What do these NC candidates say about Jan. 6? Who knows.
Most Republicans running for Congress in North Carolina are steering clear ahead of primaries on the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Why? There’s little to be gained and a whole lot of risk of alienating conservative voters.
The Charlotte Observer recently asked every Congressional candidate in an email survey whether they agreed with former President Donald Trump, who said he would consider pardoning some of the people who were convicted for crimes in the mayhem that day.
Few candidates — and no front runners — agreed to answer the questions.
We also asked if they agreed with the Republican National Committee, which issued a resolution saying that Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” by serving on the Jan. 6 select committee, the U.S. House committee investigating.
Candidates for U.S. Senate have been more open about Jan. 6.
Rep. Ted Budd and former Rep. Mark Walker, or their spokespeople, have both called the House select committee a partisan sham, while former Gov. Pat McCrory applauded Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell for criticizing the RNC after it said the committee was persecuting Americans who engaged in “legitimate political discourse.”
In previous candidate questionnaires we’ve asked about gun control and the end of the war in Afghanistan.
In campaign ads and on the trail, safer issues for Republicans in competitive primaries are taking a front seat: high gas prices, the war in Ukraine and the end of the war in Afghanistan, masks in schools and the economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The depth of partisanship in North Carolina politics helps explain why Congressional Republican candidates are staying mostly quiet on Jan. 6, says Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College.
Bitzer analyzed data on previous election results and found that just 369 out of the state’s 2,662 voting precincts were competitive in the 2020 election — meaning that they went 50-54% for one party or another, rather than a blow-out victory of 55% or more.
Many of those competitive precincts are in the state’s most populous counties, like Mecklenburg, Wake and Guilford.
“The polarization is happening on the ground,” he said. “Candidates see that dynamic and they say ‘If i want to be a representative and 60% of my (districts supports Trump) ... why would I not follow Trump’s edicts?’”
The new Congressional map for the 2022 election include seven seats that are expected to go to Republicans and six that are expected to go to Democrats, leaving just one that is a tossup.
Republicans on Jan. 6
CBS News reported earlier this month that the House Jan. 6 committee plans to release a report in June, synthesizing their findings after interviews with more than 650 witnesses.
In a court filing earlier this month, lawyers for the House committee wrote that they had accumulated evidence showing that Trump and some of his associates could be charged with criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States “by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort.”
But avoiding those issues may be Republican candidates’ best bet, at least during the primary, Bitzer said.
Polling of North Carolina voters by Carolina Forward, a progressive policy group, backs up that decision.
Asked who was responsible for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, just 4% of Republican respondents blamed Trump, while 37% said they blamed the individuals involved and 47% blamed Democratic leaders.
More than half of the Republican respondents said they strongly agreed with the notion that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. (Courts and state election officials have repeatedly found no evidence of significant levels of fraud.)
While North Carolina’s U.S. House candidates have mostly stayed quiet, some have spoken about it. Bo Hines, who is running for the 13th district, called the committee a sham on Twitter last month. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who is running for reelection, has called some of the people arrested “political prisoners.”
The respondents to the Observer’s survey included Republican Congressional candidates Lee Haywood (running in District 6), Tyler Lee (District 12), Max Southworth-Beckwith (District 7), and U.S. Senate candidates Jen Banwart and Benjamin Griffiths.
Each of those candidates, aside from Banwart, stood by the notion of pardoning some individuals on a case-by-case basis, and said the House committee was partisan and bias.
Banwart said she was “disappointed in the RNC conflation of peaceful protestors with those who participated in an insurrection against America.”
“There are many Republicans who have accepted the results of the 2020 election, denounced the events of 6 January, and wish to move forward in the image of the Republican Party that we know, support, and represent,” she said.
2022 general election
It’s unclear how much of an impact Jan. 6 will have in Republicans primaries this May, especially in U.S. House races where the candidates are staying quiet. But the storming of the Capitol and its aftermath could make a difference in November’s general election, said Kerry Haynie, a professor of political science at Duke University.
General elections tends to bring out more moderate voters than primaries. That could include Republicans or independents who would normally vote for the Republican, but who may flip or stay out of the election altogether if Democrats press the issue.
Haynie said Democrats could use Jan. 6 in combination with the war in Ukraine to undermine Republicans generally. Although most Republicans have been unequivocally critical of Russia, some have muddied the waters.
A video surfaced last week of Cawthorn calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “thug.” Budd called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “very intelligent actor,” which McCrory has already capitalized on with a campaign ad. (The ad does not include Budd’s full quote, in which he said Putin was “evil,” and “an international thug, but he is intelligent, so we have to treat him as such.”)
Haynie said Democrats could use examples like those, along with any tepid response to the riot on Jan. 6, to paint Republicans as unpatriotic and unwilling to defend democracies — both domestically and abroad.
Political advantage could rise for Democrats if the select committee findings are damning.
“There could be enough Republicans offended by what (the committee’s) report may show that it could be the difference in the election,” Haynie said, referring particularly to the U.S. Senate race.
“If you take some of these pro-Russia statements, put them alongside of some statements calling Jan. 6 ‘legitimate political discourse,’” Haynie said, “You can say: ‘This is what I’m running against.’”
This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 12:38 PM with the headline "What do these NC candidates say about Jan. 6? Who knows. ."
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