
Such votes, even a few years ago, were not considered the kinds of issues over which you could lose your job. But the attention being paid on the campaign trail showcases just how much the political ground has shifted.
“When it comes to protecting the rights of the people in my district, that’s going to outweigh everything else,” Loudermilk said in an interview. “Protecting our water rights is the most important thing that we have to do in this state because if you shut off our water, you kill economic development and you take away the rights of the people to access their water by rationing the water at their homes.”
The lines of attack against incumbents such as Loudermilk, who is aligned with some of Congress’ strongest conservatives as a member of the House Freedom Caucus, demonstrates what Stone sees as the “impossible standard” that’s often set for GOP lawmakers by their base.
“There’s a big difference between campaigning and governing. These Republican House members often find themselves … having to deal with things as they are in Washington, which are very different from” Georgia, Stone said.
The current political state is not lost on Republican incumbents such as Collins, a former Baptist minister and Army chaplain currently seeking a third term.
“As an incumbent, I know that I am under great pressure to articulate all that I am doing to try to fix a broken system in Washington, D.C.,” he said in a statement. “Washington, D.C., is broken and people want it fixed now. So do I and I share their frustrations with how slow reform happens.”
Results unknown
What’s still unclear at the moment is the real impact of the outsider presidential campaigns of Trump and Cruz in terms of the success of challengers in these congressional primaries.
State Sen. Mike Crane, who’s also running for the 3rd Congressional District seat, said the people Trump in particular is helping attract to the polls who were previously inactive politically can ultimately help a campaign like his.
“People are concerned, and rightfully so, as they’re watching our nation slipping away,” he said. “They’re asking for somebody to come stand in the gap and stand for what’s right, and they see that I’ve got a track record that can do that.”
Geoffrey Skelley of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics indicated he is not yet prepared to declare a political shift, noting that despite some close calls, no sitting incumbents have lost their congressional seats yet this cycle.
“At some point it’s going to happen,” he said, “but it hasn’t so far in situations where, given the ascension of Trump and the feeling that the Republican electorate in particular has shown, we might have expected someone to lose by now.”
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