The Downballot: Freedom Caucus chair loses in a squeaker (transcript)

The entire GOP from Trump on down was gunning for the head of the House Freedom Caucus on Tuesday night—and they succeeded, but only barely. We're recapping the latest primaries on this week's episode of "The Downballot," starting with Virginia Rep. Bob Good's near-escape from political doom. We've also got a compelling Democratic primary in NoVa, where a retiring congresswoman's blessing proved critical, and a brewing rumble in a swing district that will test a first-time Democratic candidate with immense fundraising prowess but limited experience on the campaign trail.

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This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.

Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. "The Downballot" is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. You can subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode.

Beard: We've got a bit of an abbreviated episode this week, thanks to the Juneteenth holiday, but there was an election on Tuesday night, so we definitely wanted to hit some of the highlights from those primaries.

Nir: Absolutely. The main action was in Virginia, where we had a fascinating result in a race where Donald Trump had marked the chair of the Freedom Caucus for extinction, and it didn't go exactly as planned. We also had a Democratic primary in northern Virginia where an outgoing congresswoman's endorsement seemed to play a critical role in a swing district that Democrats are seeking to hold. We're going to also preview the general election a little bit.

And finally, an interesting race out in Oklahoma where a veteran member of the GOP establishment hung on by a wide margin despite fears that a self-funder could actually knock him out of office. There is a bunch to get through, so let's get rolling.

Beard: Well, we had another big primary night and we actually saw the first House incumbent lose to a challenger this cycle, though I don't think anyone thought it would play out quite the way that it did.

Nir: Yeah. And that includes us. So, there was no AP call on Wednesday afternoon at the time that we were recording this episode. But in Virginia's conservative 5th district, state Senator John McGuire currently leads House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good by about 300 votes, and he's almost certainly the winner here. Everything except an unknown number of provisional votes has been tallied. There could conceivably be a recount, but right now the margin is just a hair outside the threshold where the state would pay for one.

So, Good, if things stand as they are, would have to pay for one himself. And when a margin is 300 votes, it's exceedingly unlikely for a recount to change the outcome. But talk about exceedingly unlikely — for quite some time, Good had truly looked like a dead man walking. Just about every corner of the GOP had it out for him. Trump hated him because he'd endorsed Ron DeSantis.

Kevin McCarthy hated him because he'd voted to oust McCarthy as speaker. And a lot of his colleagues, his House GOP colleagues, hated him, too, because the Freedom Caucus is such a constant pain in the ass and it's the chief reason why Hakeem Jeffries is actually in charge of the House whenever there's actual legislation that actually needs to get passed.

And on top of that, McGuire and his allies outspent Good's side by almost two to one, and we're talking a lot of money. Team McGuire spent more than $9 million. And on top of that, McGuire released a poll in early May that had him up 14 points and Good's response was literally straight out of the loser-speak playbook. This is what his campaign said, and I quote, "The only poll that matters is the final count on election day." I mean, whatever you hear a campaign say that, Beard, that's just a total admission. You know that even their own polls show them losing.

Beard: Now, the interesting thing about that is that there was a report that McGuire was at an event where Good was, and McGuire was touting his poll lead of 14 points in his own poll. And then Good claimed that he had a poll showing himself up 25 points. So, very much like a one-upmanship, but then someone on Twitter went and looked through all of his campaign finance disclosures, and nowhere was there anything related to a survey or a poll or research or anything that looked like it could have been possibly a poll paid for by the Good Campaign. So, it seems entirely likely that Good never bothered to poll, pretended to claim that he had a poll with a 25-point lead, and saw that McGuire had a poll with him down 14, but then, in the end, he nearly won anyway after all of that.

Nir: I mean, talk about flying blind. Jacob Rubashkin from Inside Elections tweeted about that funny dispute between the two candidates, each claiming to have polls showing them up and said they were both wrong by double digits, which is super, super funny because here we are, a 300-vote margin, which truly no one seemed to see coming. And again, I say we're in that bucket, too. I was certain that Good was going to get completely stomped on.

