An Early Look at the 2022 General Elections in Louisville and Kentucky
We aren’t likely to have many polls about the November elections in Louisville and Kentucky. But we actually have a lot of data about these races already.
It’s basically a law of politics that the party that controls the presidency loses ground against the out-party in midterm election years like this one. (The out-party’s voters tend to vote in higher numbers, out of anger at the current president, than the president’s party votes in support of him. Swing voters back the out-party to balance power and because they are almost always dissatisfied with whoever is in charge.) Joe Biden’s approval ratings are low. (Comparing Biden and Trump’s popularity in the middle of their second years as president, Biden is, unfortunately and almost unbelievably, more unpopular than Donald Trump was at this stage of the presidency.) Most voters say they prefer Republican control of Congress, compared to Democratic control. Americans increasingly support the same party that they support for president in other races, particularly in races for federal offices.
When you put all of that together, November looks like it will be a Republican sweep—the GOP winning control of the House, the Senate and many governor’s offices and state legislative seats currently controlled by Democrats. Politics is unpredictable, but we have some clear patterns. And all evidence is 2022 will be like 2010 and 2018—the president watching the other party sweep into control of much of the government.
So for Kentucky, that means Charles Booker’s odds of being elected to the Senate are just really low. That’s nothing against him—he’s a great candidate in many ways. But Booker is running in a much harder electorate environment than two years ago when Amy McGrath ran while Donald Trump was still in office and both Democrats and even some independents in Kentucky were pretty fired up about getting Trump out of office. And Booker is suffering from McGrath getting crushed by Mitch McConnell despite McGrath raising tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations. Now, campaign donors, particularly those from out of state who provided much of McGarth’s war chest, have learned their lesson—winning a statewide federal race in Kentucky is really hard. So Booker is raising far less money than McGrath did and won’t be able to hire as many campaign staffers or run as many commercials as she did. (Andy Beshear won in 2019 in part because of good feelings about his father’s tenure as governor. But he also benefited from anti-Trump sentiment among Democrats, a really flawed opponent in Matt Bevin and the fact that he was running in a state race, not a federal one. Very-blue Massachusetts and Maryland have Republican governors, very-red Kansas and Louisiana have Democratic ones. This is why Beshear could win reelection next year.)
McGrath lost to Mitch McConnell 58-38. Considering the headwinds that Booker is facing that McGrath didn’t, matching her 20-point loss would show real political skills. (Or perhaps that Booker’s opponent Rand Paul is really disliked). Getting over 40 percent would be the sign of a strong campaign. The good news for Booker is that if he wins, it would be one of the biggest upsets in modern political history and he would immediately become a serious presidential candidate.
On the other hand, if you are Bill Dieruf, the Republican running for mayor in Louisville, all of these broad dynamics are moving in your direction. This is likely to be a much more Republican-leaning year than in other recent elections. The Louisville area voted 59-39 for Biden over Trump in 2020. So Dieruf, like Booker, has a 20-point margin to overcome. It’s pretty unlikely. But I think Dieruf has a good chance of getting into the low 40s and could really be a contender if a few things bounce his way.
Dieruf, in my view, has a much better chance of winning than Booker does.
So that has real implications for Louisville Democrats. Dieruf is more of a traditional, McConnell-ish Republican than a Trump-style figure. So he probably wouldn’t be terrible as mayor. That said, I would rather have a Democrat.
Whatever Greenberg’s own views and inclinations, he will be more accountable to black voters and progressive voters because they will be a core part of the coalition that votes for him, unlike with Dieruf or another Republican. The Louisville mayor’s role is important in four ways in particular:
Figuring out the city’s budget with the council
Managing the police department
Working on economic development
Serving as a kind of symbolic cultural figure for the city.
If there is a need for budget cuts, Greenberg, as a Democrat, is more likely than Dieruf to seek cuts in other programs or to raise taxes before cutting programs that specifically benefit the poor. His political base, unlike Dieruf’s, will include black people and progressives who will push him hard to hold the policy accountable if they kill a civilian without justification. Greenberg is unlikely to be a cheerleader for various crazy legislation coming from the GOP state legislature that might affect Louisville negatively, while Dieruf would essentially be required to welcome such proposals as part of party loyalty.
So considering that the mayor’s race is more likely to be a real contest than the Senate race, I hope two things happen in the next few months:
As part of unifying the local Democrat Party around him, Greenberg commits to a truly-diverse administration (so not just appointing the black people who endorsed him last year with expectations of jobs in his administration, but people of all races who backed Tim Findley and Shameka Parrish-Wright) and to govern with the Democrats who didn’t vote for him in mind. In turn, Findley, Parrish-Wright and others encourage their supporters to lean into the mayor’s race and ensure Greenberg’s victory.
People who volunteer and otherwise support Booker (because they are excited about him) also do so for Greenberg if he needs that support (because he is way more likely to win.)
What Attica, Shameka and Tim Won Last Week
Mayoral candidate Tim Findley and U.S. House candidate Attica Scott, both of whom are black, did particularly well in heavily-black areas of Louisville in last week’s election. That will have some important implications moving forward.
It’s hard to tell exactly which candidates won the most black voters in Louisville overall—Greenberg and U.S. House candidate Morgan McGarvey, who are both white, appear to have won a lot of black voters too. (They both won overall.) But in heavily-black precincts in West Louisville and other parts of the city, Findley and Scott came out ahead. That’s probably a decent proxy for black voter sentiments overall. And since Greenberg and McGarvey had way, way more campaign donations than their rivals, it’s likely that with equal funding Findley and Scott would have clearly won among black voters. Shameka Parrish-Wright, another mayoral candidate, did much better in more racially-mixed areas than the heavily-white eastern parts of Louisville.
Why does this matter? Greenberg in particular made fighting crime and reducing the murder rate in Louisville a big focus in his campaign. Had he dominated in black areas of the city, I suspect there would been a lot of discussion of how the regular/non-college-educated/real/working-class/non-elite/not-on-Twitter black people really care about having more police and fighting crime, while the college-educated activists/”woke”/elite/on-Twitter black people are the only ones obsessed with police reform and systemic racism. (In reality, these groups and their concerns aren’t that distinct from one another.) I suspect there would have been a lot of behind-the-scenes and perhaps even public commentary suggesting that Scott, Findley, Parrish-Wright and other Louisville black figures who were deeply involved in the 2020 protests don’t represent sentiments held by the broader Louisville black community.
I say this because I kept hearing these general sentiments before the election. And because that’s what happened nationally. Joe Biden’s strong performance among older black voters during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary seemed to me quite obviously about good feelings about him from his service in the Obama administration and a sense from black voters that Trump was truly dangerous and Democrats needed to pick the safest choice (white, male, moderate) to defeat Trump. Somehow, many in the national media have interpreted the results as Biden representing the authentic views of black voters more so than say, Black Lives Matter activists. (In reality, black public opinion, like that of other groups, is fairly complicated. Most black voters support increased funding for police, unlike BLM activists. They also like the activists’ idea of shifting some police funding to other services that might better improve public safety. They also overwhelmingly support reparations and forgiving college debt, decidedly non-moderate ideas that Biden is wary of.)
Here in Louisville, the maps of the election results are hard to ignore. Findley, Parrish-Wright, and Scott won a lot of votes in black areas. Their views and perspectives may not align perfectly with the average black voter–but they are certainly not totally out of line with those voters either. That embrace from black voters in particular ensures that you have not heard the last of Findley, Parrish-Wright or Scott in Louisville politics.