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November 2, 2022
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PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
Happy Wednesday morning. There are six days until the midterm elections.
It’s pretty clear at the moment that the House Democratic majority built by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is in deep danger of disappearing. There may be no better example of that than in Virginia, where two “national security Democrats” – Reps. Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger – are fighting for political survival.
Spanberger in particular has been one of the Democratic moderates countering the impulses of the leftward drifting caucus – the story of this majority – and now she’s paying a price. Spanberger’s seat, which includes swathes of Prince William, Stafford and Spotsylvania counties, is one example of the dissolution of the four-year-old majority.
Here’s a dispatch from Max Cohen, who crisscrossed Virginia’s 7th District during the past few days. And then, in the next item, Jake, Bres and Heather break down the larger picture of what happened to House Democrats – and why it matters.
Take it away Max:
In 2018, Spanberger’s upset victory over Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) symbolized the power of that year’s blue wave. Across the country, Democratic candidates — many of them women with national security backgrounds, such as Spanberger, a former CIA officer — made huge inroads into suburban districts that were previously out of reach for the party.
But over the past four years, conservatives have tried to tie all Democrats to the ideological goals of progressives – such as the now-toxic “Defund the Police” moniker.
In Spanberger’s toss-up reelection race against Yesli Vega, the incumbent is promoting the endorsements of Republicans and local law enforcement officials. Yet it remains to be seen whether it will be enough to distinguish Spanberger from the national Democratic Party brand in a district GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin won in 2021.
On Monday night, Youngkin said that Virginia would “join that red wave that is sweeping across the nation” at an event for Vega. Vega, a Prince William County supervisor, former law enforcement officer and daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, is mounting a determined challenge to Spanberger centering on rising costs and parents’ rights.
The 7th District is ground zero for the dilemma Democrats are facing in the off-year election. Redistricting has substantially changed Spanberger’s district. And she’s running in a seat that swung wildly between backing President Joe Biden by seven points in 2020 to voting for Youngkin by six in 2021.
Spanberger told us at an early voting site in Woodbridge, Va., that she wasn’t concerned by Youngkin’s popularity or his embrace of Vega.
“My discussion with voters is regardless of who you voted for 10 years ago, a year ago, two years ago, your choice right now is between me and my opponent,” Spanberger said.
Spanberger’s reelection bid rests squarely on the legislative accomplishments of the 117th Congress, touting how the American Rescue Plan, bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act have directly benefited communities across the 7th District. These are bills, Spanberger noted, that Vega would have opposed.
“Here the question is: Do they want to vote for somebody who has a track record of delivering for this district, even though I didn’t represent it?” Spanberger said.
GOP messaging in the race has tried to tie Spanberger to Pelosi – even running an ad depicting the two in matching pantsuits – and the left wing of the Democratic Caucus. But these attacks are a stretch in Spanberger’s case.
Spanberger has been one of the most outspoken opponents of Pelosi in the Democratic Caucus. Spanberger twice voted against Pelosi’s nomination for speaker on the floor. And she recently clashed with the speaker over efforts to ban stock trading by members and aides.
And the Virginia Democrat has made no secret of her disdain for progressives. Here’s Spanberger on her frustration with the pace of legislative action in the House this Congress, due in large part to the demands of left-wingers — and unceasing opposition by Republicans.
On the ground, Spanberger has eschewed the larger rallies that Youngkin and Vega are putting together. During the incumbent’s early stops Sunday, nonpartisan volunteers from the historically Black Phi Beta Sigma fraternity passed out coffee and doughnuts outnumbered voters.
Spanberger’s conversations with voters at the voting sites across her new terrain illustrated the challenge she faces. One middle-aged Black voter asked Spanberger simply, “What have you done?” Another voter promised to ignore “the bad things” he heard about Spanberger from GOP attack ads on TV.
Redistricting shifted part of Prince William County into the district, and Spanberger has gone to great lengths to introduce herself to new voters.
