Third parties

Third parties shake up Senate battle 

Rising poll numbers for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are giving major party strategists heartburn.

By Burgess Everett

Gary Johnson could care less if his quixotic run for the presidency costs Republicans the Senate.

“I’ve always believed that Republicans are mostly about smaller government. But of late? Not at all,” the Libertarian candidate says matter-of-factly about the party he once championed as GOP governor of New Mexico. “What’s to crash? What’s to ruin? What’s to spoil?”

With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump making history as the least liked candidates in the modern era — both sport unfavorable ratings topping 50 percent — Johnson and his Green Party counterpart Jill Stein are getting a fresh look from disaffected voters. Whether they draw enough support to swing the general election remains to be seen, but their presence on the ballot could play an outsized and unpredictable role in the undercard: The battle for the Senate.

According to the latest poll data, they're already getting some traction. The latest rolling averages from RealClearPolitics give Johnson about 8 percent and Stein 4 percent nationally, with Johnson also drawing statistically significant support in battle ground states like Florida and Pennsylvania.

Top strategists in both parties openly admit they’re perplexed about how third-party and independent voters will cast their ballots in Senate contests and battleground House races. Disgruntled Ted Cruz or Bernie Sanders supporters may toss out protest votes for third-party presidential candidates, while sticking with their party in the battle for control of the Senate. Or Libertarian and Green Party voters might decline to vote for Democratic or GOP Senate candidates — some might not even cast a downballot vote at all — moves that would have negligible effect on the battle for the upper chamber.

“I just don’t know how they swing. It could absolutely have an impact, it’s totally unpredictable,” said Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman.

And Cruz himself tossed a little fuel on the fire when he refused to explicitly direct voters to back GOP candidates during the national convention, instead imploring Republicans to vote their "conscience" up and down the ballot.

Most ominously for the two major parties, a handful of disenchanted voters in just one state could determine Senate control and which party will oversee the confirmation process and priorities of the Senate under a new president, particularly in places like Nevada and New Hampshire. In Nevada, there’s the infamous “none of the above” option that could drain support from Rep. Joe Heck (R) or former Democratic Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, and in New Hampshire a third-party conservative is openly running as a spoiler that could hurt the chances of Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R).

“She’s moved so far to the left that she’s virtually indistinguishable” from Democratic candidate Maggie Hassan, said independent conservative candidate Aaron Day. “Absolutely neocon. She’s a war hawk. A law-and-order type. She buddies up with the police. She’s a big champion of the war on drugs.”

Voters looking past Clinton and Trump aren’t getting a lot of direction from Johnson or Stein on whether to support someone like Day. Johnson made clear in an interview this month at a downtown Washington hotel that he has no intention of asking his supporters to help protect the GOP’s narrow 54-seat majority, even though they account for nearly 10 percent of voters in 4-way polls with Trump, Clinton and Stein, according to rolling averages.

Libertarian Senate candidates are aiming to be on the ballot in more than 20 states, but the former New Mexico governor’s apathy for Republicans is mostly driven by how far he believes the party has drifted from its core principles.

“Republicans are going to send me a bill for smaller government and it contains eliminating Planned Parenthood? Give me a break,” Johnson said.

Johnson's neutrality is clearly a worry for the GOP, given that Libertarians often try to make appeals to GOP voters and several Senate races are currently dead heats. In an interview, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he’s inclined to believe that a Gary Johnson voter is a Republican Senate voter, even if Johnson costs Trump support.

Even so, Wicker can’t hide his displeasure that there’s yet another wild card in his already difficult task of defending 24 Senate seats to Democrats’ 10.

“Really, I wish Gary Johnson and Bill Weld weren’t doing this,” he said.

Over at the National Republican Congressional Committee HQ, staffers are testing how Johnson could rock the boat in pockets of the country like Colorado and Nevada. The threat of libertarians costing the GOP’s seats, at least in principle, is real, but has yet to be tested in a full-on election with presidential candidates this unpopular.

“As we test and look at things, we will include [Johnson] on the ballot because we want to poll and test on how the ballot’s going to appear for voters and see what kind of impact he’s having right now,” said Rob Simms, the NRCC’s executive director.

On the left, the Green Party is less resistant to supporting the Democratic Party over the GOP, even as the party faithful remain disappointed by congressional Democrats’ centrist tendencies. Currently, the party is only fielding candidates in two states with competitive Senate races, and in places where there’s no Green Party Senate contender on the ballot, officials expect that Green voters will be pragmatic and gravitate toward the more liberal politician on the ballot.

“A Democratic Senate is better to the extent that the Republican Party is just so wretched,” said Scott McLarty, a spokesman for the Green Party.

According to an analysis of the last four presidential elections, New Hampshire and Nevada are the two states with competitive Senate races that consistently vote in substantial numbers outside of the Republican and Democratic parties. In the 2012 Nevada Senate race, voters cast nearly 10 percent of their ballots for “None of the Above” and an independent candidate as Sen. Dean Heller (R) squeaked out a win over former Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley. He won by a point and and barely cleared 45 percent of the vote.

The stage is set for an even bigger breakaway from the major parties this year: Marijuana legalization is on the ballot in Nevada, while Clinton and Trump are not popular there.

“It could make a difference, if none of the above was 3-4 percent,” Heller says of this year’s race. “There’s an opportunity for it to be very high but it will just depend on how well the races are run.”

Ayotte is actually facing an active insurrection from Day and primary opponent Jim Rubens, who have a forged an unorthodox alliance to take her down that could gift Hassan the seat if successful. If Rubens wins the primary, Day will support him; if Rubens loses as expected, then Day will do everything he can to stop Ayotte.

“Ayotte’s got a real horrible dynamic here. Everybody in Republican circles knows who I am,” Day says. “Hassan and Ayotte are essentially the same.”

Sadie Weiner, a spokeswoman for the DSCC, called Day “a Republican third party challenger who doesn’t care if Ayotte loses because he just wants to make an example of her.”

But there’s slightly more at stake for Day, who wants to gain a foothold in his state for people who revile political insiders running Concord and Washington. If Day can grab a significant portion of the vote, he aims to establish a third-party in New Hampshire, a state whose GOP is constantly rocked by warring establishment and conservative factions.

But in an interview, Ayotte essentially called Day a Democratic plant.

“If they are going to rely on a third party, apparently their candidate’s not strong enough,” Ayotte said.