Local congressman a shepherd for House Democrats
NAMBÉ, N.M. — Ben Ray Luján was a relatively new congressman, barely finding his way through the halls of the Capitol, when his mom called with an urgent message from home.
The llamas, she told him, had broken out of their pen again.
From nearly 2,000 miles away, Luján helped her figure out how to corral the animals, which were supposed to be guarding the family’s sheep herd in New Mexico.
It’s a skill that could serve him well in his current job, where he will be expected to play a leading role in guiding Democrats as they try to win the House majority in 2018.
“Something that I learned just around here, growing up on this small farm, is that every job mattered and whatever job you were asked to do or tasked with, you had to do it, and you had to do it right,” said Rep. Luján, 45, sitting beneath a towering cottonwood at his family’s generations-old farm.
As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Luján has a difficult, often thankless, job at a time when almost every Democrat seems to have an opinion about what the party needs to win in the age of President Donald Trump.
Energetic anti-Trump groups are hammering the campaign committee for not doing enough to recruit and promote fresh candidates, portraying party leaders as tone deaf to Trump’s populist appeal.
At the same time, more moderate forces are pushing Democrats to the center, trying to keep the party from drifting too far left into the Bernie Sanders wing.
It falls largely to Luján to shepherd the campaign arm of the fracturing party, united mainly by opposition to Trump and by a desire to win back the House majority. Luján must help recruit dozens of candidates and persuade deep-pocketed donors to shell out more than $200 million for the midterm election.
“This is a moment of opportunity and a moment of truth for Ben Ray Luján,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an outside group promoting progressive candidates.
“Does he fill the map with bold, inspiring economic populists who can win in red and purple districts? Or does he go the traditional route of finding milquetoast candidates or self-funding candidates who lose cycle after cycle?”
After losses in four special elections this spring, many Democrats blamed party leaders for failing to pick up a single House seat.
But Luján held firm, rejecting pressure to spend more money in long-shot races. While the campaign committee poured $6 million into suburban Atlanta, where Democrat Jon Ossoff appeared to have the best chance to pick up a traditionally Republican seat, it declined to go big in deep-red districts in Kansas, Montana or South Carolina. Ossoff still lost, but the campaign committee learned valuable lessons and Luján saved resources for what he believes are more promising battles to come.
It was an unexpectedly hard-line approach from the typically goodnatured Luján, who is preparing to go on the offense next year in 80 Republican-held battleground districts, particularly those Trump lost to Hillary Clinton or won only narrowly. Colleagues made note of his resolve.
“The chairman’s responsibility is to look at it in a cold-blooded, strategic way — to look at what we need for 2018 to win the majority,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., co-chairman of the House Democrats’ Policy and Communications Committee. “That always creates some disappointment for people.”
Laid-back and blue-jean casual, Luján seemed like an odd choice when he was first tapped for the job. He was pulled from relative obscurity as a back-bench, four-term congressman from a small, poor state, hardly seen as a power player in Washington.
But as the first Latino to run the committee — and the first Westerner in years — Luján represents an aspirational face of the party, one that is more energetic, youthful and rural.
On his family’s fouracre farm nestled among tribal lands in the Nambé valley — the street is named for his grandparents — Luján explains his system for cooking bite-size chicharrones snacks on a New Mexican disco — a woklike pan originally made from a tractor disc — on the outdoor grill.
His father, the longserving speaker of the state House, encouraged him to pursue politics, which he did only after a circuitous route through college, finally graduating later in his 20s after working night shifts as a blackjack dealer at a nearby tribal casino.
“You learn how to visit with people, carry on a conversation,” he said about his time playing cards. “My political opponents tried attacking me for having those jobs. This paid the bills. If you’re going to attack me doing that, then you clearly don’t understand the constituents you’re fighting to represent.”
His predecessors at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee were usually hardcharging Washingtonians — think Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel or former New York Rep. Steve Israel.
But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi saw in Luján a well-liked and charismatic newcomer when she asked him to take the job after the 2014 midterm losses.
Luján accepted and quickly set out to expand the committee’s team. He stacked it with lawmakers newer to Congress, naming vice chairs from regions across the country. He also worked to improve relations with minority groups in the House, particularly the Congressional Black Caucus, which often feels shortchanged in campaigns.
His first big challenge, the 2016 election, became a brighter spot on a dismal night for Democrats, with six House seats netted. But disappointed Democrats agitated for House leadership changes after Trump’s win.
When Luján sought election as chairman later that year — the job would no longer be appointed by Pelosi, as she heeded demands to loosen her grip — he fended off a potential challenger and won unopposed.
This year, he was hit with an ethics review after a conservative watchdog group filed a complaint over his use of photos from a Democratic sit-in on the House floor for his own re-election fundraising, a potential violation of House rules.
A core debate among House Democrats is whether their focus should be on reaching white, working-class Trump Democrats who have broken away from the party, or on investing more heavily in outreach to the AfricanAmerican, Latino and other groups sometimes taken for granted.
Democrats need 24 seats to pick up the majority, about as many as a party historically wins during midterm elections when it does not control the White House.
The committee is trying new strategies to tap into unprecedented grassroots enthusiasm, including recruiting more locals for campaign jobs rather than parachuting in experts from Washington.
It has also moved its entire Western state operation to Southern California to aggressively target GOP-held seats in Orange County.
“We need to do a better job in understanding that we’re talking about real people,” he said. “And be able to connect with those people all across the country, like the ones I represent, and the family I grew up in.”