Switching Your Registration To Vote In The GOP Primary... A Terrible Idea
There is nothing good or redeeming about Madison Cawthorn. Period. Full stop.
A shortlist of Cawthorn’s missteps, mistakes, and offenses would include lying about military service, multiple credible accusations of sexual assault, telling a disability rights advocate “chill the f&*k out”, and disregard for law and order, abandoning his constituents, and supporting an insurrection.
While the feelings of rage that we all feel about Cawthorn are understandable, I was always told when I was growing up not to make any decision out of anger. It’s advice that we as Democrats may want to heed right now, or else we may risk the long-term political future of our party.
Recently it seems that one can’t visit a local brewery, sit down in a coffee shop, or sign in to Facebook or Twitter without hearing a Democrat talking about the idea of changing their voter registration to Unaffiliated with the goal, they say, to take out Madison Cawthorn in the Republican primary. The logic is that if enough Democrats leave the party temporarily, register as Unaffiliated, and vote for another Republican candidate in that contest then maybe we will be spared two more years of this disgrace.
Let me be clear: This is a terrible idea.
In the short term, this is simply unlikely to work. In January and February of this year, less than 500 Democrats in NC11 left the party. Let’s hypothetically assume that those numbers double in March and April, which is extremely generous. Even if all of those who transfer from Democrat to Unaffiliated vote in the Republican primary (which they won’t) and coalesce around a single Republican candidate (which, again, they won’t), it would barely make a blip in the vote count in the Republican primary. And even if that far-fetched hypothesis works, does that make it any more likely that our Democratic candidate in the general election will win in November? No. Of course not. If anything, it would reduce that likelihood because we would then have a Republican candidate who true Unaffiliated right-leaning swing voters would see as a more comfortable pick than Cawthorn.
This strategy also has the potential to hurt Democrats running for other offices in 2022. It’s a long ballot, with choices that are just as equally important and consequential as the Congressional race. Should we as Democrats sacrifice our influence over selecting our party’s nominees for municipal, statewide, and county elections all in the name of hopefully taking out one junior member of Congress who will, under this scenario, be replaced by a staunch conservative who will almost certainly be a more effective legislator than the one rejected?
And even if this strategy is successful (which, once more, it won’t be), it would undercut and erode the Democratic Party in Western North Carolina for years to come. Unaffiliated voters already outnumber Democrats AND Republicans in many NC11 counties, including Buncombe, Henderson, Haywood, Jackson, Madison, Swain, and Transylvania. If more people leave the Democratic party, who will be left to volunteer for our county parties? Who will staff important party positions? Who will serve as Precinct Chairs and officers? Who will organize the party’s get-out-the-vote efforts? And most importantly of all, who will we recruit and have to run for office in cycles to come?
Canceling Cawthorn out by trying to influence the Republican primary is not a winning strategy. It is simply a short-term, short-sighted political play that is mathematically unlikely to work and has the potential to hurt our party’s long-term goals and interests.
So what do we do? We organize and get back to what it truly means to be Democrats! We need to get out into our communities, listen, and make the case to people about the ideas and policies that WE champion that make a difference in the day-to-day lives of our friends and neighbors. We need to connect and message based on the concerns and needs of the people that we live next door to. We need to tirelessly work to recruit and register every single voter that we possibly can in NC11. Because the answer to winning elections this cycle and each cycle going forward and keeping deadbeats like Madison Cawthorn from holding office isn’t by trying to influence Republican elections…it’s to gain more Democrats and to gain more support for our Democratic candidates!
Lastly, I’ll challenge each of you to this: Plan and schedule a voter registration drive in your county in the next 2 months. I challenge every county in NC11 to have at least one voter registration drive or event before May’s primary. When you have it scheduled, let us know so that we can put it on our NC11 Democrats Calendar on our website for all to see and so that Democrats from other counties around our district can come to help you. And call or text me personally at (828) 545-2698, or email me directly at chair@nc11democrats.org. I’ll be there and do my absolute best to knock on more doors and fill out more voter registration forms than anyone else in attendance.
We will make gains in this district and defeat Madison Cawthorn together, as DEMOCRATS.
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Matt Ballance, District Chair | 11th District - North Carolina Democratic Party
