Julio Cortez/AP Photo
In this June 3, 2020, photo, people gather at the site where George Floyd died in Minneapolis.
In the summer of 2022, the GOP realized it had painted itself into a political corner. Overturning Roe v. Wade incited a national backlash, and their steadfast fealty to Donald Trump gave way to an endless string of extremist sycophants running for office. With the walls closing in, the GOP returned to a familiar playbook: racist attacks on crime.
By September, 29 percent of GOP ad campaigns mentioned crime, more than doubling the 12 percent figure from July. They spent tens of millions of dollars per month on crime-related messaging, routinely misleading voters on crime statistics and candidate positions and further perverting the overdue discourse on the role of the police. Like the Willie Horton ads in the 1980s, the GOP continued a legacy of weaponizing crime to plant racist dog whistles across America. In so doing, they targeted Black candidates, most notably Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, flashing his name on videos shamelessly exploiting actual crime scenes and darkening his skin.
And yet, Republicans’ attempt to make the midterm elections a referendum on crime failed to materialize into the “red wave” they eagerly predicted.
Republicans in the election offered no crime solutions other than doubling down on police budgets.
An NBC News exit poll reported that just 11 percent of voters rated crime as their most important issue, tying it for third place out of five options and trailing significantly behind abortion and inflation. Furthermore, in contrast to the Democrats’ effective messaging on abortion, in which 76 percent of voters who listed abortion as their top issue voted for Democrats, just 57 percent of voters who listed crime as their top issue supported the GOP. Not only was the GOP unsuccessful at manipulating the issue of crime to be as vital as abortion or the economy, but they were also unsuccessful at portraying their party as the clear solution to that problem.
In no small part, this failure reflects the fact that American voters want a more holistic approach to public safety. Republicans in the election offered no crime solutions other than doubling down on police budgets. In October, HIT Strategies, where I work, and Change Research released an extensive research project (with multiple polls and focus groups) showing that 62 percent of Americans prefer funding alternatives to lawmakers over-maximizing police budgets. And substantial majorities of Americans prefer alternative first responders rather than the police to respond to substance abuse episodes (60 percent), homeless encampments (65 percent), and mental health episodes (75 percent). Moreover, support for these policies measured higher among communities of color and young voters who propelled Democratic victories.
Despite many Republican and even Democratic strategies publicly recommending that Democratic candidates retreat on the issue of crime, officials who messaged progressive solutions on crime won big in 2022. In some of the first public-safety elections in Minnesota since George Floyd’s murder, Democrat and former chief public defender Mary Moriarty knocked off a GOP prosecutor backed by law enforcement in Hennepin County (Minneapolis). Likewise, Attorney General Keith Ellison defeated a police union–backed challenger.
Prosecutors and judges with criminal justice reforms in mind also defeated “law and order” challengers in Dallas, San Antonio, and Oklahoma City, hardly ultra-blue strongholds. And Polk County, Iowa, the largest county in the state with a population 84 percent white, elected district attorney Kimberly Graham, who ran on ending cash bail and low-level prosecutions on cannabis. Furthermore, in the much-publicized Los Angeles races, reformist Karen Bass handily defeated Rick Caruso for mayor despite Caruso spending $100 million of his own money on a law-and-order campaign. And Kenneth Mejia won the city’s controller race in a landslide, after notably running billboards across the city specifically criticizing bloated police budgets.
And Barnes, the poster child of the GOP’s racist crime attacks, nearly defeated Ron Johnson, a two-term incumbent in one of the closest races in the country. For an environment that should have favored Republicans, Barnes was among the most successful challengers of an incumbent senator in the nation, coming within one point of victory. And compared to voters’ trust of Democrats nationally on crime (43 percent), Barnes actually outpaced the party, with 47 percent of Wisconsin voters preferring trusting Barnes over Johnson. Barnes ultimately came up short, but he did what Democrats have to do across the board: change the public discourse from a crime discussion to a public-safety debate.
The main exception to Democratic midterm success proves the rule: New York. Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin ran a single-issue campaign on law and order. But rather than back popular, effective solutions on crime, New York Democrats ceded the issue almost entirely. New York City Mayor Eric Adams blamed cash bail reform for increases in crime, and Zeldin’s opponent, Gov. Kathy Hochul, ended her campaign by highlighting her support for increased police deployment.
As a result, about twice as many New York voters rated crime as their top issue as did voters nationally. Zeldin won 67 percent of these crime voters, outpacing the national GOP’s support on the issue and creating a mini red wave. The lesson is clear: Public safety is an issue Democrats can win on, not one they should run away from every election season.
If history is any guide, Republicans will return to this familiar playbook in 2024 and beyond. They will mislead voters on crime, weaponize racism, and beg the Democrats to back down on progressive messaging, just as they did in New York. But the 2022 midterms demonstrate that this strategy does not reflect American public opinion or represent a recipe for electoral success. By continuing to promote a progressive vision for public safety, the Democrats can win up and down the ballot, offering solutions supported by the public and motivating to their core constituencies.
HIT Strategies was one of several public opinion firms consulting the Barnes campaign, but this article should not be attributed to the campaign in any capacity.
