California could shift the House
California so reliably votes Democratic that it has become little more than a fundraising stop in national elections. But the razor-thin vote in the House of Representatives to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act has moved the state into an unaccustomed position: ground zero in next year’s battle for control of Congress.
Even before the vote, California began registering on the 2018 radar because seven of its House Republicans represent districts that backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump last November. That’s nearly one-third of all Clinton-district Republicans in the lower chamber, and the largest concentration in any state.
But when all seven voted for the GOP healthcare bill, California suddenly moved to the center of Democratic efforts to regain a House majority. Otherwise, said Bill Carrick, a Southern California Democratic strategist, “you have to chase Southern ... and rural Midwestern seats.”
The California Seven’s unanimous support for the deeply controversial ACA repeal was stunning in two respects. First, it clearly distinguished them from the 16 other Republicans in Clinton districts: More of those representatives opposed (nine) than supported (seven) the bill. Instead, the California Seven aligned themselves with Republicans from the state’s districts Trump carried.
Even more striking, those repeal votes came despite the ACA’s success in California: Nearly 4 million Californians have gained coverage under the law, more than double any other state. Golden State adults are far less likely than people in demographically similar Texas and Florida to report difficulty paying medical bills or delaying care because of cost.
Five of the California Seven hold seats in Southern California: Ed Royce, Mimi Walters and Dana Rohrabacher in Orange County; Darrell Issa in a district that straddles Orange and San Diego counties; and Steve Knight in the northern Los Angeles exurbs. Jeff Denham and David Valadao represent seats in the Central Valley.
Privately, Democrats acknowledge that allowing all seven to survive in 2016 was a missed opportunity. Clinton, after all, won the state by more than any Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, and became the first party nominee since FDR’s run that year to carry Orange County, a onetime conservative bastion now being reshaped by racial and ethnic diversity and rising education levels. The Southland districts held by Walters, Issa, Rohrabacher and Royce were among the 30 nationwide where the president’s performance deteriorated most from Mitt Romney’s in 2012.
Yet Democrats last year mounted serious challenges against only Knight, Issa and Denham, and came close to ousting just the latter two. Democrats should be able to recruit stronger candidates for 2018 because the filing deadline for last year’s election, in March, fell before it was clear Trump would win the GOP nomination. And after the healthcare vote, these races will draw more media and fundraising attention than in 2016. Democrats are aggressively recruiting candidates even in the districts where credible 2016 challengers Douglas Applegate and Bryan Caforio are seeking rematches with Issa and Knight, respectively.
With California trending so Democratic, the Republican mantra for these seats is “localize the races.” And even Democrats acknowledge that several of the Republicans have effectively connected themselves to their districts. That’s especially true for Valadao and Denham, whose districts have voted Democratic in all three presidential races since 2008. Meanwhile, Knight and Issa also tried to establish distance from Trump by supporting an independent counsel on Russian election meddling before the Justice Department put special counsel Robert Mueller in place.
But maintaining separation from Trump will grow more difficult for the California Seven as they cast votes on Trump priorities, such as the deeply conservative budget he released Tuesday. “In ’16, polling showed voters separated Republican candidates from Trump and that helped all of these incumbents,” said Kevin Spillane, a California GOP consultant. “Now Trump [will] be a central factor in these campaigns.”
The California Seven will benefit in 2018 if turnout among strongly Democratic minorities and young people falls off, as usual, from presidential elections. But census figures show that in almost all of these districts, the shares of minorities and college-educated whites — two groups persistently hostile to Trump — are growing. Minorities now represent more than half the population in the Valadao, Denham, Royce and Knight districts; just under half in Walters’; and around two-fifths in Issa’s and Rohrabacher’s. The state’s open primary system adds another complication: In next year’s gubernatorial race, the two finalists both may be Democrats, potentially depressing GOP turnout and hurting these incumbents.
From its voters through its elected officials, California has expressed more opposition to Trump than any other state. And now, unexpectedly, no state has a greater opportunity to empower Democrats to hobble his agenda by winning back the House of Representatives.