Bannon not targeting House Republicans in ’18
Incumbents still wary of Trump’s ousted strategist.
WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon is telling people he’s not coming after mainstream Republicans in the House the way he’s targeting senators with anti-establishment disrupters in primaries. Many in the House are looking over their shoulders all the same.
“I can’t read Mr. Bannon’s mind,” said North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger, who could well be on the list.
Back atop the right-wing media organization Breitbart News, President Donald Trump’s ousted strategist is openly trying to topple Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and incumbents backing the Kentucky Republican. Bannon and his supporters say McConnell is the embodiment of an insufficiently conservative, unproductive party establishment.
The House is a different story, so far.
The 435-representative chamber is far larger than the 100-member Senate, so it would take huge sums for Bannon to reshape. It’s also where Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has steered bills erasing much of the Obama health law and cutting taxes. Conservatives such as Bannon may be able to tilt the House rightward simply by running primary candidates in open seats, rather than battling normally well-funded Republican incumbents.
When Bannon met this month with Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, who heads the House GOP’s campaign organization, he told Stivers their goals are aligned.
They’re “largely on the same page to defend and expand” the party’s majority, though there “might be a race here or there” where they clash, said Andrew Surabian, a Bannon associate and adviser to the Great America Alliance, a pro-Trump political organization.
“Steve’s focus is not on incumbents in the House,” Surabian said. “If you’re not going out of your way to be a thorn in the side of the president, you probably don’t have much to worry about.”
Surabian said Bannon will headline a fundraiser next month for Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y. But some GOP incumbents aren’t certain Bannon will leave them alone, and potential challengers are feeling buoyed.
“There are qualities about my candidacy he certainly would like,” Mark Harris, a former pastor set for a rematch with Pittenger in a district east of Charlotte, said of Bannon. “We’ve got to start draining the swamp.”
Harris lost in 2016 by fewer than 200 votes. He says he hasn’t talked to Bannon “as of yet.”
In New York, GOP Rep. Dan Donovan got a shot across the bow: a “Game on!” tweet by Michael Grimm, his challenger in next year’s primary, that included a photo of a smiling Grimm with Bannon. Grimm held Donovan’s Staten Island seat before serving seven months in prison for tax evasion.
House moderates, who call themselves “governing conservatives,” seem particularly unsettled by Bannon’s crusade and anti-incumbent efforts by other conservatives groups.
“We want one unified Republican Party,” said Sarah Chamberlain, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership. “If the fight comes, we’ll be prepared.”
The Senate has 33 seats at stake next November, including eight that are held by Republicans. It’s also the realm of McConnell.
“It’s Mitch McConnell’s desk where the Trump agenda goes to die,” Surabian said.
Bannon’s ability to influence the House is more questionable. It would take tens of millions of dollars to sway the several dozen competitive races expected next year.
Beyond the House’s sheer size, many moderate Republicans who might be tempting Bannon targets represent suburbs where hard-right conservatives could well lose the general election. That could increase the risk of Republicans forfeiting House control — bad news for Trump’s agenda and his prospects of avoiding congressional investigations.
“You lose control of the House and you have a misery index,” former Rep. Tom Reynolds, a New York Republican, said of the consequences for Trump should Democrats take over.
Bannon would most likely engage in open House seats in GOP strongholds in Texas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, or the dozen Democratic-held districts, mostly in the Midwest and Northeast, that Trump carried last year. Surabian said the idea is to elect “more allies to Mark Meadows,” the North Carolina Republican who leads the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.
Bannon supporters say his backing brings activist conservatives and fundraising. Mainstream Republicans say his potency is overrated, noting that conservative groups such as the Club for Growth have targeted Republican centrists with limited success.