Run some independents

Thinking outside the box is good, but it needs to be strategic.

This year, the North Carolina Association of Educators recruited six members to run in Republican primaries for the legislature. They didn’t really expect to win, but they wanted to elevate the conversation about public schools and give Republicans and independents a choice in Republican primaries.

They filed in Republican primaries because the districts are so Republican that no Democrat could win. I applaud it, but I think there are more effective ways to counter gerrymandering and alter the conversation. Democrats need to start trying them.

The biggest problem with running in Republican primaries is the electorate. Primary voters are the most engaged and usually the most ideological citizens. They believe in Republican principles, whatever those are, and they are going to support GOP candidates they know. They get their information from sources they trust who see the world similarly. They are the Republican base and essentially unpersuadable.

A better way to challenge Republicans in heavily gerrymandered districts is to run centrist independents. Democrats should clear the field for them. With no Democratic candidate in the race, independent candidates will get the vast majority of Democrats to vote for them. Their job becomes to persuade fellow unaffiliated voters to come to their side.

It’s not an easy process. First, unaffiliated candidates need to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot. In the case of legislative races, they need 4% of the total that voted in the last gubernatorial race. That’s a lot of signatures and takes a lot of time.

Next, they have to build an infrastructure that the two parties offer to their nominees either for free or at a vastly reduced price. It’s expensive and takes expertise.

Then, they have to raise money without a donor base. Both parties have reliable contributors who will fund competitive races. Independent candidates will need to peel off some of those donors while also building their own network.

Finally, if independent candidates are successful in all of those tasks, they have to convince a majority of unaffiliated voters to support them in the election. That may be the easiest part of the task, depending on the year and the district. They are targeting people who have already eschewed both parties and will likely find many who hold similar views among unaffiliated voters.

I wish Democrats and their allies would think more strategically. I agree that they need to contest every race, but not always as Democrats. In districts where the Republican candidate is likely to get 55% or more of the vote, no wave is big enough and no candidate good enough to put Democrats into office.

There are lots of reasons to run for office and not all of them involve winning. I ran for Congress in 2016 because I believed Democrats needed to fill the ballot. Now, with the state Supreme Court allowing partisan gerrymandering, Democrats need to think differently. Independent candidates are worth the shot.