Ex-House member leads GOP-overthrow effort
Former Rep. Ellen Tauscher of Pleasanton is easing back into California politics as one of the founders of a new super PAC aimed at flipping seven GOP congressional seats into the Democratic column next year.
Working with Berkeley political consultant Katie Merrill, Tauscher has launched Fight Back California, which plans to spend as much as $10 million between now and next June doing spadework in those targeted districts.
It’s the early start that makes this new effort so different, Tauscher said, especially since it won’t be linked to any particular Democratic candidate.
“You have to start working before the (candidate) filing deadline,” which isn’t until March, Tauscher said. “You have to be in those districts early, talking about local people, local politics and local issues.” The plan is also going to need some local money. While the new PAC already has collected a six-figure contribution from an undisclosed donor to get the
effort rolling, Tauscher and Merrill are looking to snag some of the Democratic money that typically flows out of California to campaigns in other states.
“We have to keep some of that money here,” Tauscher said. “There’s a sense that all of our (political) business is taken care of in California, and we have to tell people that’s not really true.”
The stakes are high for Democrats. Those seven Republican districts, split among the Central Valley, suburban Los Angeles County, Orange County and San Diego County, represent nearly a third of the 24 seats the party needs to take back the House from the GOP.
Tauscher knows what it’s like to challenge a GOP incumbent. In 1996, the former investment banker took on Republican Bill Baker and eked out a narrow 4,000-vote victory. She held the seat until 2009, when she resigned after being appointed to a top State Department post by President Barack Obama.
That California experience is invaluable, said Merrill, who ran Tauscher’s winning campaign and later worked in her Washington office.
“Typically, you don’t have a candidate until after the June primary, and then the national groups come out to work in the last five weeks of the campaign,” she said. “We need to get out there early and soften the ground” for whoever the candidates will be.
Within the next four to six weeks, the PAC will have people knocking on doors and making calls in all seven of those targeted districts, talking to people about issues that are important to them and their feelings about the people who represent them.
There won’t be anything nonpartisan about that effort, Merrill admitted.
“We must disqualify the incumbent first and then qualify the challenger,” she said. “We have to make sure people know when their member of Congress votes against their interests.”
That means staying in touch with those voters over the next year and not just making one call or one visit and moving on.
Voters in each of the targeted districts backed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president over Republican Donald Trump at the polls in November and then turned around and re-elected their GOP incumbents for Congress. The PAC effort will be focused on those ticketsplitters.
“There are overlapping state Senate and Assembly districts where Democrats are winning,” Merrill said. “We have to ask why they are different from Congress.”
Even with the best efforts, there are no guarantees. Republicans like Jeff Denham of Turlock (Stanislaus County), David Valadao of Hanford (Kings County), Steve Knight of Lancaster (Los Angeles County) and Darrell Issa of Vista (San Diego County), all were targeted by Democrat Party leaders last year and still managed to win, despite Clinton’s landslide victory in California.
The new GOP targets from Orange County — Ed Royce of Fullerton, Mimi Walters of Irvine and Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa — all were easy winners in 2016, which will make them tough targets for any Democratic challenger.
For Democrats, though, taking back the House is a job that has to be done, and both Tauscher and Merrill are confident they’re the ones who can help do it.
“We know how to win campaigns and we know how to win in California,” Merrill said.