With just one race left uncalled in the US House as the AP on Wednesday handed Iowa’s 1st District to incumbent Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks over Dem challenger Christina Bohannan by 798 ballots, the GOP are looking into why the hell they lost (probably) a net two seats to the Ds despite the first popular vote win for a Republican presidential candidate in two decades, with some pointing to Libertarian spoiler efforts in several key swing seats as a major factor, Politico reports.
In three districts there were right wing spoilers whose vote share was larger than the margin of the Democrat’s win: Ohio Libertarian Tom Pruss took 14,799 votes in the 9th District, far larger than longtime incumbent Marcy Kaptur’s 1,193 vote edge over Republican challenger Derek Merrin. In North Carolina’s 1st District, freshman Dem Don Davis beat Republican Laurie Buckout by 6,303 votes while Libertarian Tom Bailey took 9,949. Dem Janelle Bynum ousted Oregon 5th District GOP Congresswoman Lori Chavez-Deremer by 9,475 votes, which was larger than Libertarian Sonja Feintech’s 6,033 vote share but a fourth candidate, independent Brett Smith, took 18,233 votes.
Politico identified spending by two groups key for late ad pushes boosting the three Libertarian spoilers: In the Ohio race it was $423,263 from the Voter Protection Project, founded by Dem former House candidate Andrew Janz. Save Western Culture, a mysterious outfit registered at a UPS Store box in Massachusetts, dropped $46,348. In Oregon’s 5th both groups spent a total of $371,340.
Needless to say Republicans are pissed that their own tried and true method of fucking over Dems has been turned back against them, with some PAC cocksucker writing “We Moved Two Democrat Incumbents and a Democrat Challenger to Where We Needed Them, Only for Third-party Candidates to Cost Us Seats,” in a memo to donors about these districts (For those wondering, it does not appear that in ANY swing states Russian assets Jill Stein and Cornel West’s combined vote share is larger than convicted felon president-Elect Trump’s margin of victory, not even in Michigan, or with Bobby Jr added. Cold comfort, yes. Still far less frustrating and rage-inducing than 2016).
These successes highlight another important truth about the current political reality: That Trump himself has significantly more appeal than the Republican Party and it’s not just the straight ticket splitters – Trump for President, Dem for Senator/Governor – who could be peeled off. Assuming Trump doesn’t ignore the constitution and simply runs again (which isn’t the safest assumption to make these days, but nevertheless) he won’t be on the ballot again, creating plenty of more room for expansion with this strategy. The question now is whether Dems should just stick with Libertarians as the go-to or if there’s a path to standing up an “America First Party” in which the candidates claim to be the true inheritors/loyalists to the MAGA agenda while the Republicans are just pretenders.
Libertarians seem more like an out for “principled” conservatives opposed to MAGA (worth noting here that the top of their ticket, Chase Olivier, is an openly gay and pro-police reform, which might help explain why he got just over a third of the total votes previous nominee Jo Jorgensen did in 2020), than anything that would appeal to the far right-extremist-QAnon-incel-batfuck crazy voter demographic. Politico’s article mentions that the shady “Save Western Culture” PAC put out a robocall in Maryland attacking former Governor and now failed Republican Senate Candidate Larry Hogan from the right. Dem Angela Alsobrooks won by nearly 12 percent, so there’s no chance that it made a difference. But it’s the kind of thinking needed for 2026, that there should be a pincer movement against vulnerable Republicans: Libertarian candidates to squeeze them from the left, “America First” candidates – or if not at the very least anti-“RINO” propaganda – from the right.