Republicans Make President Obama Foil In State Races
In governor’s races across the country, top GOP candidates are concentrating their attacks on the White House, the surest sign yet that Republicans see opportunity in nationalizing the 2010 election and a departure from the strategy that elected two Republicans to governorships in November.
While Chris Christie in New Jersey and Bob McDonnell in Virginia both refrained from overt criticism of President Barack Obama in their successful 2009 races, the current crop of GOP gubernatorial contenders seems intent on making the 2010 election a referendum on Obama’s policies.
Obama isn’t all they’re talking about — GOP candidates continue to opine about bread-and-butter state-level issues in their campaigns. But many of them are also unmistakably targeting the president and the national Democratic agenda in an effort to underscore their conservative credentials and distinguish themselves in crowded primaries.
“For candidates who are running in Republican gubernatorial primaries, it would be a mistake not to contrast their ideology vis-à-vis the president,” said Brad Todd, a GOP ad man who is a veteran of governor’s races. “We are begging for a national election. It will benefit Republicans in every race where that nationalized dynamic is in place.”
The health care reform bill is proving to be an especially rich vein for mining. In Georgia, state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine has turned Obama’s push for health care reform into a rallying point for his campaign by launching “YouCanStopObama.com,” a site that allows supporters to sign a petition protesting “a government takeover of our nation’s health care system.”
“With your help we can stand up to President Obama and the power grabbing, free market destroying Congress. From centralized control of banking, automaking, and now health care, Obama’s and Congress’ plan for America is a prescription for disaster,” reads the website, which features a picture of Obama that dominates the screen, accompanied by large, attention-grabbing block letters.
In South Carolina, Attorney General Henry McMaster has gained national notice for assault on the president’s health care overhaul effort, on Wednesday writing a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatening to sue unless a Medicaid provision in the Senate health care bill that benefits Nebraska at the expense of other states is eliminated.
Signing on to McMaster’s letter was a handful of other Republican attorneys general who, like McMaster, are also running for governor in 2010: Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett.
GOP strategist Bill Kenyon, a veteran of gubernatorial campaign battles, explained that the Republicans were tapping into anxieties at the state level about expanding Medicaid at a time when state budgets are swimming in red ink.
“It allows an opening for statewide candidates to bring Obama into the fray,” said Kenyon.
Tennessee state Senate speaker and gubernatorial contender Ron Ramsey, who is calling on his state’s Democratic attorney general to sign onto McMaster’s effort, said zeroing in on the health care issue was a logical move in a Republican primary where conservative voters are up for grabs.
“I think people are upset that the federal government is overreaching,” Ramsey told POLITICO. “I think it’s come to a head on the health care issue.”
Candidates have also found national security issues to be advantageous. In November, GOP Rep. Gresham Barrett, who is giving up his safe South Carolina seat to run for governor, sent a letter to Obama asking that he eliminate South Carolina as a potential location for housing Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
“The people of this state have already made it abundantly clear that any plan to move terrorists to our soil is unacceptable,” he wrote.
Barrett challenged his gubernatorial opponents to sign on to the letter, which concluded, “We strongly urge you, Mr. President, not to transfer any more of these known terrorists to American soil and we would support any legal or legislative remedy opposing more terrorist transfers to the State of South Carolina.”
It wasn’t the first time Barrett had taken aim at Obama. A month earlier, after the president won the Nobel Prize, Barrett released a scorching statement.
“I’m not sure what the international community loved best; his waffling on Afghanistan, pulling defense missiles out of Eastern Europe, turning his back on freedom fighters in Honduras, coddling Castro, siding with Palestinians against Israel, or almost getting tough on Iran.”
In the days following an attempted Christmas Eve terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound jetliner, no Republican was more aggressive in challenging the Obama administration than Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor of Michigan and giving up his slot as the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Hoekstra took to "Fox News Sunday" just days after the incident to say it was fair to hold the White House at least partly responsible for the attack, and he has blasted Obama repeatedly over the last week on his Twitter feed, criticizing the White House for failing to answer questions about what it knew about the attack.
That much might come within the ambit of his position on the Intelligence Committee, but Hoekstra attracted fierce Democratic criticism for taking it one step further: He put out a fundraising appeal excoriating Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for saying after the attack that “the system worked.”
“They just don't get it,” Hoekstra wrote in the appeal. “The system didn't ‘work’ here. Far from it! It is insulting that The Obama administration would make such a claim, but then again, these are the same weak-kneed liberals who have recently tried to bring Guantanamo Bay terrorists right here to Michigan!”
“It’s kind of just call ‘em like you see ‘em,” Hoekstra told POLITICO in an interview. “I’ve got political differences with this president on national security, and I’m just calling him on it.”
On Wednesday, GOP Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons joined in the criticism and called on Napolitano to resign. The embattled Gibbons, who has also asked Democratic state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto for a ruling on the constitutionality of the Senate version of the health care bill, is facing tough primary and general election competition.
Phil Musser, a former executive director of the Republican Governors Association, said turning Obama into a target would be particularly helpful for Republicans running in crowded primaries, like Hoekstra and McMaster.
“For candidates in multicontestant primary fields, any opportunity to get noticed on national TV and bash Obama is golden. It provides free exposure when money is tight, helps them raise national money at the end of the quarter, and most importantly, forces their local press to cover them,” said Musser. “For McMaster and Hoekstra, who are both in tight primary races, the recent national news provides a boost of free visibility on issues the GOP base feels strongly about.”
“[T]his is a very smart strategy. It’s how to win,” said Fred Davis, a Southern California-based Republican strategist who advised Georgia Gov. Sonny Purdue’s 2002 campaign. “Just like the Democrats did in reverse, attaching themselves from top to bottom to George W. Bush’s unpopularity.”
Emily DeRose, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Governors Association, said the GOP targeting of Obama would backfire.
“Any time you see a gubernatorial candidate talking about federal issues instead of state issues, you know two things right away: 1) the candidate is listening to D.C. consultants instead of the voters and 2) the candidate has no shot of winning,” said DeRose. “Voters aren't dumb — they see right through it. They know the difference between federal issues and state issues, and they want their governor to focus on leading their state.”
Some Republicans, however, argue that Obama’s agenda is so expansive that it is blurring the line between federal and state issues — and is a problem for governors and prospective governors to speak out about.
Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry, involved in a contentious primary with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, has said Obama is “hell bent” on turning the United States into a socialist country and suggested this year that Texas might secede from the union if Washington continued its high-spending ways.
In his campaign speech last year in Florida, McCollum also rolled out the s-word — saying Obama was pushing the country toward “socialism” and that he was “nationalizing” the private enterprise system.
GOP congressman and gubernatorial contender Zach Wamp of Tennessee evoked the image of presidential encroachment at an August campaign event.
“We will meet [Obama] at the state line” if the White House issued an executive order limiting gun rights, he said at an August town hall.
“I don’t expect it, but, frankly, we’ve got to watch him closely — this administration and its liberal agenda,” Wamp told the Maryville Daily Times.
Sources: Politico
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