DEMOCRATS ARE MAKING GOP FIGHT FOR EACH SEAT
Roskam of Illinois and Mimi Walters of California, who represent white-collar suburbs near Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively.
Former Rep. Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the GOP might be helped by the renewed energy of its base following the battle over Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, but he added that independent voters remained a challenge.
“You want to hold your losses to 20 or 22,” Davis said, underscoring Republicans’ vanishingly thin margin for error. “This is the kind of year where Republicans are going to have to give up on some races and they’re going to have to make some hard choices.”
Matt Gorman, a spokesman for the Republican committee, said the party is continually “evaluating the best way to use our resources and the best paths forward” to defending the House.
“Our No. 1 goal, above all, is keeping the majority,” Gorman said.
In a memo circulated to Republican donors earlier this month, Corry Bliss, who helms the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC funded heavily by Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, laid out the party’s precarious position. Bliss said the Supreme Court fight had boosted Republican enthusiasm and a few vulnerable incumbents were looking stronger in polling, including Reps. Will Hurd of Texas and Andy Barr of Kentucky.
The Adelsons, who donated $30 million to the super PAC last spring, have given millions more from their casino fortune to Bliss’ group in recent weeks. But Bliss said Republicans were facing a “green wave” of Democratic money, as Democratic challengers raise enormous sums online and donors like Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, pour millions into anti-republican ads.
“There are 20 races within 4 points that will determine the House majority, and CLF will keep working to win them,” Bliss wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Democrats believe Republicans will not be able to shrink the House battlefield: Democratic groups have taken an aggressive approach to the map, probing Republican vulnerability even in districts that tilt to the right. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently began advertising in six conservative-leaning seats, from rural Pennsylvania to the suburbs of Little Rock, Ark., where they see Republicans slipping. Late last week, the group began spending money against two more targets: Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, whose red-hued district stretches north from Palm Beach, and Mia Love of Utah, in the Salt Lake City suburbs.
Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, who chairs the Democratic committee, said the landscape of competitive races was already too broad for Republicans to build an electoral firewall around a chosen few.
“Many of these districts are closing our way,” Luján said, adding: “There are many paths for us to get to a majority.”
Luján wryly pointed to Sessions, 63, as an example of Republican distress, noting that the Republican candidate had suggested last year he would not need help from the national party. Now, Luján said, Sessions is “calling the cavalry home to see if they can defend that seat” against Colin Allred, his Democratic challenger.
Sessions, a House committee chairman, is in a close race with Allred, 35, a civil rights lawyer whom Republicans have sought to brand as a liberal. A poll conducted by The Times and Siena College found the two effectively tied, and both parties are saturating the district with advertising.
House Majority PAC, the main Democratic outside group focused on the House, began a $2.3 million ad campaign against Sessions last week, attacking his two-decade tenure in Congress and his vote last year to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Dallas Mayor Michael Rawlings, a Democrat who holds a nonpartisan office, said Sessions was at risk of losing because voters wanted to rebuke Washington, and Trump most of all. Rawlings, a moderate who has avoided endorsing in House races, said he was backing Allred in part because Sessions had failed to be a “moral leader” and challenge offensive Trump administration policies, like its ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.
“This race represents a major part of Dallas that is very centrist, which I identify with and I’m an example of — business individuals, families that have careers in commerce,” Rawlings said. He faulted Sessions for his close alignment with the president, saying “I think the environment around him changed, and he made his choices the way he decided to make them.”
After Pence’s event in Dallas on Monday, Maryann Collins, a local Republican precinct leader, expressed optimism that more conservative voters were finally getting energized to block Democrats from gaining control. Collins, who said she is “86 and proud of it,” said the Supreme Court fight had “fired a lot of people up.”
“They’re more determined than ever that they’re not going to let the nuts take over,” Collins said.