Guy Cecil, Priorities USA chief: ‘Defund the police’ had negligible effect on 2020 election

Guy Cecil, who chairs the main pro-Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, said Tuesday that the “defund the police” slogan from liberals had a negligible effect on 2020 races, countering some Democrats’ claims that it might have tipped the scales against the party in close U.S. House and Senate races.

“If it had any effect on the election, it was negligible,” Mr. Cecil told reporters. “I would say this about almost anything [that] folks are asking about messaging or about communities.”

Mr. Cecil couched his answer in the contention that it can be hazardous to draw definitive conclusions from exit polling.

“I do not believe the defund the police narrative was the definitive factor in any race,” Mr. Cecil said.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn said this week that the slogan did help cost South Carolina Democrats in high-profile races.

“I really believe that that’s what cost Joe Cunningham his seat,” Mr. Clyburn said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to the first-term Democratic congressman who lost his bid for reelection.

Mr. Clyburn, South Carolina Democrat, had been asked about the “defund the police” push and Democrats being branded as socialists in some races.

Mr. Clyburn said Democrat Jaime Harrison’s numbers started to plateau “when ’defund the police’ showed up with a caption on TV, ran across his head. That stuff hurt Jaime.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, easily turned aside Mr. Harrison in Mr. Graham’s reelection bid despite a ton of outside money that poured in for the Democrat.

Many liberals seized on the rallying cry to defund the police in the wake of the fatal shooting of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, and some localities around the country did take steps to either reprogram or cut funding for their law enforcement departments.

Republicans painted presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden as a police budget-slashing anarchist, though Mr. Biden never embraced the slogan and his criminal justice reform plan boosted some federal funding for police.