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This past Tuesday morning (Pacific Daylight Time), I received an email with the subject line “Happening Now: Jim Jordan abusing his Chairmanship🚨,” the beacon emoji at the end letting me know just how urgent a matter this was.
It was a fundraising appeal sent by one Marcus Flowers of Georgia on behalf of Tamie Wilson, Jordan’s Democratic opponent in this November’s general election for Ohio’s 4th Congressional District.
The hook was Jordan’s aggressive questioning of Robert Hur, the special counsel whose report on Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents has not sat well with either side. The email was sent with the House hearing in progress.
You may recall Flowers as the Democratic challenger who, having taken on Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2022, raised $17 million (to Greene’s $12.5 million; the costliest House race of 2022) — and, very predictably, got Zambonied by a margin of 31.8 percent.
The Flowers-Wilson email that found my box first lambasts Jordan for his performative antics:
Jordan is compelling testimony from the Special Counsel who cleared President Biden of any wrongdoing with his handling of classified documents. But Jordan himself has obviously not even read the Special Counsel’s report:
It then rather perfunctorily contrasts the candidates:
Jim Jordan does not show up for the people of this district. He is a classic career politician with no experience beyond running for office and abusing power to keep it. Tamie is an active Democrat in her community daily, showing up and listening to EVERYONE.
And moves quickly to the ask:
Well OF COURSE I would LOVE to see Jim Jordan booted out of Congress! He is an ultra-MAGA gorgon and, for anyone hoping to save America from Donald Trump and Trumpism, a dragon to be politically slain.
Where do I send my $500!?
Actually, the ask is a link, so it turns out I send it to go.marcusforgeorgia.com, which takes me to online bundler ActBlue, where a note tells me that my contribution will be split evenly between Wilson and Flowers.
A tad dodgy — especially given that Flowers, who is running this time around not to take down the odious Greene but to primary a popular incumbent Democrat in a very blue district, dropped not so much as a hint of that little factoid in his third email of the day, which arrived while I was writing this column, asserting rather disingenuously that his “is a winnable race” (well, yeah).
But that is not the real problem here.
Been There, Done That
The problem is that Tamie already took Jim on in 2022 — and got 30.8 percent to Jordan’s 69.2, a margin of nearly 40 percent. A veritable blowout.
This was not her fault. Ohio, under GOP trifecta control for a while now, is ruthlessly gerrymandered to favor its Republican candidates for the US House and state Legislature, and Jordan’s was — and remains, after some more GOP-friendly redistricting — a very red and very safe seat. So, as we have seen, is Greene’s in Georgia.
In fact, so are something like 90 percent of the 435 House seats that will be on the ballot this November, all effectively noncompetitive one way or the other, with control of the House expected to come down to the results of just a handful of highly competitive “toss-up” contests sprinkled around the country.
Just about every would-be dragon-slayer will be sending emails for which the one I received Tuesday from Flowers could be a template: infuriating, gut-wrenching, persuasive, urgent … your great opportunity to STOP X from DOING Y to YOU and/or AMERICA!!
Among the holders of — and, occasionally, aspirants to — those safe seats will be other candidates like Jordan and Greene, with high political profiles, some wielding great power, some championing causes the other side loves to hate.
Most of these dragons will attract a would-be dragon-slayer, a Tamie Wilson or Marcus Flowers. And just about every would-be dragon-slayer will be sending emails for which the one I received Tuesday from Flowers could be a template: infuriating, gut-wrenching, persuasive, urgent… your great opportunity to STOP X from DOING Y to YOU and/or AMERICA!!
Except that you might as well take that $25 or $50 or $100 or $whatever and grill it up for dinner.
Safe seats are safe seats: No holder of a “Solid-R” or “Solid-D” House seat has lost in a very long time — no matter what their opponents have raised and spent (as of the start of this month for what it’s worth, Wilson had $64,208 cash on hand, to Jordan’s $9 million). Money can buy a lot of things, maybe even love — but it can’t buy electoral victory against a Jordan or a Greene or, to pick a high-profile safe-seater on the left, a Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
Choose Wisely
Election 2024 is — for all the disenchantment and disengagement the pollsters have detected — The Big One, certainly of our times, comparable in some ways to the election of 1860, and justly termed “existential” for our democracy. Many, including myself and my WhoWhatWhy colleagues, have looked hard at this situation and pulled no punches about what is at stake — and we will continue to hammer it home all year.
For now, if we agree about what we’re facing, the takeaway is simple. The House and Senate will come down to a handful of districts and states, respectively; the presidency, courtesy of the Electoral College, to a handful of battlegrounds; control of the House may even have a role, as I have previously examined, in the election of the president.
These handfuls will be the elections that matter — and I’m sorry if it sounds unduly pragmatic or even cynical, but the only elections that matter.
Too few would-be donors and supporters are fully informed and prepared to approach this election strategically and ruthlessly, putting their support where it can make the difference and only where it can make the difference.
I have — as I suspect most all of us have, from piggybanking school children to moguls, unions, and corporations — a finite political budget. This year, more than any other, calls for discipline and discernment in who receives my support.
I like what Tamie Wilson and her fellow wannabe dragon-slayers stand for.
I respect their good intentions and their pluck.
And I won’t be wasting a dime on their candidacies.
Unfortunately, too few would-be donors and supporters are sufficiently informed and prepared to approach this election strategically and ruthlessly, putting their support where it can make the difference and only where it can make the difference.
This election will turn on that approach, on whether enough pro-democracy Americans can focus hard on percentages, margins, and ratings — while keeping their emotions, including both rage and idealism, at bay.
WhoWhatWhy will do our part by identifying, throughout this year on a rolling basis, both the competitive elections and the noncompetitive elections — especially the high-profile, dragon-slayer lost causes with the heart-tugging emails like the ones I received Tuesday, like the dozens I receive every week.
Keep a lookout for the first of the series, coming soon.
From there it’s up to you: Study the charts, know the odds, choose wisely, share your knowledge, spread the word.
Jonathan D. Simon is a senior editor at WhoWhatWhy and author of CODE RED: Computerized Elections and the War on American Democracy.
