The Republican party is increasingly alienating younger voters, older voters and voters in the suburbs. But there is one constituency turning against GOP lawmakers that they must be especially disappointed about losing: their own family members.
On Monday, Bobby Goodlatte, a Virginia-based designer, announced he had donated the maximum amount to Jennifer Lewis, the Democrat running in Virginia’s sixth congressional district. He also claimed he persuaded five others to do the same. There was nothing untoward about the donations save for the fact that Goodlatte’s father, GOP congressman Bob Goodlatte, has been the representative for the district since 1993. Bobby says he wants to “flip” districts like his father’s in 2018.
I just gave the maximum allowed donation to Jennifer Lewis, a democrat running for my father's congressional seat. I've also gotten 5 other folks to commit to donate the max. 2018 is the year to flip districts — let's do this! https://t.co/bYCKta2Bhs
— Bobby Goodlatte (@rsg) August 13, 2018
Bobby Goodlatte also tweeted his support for Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who was fired on Friday after it was revealed he had sent anti-Trump tweets. Goodlatte claimed on Twitter that Strzok’s “career was ruined by my father’s political grandstanding”.
Congressman Goodlatte is the House judiciary chairman who clashed with Strzok in a hearing last month that regularly descended into shouting matches. At points Goodlatte demanded Strzok answer questions about classified elements of the Mueller investigation and tried to prevent him speaking to FBI counsel, to the outrage of Democratic members of the committee.
Bob Goodlatte had already announced that he would not be seeking re-election. He has not yet commented on his son’s endorsement of Lewis.
The tweets came on the same day that Stephen Miller’s uncle, neuropsychologist David Glosser, wrote a scathing piece in Politico about his nephew’s immigration policies. Titled Stephen Miller Is An Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle, the piece drew parallels between Miller’s anti-immigrant stances and the America First nativists of the 1930s who didn’t want to let Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany settle in the US.
“I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses … been in effect when Wolf-Leib [Stephen’s great-grandfather] made his desperate bid for freedom,” Glosser wrote.
As the midterms get closer, family members’ political donations are likely to be closely monitored. Last month the parents of Kevin Nicholson, a Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin, donated the maximum amount allowed to his Democratic opponent, Tammy Baldwin. In an op-ed for the Fox News website, Nicholson described the donation as a “true representation of the intolerance of a political philosophy that stands on the false platform of tolerance”. Nicholson’s brother also gave the maximum amount to Baldwin.
Ivanka Trump also criticised her father’s child-separation policy last week, albeit after months of silence. Trump described the policy as “a low point for me”, adding that she was “vehemently against family separation”.
It’s not clear that any of these family interventions will have much political effect, although like the shaming of Trump aides in restaurants they are a demonstration of how alienated Republican politicians have become from those who don’t share their politics.
One way daughters of Republican members of Congress can influence their parents’ decisions, however, is simply by existing. In 2008, Ebonya L Washington, an economist at Yale University, cross-referenced the voting records of every member of the House and found that those with daughters, especially those with more than one daughter, were significantly more likely to cast liberal votes.