Now, I'm sure it's cold comfort to Bob Good that he lost in a squeaker instead of a blowout. But if you step back a moment, it's really quite fascinating that even with Donald Trump and the entire GOP gunning for this guy, they just couldn't blow him out of the water. And you know what, I think Good could have won if he hadn't spent so much time supporting candidates who were challenging his other colleagues in the House.

It's really amazing. Good endorsed challengers — and we're talking scum of the earth, ultra far-right challengers — to Don Bacon, Carol Miller, Tony Gonzalez and William Timmons. These are all four sitting members of the House GOP Caucus and Good was like, "Yeah, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you." Well, no wonder his colleagues hated him right back. And there might have even been more, those are just the ones that we counted.

And we even know that he schlepped over to West Virginia to campaign in person with Congressman Alex Mooney in his bid for Senate, even though Mooney was totally doomed in his primary against Jim Justice. And this was not Bob Good-doomed. This was for real doomed. So, Good clearly only has himself to blame. If he'd actually spent time in his district and he hadn't been such a colossal dick, he probably could have found 300 more votes.

Beard: Yeah, yeah. Though I think ultimately the problem with Bob Good is that also his popularity is in part because he's such a colossal dick, and he's made literally everyone in the Republican Party hate him. So, he gets to claim to be anti-establishment even though he is an incumbent congressman. So, it's one of those, you can't have one without the other situation. So, who knows what the ideal form of Bob Good is, just in reality, both of these people are pretty awful. This is not a situation where one of the Republicans was like a Lisa Murkowski-esque reasonable person. These are pretty awful people and we're just replacing one bad Republican congressman with another.

Nir: That is so funny, Beard, because maybe there are people who voted for Bob Good and said, "Oh, I like the fact that he doesn't spend time in the district, that he's going across the country stumping for these other jackasses."

Beard: Probably; it wouldn't surprise me.

Nir: Well, ultimately what I think matters a lot more is that for once in a really high-profile race, Trump's endorsement did not prove to be the Word of God. I hope local reporters really dig into this race to help us understand what happened because half of all GOP primary voters just said nuts to Trump, and we've really seldom seen that. This question is really difficult to answer. There are a thousand stories you could probably tell about why Good performed above expectations. And unfortunately, because he lost narrowly instead of winning narrowly, there will probably be less interest in trying to uncover what happened here.

Though I want to be really clear, Beard, like you were saying, unfortunately, because Good lost, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm very happy that he's gone. Only for the sake of election analysis do I wish we could learn more about this one. But it's really possible that there are lessons here to learn about how Trump can be almost successfully defied. And I think there are lessons I would like to know more about, but also the Republican Party could probably stand to learn them, too.

Beard: Yeah, and I think, if I had to guess, my number one point would be that the main issue that Trump had with Good, though there were a few others, is that Good endorsed DeSantis back during the presidential primary. While you can understand why that would make Trump very upset, I think any Republican primary voter is not going to be as upset by that as opposed to the other issues where people have upset Trump because they split with him on an issue or they criticize Trump or something like that, where you get that riled up of like, "Oh, I have to defend Trump and be with Trump," that all these Republican primary voters have for whatever reason.

Good, I think, was never really criticizing Trump. He had just endorsed DeSantis. He thought DeSantis was great; who knows why. But I think that is something that was probably seen as more forgivable by Republican primary voters than the other instances in which we've seen Trump go after people. Also, incumbency, like you said, there's a lot here going on. And it would be interesting, and hopefully, people dig more into it.

Nir: Well, there were a bunch of other interesting races in Virginia on Tuesday night. So, we are going to head up I-81 to Northern Virginia and talk about the Democratic primary in the open 10th district.

Beard: Yes, this is a district where Jennifer Wexton is retiring. There were a bunch of candidates, but state Senator Suhas Subramanyam defeated state Delegate Dan Helmer, 30-27, so a pretty narrow margin. Nobody got anywhere close to a majority, but there are no runoffs in Virginia. So, Subramanyam will be the Democratic nominee. He'll be a pretty heavy favorite against Republican Mike Clancy in the fall. This is a district that Joe Biden won by about 20 points in 2020. Obviously, Northern Virginia has really exploded both in votes and in Democratic margins, so he should be pretty set to go to Congress in 2025.

