More bait: Will Democrats fall for it?

Republicans are promoting Clay Bearnson, a candidate running against their own Republican candidate in Oregon’s state Senate District 3 race.

It is deceptive, clever, hardball politics. They are playing to win. 

I wonder why Hicks’ side waited so long to do it.

Here is what popped up in my text messages Saturday afternoon:

The link takes you to Bearnson’s legitimate website, but Bearnson did not send or pay for this advertisement. It came from a Republican PAC dedicated to electing Republicans.

The text is an invitation to disaffected Democrats. Some of the most politically passionate Democrats are frustrated with their party. Some of the disaffection is a continuation of the Bernie-Hillary split from 2016. Those voters are confident we can and should implement Medicare for All and other redistributive aspirations sooner rather than later. Some of it is residue of the Biden-Harris loss and a feeling that Democrats are weak and incompetent, which is why Trump steamrolls over them. The internal debate now shows up as a split between Democratic Socialists of America activists and “regular” Democrats.

There are also local Democratic activists who want to punish Democratic nominee Denise Krause for defeating their preferred candidate in the primary.

My sense was that the normal erosion away from Krause would be about equal to the Jill Stein and Cornel West vote in 2024. Together Stein and West got just over one percent of the vote in Oregon. Those were protest votes, gestures from people on the disaffected left. That was my estimate of the baseline erosion from Krause due to Bearnson’s place on the ballot.

I am revising that upwards.

I suspect this late burst of GOP ads for Bearnson will push his share above that baseline. The Hicks campaign did a good job of demonizing a grainy black-and-white caricature of Krause, calling her a future rubber stamp for failed policies. (Krause is doing the same thing to Hicks, presenting him in grainy black and white as a tool of his corporate funders. Hicks has twice her money, so the overall impression is of Krause as the underdog getting pummeled, but that she is fighting back and is not a doormat.) While I typed a draft of this post, with MS NOW playing in the background, I heard, in a single half hour, two 30-second Hicks ads bashing Krause as a Portland-loving pawn of Democratic Governor Tina Kotek, yuck, and one 30-second Krause ad asserting that Hicks is a Republican, yuck. This is a microcosm of this campaign.

In a very close election, the Democratic protest votes Bearnson takes from Krause could be decisive. But this GOP text blitz is too little, too late. Bearnson was never visible and credible enough to become the real alternative to Krause’s left. A significant chunk of the political left is eager to support such a candidate, confident that the country is ready for a real progressive. Republicans could have spent several hundred thousand dollars from their cornucopia building up Bearnson with no loss to the Hicks campaign. Bearnson would have been the “good guy outsider” in the ad war voters are watching. Hicks and Krause are the fighting thugs; Bearnson would be the guy saying campaigns shouldn’t be so big and nasty. That would have some appeal, and I can imagine him getting 10 percent of the vote, likely securing a Hicks victory. Republicans did not do this.

Instead, the Hicks campaign repeatedly ran harsh ads condemning Democrats as corrupt and incompetent, then immediately saying that Hicks respects Democrats and would work across the aisle with them.  That is supposed to be credible. Very strange. It is as if they don’t watch their own ads. 

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