Arizona Senate Candidate Martha McSally’s narrow defeat nearly one week after the polls closed has to be crushing, which makes her gracious concession to Democratic Senator-elect Kyrsten Sinema that much more admirable.
“I wish her all success as she represents Arizona in the Senate,” McSally of her opponent. “I am convinced Arizona is the best state in the country and our best days are still yet to come.” In her victory speech, Sinema went out of her way to create a sense of continuity by invoking the memory of the late Sen. John McCain. “Senator McCain is irreplaceable,” she said, “but his example will guide our next steps forward.”
These were performances worthy of the republic in which they both serve as constitutional officers, and McSally’s concession yielded deserved praise from the liberals and Democrats. That praise is, however, tainted by the fact that so much of it was only issued to sharpen criticisms of McSally’s fellow Republicans.
“This message is quite a contrast to the idiocy coming out of Florida,” podcast host Tommy Vietor said of McSally’s concession.
“During the campaign, Martha McSally lied repeatedly,” New York Times columnist David Leonhardt wrote. “And yet she has handled a very close defeat with the class of a patriot.”
“I give McSally credit for a graceful concession,” Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall added. “But let’s be clear: It only stands out because of the moral sludge of Trumpism in which any show of grace or honorable conduct is shocking.”
“Arizona Republicans show losing an election with a little grace is still possible,” Vox.com tweeted. “Voters have to trust the process for self-government to work,” The article’s author, Dylan Scott, wrote. “That means you must keep your cool, even when the margin is maddeningly close.”
That’s good advice. These liberal luminaries might spare some of it for their ideological compatriots. They desperately need to hear it.
Georgia gubernatorial hopeful and progressive darling, Stacey Abrams, is still holding out hope for a miracle. She refused to concede the race on election night, insisting that her margin of defeat might be reduced when all the votes were counted to the point that the state’s automatic runoff provision would rescue her candidacy. On Monday, a federal judge postponed the certification of the final vote until all the state’s provisional ballots were counted—many of which are out in heavily Democratic counties—so Abrams recalcitrance is superficially prudent.
But the vote count seems unlikely to reverse the results of election night. As of this writing, Republican Brian Kemp maintains a 56,000-vote margin over his opponent with a solid majority of the votes cast. A runoff election would be likely if Abrams netted about 19,000 new votes, forcing Kemp’s total below 50 percent. But the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, which was recently vacated by Kemp, reports that there are only 21,190 provisional ballots left to tally. Even if none of those votes were rejected, Abrams would need to win almost 90 percent of them just to force a second election. The Abrams campaign and the state’s Democratic Party are suing to require the state to count ballots that were rejected for what her campaign calls “arbitrary” reasons, but there were only slightly over 5,000 rejected ballots in the entire state.
If everything went Abrams way, she could narrowly force a runoff race. But that’s hard to imagine. Nevertheless, Abrams is refusing to let her supporters down gently. More egregiously, her allies are mounting a campaign to discredit Brian Kemp’s apparent victory by calling the legitimacy results into question and alleging racially-prejudiced voter suppression. “The erosion in trust is done,” said Georgia House Democrat and African-American Erick Allen. “If Kemp wins,” the Boston Globe’s Renée Graham wrote, “he’ll make history for engineering the most blatantly racist voter suppression tactics since the vicious days of poll taxes and so-called literacy tests.”
It’s not hard to imagine how McSally’s newfound admirers would react if Republicans were calling the legitimacy of the vote into question. They already are!
In Florida, many Republicans have recklessly implied that something nefarious is afoot. But there is no evidence of voter fraud, and there is no reason for both Democratic candidates for statewide office—Senator Ben Nelson and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum—to concede while the state is conducting a legally-mandated recount. And yet, both Florida’s Broward and Palm Beach Counties have been lax in following the law, maintaining opacity about the number of ballots left to cast and failing to meet state-mandated deadlines. Republicans who dare make a note of these irregularities have been accused of attempting to disenfranchise minority Democrats.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Scott insisted that Republicans “are dredging up fears that the votes of primarily people of color will not be properly counted.” Esquire’s Jack Holmes contended that Republicans are trying to prevent legitimate votes from being counted rather than attempting to force two rogue counties to stop violating state election and public records laws. Unfortunately, even Senator Nelson and Mayor Gillum joined the rabble. “Sadly,” Nelson said, “it’s become clear that my opponent isn’t interested in making sure every ballot is counted.” Gillum agreed, invoking grotesque and violent racial discrimination of the Civil Rights era. “Disenfranchisement isn’t just someone putting dogs on you,” he said.
It is unlikely the statewide recount will overturn a five-figure advantage enjoyed by Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis, though not impossible. But what if these narrow victories hold? That would render efforts by Democrats and the press to brand the GOP’s concern for the law racist even more unconscionable. Vox’s warning is correct; voters’ trust in the legitimacy of the system must be preserved. That inviolable imperative doesn’t disappear when the GOP is the presumed winner.
It is hard to avoid the impression that the praise McSally has received from the left, while deserved, was entirely dishonest. Republican candidates are beloved when they die well, but that is a standard that is never imposed on Democrats. Liberal candidates are obliged to fight until the last man and to scorch the earth on their way down to defeat. His opponents on the left mimic Donald Trump’s contemptible disregard for posterity, comity, and trust in public officials. But they don’t seem to see it.