This really proved to be a compelling contest, primarily because Helmer had raised by far the most money and had some $5 million in outside help, but Subramanyam had something that I think was more important, which was the endorsement of Representative Wexton. Now, Wexton, as you may have heard, flipped the seat in 2018. It had been a long-time GOP stronghold, but as I mentioned, this area has been zooming left. It's a very affluent, well-educated suburban area.

Now, Wexton had been set for a long career, but tragically she had announced she was suffering from a serious neurodegenerative disease last year and said that she would be retiring. And about a month before the primary, she gave Subramanyam her blessing, which clearly certainly helped him towards the top.

Nir: Yeah. Helmer also got hit with a really ugly story in the final stretch of the race when several women who run a local Democratic organization accused him of engaging in inappropriate behavior with an unnamed member. Helmer denied the allegations and his rivals mostly didn't press them, but obviously, that's not the way you want to finish out a race.

Beard: Yeah. And it's impossible to know, but you could certainly imagine this having an effect on particularly voters who voted either at the very end of the period or on Election Day itself.

Nir: What I think is most interesting is Wexton's role in all of this because, yes, Subramanyam won with a 30% plurality, but it's quite interesting that in a race packed with a lot of pretty prominent local candidates, he managed to rise to the top of the pack despite getting outspent. And it shows that at least to some degree in Democratic primaries, the wishes of the party establishment still hold some pretty strong influence.

There's nothing on the Democratic side like a Trump endorsement. Even an endorsement from an Obama or a Biden or a Hillary Clinton is nowhere near as big. But Wexton as a local figure who was quite well-liked, I think, still really had an impact on this race in all likelihood. Obviously, we can't prove that for certain. And it just shows you, I think the different way that Democratic primaries tend to play out compared to the chaos we often see on the GOP side.

Beard: And compared to some races where we see the democratic establishment really line up for one candidate and then there might be a more left-wing challenger or something like that, outside of Wexton, a lot of the Democratic establishment was pretty dispersed because as you mentioned, there were a lot of candidates. Helmer, of course, came in second, but also Eileen Filler-Corn, who had been speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, Jennifer Boysko is also a state senator. So, there were other prominent names here who also got money that was raised. They also got outside spending. So, this was a race where there were a lot of different things flying in a lot of different directions, and I think in that case I suspect that a lot of voters saw Wexton's endorsement as a north star to direct them.

Nir: So, there's one more Virginia race that we want to discuss, and that's in the 7th District, which is just to the south of the 10th. That is a swingy open seat. And there, we had primaries on both sides that are worth mentioning. On the Democratic side, things played out exactly as expected. Former National Security Council advisor Eugene Vindman crushed the rest of the field. He beat his nearest opponent, former state delegate Elizabeth Guzman, by a lopsided 49 to 15 margin. Vindman, you might recall, came to prominence during Trump's first impeachment in 2019, thanks in key part to his identical twin brother, Alexander, who provided critical testimony about Trump's efforts to ask Ukraine to interfere in US elections on his behalf, that led the House of Representatives to impeach him.

That background instantly turned on the money printing machines. Grassroots, progressive donors love that profile and they donated just bonkers sums. Vindman has already raised $5 million, which is a wild amount for a primary, and he'll definitely raise a lot more. Several local elected officials also sought to run here. In a way, it was a little bit like the field in the 10th district except for this juggernaut presence of Vindman and his profile and his money. And as a result, you had this crabs in the bucket problem. There were so many of these reasonably prominent candidates, each with their own basis of support, that no single one of them was able to consolidate their status as the main non-Vindman option.

Beard: Yeah, I think the main difference here is while you saw a lot of groups play in VA-10, that was as a result of the early lack of a front-runner, which I think made a lot of groups feel like they could make a difference if they went in for their favorite candidate. While, here, because Vindman got in early and was able to raise a bunch of money early, you were looking at taking on this Goliath financially, and you don't want to be the one group to go in and spend $500,000 against somebody who's raised $5 million. So, there's a coordination problem. As you mentioned, also a crab bucket problem, where there were multiple candidates who were all competing there, and so they were often firing at each other to try to be the anti-Vindman candidate as opposed to firing at Vindman. So, as a result, a lot of outside groups didn't play here. Vindman was really able to dominate financially and really get a very comfortable victory.

