As we approach the midterm elections this year, I’ve seen and heard many describe them as relatively unimportant. This happens every four years, especially after the election itself, as we all remind ourselves that the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue didn’t change. That said, midterms have impacts – in some cases, the impacts can last years or decades. Pursuant to that, I put together my (admittedly unscientific) list of what I consider the five most important midterm elections. As a rule, I’m only referring to elections for one office (state or district), not the overall year. As it happens (this wasn’t by rule) none of my top five elected a future president (although one was involved in two of them). So I begin with #5: the New York Gubernatorial election of 1958.
The Republican Party was at a crossroads in the 1950s. Prior to 1932, the GOP’s soft corporatism made them the party of bigger government (compared to the Democrats). FDR’s New Deal completely upset that apple cart, and while Dwight Eisenhower made the GOP competitive, he didn’t give the party much of a platform. So there was always going to be an argument within the party between backers of its big-government past and those who looked to take up the limited-government space the Democrats abandoned. However, it was New Yorkers in 1958 who determined who would speak for the “liberals” in the party, and that made all the difference.
In the midst of one of the worst Republican mid-term elections (the party lost 12 Senate seats and roughly four times that in the House), Nelson Rockefeller crushed a wealthy, popular, and connected incumbent Democrat (Averell Harriman). Given that New York was the most populous state in the Union (and would remain so for as long as Rocky was governor), he was immediately catapulted into the top rank of Republican officialdom. He ran for president in each of the next three elections, and was the standard bearer for the Republican left each time – to the point where they are still known in some circles as “Rockefeller Republicans.” He helped make the intra-party battles deeply personal and polarizing (to an extent that would stun any modern “Tea Party” or “Establishment” Republican). The animosity within the party was so strong that when Gerald Ford nominated him for Vice President in 1974, it became one of the chief complaints of those who supported Ronald Reagan against Ford for the GOP nomination in 1976.
Yet even that might not be the most important impact of his ascension. While Rocky was more than willing to argue with his fellow Republicans on domestic issues, he was one with the conservatives on foreign policy. In fact, Rockefeller’s anti-Communist was so resolute that Barry Goldwater nearly endorsed him rather than run for president in 1964. Four years later, the very few “doves” within the party on Vietnam found no solace in the New York Governor. Opponents of the Vietnam war outside the party were thus shoved to the Democrats – in particular Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, the latter of which completely reshaped his own party in 1972 (the same year Rocky, nearly alone among politicians, supported Nixon’s “Christmas bombing”).
Republicans were going to have a factional battle in the 1960s (parties always do), but Rockefeller symbolized that battle in a way George Romney or Bill Scranton never could. At the same time, Rockefeller’s role also ensured that foreign policy would not be part of the discussion, which ensured that debate would only occur (and thus me that much more energetic) within the Democrats. One could argue that New Yorkers locked Republican foreign policy in place until Rand Paul’s election in 2010 (which, by the way, is still to recent for a place in this list – stay tuned).
