Pointed

The 2022 general election is about a month away. Accordingly, the new Voters' Pamphlet arrived in the mail yesterday, and I spent some time looking through it. Washington is a Blue state, and so I started out by looking at the entries for Republican candidates around the state.

For the most part, it was a litany of Republican talking points; taxes are too high, crime is out of control, families (specifically, it seems) can't afford their needs due to inflation, the pandemic response was mishandled, illegal immigration threatens everyone, and the like. "Make America Great Again" rhetoric was mostly avoided, although House of Representatives candidate Matt Larkin tossed in "Make Crime Illegal Again." There was also quite a bit of "I'll fight for you" rhetoric, which always strikes me as strange; but I get it, people lap that stuff up. There weren't quite as many first-time candidates for elected office as I had expected, but there were a handful. (Interestingly, there were no political novices on the Democratic side.) Only one of the candidates made reference to the Republican article of faith that there was electoral cheating going on, and references to the new Republican boogeyman of "CRT" were mostly indirect references to things like "parents' rights."

Abortion wasn't quite absent from the pamphlet, but only one of the Republican candidates had anything to say directly about it, noting that "Newborn Washington babies can be murdered as they are being born." Another of the Republicans' perhaps understanding a need to better "read the room" in a Democratic-leaning state, noted "I will defend women's reproductive rights." Interestingly, this was one of the small group of female Republicans in the pamphlet, and, judging from their photographs, possibly the only non-White of the group. (Although another of the four Republican women may also have been non-White.) She was also the only candidate who made an explicit pitch for the "middle."

Senate Candidate Tiffany Smiley, at the top of the ticket, avoided the talking points entirely, choosing to stick with her primary election strategy of presenting a generically uplifting personal story, rather than any indications of what policies she might favor. (The Smiley campaign saves that for the website.)

Because of the format of Washington primary elections, it's possible for two candidates from the same party to face on another in the general election, and so one race had two Republican candidates. It stood out from the others in the complete absence of the typical taking points.

Again, I am convinced that one of the main things one learns from the Voters' Pamphlet is how the various campaigns see the voters they're attempting to communicate it. The Republican candidates avoided explicit "Trumpiness," and mostly stayed away from the "hot-button political issues" that would lead to negative contrasts with the Democrats. They also stayed away from direct attacks, tending to be critical of policy positions that others have done the work of linking to the Democratic party and/or the Biden Administration. I think the lesson that Republicans took away from the primaries is that while it's fine to talk to their own voters in the language of their fears and distrust, going all the way to full culture-war rhetoric would alienate the less-conservative voters they would need to attract in order to actually win elections. We'll see how well it works in a month's time.