Dems, Trump get midterm boost
Centrist message fuels hopes for Texas challengers on left of the aisle
WASHINGTON — In her first campaign commercial, titled “A Little More Houston,” Democratic congressional candidate Lizzie Pannill Fletcher made an opening plea for bipartisanship.
“Congress can learn a lot from us,” Fletcher said in the commercial, which is being backed by a six-figure ad buy on local broadcast and cable channels. “Democrats and Republicans need to work together.”
The centrist message, repudiating the partisan rancor of national politics, echoes a strategy employed to varying degrees by other Texas Democrats, including El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who is vying to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
On the same day that Fletcher launched her ad to challenge Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. John Culberson, O’Rourke went on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” with his own pitch for post-partisan politics in the age of President Donald
Trump.
Distancing his campaign from what he called the “smallness” and “paranoia” of the moment, O’Rourke said he is “not against anyone, not against a political party, but for this country.” He praised DeGeneres, who is openly gay, for connecting with people and embodying what he believes a divided nation needs.
“You are kindness; you are joy,” O’Rourke told DeGeneres, whose audience skews female and young.
With control of Congress at stake in November, Republicans are laser-focused on framing O’Rourke and other Democratic challengers in Texas as liberals in the mold of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — who they see as out of step with the state’s conservative bent. But rather than fighting fire with fire, Democrats in high-profile congressional campaigns in Texas have sought to exude a sense of upbeat, positive bipartisanship.
Colin Allred, challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions in Dallas, defines himself as a “progressive” willing to be reasonable and work with people on the other side.
Gina Ortiz Jones, running against Republican U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of San Antonio, has campaigned in no small part on her military background in the Air Force, where she was an intelligence officer deployed to Iraq. The same is true for MJ Hegar, a decorated military rescue pilot making a long-shot bid to oust Republican U.S. Rep. John Carter of Round Rock.
For Texas Democrats running in a deep red state, an appeal to the center makes strategic sense. Fletcher, for example, is running in the traditionally Republican 7th Congressional District — which Hillary Clinton narrowly won in the 2016 presidential election.
Politicians traditionally seek to cast their nets as widely as possible. But some analysts also see this as a favorable time to champion nonpartisan themes. Some see evidence that many voters are tiring of the smash-mouth politics of the Trump administration, including the president’s inflammatory attacks on the press, the Justice Department, the FBI, the “Deep State,” protesting NFL players, and immigrant families crossing the Mexican border illegally.
Not channeling Trump
The question for many Texas Democrats is finding the most effective way to counter the daily turmoil of the Trump administration and the caustic mood of the nation’s politics.
“Democrats have tried the ‘Republican Lite’ model, and it really didn’t inspire people to go out and vote,” said Texas Democratic strategist Colin Strother, a consultant to U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat who is widely regarded as one of the most centrist lawmakers in Congress.
“Having said that, a lot of the polling I’ve seen indicates, No. 1, that overtly negative, hateful, mean-spirited anti-Trump stuff turns voters off,” Strother said. “They’re not really looking for a blue version of Donald Trump.”
In light of the extreme partisanship in Congress, and the gridlock it often produces, some Democratic strategists counsel a can-do attitude that emphasizes collaboration over confrontation.
“People want somebody who’s going to go up there, set aside the partisan bull … and get stuff done,” Strother said. Hence the appeals to “working together, building consensus, stuff like that.”
To Republicans, the Democrats’ uplifting appeals to bipartisanship mask liberal positions on abortion, guns, same-sex marriage and taxes — all bedrock issues for their conservative base.
Stacey Roberts, a self-described “values voter” and Cruz supporter who encountered O’Rourke on the campaign trail last month, said she was impressed by his outreach efforts in West Texas. But, she added, “In broad terms, he’s for policies that aren’t going to be helpful in Texas.”
For O’Rourke, as well as for other Texas Democrats, the fall campaign looks to blend unabashedly “progressive” views on abortion, immigrant rights and gun safety with calls for decency and civility, providing a contrast to the partisan spats that have invariably consumed the incumbents they challenge.
Cruz has long been cast in the Senate as an in-your-face conservative warrior who played a leading role in the 2013 health care funding battle that prompted a government shutdown. With the polls tightening in a surprisingly close race, he has begun to fight back using O’Rourke’s now viral defense of NFL players’ national anthem protests, which the Cruz campaign calls part of a “radical policy agenda.”
Culberson, whom many analysts consider vulnerable to a Democratic wave election, has sought to cast Fletcher as a Pelosi acolyte. He also has emphasized his own bipartisan bona fides, from hurricane relief bills to sitting with Cuellar at this year’s State of the Union Address.
“John Culberson has a long track record of working across the aisle and there is no better example than the effort he led after hurricanes Harvey and Maria to deliver the largest hurricane relief bill package in history,” said his campaign spokeswoman, Catherine Kelly. “Lizzie Fletcher, in contrast, has accepted $14,000 from Nancy Pelosi and promotes far-left policies like citizenship for all illegal immigrants, eliminating the recent middle-class tax cuts, and a government takeover of health care that will eliminate private health insurance plans while costing trillions in new taxes.”
Fletcher has said she wants to shore up the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, which relies on private insurance companies, not a government “single payer” system. She has criticized Culberson for voting to weaken and repeal the health care law, which protects patients with pre-existing conditions.
Political ‘danger zone’
Other critics, meanwhile, have focused on Culberson’s ardent support for Trump in a district won by Clinton. In a district that also is now nearly a third Hispanic, he has long championed the administration’s crackdown on socalled sanctuary cities that don’t cooperate fully with federal immigration authorities.
At bottom, however, Culberson and most other Texas Republicans have little choice but to run in the Republican Party made over by Trump, who has increasingly tailored his campaign messages to his most loyal fan base.
To Austin GOP strategist John Weaver, a consultant in John McCain’s 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns, that has left a wide opening for Democrats. “It’s a reflection of how extreme the Republican Party has become, where they’ve given up the broad center and any willingness to cross party lines to solve the major problems of the day,” he said.
Traditionally, both Republicans and Democrats have tried to run to the middle once they’re out of their respective primaries and into the general election phase.
“It’s a real danger zone, politically, for Republicans to become such a sliver of the electorate, without any desire to reach out,” said Weaver, who works with Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a potential 2020 Trump challenger. “If you go to a marketplace, you want to compete for everybody. And right now, the Republican Party really wants to try to market to themselves. … It’s how you end up in the dustbin of history.”
Evidence for that, Weaver said, could be seen in the bipartisan funeral outpouring for McCain, the longtime Arizona senator who became one of Trump’s leading GOP critics.
“There is a hunger in Texas and in America, writ large, for dealing with some of these problems in an adult, constructive manner,” Weaver said.
The outcome of the 2018 midterm elections, according to analysts like Weaver, will depend in some measure on whether Democrats succeed in claiming that space.