As Congress spars, Fletcher seeks local focus
Lawmaker hopes to address transit, flood issues rather than partisan tiffs
— Winning a Houston congressional district that had been in Republican hands for more than half a century, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher arrived in Washington this month as something of a dragon slayer.
But in politics, the hunter sometimes becomes the hunted. The 43-year-old Houston lawyer, having unseated nine-term Republican John Culberson, already has a target on her back as she negotiates the newly empowered Democratic House majority as a “pragmatic” centrist.
Fletcher has cast herself as roll-up-her-sleeves lawmaker who would rather lean into the minutiae of Houston’s transit and flood control problems than bicker over the daily partisan skirmishes of Congress.
“I think that’s a huge part of the message of the incoming class. People want us to move forward and they want Congress to actually work, instead of fight and debate and not advance the ball on anything,” Fletcher said last week during her initial orientation session. “There are a whole lot of places where there are noncontroversial problems that need to be fixed.”
But her first decision as part of the incoming Democratic majority in the House was one that could again be weaponized against her in 2020, regardless of the outcome of the internal contest over making party leader Nancy Pelosi the House speaker.
After remaining uncom-
mitted during her campaign to unseat Culberson, Fletcher threw her support behind Pelosi after her first week in Washington, adding momentum to the California Democrat’s quest to regain the gavel she gave up when Republicans took control of the House after the 2010 midterm elections.
The Harris County GOP pounced immediately on Twitter: “Remember when @Lizzie4Congress said ‘I won’t take orders from @NancyPelosi’? That wasn’t true at all.”
Republican National Committee regional spokeswoman Christiana Purves also fired a warning shot, noting that Fletcher and other swing-district Democrats like her faced “the wrath of the likely speaker” if they joined the handful of Democratic dissidents trying to unseat Pelosi.
“Not the best way to start out a congressional term,” Purves said.
Unlike some other incoming freshman, Fletcher did not vow to oppose Pelosi. She says that voting for Pelosi for speaker is hardly the same thing as taking “orders” from her.
Comfortable win
One lesson Fletcher and many of her allies took away from the race with Culberson was that millions of dollars spent by Republicans seeking to tie her to Pelosi did not work. In a district that was once represented by George H.W. Bush, and which was considered at best a 50-50 shot for Democrats to flip in 2018, Fletcher ended up winning by 5 points, a relative landslide.
Fletcher said a key to her support for Pelosi now is the current leadership team’s commitment to allow Democrats from centrist or swing areas, like the 7th Congressional District in west Houston and Harris County, to represent their local constituencies.
Incoming freshman Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who has vowed to push the party leftward, have received much more national press. But moderates like Fletcher will likely be more important for Democrats to hold their majority in 2020.
“It’s so important to remember that so many freshmen in this class are people who came from districts just like mine,” Fletcher said. “And I think that’s where so many people in the country are — in the middle.”
For some in the left wing of the Democratic Party, Fletcher’s hand to Pelosi could also be a reminder of the dramatic gambit by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which unleashed a rare primary attack against Laura Moser, Fletcher’s opponent, before the Democratic primary in March.
Recruiting the most electable general election candidates turned out to be one of the linchpins of Pelosi’s strategy to win back control of the House.
But if the episode marked Fletcher as the “establishment” candidate, that did not seem to hurt her in a historically Republican district where old-line, traditional conservatives and suburban women disillusioned with President Donald Trump were looking for a moderate Democratic alternative.
That is the space Fletcher intends to hold in Congress.
In her first week in Washington to prepare for new members’ swearing in on Jan. 3, Fletcher met with and joined the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist, pro-business Democrats who are vying for influence in the new Democratic majority.
‘Space to work’
One major area of alignment: The group remains focused on stabilizing the health care markets and shoring up the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, rather than pushing for a singlepayer, “Medicare-for-all” system favored by the party’s left wing.
One of the group’s leaders, U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, joined Texas Republican Will Hurd earlier this year to push legislation that would use technology to strengthen the U.S.-Mexico border and give legal protections to so-called Dreamers, young immigrants who entered the country illegally as children.
With divisions on immigration hardening in Congress, there has been no consensus on the HurdAguilar compromise or any other immigration or border proposal. Despite the polarization, Fletcher, who will be under a political microscope in Houston for the next two years, is banking on a Democratic majority to make way for a wave of bipartisan energy.
“Absolutely I think there’s space to work in this Congress as a moderate,” she said. “I think we will have a lot of influence in this Congress.”
Strengthening that conviction is the political reality that with continued Republican control of the Senate, there is little prospect of any major legislative initiative in the next two years that doesn’t have significant bipartisan support.
But continued gridlock is also a distinct possibility. Analysts close to Fletcher’s district say her best bet of maintaining her foothold in an increasingly diverse but historically Republican district is to focus on local issues and emphasize constituent service.
“There will always be the big, sexy national issues, but at the end of the day, you know the old Tip O’Neill saying: All politics is local” said former Democratic candidate James Cargas, referring to the legendary Reagan-era Democratic House speaker from Massachusetts.
Cargas, an assistant Houston city attorney who ran and lost three times to Culberson, sees the district as a natural GOP target — if not in 2020, then in a 2022 redistricting effort by Republicans in Austin after the next national census in 2020.
“They could redo the lines in ’22 and make it even more challenging (for a Democrat),” Cargas said.
But despite being in GOP hands since Bush won it in 1966, Texas’ 7th has become a classic swing congressional district, Cargas said.
“This district is not a crazy tea party area,” he said. “There are moderate, business-oriented Republicans. There are a lot of Democrats. But folks in the middle will determine the future of the district.”
Others who closely watched Fletcher’s campaign say she laid the groundwork with a relentless emphasis on flood control and mass transit, issues on which she faulted Culberson to be slow to deliver.
In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, as well as Culberson’s often fraught relationship with Houston’s Metro Rail system, some see Fletcher as a good candidate for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where she can help guide federal dollars home.
“She’s going to stick to those core issues that are relevant to the district, and not get sidetracked by things that aren’t in her wheelhouse,” said Jay Kumar Aiyer, an assistant professor of public policy at Texas Southern University. “She’s certainly not going to be a liberal firebrand. She’s going to have to stay true to herself.”
‘Common problems’
Fletcher has vowed to dedicate congressional staff to flood control and infrastructure issues and to hold regular town hall meetings open to backers and detractors alike. She said she will be looking for consensus.
“There are common problems,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. If your house flooded, you need help with (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), you need to make sure we keep the National Flood Insurance Program.”
But as Congress inevitably clashes on the big ideological issues of taxes, spending, health care and immigration, the challenge will be finding middle ground in an increasingly divided nation. Fletcher believes the ground is there — if Democrats can move past the House leadership question.
“There are a lot of things we can accomplish,” she said. “I feel like this is not what we should be talking about right now. Let’s just move on.”