While at an early voting site in Dumfries, Va., Spanberger got word that an elderly constituent wanted to say hello but wasn’t feeling up to traveling to the town’s main street. Spanberger decided to make the short drive to the 95-year-old man’s front porch.
Her team got a campaign yard sign installed and she greeted the Army veteran with a hug. It’s the type of door-to-door politicking that will be critical in the tight race.
On the airwaves, Democratic groups have ripped Vega for her history of controversial comments. Vega has suggested that women can’t get pregnant from rape and said that Jan. 6 “was actually a group of Americans exercising their First Amendment right.”
“[Spanberger is] desperate. She wants to talk about everything and anything because she can’t run on her record,” Vega told us after a rally with Younkin. “And so she’s trying to distract voters from the fact that she has voted with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time. … Shame on her for using these cheap tactics to score cheap political points.”
| → | Also: Youngkin partially walked back his comments poking fun at Pelosi following Friday’s attack on Paul Pelosi. |
“At the end of the day, I really wanted to express the fact that what happened to Speaker Pelosi’s husband was atrocious,” Youngkin told us. “And I didn’t do a great job.”
— Max Cohen in Virginia and Jake Sherman in Washington.
Two weeks away: We’re only two weeks away from our conversation with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) about the impact of 5G on energy at Hawk ‘N’ Dove on Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 9 a.m. Don’t miss it – RSVP today!
THE BIG PICTURE
House Democrats staring at defeat
Just six days out from the midterm elections, House Democrats could see their second majority in a dozen years disappear in a red tide.
The polls are against them. History is against them. House Republicans and their allies are dumping staggering amounts of money into toss-up races, a last-minute deluge of spending that’s hard for Democrats to match. Democratic incumbents in once seemingly-safe seats find themselves scrambling to make sure they’re not swept away.
Democrats are getting pummeled on the biggest issues for voters, especially inflation and economic fears. The Federal Reserve is about to jack up interest rates again today. And President Joe Biden’s approval ratings remain solidly underwater. It’s a grim picture overall for House Democrats.
Just look at Nevada. According to an Emerson Poll released Tuesday evening, Democratic incumbents Dina Titus and Susie Lee are getting trounced by their GOP challengers. And Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) is up by only three points.
The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter moved 10 races toward Republicans on Tuesday, including seats on Long Island, three seats in California and a seat in Oregon. Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Calif.), who represents a district north of Los Angeles that voted for Biden by 20 points in 2020, is scrambling to keep her seat. Democrats find themselves spending money in Rochester, N.Y., to bolster Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), a seat that Biden won by 19 points.
Yet a number of senior Democrats don’t believe – or won’t admit – they’re about to lose their hold on the House. Numerous races are too close to call in the latest surveys, with candidates only separated by a point or two, they insist. Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D-Ariz.) will very likely lose, and a host of other incumbents are in trouble. But Democrats argue that vulnerable Reps. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa), Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and Tom Malinowksi (D-N.J.) can still pull it out despite the dismal environment. And incumbents in GOP-friendly seats such as Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) are leading in the most recent public polls.
Democratic lawmakers also repeatedly point to 2020 – when Republicans defied the experts’ predictions of major losses and won 14 seats – as a big reason not to concede anything.
“It’s as close as we’ve ever seen it,” a Democrat involved in tracking races said. “Anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen is trying to sell you something. It’s going down to the wire.”
Among Democratic leaders, there has been some quiet preparation for the inevitable. The DCCC and other Democratic organizations have previewed to leadership in recent days that the outlook for keeping the House continues to deteriorate.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been back in San Francisco as her husband, Paul Pelosi, remains hospitalized following the horrific attack Friday morning in their home.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer will be in Miami today, the second day of a campaign swing to the Sunshine State. Majority Leader Jim Clyburn has been to a number of swing districts in recent weeks. Other key members, including Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark and Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Pete Aguilar, are either on the road or raising money furiously for vulnerable members – or both.
Yet even DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney – facing a dramatically altered district thanks to a chaotic redistricting process in New York State – is being hit with millions of dollars in TV ads from the NRCC and Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican-allied super PAC. FiveThirtyEight projects Maloney will win, although that this race is in play demonstrates just how difficult the final stages of this cycle have been for the party.