Nir: It's so interesting you say that, Beard, because in a somewhat similar race that we discussed a while back, the primary for Maryland's open 3rd district, we had a somewhat parallel setup where former Capital Police officer Harry Dunn raised money like Vindman from a similar set of grassroots progressives, but, there, AIPAC decided, "Well, we have a candidate we really like in state Senator Sarah Elfreth." And they did go in big and spent millions to boost her. So, I guess it's also a combination of no one feeling particularly motivated to jump in and decide to elevate an alternative to Vindman. Though, I think the Dunn example shows that someone could have, it just would've taken a lot of effort and a lot of money.

Beard: Yeah, I think another key difference is obviously this is a very competitive general election campaign. So, in that way, Vindman's ability to raise massive amounts of money is very appealing to establishment groups that are looking to spend in the general election and may think, "Oh, we don't have to invest as much in the 7th district because Vindman will raise a ton of money, way outraise his opponent, and we can just check that off from a financial perspective." Whereas, in Maryland's 3rd District that you mentioned, or even in Virginia's 10th district, those are Democratic districts by in large where the primary decides the winner. So, whether or not the winner has a bunch of money after primary day doesn't matter as much. So I think that was a factor as well. There's just a lot of pressure to go with this great fundraising candidate in a competitive seat like this.

Nir: Well, we can definitely say that the general election is going to be a lot tougher than the primary. Biden carried this district by just seven points, and Republicans are really eager to take it back after losing it in 2018. It's open now because Democrat Abigail Spanberger opted to retire so that she could focus on her campaign for Governor. Virginia, of course, elects governors in odd-numbered years. So, that race is happening in 2025. Republicans nominated former Green Beret Derrick Anderson, who's a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. He had the backing of the GOP establishment, including Speaker Mike Johnson. And he's raised good money, though nothing like Vindman, but I think we can be pretty certain that Republicans are going to spend heavily to try to reclaim this seat.

Beard: Yeah, I expect this to be one of the most competitive seats in November. And I think [Vindman] does have a huge positive, of course, in that he can raise a ton of money. That will not be a problem. He will definitely outspend the Republican candidate. The question, of course, is how good is he as a candidate outside of that, because he hasn't run for elective office before. This wasn't a campaign where he was building a lot of grassroots support at local parties or things that you think of that a typical state legislator or county commissioner would do to build up a campaign from that baseline and out for a congressional campaign. This was: raise a ton of money from across the country, spend it all, and get yourself the nomination that way. So, in the fall, he is going to have to do a lot more conventional general election campaigning.

Nir: Yeah. And the issue is going to be how well he holds up when he's facing a very aggressive campaign from Republicans who simply aren't going to hold back. Vindman got a lot of criticism from local Democrats for his apparently weak ties to the district and for allegedly not having been involved in local politics previously. The GOP attacks are going to be just a completely different level. They're going to be nasty, they're going to be hostile, there're going to be millions of dollars spent on him. There are going to be probably borderline false in a lot of cases. And he is going to have to deal with that. And there's some question about how well he's going to handle that pressure.

Just the other day, his campaign threatened the British newspaper The Independent with litigation for reporting about complaints from another Democratic candidate that Vindman has referred to himself as a colonel even though he retired from the Army with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Obviously, that's a fairly small thing, but this is a problem you can run into with inexperienced candidates. And the campaign's response was maybe thin-skinned. The Independent ultimately did publish this story. Of course, it wasn't deterred by these threats. And the story wasn't flattering to Vindman, so he's got to show that he's able to throw a punch and take a punch much better than this.

