David Brat. Photo credit: Times-Dispatch.
by James A. Bacon
I rarely pontificate about congressional races but I live in the 7th Congressional District, so I believe I have a few insights into how David Brat slew Goliath, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. National media have examined the race through the prism of national issues such as immigration and the Tea Party. While those issues may have had a marginal impact, I think they don’t explain much. The fact is, Cantor and Brat were both conservative candidates, and they both jostled to out-conservative the other. I think the electorate’s rejection of Cantor had more to do with style than substance. Let me give two examples.
A few months ago my wife and I had just sat down for dinner at an expensive local steakhouse, Buckhead’s, when in walked Cantor, his wife and his bodyguard. (Buckhead’s was a treat for us; apparently, Cantor is a big steak eater. He reportedly dropped $168K in campaign money on Bobby Van’s Steak House in New York and and BLT Steak in Washington, D.C.) The hostess started to seat him in the table next to ours but someone had other ideas, and the group wound up seated in a back corner of the restaurant away from everyone else. My wife joked at the time that he was avoiding me, the notorious blogger, but I am pretty certain he had no idea who I was. Here’s the point: We didn’t see him interact with anyone in the restaurant. He gave every indication of wanting to avoid his constituents. There is a reason that Cantor has the reputation of being aloof. He is aloof.
By way of contrast, my wife and I were working in our front garden a couple of weeks ago when who should come rolling down our suburban cul-de-sac street but David Brat and a lad whom I took to be his son. He yelled out something to the effect, “Hi, I’m David Brat and I’m running for Congress.” I’d met Brat a couple of times before he announced his candidacy so I spent some time chatting with him. It was getting warm and Brat had sweat stains in his underarms and perspiration on his forehead but he was upbeat and enthusiastic. I sicced him on a neighbor, and off he went like Labrador after a duck. While Cantor was entertaining the big-money special interests in New York and Washington, Brat was pressing the flesh in the 7th District.
Cantor compounded his image problem by labeling Brat as a “liberal college professor” and sticking with the charge even after it had been debunked by every objective source. The original charge was sleazy enough. But to persist in making the charge a centerpiece of the campaign after it was repudiated was an insult to the intelligence of Republican voters. Anyone who paid any attention to the campaign could see that the charge was a bald-faced lie, and I have to think that many asked themselves, “How f***ing stupid do you think I am?”
While the local Tea Party backed Brat, it was not a major factor. The simple fact is, the local Tea Party chapters are not especially strong or well-financed. The national Tea Party organizations all wrote him off. Although local Tea Partiers did contribute to Brat’s organization, it is ridiculous to see Brat’s victory as a Tea Party victory. The election reflects a dissatisfaction with politics as usual that extends beyond the Tea Party. While Cantor gave lip service to the ideal of a smaller, more fiscally responsible federal government, he came across as a pol who was all too happy to sell out to the D.C. political class. He surrounded himself with security guards and staff minions. He spent more time fund raising with special interests than listening to his constituents. Yes, he was powerful in Washington, D.C., but the folks back home were not impressed by his ability to articulate their hopes and fears.
Republican voters are sick and tired of the way business is done in Washington. They view the nation’s capital as a stinking cesspool that favors insiders. They see crony capitalists buying politicians and rigging the rules to loot the middle class. Republican voters see Republican leaders in Washington as less rapacious than the Democrats but not a whole lot better. They think term limits are a good idea because they know that, given enough time, the D.C. political culture can corrupt the most virtuous. To the middle-class voters of the 7th District, politicians are expendable. Eric Cantor was expendable. Voting for David Brat sent a message.
