In California spots, GOP to raise specter of Pelosi as speaker
Rep. Nancy Pelosi has starred in roughly one in every five Republican-made House campaign ads across the country this year, usually as a device to tar a fellow Democrat running in a conservative area as beholden to her “liberal San Francisco values.”
But almost no Pelosithemed ads have aired yet in her largely Democratic home state. That is about to change, as two Republican groups are planning to use Pelosi in attack ads warning that if Democrats take GOP-held House seats in California, it will mean higher taxes for all Americans.
Republican groups have purchased ad time in Orange County districts to tie Pelosi to the Democratic opponents of Republican Young Kim, who is running to replace retiring Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, and Rep. Mimi Walters, RIrvine. They are also planning to use Pelosi in ads in Central Valley districts held by Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock (Stanislaus County), and Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford (Kings County).
The anti-Pelosi ads typically raise the specter of her returning as speaker should Democrats flip the 23 seats they need to recapture the House. Several California races are key to determining which party will control the chamber for the next two years.
The attacks have driven dozens of Democratic candi-
dates — 44 challengers and seven incumbents, by an NBC News count last week — to promise not to vote for Pelosi as speaker should Democrats prevail.
In California, the anti-Pelosi roster includes Democrat Gil Cisneros, who is running for Royce’s Orange County seat, and Andrew Janz, who is challenging GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare. T.J. Cox, the Democrat challenging Valadao in the Central Valley, declined to commit one way or the other.
“When I win and when we take back the House, that’s the point in time that I will look at who the leadership should be,” Cox said in a television interview.
Pelosi’s favorability rating is low nationally (29 percent) — much like that of GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin (30 percent) and Congress itself (16 percent) — and Republican operatives say they are targeting her because their internal polling shows she is particularly unpopular in the areas of California where the competitive House races are being run.
In Denham’s Central Valley district, 57 percent of voters disapprove of Pelosi, according to internal Republican research shared with The Chronicle. In Walters’ Orange County district, 55 percent disapprove, GOP polling indicates.
“In districts around the country, including in California, Pelosi is easily the most unpopular national figure of any political party,” said Jack Pandol of the National Republican Congressional Campaign, which is planning Pelosithemed ads. “Associating her with Democratic candidates makes them radioactive.”
Corry Bliss, executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, which works to elect Republican House candidates, said that “to the average American — not the average Republican, the average American — Nancy Pelosi and her San Francisco liberal values are completely removed from reality.
“That means the resistance movement and everything that comes along with it — raising taxes, getting rid of ICE, trying to impeach Trump,” Bliss said.
Pelosi doesn’t support doing away with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Nor does she support impeaching President Trump — she has actively opposed billionaire activist Tom Steyer ’s impeachment petition drive as politically unwise and a distraction.
But conservative operatives don’t sweat those details because their research shows that Pelosi is an avatar for “San Francisco values,” an amorphous catch-phrase that Republicans have used for more than three decades as shorthand for positions far to the left of the mainstream.
And unlike Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. or other top Democrats, people know who Pelosi is — in part because she’s been a star of Republican attack ads for so long.
“One of the factors why she’s so toxic is that her name ID is nearly 100 percent,” said Courtney Alexander, a spokeswoman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, which has raised $95 million in the 2018 cycle toward protecting the GOP’s majority in the House. “She’s been around so long that people know what it’s like to have her and her agenda in power.”
Pelosi’s name has been invoked in more ads this year than in the entire 2014 and 2016 campaign seasons, said Mitchell West, a senior analyst with Kantar Media, which measures political advertising. The company estimates that Pelosi has starred in about 20 percent of GOP House ads this year.
The only politician whose name has been used more often: Trump. He was featured negatively in 13 percent of the nearly 300,000 local broadcast political ads aired through June 4 of this year, according to the nonpartisan Wesleyan Media Project. Pelosi has been featured negatively in 6.5 percent of those ads during that period — nearly three times as often as Schumer and nearly 20 times as often as Ryan.
“There are a number of districts that are up for grabs in California this year, and Nancy Pelosi is just as much of a political liability as she is in Columbus, Ohio,” said Ken Spain, a former GOP operative who first used anti-Pelosi ads a decade ago when he was the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
And Spain says the ads work. “Whether or not Democrats win the House in 2018, it is likely they will leave five to 10 seats on the table simply because of the prospect of Nancy Pelosi returning to the speaker’s chair,” he said.
Some who study such things, however, say there’s no proof anti-Pelosi ads persuade voters who are on the fence.
“I have not seen any research like that,” said Travis Ridout, a professor of political science at Washington State University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project.
“I suspect that these ads are less designed to appeal to the independent voters than to get their base to turn out,” Ridout said. “A lot of these candidates have decided that they are for Trump and this is their way to win: Get their voters out and the heck with the middle.”
Pelosi, 78, has given no sign of stepping down from the Democratic leadership. Asked in May about the Democratic candidates who were backing away from her, she said, “If they have to do that to win the election, I’m all for winning.”
“California voters see through the pathetic, darkmoney-funded ads that don’t work,” said Pelosi spokesman Jorge Aguilar. “They show the GOP’s desperate attempts at demonizing strong, effective women and the bankruptcy of their ideas because they have nothing to run on.”
One reason more Democrats don’t advocate pushing Pelosi aside: She continues to be one of the party’s strongest fundraisers. She has raised $87.4 million in the 2018 election cycle.
Using Pelosi in ads in California “shows that Republicans don’t have a compelling case to either make for their candidates or against the Democrats,” said Katie Merrill, strategic adviser to Fight Back California, a super PAC focused on flipping Republican House seats.
The biggest mistake both parties make “is when they try to nationalize their message,” Merrill said. “When voters hear something like (antiPelosi ads), Democrats go to one corner, Republicans go to another corner and the people in the middle tune out. Voters want to hear about issues that affect their district.”