Beard: Yeah, and the issue here, as you said, is very narrow. He was a colonel at one point. He wasn't a colonel long enough, apparently, to retire as a colonel because that's a distinction within the Army. So, what worries me about it is, A, the best response would've been like, "Hey, we reviewed these relatively obscure complex regulations and we realized he should refer to himself as a retired lieutenant colonel, and we'll be doing that going forward." And I think nothing would've come of it because it's a very understandable thing to do. He was a colonel; it was just a length of time issue as he moved into retirement.

But the fact that they then threatened litigation, that they're insisting that he still is referred to as a retired colonel when by reading the article, it certainly seems like he should be referred to as a retired lieutenant colonel, it seems to me like a campaign that is not responsive to new facts. It is somebody who's being stubborn and insisting on something when the right thing to do, if you're like a campaign manager or somebody on the stuff to be like, "Hey, just be like, this was a confusing issue. We understand now that this is the right reference, and that's what we'll be using going forward." And instead threatening litigation is a little concerning to me.

Nir: Yeah, the good news is we still have quite a few months before election day, most voters haven't tuned in. The Vindman campaign has a chance to get things sorted, to get things right, and to hopefully prepare their candidate for what is definitely going to be a bruising race in a seat. Democrats really need to hold in order to have a good shot at taking back the House.

Beard: Now, we've got one race that we want to cover outside of Virginia, and that is over in Oklahoma.

Nir: So, we are heading out to Oklahoma's deep red 4th congressional district where longtime Republican representative Tom Cole was challenged by a self-funder named Paul Bondar. Bondar spent something like $5 million on the race, and he managed to totally freak out Cole and his allies, who responded by together spending almost $7 million to save him.

But in the end, it wasn't even close. It wasn't even distant. Cole won by a 65-26 margin. We're talking almost 40 points. And the reason we even mentioned this race, this total blowout, is because obviously someone had polling that spooked him. You do not spend $7 million simply as an insurance policy to hedge against some kind of black swan event.

Now, maybe the polling was accurate. At the time, it was conducted earlier in the race, but the spending for Cole never let up through the end of the race. So, his allies were still protecting him pretty much until the last minute. And I mentioned all this because it shows just how hard it can be to poll a race, especially so in a primary. Polling should rarely be taken as dispositive... I'm not going to praise someone like Tom Cole, but just to be clear, I'm not saying that his team and his allies did anything wrong in response to whatever numbers they saw. Just that it's hard to get numbers that are right. The savvy elections analyst is always the humble one.

Beard: And particularly in Republican primaries, we've seen them be very volatile. We've seen challengers who spend very, very little money get a significant percentage of the vote. I believe it was Iowa's 1st district where we talked about that Republican primary, where Mariannette Miller-Meeks was expected to have an easy sail to victory in her primary. She ended up winning only 56-44 against a super underfunded opponent.

And so if I'm a Republican congressman, particularly one like Tom Cole, who is pretty associated with the establishment — he is not a Freedom Caucus type — I would be scared of any and all challengers, particularly one spending $5 million. Obviously, in this case, Bondar was not the guy. He got embarrassed by spending that $5 million and getting 26% of the vote, but you never know. And so while I would say if you had a poll that showed you 40 points up, you would probably feel pretty good. Even if you had a poll showing you 15 or 20 points up, it is probably worth it to spend that $7 million and make sure you're going back to Congress.

Nir: Yeah, that is absolutely true. And Bondar was, in a lot of ways, a clown of a candidate. He had just moved to Oklahoma. It's not even clear if he really truly had moved to Oklahoma. He voted earlier this year in the Texas primaries in March. He says he is going to run again in 2026. I don't know, 65% ordinarily for a member of Congress in a primary is not an amazing number. But as you said, Cole being such a GOP establishment figure — once upon a time he was even head of the NRCC — that's actually not a terrible showing. So, I actually wonder if he is going to be vulnerable in the future. We'll just have to see.

Beard: Bondar, I certainly think we'll hear from again. Will we hear from him in Oklahoma's 4th district? Who knows? He could pop up anywhere in the country, and it would not shock me.

That's all from us this week. "The Downballot" comes out every Thursday, everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to "The Downballot" and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Drew Roderick. And we'll be back next week with a new episode.