In the 1982 Midterm Elections, Republicans Showed They Could Win AND Lead

In 1982, U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger was at the Minnesota Republican state convention seeking endorsement for re-election to a second term. On paper, it didn’t seem like 1982 would be a good year for Republican members of Congress to be seeking re-election.

It was a midterm election under a polarizing Republican president, Ronald Reagan. Unemployment topped 10% for the first time since World War II. Inflation had been in double digits and still was running at more than 6% in 1981. Paul Volker became chair of the Federal Reserve in 1979 and immediately began raising the federal funds rate, keeping consumer interest rates in the mid-teens.

Durenberger had his own challenges. He had been elected in a special election in 1978 to finish the term of the late Hubert Humphrey. Although Durenberger won in a landslide in his first election, he was the beneficiary of a divisive Democratic primary battle. In 1982, he would face Mark Dayton, the heir to a retail fortune. Dayton - who later in his career was elected to the U.S. Senate and to two terms as governor - would spend $7 million, most of it his own money  - in his 1982 bid. To put that in context, Durenberger’s campaign spending in 1978 fell well short of $2 million and was considered a staggering amount to spend on a campaign.

In addition to Durenberger’s other challenges, the Republican Party in Minnesota was moving decidedly to the right. Durenberger was an innovative policymaker, what he came to call a “progressive Republican” - conservative on core GOP principles, but a bold thinker who sought new solutions to the challenges of the day. He believed in limited government, but also recognized that government has a role to play at the times in people’s lives when they are most vulnerable.

It is that philosophy that brought Durenberger in conflict with the delegates at the GOP convention. In the first year-plus of Reagan’s term, Durenberger had become a leading critic of the President’s defense spending. He prevailed over the administration to keep federal revenue sharing for states and local governments. And, he wanted to reform welfare programs, not just cut them.

In particular, Durenberger felt that a central plank of Reagan’s agenda, New Federalism, too often was about budget cutting rather than decentralizing and improving government, as Durenberger’s brand of federalism featured. And, as chair of the Senate’s key subcommittee on intergovernmental relations, Durenberger’s voice couldn’t be ignored.

So Durenberger went to that Republican convention to face his critics. And he didn’t back down. His message was that it was his job to help Reagan create better programs, not just cheaper ones. As he later told a reporter, the election year’s “big question” was this: “Does this administration - does my party - care about the poor? Is the New Federalism a smokescreen for a repeal of the New Deal? Is the private sector initiative a fig leaf to cover a lack of compassion?"

Durenberger was endorsed by the Republicans (not a foregone conclusion; just 12 years later, the same party would reject an incumbent and popular Republican governor) and won the election by a comfortable margin. Not only that, but Republicans suffered no net loss in the 1982 Senate midterm elections. Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and California re-elected Republicans Jack Danforth, Richard Luger, John Heinz, Robert Stafford, Lowell Weicker, John Chafee and Pete Wilson respectively. Some were more conservative than others, and some quite liberal. But most Republicans who prevailed in 1982 were, like Durenberger, candidates of substance, principle and basic decency.

And what is the state of Republicans running for the Senate in 2022? Few have offered tangible solutions to critical issues of the day. Take Herschel Walker, the Georgia Republican Senate candidate. No more investment is needed in climate change mitigation because the U.S. already has enough trees: “(Democrats) continue to try to fool you that they are helping you out (with programs to minimize the impact of climate change). But they’re not. Because a lot of money, it’s going to trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”

Walker isn’t alone. Blake Masters is the GOP a candidate in another key race, Arizona. He blames gun violence on Blacks, is an election denier and believes the U.S. should not have entered World War II.  Then there is Don Bolduc, retired army general and the GOP standard bearer in New Hampshire. In August, mired in a competitive Republican primary, he told voters, “Donald Trump won the election and, damn it, I stand by [it].” Today? Bolduc, “I’ve done a lot of research on this, and I’ve spent the past couple of weeks talking to Granite Staters all over the state from every party, and I have come to the conclusion – and I want to be definitive on this – the election was not stolen.” Guess he wasn’t talking to the right people before the Republican primary.

Were it that these cases were the exceptions; sadly, they are the rule among Republican Senate candidates. Some will win, perhaps enough to tip the Senate majority. And then what? Republican candidates in 2022 are creating a mandate that fits their skill set and their party’s core objective - obstruct. It is inconceivable that a Republican Senate would allow any of the compromises that President Biden and congressional leadership brokered in the last two years to pass legislation to invest in infrastructure and climate change, to expand veterans health services, to create first-step national gun safety measures or to oppose the expansionist and illegal actions of Russia’s Putin.

Certainly, the Biden Administration and Democratic members of Congress have come up short in many areas. Inflation is an enormous problem, immigration policy continues its four-decade record of failure and the national debt is worrisome, especially in an era of rising interest rates.

But go back to those Republican senators elected in 1982 on platforms of ideas and innovation, sometimes in sync with their GOP president, often willing to look for better answers. Many of those Republicans who won in 1982 were re-elected in 1988. They served under both Republican and Democratic control of the Senate. Yet, their record in the mid-1980s to early-1990s is remarkable. They were at the center of saving Social Security, ending the Cold War, passing major environmental bills to expand wilderness areas and clean the air, improved public health and made reforms to health financing, advanced efforts like pension reform to promote economic equity for women and passed the Americans With Disabilities Act, among many other achievements. America is a far better country for the wisdom of that 1982 class of Republican senators and their colleagues from both sides of the aisle.

Today’s Republicans rush to embrace the likes of Walker, turning a deaf ear to his incompetency on public policy issues and his apparent hypocrisy in the face of credible claims that he pressured a woman into an abortion even as he seeks to deny reproductive health for other women.

Why are Walker, Masters and others viable candidates? Because for today’s Republican Party, winning is everything and often the only thing.

Yet, what’s the point in winning and sacrificing a party’s integrity if that party has no solutions to govern once the ballots are counted? Republicans want the power of the majority. But what comes after Election Day is about governance, not just control. And on that score, Republican candidates have made clear their ineptness and their total disdain for the art of actually running the country after the last ballot is counted.