House Republicans, meanwhile, see opportunities to snatch even more seats. CLF is up with new seven-figure buys in New York and Illinois, in an attempt to expand the map.
There’s no single reason why Democrats find themselves in this political dilemma. But if you look back across the 117th Congress, in spite of some significant legislative victories, Democrats could never really stay on the same page. They spent as much time fighting each other as they did fighting Republicans.
Despite the shock and anger over the Jan. 6 insurrection, and their elation over the quick passage of the American Rescue Plan in early 2021, House Democrats quickly shifted back to squabbling with each other.
House Democrats, of course, had an abysmal showing in 2020, losing seats even as their party won the White House and Senate. Moderates blamed successful GOP attacks tying them to their party’s most liberal ideas, such as defunding the police, for the setback. Progressives bristled at this, arguing that moderate Democrats needed to do more to turn out the party’s base by touting liberal policy planks.
And it only got worse as the cycle went on.
Progressives clashed repeatedly with the leadership for being too slow or too timid. The leadership, in turn, worked to give moderates symbolic political victories, only to have them turn into internecine fights with progressives. Republicans – still largely under the sway of former President Donald Trump – refused to go along with pretty much everything, meaning Democratic leaders had to operate on their votes alone.
The internal Democratic battle over a symbolic package of police funding bills this fall — legislation that is going nowhere in the Senate — was the most recent example of Democratic dysfunction.
All the intra-caucus infighting left Democrats without a cohesive message to counter Republicans’ relentless claims that they have tanked the economy and are soft on crime.
House Democrats are still debating what the best message is with the election less than a week away. Should they lean in on abortion rights? Push back on the GOP’s economic claims? Talk about student loan forgiveness? What about Jan. 6 and election deniers? Crime and safety? Their accomplishments in this Congress?
Ask top House Democrats and they’ll say they’re tailoring their message based on the district. Ok, sure, in some cases. But zoom out. It seems like the party is all over the place and moving in a dozen different directions. That doesn’t generally woo voters.
We’ve covered the end of House majorities before, yet none like this. Take 1994, 2006, 2010 and 2018 – these shifts in power in the House were the result of dramatic political realignment. This is more of a slow-motion fade that makes it difficult to predict a final outcome. But the signs aren’t good for Democrats this close to the final bell.
— John Bresnahan, Jake Sherman and Heather Caygle
HIKES? YIKES!
Powell will face an anxious D.C. as rates climb, climb, climb
All eyes will turn to the Federal Reserve at 2 p.m. ET today as the U.S. central bank plans to announce another super-sized rate hike.
Unlike some other recent “Fed days,” the headline number we expect Chair Jay Powell to announce this afternoon hasn’t been the subject of much suspense. The latest jobs numbers and inflation figures suggest the U.S. economy is still overheating, and analysts expect the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee to settle on a 75 basis point increase.
But even as jumbo hikes have become the new – if uneasy – normal, today’s event will be the first public remarks the world’s most important central banker has given since Democrats on Capitol Hill have begun to publicly fret that the Fed is moving too fast to crush inflation.
It started last week with a letter from Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) that didn’t explicitly tell Powell to slow the Fed’s rate hike campaign but warned him not to crush the labor market in the process. Then Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) followed up by telling Powell to pause hikes until the Fed had more data.
The latest missive came Tuesday from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) and several other congressional Democrats. The lawmakers expressed broad concerns with the pace of the Fed’s rate hikes and willingness to crush inflation “no matter the cost.”
These 14 Democrats are by no means the first to question how fast Powell has raised rates and warn about the negative consequences that could follow – namely lost jobs and sluggish growth. But it remains to be seen whether Powell and the other members on the FOMC will listen – and when.
– Brendan Pedersen
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Presented by Apollo Global Management
One size rarely fits all. That’s why Apollo provides custom capital solutions designed to help companies achieve their ambitious business goals. Think Credit New