(DCWatchdog.com) – The Democratic Party is implementing a controversial election strategy in which it has already spent millions of dollars to back up some Republican primary candidates over others for the 2022 midterm elections – and their GOP bidders of choice are the ones the left deems “far-right.”
The primary season for the 2020 midterms is ending on Tuesday with votes in New Hampshire, and the Democrats have spent over $53 million so far to boost far-right Republicans in a total of nine states, according to a report by The Washington Post, as cited by The New York Post.
The analysis shows that in some cases, the Democrat spending boosting more conservative GOP candidates has outspent the respective bidder’s campaign budget more than 30 times.
The Democrat strategy is supposed to help its candidates defeat the presumably “more radical” Republican winners in the actual elections in November. Still, there are concerns on the left that it may backfire if precisely these more “far-right” GOP figures score victories in the general election.
Thus, the Democratic Party has backed supposedly “easier-to-defeat” Republicans in California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Most of the spending under the Democrats’ controversial strategy has gone to TV commercials, which often emphasize a candidate’s hardline anti-abortionist views and their support for the allegations of former President Donald Trump that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election with voter fraud.
The Democrat campaigns or pro-Democrat groups have so far intervened in 13 GOP primaries: two for the US Senate, five for the US House of Representatives, and six for state governorships.
In the eleven of the Republican primaries that have been decided, the candidates preferred by the Democrats under their new strategy have won in four races: the gubernatorial primaries in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Maryland, and the primary in the 3rd congressional district in Michigan.
The most notable case was in Illinois, where the Democratic Governors’ Association spent $34.5 million to help state Senator Darren Bailey get the Republican gubernatorial nomination.
In another case, in Maryland, the Democrats threw $1.7 million to support state Delegate Dan Cox, whose own campaign budget was nine times smaller.
In Colorado, all three “far-right” GOP candidates backed by the Democrats lost in the primaries for governor, the US Senate, and the US House.
“I do want to win these races, but it makes me worried. I just really worry about promoting election deniers and this idea that we’re going to be able to control what voters want at the end of the day,” progressivist US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) told Politico back in July on the controversial Democrat strategy.
Another Democrat, US Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, has called the strategy “dishonorable,” “dangerous,” and “just damn wrong.”
