Character Matters—for the Other Party

Asked about Platner and Paxton, lawmakers condemned the opposing party’s most problematic aspiring senator while defending their own.

(Photo illustration by The Bulwark / Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)

The creep

Maine Democratic Senate primary candidate Graham Platner and Texas Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton are different candidates dealing with different scandals. Paxton’s infidelity is not the same as Platner’s, nor is Paxton’s pattern of corruption and other moral shortcomings the same as Platner’s Nazi tattoo and history of racist comments online. I am not equating their wrongdoings, nor do I propose doing so.

But the scandal-infused coverage about each candidate has given rise to a similar debate in their respective parties. It’s a debate about fitness for office and whether character—that fickle quality that is separate from a candidate’s policies, but which can result in good or bad policymaking—should be a consideration at all in a time when voters are demanding wins at any cost.

I asked some senators from both parties, many of whom either jettisoned all principles after coming to Washington or came to power in the first place simply by not having any, whether Americans should demand more of their elected officials on the character front.

Yes, they all seemed to agree: Americans should hold politicians from the other party to a higher standard.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he’s “of course” backing Paxton.

“You know who his opponent is, don’t you?” Grassley asked me. “If you look at who the opponent is and what he believes about transgender and all that stuff, you’d have a whole different view of Paxton.”

Asked about both candidates, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) expressed support for Paxton but opposition to Platner, although not for character-related reasons, exactly.

“I’m gonna support the attorney general. On Mr. Platner, that’s something the Democrats—I can give you my opinion about Mr. Platner—I’m sure Jesus loves him, but everybody else thinks he’s an idiot.”

When I asked if he considers it a double standard that Republicans are judging Platner for character problems while skating over Paxton’s issues in that domain, Kennedy wouldn’t hear of it. “Well that’s your opinion” he replied, curiously treating my question as a statement of the facts instead.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), whom Paxton defeated in last week’s primary, told reporters he stands by his characterization of his triumphant opponent as a “crook.”

“I’ve said no, he’s not [fit for office],” Cornyn said. “But he won the race fair and square.” Cornyn has pledged to vote for the ticket in November—implying that Paxton will get his support.

Democrats I spoke with also tended to downplay the relative importance of character in today’s political environment. But they also did seem to feel a need to offer a lot more excuses for this.

I spoke with Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), a man who understands better than most the political risks that lawmakers take on when they embrace open corruption and immorality. Kim succeeded longtime Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) after a jury found the latter guilty of accepting bribes and acting as a foreign agent.

When I asked for his thoughts on Platner’s situation, Kim said, “I’ll take a look where things stand, but we’re gonna fight everywhere we can.”

Asked if character is an important component in assessing a candidate, Kim said it is, but he added the caveat that policy is an equally significant part of the assessment.

“Look, I’m in the Senate by virtue of a corruption scandal,” he said. “There’s a reason I took on this race—my race—because I certainly have concerns about that. And character matters. It matters not just in terms of their personal behavior, it also depends on who they vote for for Supreme Court justices [and] in terms of what is ultimately our job, which is trying to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and whether or not, you know, people can be trusted.

“So, look,” he concluded, with a bit of a punt: “the voters will take all of that into account.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of Platner’s early and most high-profile backers, remains a Platner backer.

“I think it might be a good idea if we focused on the important issues facing the working families of Maine and this country,” Sanders told a gaggle of reporters on Monday. “My understanding is that Amy—Graham Platner’s wife, who I met—is working with her husband, loves her husband, feels that their marriage is working, and maybe as a nation we focus on issues more important than the Platner marriage.”

“Is he a saint?” Sanders said elsewhere of Platner. “I guess not. I don’t know too many saints here.”

Selective moralizing has been around in politics as long as the profession has been practiced. The prominent Republicans who admonished Bill Clinton for his peccadilloes in the 1990s were hardly men of high character themselves. White evangelicals grew more supportive of Donald Trump the more his traditionally sinful behavior came to light. Many Democrats who admonished Trump for his character are now biting their tongue about Platner. That’s the way this stuff goes.

If control of Congress is the only goal you consider meaningful for this fall’s election, then the character issues these candidates have either don’t matter, or they are of only minor relative importance in the larger scope of things. And, as of right now, current polling rates Platner’s political prospects more highly than Paxton’s. But both have a real shot at a seat in the upper chamber.

