Comment GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The Democrats face each other a backlash Wednesday — including from among their ranks — after they entered a GOP primary in western Michigan, helping a far-right candidate who has embraced false claims about the 2020 election unseat a Republican who had voted for impeachment Donald Trump. Democrats this year have tried to interfere in multiple GOP primaries, using ads that appear to be attacks on more extreme candidates as a way to subtly promote those candidates. The idea is to line up opponents that Democrats believe can be defeated more easily in the general election. But Tuesday’s vote was the first in which the closeness of the result — Trump-endorsed challenger John Gibbs won with 52 percent of the vote, according to unofficial reports — suggests Democratic meddling may have driven the results. Now, Democrats will see if their high-stakes gamble to unseat Rep. Peter Meijer will win them the seat in November. No matter what happens, critics say that The effort to boost Gibbs is reckless and undermines the Democrats’ argument that they are the pro-democracy party. “It’s cynical and dangerous,” said Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. “We know that the Trumpian wing of the Republican Party is doing much to undermine public confidence in the fairness and integrity of elections. The idea that Democrats would be willing to gamble by electing more of these people because they think it will be easier to win in the general election is really playing with fire.” Some of the criticism comes from within the party. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who has made protecting democracy a hallmark of her work, cited the decision by some in her party to support Gibbs. “If we’re going to say as a party — or as leaders — that we believe in a healthy democracy, which requires citizens to be informed and participate, we have to live those values in everything we do,” Benson said in an interview. . with the Washington Post. “Meddling in another party’s primary does not reflect those values.” He called it “a dangerous game for anyone, as part of some strategy, to support the election naysayers.” “That kind of playing the other side is, I think, a very dangerous proposition,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) told The Post on Wednesday. “It’s a dangerous proposition for a campaign committee, instead of promoting Democrats, to try to promote a Republican in a primary. Because they might actually win in the end and you’ll have someone who’s even more extreme.” The second guess by the Democrats was made before the primary day. “I am disgusted that hard-earned money earmarked to support Democrats is being used to bolster Trump-backed candidates, particularly the far-right opponent of one of the most honest Republicans in Congress,” said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn. ) tweeted last week when the ad debuted. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $435,000 on its ad, which showed a series of images of Gibbs with Trump and called him “very conservative for west Michigan.” These apparent criticisms may have struck many Republican voters as a compliment. Look at the ads Democrats are funding to boost far-right Republicans Meijer, who is in his first term, had drawn the ire of Trump and many of his supporters as he became one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach him after the Capitol uprising. “Democrats got the fight they wanted and in the process threw overboard one of the few members of the House Republican Conference who was willing to stand up to principle and defend the Constitution. It’s reprehensible,” said Kevin Seifert, Meijer’s campaign consultant. Hours before conceding Tuesday night’s fight, Meijer told reporters it was too early to tell what effect the ad had. He called the effort a troubling move from a party that has repeatedly warned that Trump and his allies are trying to undermine democracy. “I know a lot of people — my Democratic colleagues in Washington — have been outraged just by the cynicism and hypocrisy that he represented,” he said at a downtown Grand Rapids bar where his supporters had gathered. In an essay posted online Monday, Meijer accused Democrats of not just helping Gibbs but “subsidizing his entire campaign” because their advertising cost more than what Gibbs’ campaign spent on the race, amounting to which campaign finance records show was $334,000. Meijer noted that he has been denounced by GOP chapters in his district and branded a traitor by some of his one-time allies. “Watching this unfold inside my party was completely confusing,” Meijer wrote. “The only thing more disturbing was the ability of my Democratic colleagues to sell out any pretense of principle for political expediency — simultaneously decrying the decline of democracy while rationalizing the use of their hard-earned dollars to support the supposed object of their fears.” Hasen, the UCLA law professor, echoed that sentiment. “Democracy cannot be preserved by one party believing in it and helping to purge the other party of pro-democracy members,” he said. As voters went to the polls on Tuesday, Gibbs downplayed the role of advertising, arguing that the work of his supporters had given him a boost. He dismissed the Democrats’ case that they could beat him more easily than Meijer in a district that leans slightly Democratic. “Meijer, first of all, has lost so much support from Republicans that he could never win this general election in November,” Gibbs told reporters outside a community center in in the Grand Rapids suburb of Byron Center after voting. “Many Republicans will stay home or overlook his choice on the ballot because of the way he has betrayed Republican voters. So he is completely unelectable in general.” Gibbs in November will face Democrat Hillary Solten, who was unopposed in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Scholten lost to Meijer by six points in 2020, but since then, the district has been redrawn to favor Democrats. Scholten issued a statement Wednesday saying “the DCCC ad is exactly the kind of thing that makes me sick of Washington and ready to fight for the people of West Michigan.” Terri Itter, a dental sterilization technician, voted for Gibbs on Tuesday at a fire station in Alpine Township, north of Grand Rapids. He said he was disturbed by the vote to impeach Meijer because he did not believe anyone had done anything wrong on Jan. 6 As for Gibbs, he said he received a piece of mail criticizing him for his support of Trump, but he saw that as an advantage. “I know they think he’s too conservative,” Itter, 59, said of Gibbs. Other voters said supporting Trump had the opposite of the intended effect. “I’m not a Trump fan,” said Jessica Morgan, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mother who considers herself a libertarian. Gibbs “has been a very strong advocate and a firm believer that everything is corrupt and we should hate our government the way it is,” Morgan said. “And I like to have more faith than that, so Peter Meijer was the safest bet.” Kris Trevino, who voted in the Democratic primary, said he disagreed with Meijer on many issues but respected his vote to impeach Trump. He hoped to see Meijer defeat Gibbs and said he believed Democrats should have focused on their own struggles instead of helping a candidate they see as eager to usurp the republic. “Personally, I don’t want anyone who’s endorsing Trump just because I don’t believe the whole election lie,” said Trevino, 29, who works in the cybersecurity field. “And so anybody who has anything to do with the denial of the election, I just want them out.” Tom Hamburger in Washington contributed to this report.
