Democrat voters are taking advantage of the open primaries to vote real conservatives out of the midterm election, and the conservative movement is just waking up to it.
On Wednesday (June 22, 2022), Republican Senator Wendy Rogers of Arizona wrote on her Telegram channel:
Democrats are voting against #UltraMAGA in the open primaries. Get rid of open primaries now.
Rogers’ comment follows a series of recent primary election results in multiple states whereby Trump-endorsed candidates either lost or won very narrowly. Most notable of these wins are those of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, both considered bad choices by Trump and many firebrand conservatives. Both were in close races according to polls but easily won on the election day.
What seemingly happened in Georgia is Democrats voting for the Republicans that they preferred as against the ones that MAGA movement wanted. Georgia is an open primary state, which means Democrats and Republicans can vote across party affiliations. This works better for Democrats as they are known to get candidates running for key positions unopposed – i.e., without a primary challenger. Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams ran and won unopposed for the Governor’s office in the recent primary.
On the Republican side, however, the party is almost always divided and the vote is split. In an open primary, it makes the Democrats’ work easy, particularly when it’s a tight race. A bunch of Democrats voting for the less conservative Republican can help them easily win the primary.
According to the list put together by ThoughtCo, there are 15 states that currently allow open primaries: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Most of these are red states and three of them—Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin—were the embattled states in the controversial 2020 election.
It’s worth reminding that open primaries are not the only means of Democrats meddling with the election of Republican candidates. In states that don’t have open primaries, Democrats are known to be willing to change party affiliations to swing the primary results; they change their party affiliation before an important election and vote against the real conservative candidate. In case of the upcoming primaries in Colorado, for example, firebrand Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert is seeing lots of Democrat support for her primary challenger. The New York Times wrote on Thursday:
Driven by fears of extremism and worries about what they see as an authoritarianism embodied in Boebert, thousands of Democrats in the sprawling 3rd Congressional District of Colorado have rushed to shore up her Republican challenger, state Sen. Don Coram.
In Wyoming, a compromised Republican Liz Cheney is literally mailing instructions to the Democrats in her state on how to vote for her in the upcoming August 16 primary. The federalist reported that by doing so Cheney is going back on her word that she won’t ask Democrats to switch parties in order to vote for her.
Getting rid of open primaries is not something the conservatives have actively campaigned for yet, but in the light of the primary results and the open support of Democrats for compromised Republicans, this needs to be the next thing on their list of priorities.