But candidates like this are still a massive risk, and not just because we don’t know what is yet to come out about either. Just consider the recent spate of expulsions, resignations, and absences in this Congress alone. Very thin majorities are often just one scandal away from stopping regular business for an entire chamber.

Incredible thoughts

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has a plan to make everyone’s lives a lot worse. He is proposing to pull customs agents out of airports in cities that flout federal immigration laws, which would result in a de facto ban on international flights to and from those destinations.

Mullin has repeatedly brought up the plan, both on television and reportedly in the middle of unrelated White House meetings.¹ Despite one Fox News host’s claim the policy would be “a boon to red states,” other airports simply do not have the capacity to assume all the extra international flights. Besides, would, say, a family intent on visiting New York City from Europe simply accept that they need to fly into Dallas or Oklahoma City instead?

In truth, I have a hard time thinking of a dumber policy proposed by a member of any president’s cabinet since I started working in political journalism. So my question for the senators on the Commerce Committee’s aviation subcommittee was basically, “Is Mullin’s plan even possible?”

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who chairs the Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on aviation, told me that he hasn’t spoken about it with Mullin or anyone else in the administration.

“It’d certainly be a very complicated and messy circumstance,” Moran said. “I don’t know what our capacity could be in that circumstance.”

“Well, I understand the secretary’s frustration,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said. “I’m not sure that the flame is worth the candle. It would be terribly disruptive for American commerce, including international commerce. I know Secretary [Sean] Duffy has counseled against it.”

Kennedy added he would ask Mullin “more about it” when the DHS head testifies before the Senate this week.

The senators’ skepticism about Mullin’s harebrained plan is warranted. To put the plan into context, think of how this would affect just one part of the country: Southern California. Sanctuary City San Francisco’s SFO can host around 120 international flights in a day from 50 different countries. Other international airports nearby belong to cities, like Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento, that would also likely be subject to Mullin’s customs staff pull, meaning they would not be able to receive the extra flights; theirs would also be forced to find new places to put down.² Ultimately, finding a nearby international airport that isn’t in a sanctuary city would require crossing state lines and traveling more than 200 miles to Reno, Nevada, which currently receives passengers from just one international destination on flights that come in typically once a day, if at all. Receiving potentially hundreds of new international flights per day full of irate international travelers meaning to go elsewhere would complicate the lives of many innocent Nevadans who work at the airport.

“I don’t know why he keeps raising this,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) told me. “It would do so much damage to our country as a whole.”

But Kim isn’t brushing off the possibility of Mullin’s proposal the way some of his Republican colleagues have been.

“I mean, this administration has demonstrated that if they want to do things and use [them] for political retaliation, . . . they are capable of doing it,” he said.

We like sportz

If you read this newsletter, you probably know ball. It turns out that there’s a further corollary to that proposition, which is that you’re probably also not running for office.

That’s because politicians—and Democrats, in particular—often flub when trying to discuss sports, something they typically do in a bid to reach elusive male voters. Even the ones who seem like they’d be sports-conversant have had problems; recall Gov. Tim Walz posting an embarrassing tweet about running “a mean pick 6.”

Nathaniel Frum writes in the Atlantic:

As Democratic politicians scramble to seem in touch and ensure that their faces appear on our phones as much as possible, they are neglecting the free real estate offered by sports talk. A popular meme mocks men for being content to sit and name obscure athletes to one another for hours. It’s popular because it isn’t far from the truth. The politically disengaged male voters whom Democrats are so desperate to reach aren’t at bars arguing about Medicare funding. They are arguing about a roughing-the-passer penalty. Bettors on Polymarket give Stephen A. Smith higher odds of winning the 2028 Democratic presidential primary than Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, and Ruben Gallego. Nothing gets attention like sports takes.

Political consultants often overthink things. Perhaps they should just force candidates to memorize the names and career stats of obscure wide receivers from the 2000s. Rattling off some of that material in the right context could do wonders for them at the ballot box.

Read the whole article.

1. These are often the best ways to get Trump’s attention.

2. San Jose is not a “sanctuary city” per se. It operates under the “welcoming city” label, which, in regard to policy, amounts to the same thing.