Stephanie Grace: “Candidate quality” elections are all the rage this year, but not here

The congressional midterm elections are rapidly approaching, and among those handicapping future control of the U.S. Senate, “candidate quality” is one the season’s buzz phrases.

As in, are the GOP’s candidates in key swing states unfit enough to allow Democrats to keep their ever-so-slim majority? Put another way, are there enough voters who in a vacuum would choose a Republican but are so put off by lost-in-space Herschel Walker in Georgia or controversial celebrity doc Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, say, that they would rather be represented by a Democrat like Raphael Warnock or John Fetterman?

It’s an interesting lens through which to view the current political landscape, and one that resonates in Louisiana.

The most candidate-focused election in modern state memory was the 1991 runoff for governor. That race turned entirely on the quality — or lack of such — of former Klan leader David Duke, who inspired reasonable voters to back his deeply tainted opponent, ex-Gov. Edwin Edwards, in droves.

A more recent example came in 2015, when largely unknown state Rep. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, trounced the once-mighty Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter.

Edwards ran a strong campaign that year built on an appealing profile for Louisiana, as a socially conservative West Point grad from a law enforcement family. He hammered Vitter for his personal failings, particularly the prostitution scandal in his past.

There were likely more reasons voters turned on Vitter, including a superficial similarity with his GOP archrival Bobby Jindal, by then a profoundly unpopular lame duck. But Republican-leaning Louisiana’s willingness to put a Democrat in the Governor’s Mansion showed it’s possible for candidate quality to trump party.

If candidate quality elections are noteworthy at the state level, they’re downright rare when it comes to the U.S. Senate.

Red states such as Louisiana, Kentucky and Kansas have elected Democratic governors in recent years, and blue states like Massachusetts, Vermont and Maryland have been led by popular Republicans. That suggests that many voters value moderation and managerial competence more than ideological purity in state capitols.

But modern Senate races are all about the sort of nasty, my-way-or-the-highway partisanship that has come to dominate Washington politics.

Vitter, for example, was able to survive the prostitution revelations of 2007 when he framed his 2010 reelection campaign as a vote for or against the sitting president, Barack Obama, not the referendum on his own character that opponent Charlie Melancon sought. It was only when Vitter ran for governor five years later that his past caught up with him at the voting booth.

His successor in the Senate, John Kennedy, is up for reelection this year and running a Vitter-style party line campaign. Indeed, Kennedy, a onetime Democrat, has become so predictable in his political positioning that the only suspense is over which fake-folksy phrase he’ll trot out to explain his position on a given issue, the one about drinking weedkiller or the one about unicorn urine. Roll your eyes all you want — plenty of Louisiana voters do — but Kennedy’s current party affiliation gives him a huge leg up.

Democratic challenger Luke Mixon, whose campaign is openly modeled on Edwards’ defeat of Vitter, is trying to turn the conversation to Kennedy’s behavior, including his vote to reject the presidential election results in Arizona after the attack on the U.S. Capitol fueled by Donald Trump’s false claims of ballot chicanery. But the fact is that, when states as lopsided as Louisiana (as opposed to divided like Georgia and Pennsylvania) choose senators, party almost always carries the day. About the only exception in recent history was Roy Moore’s 2017 loss in Alabama, and he was a fringe figure accused of multiple instances of sexual misconduct, some involving teenage girls. That’s an awfully high bar.

And even since Louisiana’s last big candidate quality election, there’ve been signs that the sort of partisanship that dictates Senate elections is filtering down more to the states, where many divisive issues are now front and center.

When Edwards ran for reelection in 2019 after a successful first term, he faced not a powerful and experienced politician but novice candidate Eddie Rispone, perhaps best remembered for invoking Trump’s name ad nauseam. Yet Edwards’ runoff share dropped from 56% against Vitter to 51% against Rispone.

That sure seems like a sign that state political races are becoming more like national contests to me.