Privately, many Republicans wanted GOP Rep. Cory Mills to lose his primary in Florida. Like with so many scandal-plagued candidates this year, they worried he would turn a safe seat into a battleground.
But rather than push him out of the race, they let voters decide his fate. With weak fundraising and polling amid allegations of sexual misconduct and domestic violence, party officials believed he was going to lose anyway, saving them from having to intervene.
“There wasn’t much of a push to yank him out,” said one national Republican operative working on House races, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
On Tuesday, Florida voters rejected Mills’ reelection bid, avoiding what would have been another headache. This election cycle, both parties keep playing whack-a-mole as candidate after candidate becomes embroiled in controversy ranging from ethics scandals to sexual misconduct, including in key races that could determine who controls Congress. Neither party has settled on a clear playbook for when to step in or what counts as disqualifying — though they have drawn those lines differently.
Top Republicans are now quietly getting behind Ohio Rep. Max Miller, who is mired in allegations of domestic abuse involving his ex-wife and child, and defied calls to drop out. They declined to push out then-Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), whose staffer died by suicide after he had an affair with her. Facing an expulsion vote, he did not resign until hours after embattled Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) did, effectively evening out the margins. And GOP leadership eventually got behind scandal-ridden Ken Paxton, but after President Donald Trump and Texas voters embraced him in the Senate primary.
Many Democrats also grappled with what to do about Graham Platner throughout a series of escalating scandals until POLITICO’s report of a sexual assault allegation forced him out of the Maine Senate race. Their months of indecision, some worry, will continue to haunt them through the midterms.
“We don’t trust our instincts anymore,” one longtime Democratic strategist said.
“The laws of political gravity have just been so upended” since Trump won in 2016 over a series of scandals, the strategist said, adding: “We’re reluctant to apply the old rules because … are we handicapping ourselves or potentially punishing ourselves by adhering to the old standards that haven’t been serving us, or certainly didn’t stop the other side from winning the presidency twice?”
In Mills’ case, his loss brought Republicans private relief even as it meant a Trump-endorsed incumbent was ousted. The representative is facing an investigation by the House Ethics Committee and remains under a restraining order imposed last fall after a former girlfriend accused him of threatening to release sexually explicit videos of her. He has denied wrongdoing.
Trump, in the aftermath of the primary, wrote on social media that he asked Mills “to get out of the Race, but he wouldn’t listen” and immediately backed the winner, Ryan Elijah.
Voters have increasingly displayed a willingness to tolerate controversy — especially when political power is on the line. A recent POLITICO Poll shows voters are willing to accept their preferred candidates having DUI convictions, being accused of using tax loopholes, concealing a terminal illness or exaggerating their military service, though Democrats were less tolerant than Republicans of sexual assault and domestic violence allegations.
“[When] the gavel is on the line, people in both political parties have the … highest tolerance for political weakness of their party,” said an Ohio-based GOP operative. “This is the year like no other where voters and political leaders and political parties are willing to look past blemishes and weaknesses of their own candidate.”
The GOP and Democratic Party have shown different responses to the most serious of allegations. Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson have often called for processes to play out and to let voters decide their future. And even as White House officials or Trump himself placed a call to get a scandal-plagued Republican like Mills or Miller to drop, they rarely followed through on pulling their support.
Democrats have shown they’re more willing to draw a line, particularly around sexual assault allegations. But their biggest example — Platner — is a complicated one: Many in the party tolerated months of controversy, from a Nazi tattoo to reports of volatile prior relationships, before ultimately calling for him to suspend his campaign.
“They either didn’t care about the scandal, were willing to turn a blind eye to it,” said a second Democratic operative working on Senate races. Democrats were so focused on beating Susan Collins they were willing to accept multiple scandals, they said, but “I am glad to see that credible allegations of a sexual assault were actually a red line for people.”
Democrats did quickly turn on Swalwell, who suspended his bid for California governor days after sexual assault and misconduct allegations pushed his campaign into a tailspin. But Democratic leadership has not yet called on Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) to resign amid allegations of sexual misconduct, instead pushing for a “thorough and swift” Ethics Committee investigation.
Gomez has admitted to extramarital affairs but said they were “consensual in nature,” a claim disputed Wednesday by lawyers of the woman interviewed by the ethics panel.
On the GOP side, Johnson and House Republican leaders took weeks to pull their support for Gonzales. It wasn’t until a day after POLITICO reported that independent House investigators found a “substantial reason to believe” Gonzales had sex with his subordinate, a violation of House Rules, that they abandoned him.
But the GOP let the voters decide in Arizona, where Trump-endorsed Mark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff, recently won his congressional primary despite allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse of power.
And Republicans have quietly accepted Miller in Ohio. Once the Trump administration saw Miller was unlikely to abandon his reelection bid, they asked Ohio Republicans to refrain from waging a public pressure campaign to avoid a messy situation where they then have to defend a candidate they once tried to oust.
Democrats say that’s a clear example that they are more willing to draw a line than Republicans.
“Graham Platner is not a candidate, and Max Miller is. That should tell you everything you need to know about the differences between the two parties,” said Democratic ad maker Ian Russell.
“There are complicated situations that have definitely not been handled in retrospect by both parties as well as they could have been, but there is nothing the same in how Democratic leadership has responded to issues in our ranks versus our Republican leadership has responded to issues in their ranks,” Russell said.
Still, the calculus for scandal, a second national GOP strategist and a longtime senior House staffer argued, most often comes down to Congress’ razor-thin margins.
“It’s about numbers,” they said. “It’s not about the gravity of a scandal.”
Chris Marquette and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.