2 Dems clash in runoff
WASHINGTON — On paper, there is little to separate attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher and writeractivist Laura Moser, the two Democrats vying in Houston’s 7th Congressional District primary runoff battle next month.
They’re both women who favor abortion rights, first-time candidates with deep roots in Democratic politics. Both grew up in Houston political families and attended St. John’s School, an elite college preparatory academy on the city’s affluent west side.
But they’re sharply divided over how to unseat nine-term Republican John Culberson, presenting a contrast that serves as a microcosm of the divi-
sions within the national Democratic Party as it looks to flip two dozen seats and wrest control of the House from the GOP.
In Houston, the fault lines became particularly jagged as Democratic leaders in Washington sought to blunt Moser’s advance to the runoff. The intervention by national Democrats angered many Texas activists and added fuel to Moser’s campaign at a critical point before the March 6 primary, which whittled down a seven-candidate field to two.
As the May 22 runoff approaches, the candidates have come to symbolize two opposing Democratic factions, separated less by their politics than by the tone and tactics of their campaigns, with Moser cast as the insurgent liberal populist to Fletcher’s centrist standardbearer.
The choice is crucial for Democrats because the 7th, a traditionally GOP district that Hillary Clinton won in 2016, offers exactly the sort of urban-suburban voter mix that Democrats believe they can win over in a midterm election that is expected to largely be a referendum on President Donald Trump.
Fletcher has sought to project a moderate face that could appeal to Democrats, centrists, and more independent or liberal Republicans. Moser, by comparison, is seeking to ride a wave of Democratic energy.
A similar dynamic is playing out in Democratic primaries in swing districts across the country as the establishment Clinton wing of the party comes under continuing assault from the progressive wing represented by 2016 Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders.
The divide has played out from New York to California, where U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a four-term Democratic stalwart, faces a slew of challengers appealing to a new generation of “surge” voters, including state Sen. Kevin de León.
Moser, in a recent interview, said she has no desire to “re-litigate” the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, in which her husband, former Obama White House videographer Arun Chaudhary, played an active role in Sanders’ campaign.
“I’m not comfortable with any dichotomies within the Democratic Party right now,” Moser said. “There are too many of them.”
Washington insider
But the central rift in the race broke into the open in late February, when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee posted an unusual opposition research attack on Moser, whom party leaders feared could not beat Culberson in the general election.
The DCCC attack piece played on Moser’s decade-long residency in Washington, labeling her a “Washington insider, who begrudgingly moved to Houston to run for Congress.”
The national party operation took it a step further, citing an article Moser wrote in Washingtonian magazine that she’d “sooner have my teeth pulled out without anesthesia” than to move to her grandparents’ home in Paris in northeast Texas. Moser and her backers argued that the town of Paris bears no resemblance to Houston, where she grew up before moving to Washington.
“We need to make sure we've got strong candidates in the general election across the country,” said DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, a congressman from New Mexico. “The grassroots organizations have been working too hard across America not to have a strong candidate who can win in November.”
By most accounts, that attack backfired.
A new Moser campaign strategy memo provided to the Houston Chronicle plays up her status as the “grass-roots” candidate “not chosen by DC party insiders.”
Fletcher’s campaign rejects the establishment label, contrasting her lifelong legal career in Houston to Moser’s move to Washington.
“Lizzie has been living and working in this community all her life, representing Houstonians from all walks of life in the courtroom, fighting on the front lines to protect Planned Parenthood and quality education for the next generation,” said Fletcher campaign manager Erin Mincberg.
Fletcher’s supporters point to her recent fundraising, 80 percent from donors in Houston. Moser has not detailed her most recent fundraising figures, but an earlier analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics showed nearly 60 percent of her contributions came from out of state. Both campaigns have relied on Washington-based vendors and consultants.
Similar views on key issues
Little separates them on the issues.
Both support gay rights, gun restrictions and public education. Both also are eager to take on Trump and Culberson, a lowprofile Republican lawmaker who they criticize for failing to push harder in Congress for long-neglected flood control projects that could have helped limit the devastation from Hurricane Harvey.
One of their few differences on policy involves health care. Moser, like Sanders, has vowed to push for a single-payer “Medicare for all” system. Fletcher has emphasized the need to protect the Affordable Care Act against GOP efforts to undermine the Obama-era heath care law.
Some of their differences come down to strategy. While both support legislation to protect undocumented “Dreamers” from deportation, Moser said she was willing to shut down the government over the issue. Fletcher said she was not.
“If you look at them on paper, they basically are 99 percent in alignment on all the issues,” said Harris County Democratic Party Chairwoman Lillie Schechter, who disputes the “establishment versus insurgent” narrative that has grown up around the runoff.
But as the race heats up, the fissures in the traditional Democratic coalition in Houston have widened.
While Moser has gotten crosswise with the DCCC, the campaign arm of the House Democrats, Fletcher remains on the outs with the Texas AFL-CIO, an important labor constituency that has endorsed Moser.
Some labor activists still bristle at a $7.8 million judgment Fletcher’s law firm won in 2016 against a union trying to organize janitorial workers in Houston. Fletcher has said she had nothing to do with the case — Professional Janitorial Services of Houston v. Service Employees International Union — but labor leaders argue that she’s a partner in the firm that benefited from the award.
Zeth Capo, president of the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation, said the janitor case, along with the DCCC’s intervention in the primary, has contributed to the sense of Fletcher being the “establishment” candidate, which he thinks will not help her mobilize rank-and-file Democrats in November.
“We have to overcome voter apathy in Texas,” Capo said, lambasting the DCCC’s attack on Moser. “We are not the DCCC. I have had no problem telling the DCCC lately that they need to stay the hell away from our office. We represent our members.”
‘Eyes on the prize’
Some Democratic strategists in Texas are urging a deescalation of tensions, noting that whoever wins the May 22 runoff will need the DCCC’s financial and organizational help to overcome the numerical advantage of Republican voters in the 7th District — at least judging from the March 6 primary, when nearly 5,000 more Republicans showed up to vote.
“It’s important that everybody keeps their eyes on the prize,” said Colin Strother, a Texas strategist who has worked with the DCCC.
“This all-out assault on the DCCC for wanting to win in November, I just don’t find it authentic,” he said.
Strother said he understands that Democrats must find a candidate with crossover appeal in a Republican-skewing district. At the same time, he said, “statewide, ‘Republican-Lite’ has not been a winning formula for us. The Republicans don’t believe it, and the Democrats are not motivated by it.”