The Pennsylvania GOP’s Pushover Primary

Some Republicans in the Keystone State say this year’s election results show ‘how weak’ their party is.

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People clap as Doug Mastriano finishes speaking during a campaign rally in May. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Following Democrats’ midterm sweep of Pennsylvania’s open Senate and governor seats, Republican operatives, consultants, and elected officials across the state are frantically searching for someone to blame. 

The primary targets are the Republican candidates themselves, both of whom were endorsed by former President Donald Trump and lost by wide margins in what’s normally a battleground state: Dr. Mehmet Oz, who lost the Senate seat by 5 points, and far-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a 2020 election-denier who lost the gubernatorial race by 14. 

But many GOP county chairs and political operatives insist the party’s problem wasn’t just the candidates themselves. It was also the party’s unwillingness to squelch ultimately unelectable candidates and the support they got from the populist right. Now they’re urging state GOP leaders to consider new ways for nominating a competitive challenger to Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in 2024.

One solution is for the party to adopt a runoff system, whereby a candidate would have to secure a majority of votes to win the party nomination. Leaders at Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, a key player in Pennsylvania GOP politics, are already urging state party leaders and elected officials to consider the move in the primary election, The Dispatch has learned.

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  1. Mctaglieri

    This is more evidence, if any were needed, of the value of rank-choice voting. When there's a large field of candidates with several "normal" ones and one extremist, the "normal" voters may not coalesce behind a single candidate, allowing the limited but enthusiastic supporters of the extremist to win.

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  2. Jfan

    Return to caucuses. While both primaries and caucuses can malfunction in any given case, caucuses force people to listen each other before voting. Would you trust a trial in which the jury rendered a verdict without hearing the evidence or the lawyers' arguments?

    Separately, in July 2016 I met Adele Malpass, the New York County Republican Party chairman, who had denounced Trump in the fall of 2015 but refused to push him out of the party then, at a point when most people assumed Trump would just disappear. By July she was a delegate pledged for Kasich, but she refused to fight for a rule change to liberate the delegates and stop Trump. When I asked why, she replied "He won fair and square." Personally, when seventeen candidates run and one candidate gets sixty percent of the news coverage, I think that campaign is rigged. The finger-pointing Pennsylvania party leaders recall Malpass's weakness. Her husband was rewarded with a Trump appointment.

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    Connie

    The GOP evolved into one Alpa Male and a herd of beta males.

    Then there is Liz Cheney; our modern day Esther.

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    1. Jfan

      The only problem with this formulation is that it clashes with my preferred quip, that Cheney has a bigger pair than either Donny or Donny Jr.

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  4. Randall Briggs

    The parties have become weak at most levels, from the national party establishments on down. They have little impact on who the nominees are, but they then provide money to those nominees. They are wealthy-but-weak organizations that can be hijacked by charismatic (or bullying) candidates. If the parties were strong, Donald Trump would not have been the GOP nominee, and Bernie Sanders would not have come as close as he did to being the Democratic nominee, in 2016.

    A big problem is primary elections. The bully can get his shock troops/true believers out on primary day, so a small minority makes the most important decision for the whole party. Having a runoff requirement in cases where no primary candidate wins 50% plus one is only partial, fix, but it's better than letting a candidate who only won a plurality of primary votes become the nominee.

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  5. MathewA

    I think a switch to ranked choice voting makes a lot of sense. It seemed to work pretty good with Younkin in VA

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    Christophertingey

    Why do you keep using the term "establishment" to describe Republican candidates who are not Trump cultists. The party has been taken over by Trumpsters who are the establishment.

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    The Stray Goose

    Hey, uh. What happens if the ‘smoke-filled’ rooms get filled with populists? Who’s gonna limit those guys???

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    1. Avatar photo
      The Stray Goose

      Clearly, what must end are, open, primaries, and jungle primary’s. We should not be permitted to make selections for a party that we do not belong to. If you want to choose their candidate, join their party.

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    Joe Schueller

    Play stupid games, win stupid prizes!

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  9. Rblik

    Great article. Hopefully there are many of these discussions going on in state parties on how to change primaries to discourage future Mastrianos. Thankfully, the PA GOP seems less nuts than the AZ GOP. Mastriano won the nomination easy...then got crushed. A terrible sign. Looking forward to more updates on primary changes.

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  10. Krbrady1919

    VA red-leaning independent here. I was happy when then-candidate Youngkin was basically chosen through a highly unusual partly-closed, in-person process at the VA statewide GOP convention back in the Spring of '20. Honestly, the 'smoke-filled, party backroom' in our case chose a Republican candidate who pretty handily won a statewide race, and we avoided a Trumpy nutbar state rep who had no chance of winning in the general.

    Out with extremist-leaning primaries, in with the smoke-filled, exclusive rooms! Haha.

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      Narwhal

      “Virginia Republicans eschewed holding a state-run primary and instead opted for what organizers described as an “unassembled convention,” with about 30,000 pre-registered Republicans voting at nearly 40 sites across the commonwealth on Saturday.”

      https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/10/youngkin-virginia-gop-nomination-governor-486854

      30,000 registered Republicans meeting in person to vote in forty locations across Virginia isn’t what I’d describe as a “smoke filled room”. I don’t know if Jonah would or not. It was around one-twelfth the number of prior participants in a Virginia Republican primary. So, smaller and more likely to include only the most engaged and informed.

      https://results.elections.virginia.gov/vaelections/2017JuneRepublicanPrimary/Site/Statewide.html

      And those 30,000 registered Republicans who participated could be fairly described as highly politically engaged, or as Sen. Sasse describes them: “political addicts”.

      https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/04/ben-sasse-censored-nebraska-466056

      And of course that is only Virginia.

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