House members are now on record on impeachment.

Both parties key on it for 2020 House races

WASHINGTON — After nearly every House Democrat voted to impeach President Donald Trump, the chief of the House Republican campaign committee said the political fallout was clear.

“Their obsession with impeachment finally came to a head, and they basically ended their majority,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn. “Max Rose is done,” he said, listing the New York congressman among freshmen Democrats from districts Trump captured in 2016 who he said won’t survive next November’s elections.

Rose, an Afghanistan combat veteran, sees things differently.

“We are going to beat them by such a wide margin that next time around, they won’t even talk like this again,” he said.

The nearly party-line House vote impeaching Trump locked in lawmakers’ positions on the subject. Many moderate lawmakers from swing districts had spent months saying they were on the fence.

Now, voters will decide whether to reward or punish incumbents for their choices. And both sides are using the bitter impeachment fight as weapons.

“This is an attack on Democracy,” said a Trump campaign email. “An attack on freedom. An attack on everything we hold dear in this country. And it’s an attack on YOU.”

Freshman Rep. Harley Rouda, who ousted a 30-year House GOP veteran from what was once a Republican stronghold in Southern California, is among the Democrats issuing their own pleas for cash.

“Last night I cast my vote to defend our Constitution and impeach the President of the United States. A vote bigger than party, polling, and politics, & we’ve faced an onslaught of attacks since,” Rouda told supporters.

Republican organizations and conservative outside groups have outspent their Democratic rivals, $11 million to $5 million, on television ads mentioning impeachment in congressional races. The figures from Advertising Analytics, a firm in Alexandria, Virginia, that tracks advertising, exclude spending by candidates’ campaigns.

Kyusung Gong The Associated Press file Harley Rouda, then a newly elected Democratic congressman, addresses supporters in 2018 at his election party in Newport Beach, Calif. Both major political parties, but especially the GOP, are using the impeachment fight as weapons.