Let’s agree on this: Both Claudia Tenney and Mario Fratto are political conservatives. Tenney ended up winning their Republican primary contest for New York’s 24th Congressional District on Tuesday, proudly and pointlessly waving the I’m-more-conservative flag. Tenney will go on to face Democrat Steven Holden in November’s race to represent this redrawn – and newly expansive – district, which stretches from Niagara County to Jefferson and Oswego counties.
This primary campaign was full of the usual allegations and accusations with which voters are familiar, but that debate of which one was more conservative was particularly inane. It’s like a Smothers Brothers routine. What does that have to do with serving the actual needs of voters?
This is an accelerating trend among Republican political candidates, though it dates back decades. It’s not enough anymore to be conservative. To stave off accusations of insufficient commitment, you have to be more conservative than your opponent – or, at least, you have to appear that way.
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That has little to do with dealing with the bedrock issues of constituents, whether they are on the right or the left. Arguing over who is the more conservative doesn’t put food on the table, save the family farm, deal with a changing climate or attend to any of the other issues that government may be able to address. Its point is to treat voters the way Pavlov treated his dogs. It’s insulting – or, at least, it should be.
Americans have seen this trend play out for years as the once “solid South” transformed from broadly Democratic to overwhelmingly Republican to something else altogether. It’s not at all conservative or historically Republican to support the attempted theft of a presidential election and to justify the violence used in the effort. But that’s a consequence of the mindless need to out-conservative the other guy, regardless of the cost. New York was once largely immune to that. Not anymore.
Some of this occurs among Democrats, of course, but the party’s left doesn’t have the same suffocating influence. In Buffalo, for example, centrist Democrat Byron Brown won re-election last year over the more liberal India Walton. In her recent primary, Gov. Kathy Hochul prevailed over the more liberal Jumaane Williams and the more conservative Tom Suozzi. Joe Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination over more liberal candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Democrats, it seems, are more interested in advocating policies that have broader support – so far, at least.
Maybe Republicans think that’s the way to win here, as it has been in red states such as Texas and Florida. It may work in some legislative districts, but the victories come with a cost. Despite its red regions, New York remains decidedly blue, to the extent that Republicans haven’t won a statewide election since George Pataki was last elected governor, 20 years ago. The reflexive march to the right won’t help to change that.
That’s not to say that Republicans, even in their current condition, can never win statewide. Dominant parties can exhaust themselves. Voters sometimes want a change. But it doesn’t help when your gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin, is a congressman who voted against seating electors pledged to Biden, only hours after a deadly insurrection sprung from the Big Lie of a stolen election.
Like the country, New York needs two competitive parties, advocating conservative and liberal ideas that are meant to help real people deal with the real issues they face. That’s what New York Republicans are sacrificing as they gabble on about who is the most conservative. It doesn’t matter if you can’t do the job.
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