Rep. Ben Ray Luján’s (D-N.M.) path to a Democratic House majority starts with making voters see that they can trust the Democratic Party again.
Democrats gained just six House seats in the 2016 elections, when almost everything went wrong for the party.
States such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin slipped away at the presidential level for the first time in decades. In the six months after Election Day, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating fell 5 points in Gallup polling.
ADVERTISEMENT
With President Trump’s favorability in the dumps amid historic midterm trends that favor the party out of power, the Democrats see a chance to take back the House with what they say is the largest field of winnable seats in a decade.
But Luján, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), believes that the party needs to restore its image before it stands any chance of taking back the House.
“A lot of this is who I am — if you don’t earn back the trust with people you lost it with, how can you expect to mend fences and to do better going forward? It’s not going to work,” Luján told The Hill in a wide-ranging interview from his DCCC office.
“You need to get to know folks — if that relationship or that faith has been shaken, you need to restore it, you need to repair it, you need to earn it back. And we are not going to say, ‘Just because we are Democrats, we earned your trust back.’ We have work to do.”
Luján isn’t the first to diagnose the Democratic messaging problem. Democrats have twisted in the wind for months since the 2016 defeat trying to settle on a new message.
This week bore the first major fruits of the party’s effort with its “A Better Deal” plan, a platform meant to refocus the party around economic issues and a message to voters that goes beyond attacks on Trump.
The plan, unveiled in vulnerable Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock’s northern Virginia district, focuses on policies such as raising wages, fighting job losses from outsourcing and “unfair” trade deals, protecting entitlements, lowering prescription drug costs, targeting monopolies and promoting long-term economic growth.
Notably, the plan never mentions Trump. While his polarizing presidency dominates Washington chatter and cable news, Luján said that the party has to go further than just criticizing Trump.
“We need to concentrate on focusing on the American people,” he said.
Click Here: Fjallraven Kanken Art Spring Landscape Backpacks
“The narrative around the president is going to be commanded by him nationally — right now, he’s the one talking about impeachment, he’s the one talking about the Russia investigation, he’s the one talking about all this stuff. We don’t need to; he’s doing it for us.”
Luján pointed to his modest childhood in New Mexico, where his family grew their own food on a small farm, as proof that Democratic values can resonate with voters beyond the coasts if they are willing to make the pitch.
The DCCC has pulled in a variety of perspectives to help shape the message and the strategy. The group has conducted focus groups with voters in Michigan, California, Pennsylvania and Georgia. The party has also held high-level meetings with representatives of diverse Democratic interests, including EMILY’s List, End Citizens United, Vote Vets and former staffers from Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign.
Luján said he’s also spoken with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former DCCC chairman who masterminded the last Democratic House takeover in 2006. The current chairman emphasized that while there may be some intraparty squabbles along the way, a “broad coalition” is the only path to a majority in the House.
The DCCC declared the House in play in June after a disappointing loss in Georgia’s marquee special election, releasing a detailed memo that cited Trump’s approval rating and historic trends as proof that Democrats could clinch the House majority.
Luján’s DCCC office is adorned with maps of the dismal 2016 vote and the party’s expanded battleground map. Written in marker next to the maps, a count notes that the DCCC has so far spoken with 380 candidates in 95 districts — part of an effort to flood GOP-held districts with candidates.
A bevy of candidates could be a double-edged sword for Democrats, with a handful of competitive districts already seeing five or more Democratic challengers. Luján and his senior staff see crowded primaries as a sign of enthusiasm, but that dynamic also sets the stage for brutal primary fights — or at least ones that could sap the eventual nominees’ resources.
Asked how the DCCC will decide whether to wade into crowded primaries, executive director Dan Sena noted that the party has a history of backing candidates in “jungle” primaries — elections in states like Georgia and California where the top two candidates move on to a general election regardless of party affiliation, and where one party can conceivably be shut out of a general election.
But he added that, with the majority on the line, the party is open to picking sides in more traditional Democratic primaries, too, a decision that could ruffle feathers with Democrats who feel shut out by the party establishment.
“I think if we have candidates who have the ability to win general elections, I think we are open to engaging in primaries,” Sena said.
“We are here to win races, and when we have great general election candidates, I don’t think we’ll be bashful about engaging.”
Democrats have seen the landscape bend their way over the past few months. The party has a 9-point lead on a generic congressional ballot, according to RealClearPolitics, while Trump’s approval rating continues to languish.
Democratic special election candidates running in red districts have outperformed compared to previous years in 2017’s special elections, but the party still hasn’t flipped a seat. Those high-profile losses have given Republicans a jolt of enthusiasm and evidence to prove their rivals are still far from turning “the resistance” to Trump into a political windfall.
But the DCCC is brushing aside concerns about those special election losses and any negatives related to primary showdowns.
“I’d rather have the challenge of more energy than not any energy,” Luján said.
“And when you see the number of candidates that we have out there, that’s a direct correlation to the energy that we’ve seen.”