Editor’s Note: Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and CNN political commentator, was a political consultant for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992 and served as a counselor to Clinton in the White House. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. View more opinion on CNN.
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Crime is an important issue.
There, I said it. The problem is, not enough Democratic candidates are saying it. Some don’t seem to know what to do about this issue.
I’m not naïve. I know that some Republicans use crime as a code for racially-tinged political attacks. In the case of Alabama GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville, you can drop the “tinged” part.
Democrats “want crime,” Tuberville crowed to the MAGA folks at A Trump rally in Nevada “because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have.” He added that Democrats “want reparations” for Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved people “because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”
My friend Bakari Sellers doubtless spoke for millions of folks when he said, “Tommy Tuberville can go to hell.” Bakari noted that as a college football coach, Tuberville made millions from the unpaid efforts of Black athletes. It is particularly galling to hear such racism from a former college coach who got rich because of African American men risking life and limb on the gridiron.
Beyond telling politicians who traffic in racist attacks to go to the devil, how should Democrats deal with crime? First, let me suggest how not to talk about it.
In my many years in politics, I have never seen a more destructive slogan than “defund the police.” In fairness to my beloved Democrats, only a tiny slice of the activist left supports defunding. This election season, I can’t find any Democrats – actual Democratic candidates – running on that nonsense. The overwhelming majority of Americans – including most Black Americans and most Democrats – oppose defunding police. Still, the political damage from that slogan has been real.
Some Democrats don’t want to talk about crime. They hope most voters’ righteous outrage about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade will overshadow crime as an issue. I think they’re wrong. A lot of smart Democrats are embracing their strong records on crime, refusing to cede the issue to the party whose leader, Donald Trump, described the January insurrection, in which scores of police officers were injured and five later died as a “lovefest between the Capitol Police and the people that walked down to the Capitol.”
A great example is Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada). Cortez Masto – arguably the most endangered Democrat in the Senate – who is locked in a neck-and-neck race with Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt. Cortez Masto was attorney general before Laxalt, and has worked as a federal prosecutor. Her husband is a former law enforcement officer and she is running ads touting her support from law enforcement. She has even earned the support of the Republican police chief of Reno.
Cortez Masto was so effective as a crime-fighter that when Laxalt took over as AG, he called her “a role model,” and when he was running for attorney general he said she had done “an excellent job.” Will Cortez Masto’s tough-on-crime credentials be enough to return her to the Senate? I don’t know. But if she weren’t leaning in on crime, this race might already be over.
Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) is another Democrat who is unafraid of the crime issue. When you go to her campaign website, just below the standard “Donate Here” plea, there is a photo of Demings in a police uniform.
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