Some fault minority leader for losses
They may be united against President Donald Trump, but the Democrats’ loss in a closely watched and enormously expensive congressional election in Georgia on Tuesday night offered another warning sign that their party is still having trouble connecting with voters.
And if the first step to solving a problem is identifying it, they’re still a ways away.
Supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders saw Jon Ossoff’s four-point loss to Republican Karen Handel as a sign that moderate, cautious candidates such as Ossoff were the problem. But other Democrats suggested that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, was a boogeywoman driving away voters from Democratic candidates.
Some of the toughest ads against the 30-year-old Ossoff
were those tying him to Pelosi, whose approval ratings are underwater outside California.
Golden State Democrats had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars backing Ossoff’s campaign, but that support was used against their candidate.
“It was a very rough night for Nancy Pelosi,” said Sean Clegg, a Democratic strategist in San Francisco, adding that he was personally a big fan of hers. “Republican messaging attacking Pelosi appeared to be more effective than Democratic messaging against Trump. That’s a problem going forward, and it’s going to be a challenge in House races particularly.”
On Wednesday, some Democratic members of Congress publicly voiced concerns about Pelosi, raising the specter of a leadership challenge. “I think you’d have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top,” Rep. Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat, told Politico. “Nancy Pelosi is not the only reason that Ossoff lost, but she certainly is one of the reasons.”
Vela voted for Pelosi as leader in November, when she won the backing of about two-thirds of the Democratic caucus — her smallest win in a leadership race in years.
Rep. Tony Cárdenas, a California Democrat who represents part of the San Fernando Valley, argued in a closed-door session among House Democrats that the party should address the impact Pelosi is having on its candidates, the New York Times reported.
A Pelosi spokeswoman did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment. But at a meeting with House Democrats on Wednesday, Pelosi urged her caucus members not to overreact to a Republican win in a longtime Republican district. “A loss is a loss. It is a setback. Unfortunately, a loss for us — but not good news” for Republicans, she said, Politico reported.
Pelosi could face opposition from both moderate Democrats, who see her as a drain on centrist support, and “Berniecrats,” who resent her as a member of the party establishment.
Joey Aszterbaum, a former Sanders delegate and state party official in Riverside County, said Pelosi was a “liability” for candidates in tough districts because voters saw her as a symbol of what’s wrong with the party.
But Pelosi is a prodigious fundraiser with a long history of building ties with Democratic members of Congress. She’s raised more money for House Democrats than any other candidate in history who didn’t run for president — about $560 million since taking the leader’s chair in 2003, Politico reported.
Nationally, many looked to this race in an affluent corner of the Atlanta suburbs as a referendum on Trump. The attention on the race may have hurt Democrats by encouraging more Republicans to go to the polls, Clegg said.
Overall, though, Ossoff’s relatively close result in a district that has gone Republican since 1978 is good news for Democrats in 2018, Clegg argued. Even though Democrats have lost repeatedly in special elections this year, they did better than expected in each one.
“I’m not crying in my Cheerios this morning,” Clegg said Wednesday. “While it would have been nice to have that trophy of Newt Gingrich’s former district, we have an energized, mobilized Democratic base that’s turned up and turned out again in four very red districts and very red states.”
In recent weeks, both candidates had in many ways shied away from talking about the controversial president, with Ossoff trying to present himself as almost nonpartisan and refusing to support higher taxes for wealthy people or a single-payer health care plan.
That was a mistake, liberals say.
Unless Democrats start running more liberal candidates, Aszterbaum said, “I don’t have a lot of hope for 2018.”
There’s little question the result amounted to a pretty bad return on investment for California donors in what became the most expensive House race in U.S. history. In April and May, the Ossoff campaign actually raised more money from donors in the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties than in the entire state of Georgia.
It’s unlikely that fundraising record will be broken next year, when the attention of Democratic donors will be spread out over hundreds of competitive races around the country. The Ossoff-Handel race “was almost like a chew toy for Democrats around the country to get their aggressions out on,” Clegg said. “It was like a fidget spinner.”
Still, donors who sent Ossoff big checks in the hope of sticking one to Trump said they were distressed.
“I’m so surprised,” said Rosaria Haugland, 77, a Palo Alto philanthropist who gave Ossoff $2,167. “It feels like we don’t live in a democracy anymore. The whole thing is crazy.” She said she was worried that the result would empower Republicans in Congress to cut Obamacare.
In fact, the California support may have come back to bite Ossoff. A stream of TV ads played up his donations from the Bay Area, and featured a troupe of stereotypical San Francisco characters professing their love for the reedy Democrat.
But Aram Fischer, a leader of Indivisible San Francisco, an anti-Trump group, said his members weren’t disheartened by Ossoff’s loss. “We saw four close races in ruby-red districts, and while a win would have been great, we showed our ability to build capacity,” Fischer said. “We should go into these same districts and win in 2018.”
What’s next? As the 2018 races ramp up, you can expect Democratic attention to turn to California, where seven Republican members of Congress represent districts won by Hillary Clinton. The path to Democrats retaking the House majority probably runs through those districts, strategists say.
Already, Clegg said his political consulting firm has phones “ringing off the hook from candidates who want to run in these targeted races,” even though they don’t have to officially file paperwork declaring their run until next March. He predicted crowded, messy Democratic primaries.