The 2018 midterms have an important lesson for every aspiring corrupt politician out there: commit your scandals after you’re elected to high office.
Incumbents, it seems, have rather a lot of leeway when facing scandals. Yesterday’s electorate cared not a bit about California representative Duncan Hunter and his wife Margaret Hunter’s indictments for alleged campaign finance crimes. Voters looked the other way as New Jersey senator Bob Menendez allegedly took gifts from a wealthy doctor while using his office to further that doctor’s interests. Representative Chris Collins’s insider trading charges weren’t enough to stop him from squeaking out a victory in New York’s 27th district.
The polling gurus at FiveThirtyEight counted 11 men (yes, these were all men) up for re-election this year while also facing fresh scandals—i.e. ones allegedly committed since their last election. Eight of those incumbents won.
In addition, Minnesota elected Democrat Keith Ellison, who has been one of the state’s representatives since 2007, as its new attorney general, despite high-profile allegations of domestic abuse.
By contrast, new candidates facing scandals had a terrible night; all 12 men (again, all men) lost their race.
Many of those were no-hopers, like Omar Navarro, the 29-year-old fringe GOP activist running against California Democratic stalwart Maxine Waters, who has been in office longer than he’s been alive—and, unlike Navarro, hasn’t been accused of putting a tracking device on a spouse’s car.
However, four of them were Republicans running in districts currently held by their party. In theory, they should have had a decent chance of winning in areas that had gone Republican at the last election, but all four lost: