Texas key in fight for House
Democrats could check Trump, GOP if they win control
WASHINGTON — Underlying the battle for the U.S. House, with unusual competition in Texas this election, is the prospect of big change in what Congress does — and doesn’t do — on issues from immigration to health insurance to taxes.
Democratic control of the House for the first time since 2010 would blunt President Donald Trump’s most controversial initiatives, including his drive to construct a border wall, and perhaps swiftly resolve the status of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants under temporary court protection since Trump ordered cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Polls point to the likelihood of Democrats adding seats on Tuesday. But whether they will post the net gain of 23 needed to retake the House is fraught with uncertainty, in large measure because nearly all of the “toss-up” contests are being fought on Republican-held turf where Trump is a wild card.
After the 2006 midterms when Democrats wrested away House control, the impact was felt as soon as January when then-President George W. Bush sped up the Iraq War with a surge of troops, hastening to end the unpopular conflict.
The effect of Democrats capturing the House on Tuesday could be far wider,
resetting the bargaining table on a host of issues and triggering a new round of partisan warfare heading into the presidential election season, according to congressional experts and Texas Democrats primed to return to power.
With odds strongly favoring the GOP narrowly hold the Senate, a Democraticrun House would work as a check on Republicans and the White House amid investigations of Trump policies and appointees by committee chairs newly armed with subpoenas.
“Even if Democrats can’t move legislation, they can really stop the president from making progress he wants on many issues, from immigration to health care,” said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University political scientist and author.
“Democrats can use their power to start national conversations on other issues. But it won’t be easy; President Trump still has the loudest bullhorn around,” said Zelizer, whose book, “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” chronicled President Lyndon Johnson’s work with Congress crafting Great Society legislation.
James Thurber, founder of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, believes a Democratic majority would effectively moderate the Senate, thereby quashing further efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act or remove its popular features.
“They’ll protect entitlement programs, take a look at changing the tax bill and they’ll absolutely stop expansion of the wall,” he said.
But Democratic factionalism could limit success, he believes. “It depends on the far left and whether the party is going to be pragmatic and think about 2020,” he said.
Focus on accountability
Undoing parts of the Republicans’ sweeping tax bill passed just before Christmas last year would be a major priority. The law slashed rates for corporations, provided new breaks for private businesses and reworked the individual tax code. Trump recently clouded the future of taxation by remarking on the campaign trail that the GOP will “put in” another 10 percent tax cut for the middle class — which came as news to Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and principal author of the tax overhaul, has said he wants to make permanent the individual tax cuts in the law. They expire after 2025.
“Our economy is booming and we are on track to have the first total year of 3 percent growth in over a decade,” Brady said in a statement. “Our agenda is to keep the economy growing, and it’s crucial that we have the chance to continue our work with President Trump.”
Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, said the priority of the tax-writing panel “has to be a thorough review of the Republican tax law. It is burdening our economy and will saddle us with trillions of dollars in public debt. Some of the provisions are justified, some are not.”
Doggett, a Democrat whose district runs from San Antonio to Austin, vowed to remain a leader in the drive to force release of Trump’s tax returns. If Democrats subpoena those records, the case might well end up at the Supreme Court.
“It’s not just his personal 1040,” Doggett said, “but the fact that he has over 500 entities from Manhattan to Azerbaijan and we need to see the nature of personal gain, and the international entanglement and self-dealing, with regard to current administration policies.”
Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, in line to take over as head of the 31member Congressional Hispanic Caucus whether or not Democrats win control, said that immigration matters and resolving the status of so-called Dreamers — roughly 120,000 of them in Texas — would be a first order of business under a Democratic majority.
Castro, who stands to move up on the key Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, summed up the goals if Democrats succeed Tuesday.
“Two things: creating opportunities for Americans by focusing on the breadand-butter things people care about, and second, accountability in government. We’ve witnessed an astonishing lack of oversight in the last two years,” he said.
Low approval rating
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, boiled down his prediction if Democrats take charge: “Another period of gridlock. I don’t think we have too much new to experience there.”
He added: “Any difference will be more extreme polarization and a focus on Donald Trump that colors everything. You could have a simple resolution on Mother’s Day and there probably would be a debate, and Trump probably would tweet something about it.”
Like most analysts, Sabato predicts a Democratic takeover, which history and polls suggest is likely.
Since 1946, the party of presidents with an approval rating under 50 percent has lost an average of 37 seats in midterm elections. Trump’s job rating, after ticking up recently, dipped to 40 percent in Gallup tracking this week and averaged 43.9 percent in the Real Clear Politics average of polling this month.
By other measures, Democrats had a 7.5 percent average last week in the average of surveys when voters were asked which party they prefer in congressional elections. In 69 House contests identified as competitive, Democrats held a 4 percent advantage, according to Washington Post polling published Thursday.
What’s more, Democrats, more than Republicans, tell pollsters that they are likely to vote, similar to what GOP voters were saying when they captured the House eight years ago. The often cited FiveThirtyEight political blog gives Republicans only a 1-in-7 chance of keeping House control. And among women, Democrats hold a 25 percent advantage in polls, a gender gap that in normal times likely would be insurmountable.
But analysts caution that these times are not normal, with the volatile backdrop of the hate-inspired massacre in Pittsburgh, domestic terrorism, the fiercest Supreme Court confirmation battle in a generation and thousands of troops on the border with Mexico.
Trump lends more unpredictability. In the campaign’s final six days alone, he planned 11 rallies across eight states, likely stoking fears of migrants with more warnings of an “invasion” from the Central American caravan working its way north through Mexico.
“The Democrats should win, but that doesn’t mean they will,” Sabato said. “Hillary Clinton should have won in 2016, but she didn’t.”
Texas races to watch
District 7: The district that stretches from some of Houston’s wealthiest neighborhoods into Harris County suburbs is the kind of territory where Democrats need to marshal the antiTrump sentiments of independents and GOP women. Judging by poll results, they could succeed in Houston.
Incumbent Republican John Culberson, elected to Congress 18 years ago, is trying to stave off a furious challenge from Houston corporate lawyer Lizzie Fletcher.
In campaign wherewithal, Culberson has been heavily outraised by Fletcher — $5.3 million to $2.9 million through mid-October. Just eight House races in the country have seen more outside spending in the general election, with efforts on Fletcher’s behalf leading those for Culberson by more than $1 million.
Fletcher has worked her way into a virtual tie with Culberson in a district that Clinton won in 2016, according to New York Times polling this month.
Democrats are taking aim at Culberson’s votes to gut the Affordable Care Act, keying as they’ve done across the country on the health insurance law’s popular protections for pre-existing conditions.
Culberson, like many Republicans fending off the charge, asserts in a late ad that Fletcher supports a Bernie Sanders-styled “government takeover of healthcare” — an assertion based Fletcher’s stated supported earlier this year for “universal health care.”
District 23: No Texas congressional turf has been more fiercely contested in recent years than the territory that runs from San Antonio to the edge of El Paso. The race this year in the majority Hispanic district between incumbent Republican Will Hurd and challenger Gina Ortiz Jones is no different.
One measure is the 3,986 ads that aired in the district from Oct. 16 to Oct. 25 — the sixth most of any district in the country, according to ad-tracking analyzed by the Wesleyan Media Project.
Hurd, a former CIA undercover officer and a moderate in his party, is being targeted in many of those ads for GOP votes aimed at the Affordable Care Act — although he abandoned the GOP when the repeal passed the House in April 2017.
A New York Times poll last month found Hurd with a lead outside the margin of error over Jones, a former Air force intelligence officer and Iraq war veteran who worked in the Obama administration.
Republicans either are worried or are building an expensive firewall. A GOPaligned super PAC began hammering her last week with attack ads common against Democrats this year, associating her with California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who could return as House Speaker, and socalled government-run health insurance.
In addition, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which had halted its ads in the district, is back on the air through the election with a spot invoking Pelosi’s name and Jones’ donations from “extreme environmentalists.”
District 32: In the Dallas area, shifting political sentiments give Democrats a prime pick-up opportunity. Incumbent Pete Sessions is an 11-term Republican veteran and House powerbroker who chairs the Rules Committee, which controls the flow of legislation. In 2016, he drew no Democratic opponent.
But Sessions is fighting for his political life against former National Football League linebacker Colin Allred in a contest rated “toss-up” by leading handicappers. A New York Times survey in September found the race within the margin of polling error.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the heavily urban district by 2 points, a stunning turnaround in Democratic fortunes in the four years since Republican Mitt Romney won it by 16 points in the previous presidential contest.
Contests on GOP turf
District 22: In a largely suburban south-central portion of the Houston metropolitan area, the re-election drive by five-term Republican Pete Olson, of Sugar Land, has drawn attention for spirited competition and for Olson’s words. He has referred to his opponent as “an IndoAmerican carpetbagger” and uttered the phrase “CNN sucks.”
Olson’s challenger, Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni, an Indian-American who worked at the State Department and on Capitol Hill for New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, has built a campaign that reflects the changing face of gerrymandered turf once represented by influential GOP House member Tom DeLay.
The population of the district, which includes Fort Bend, Brazoria and part of southern Harris County, is 25 percent Hispanic, 19 percent Asian and 13 percent African-American. Handicappers still give Olson a decided advantage.
But the Cook Political report recently moved the contest from its “likely Republican” category to “lean Republican,” a reflection of Kulkarni’s aggressive multicultural campaign, which includes phone banks of volunteers appealing to voters in an array of languages.
Kulkarni raised $1.2 million as of mid-October enabling him to keep pace with Olson and bank more cash for the campaign’s stretch run. Kulkarni’s expenditures include a recent television ad asserting that Olson has passed three bills in 10 years.
Olson, a former Navy pilot, highlights economic growth in the Trump era and recently publicized the shout-out he got from the president in Houston, attached to the words “great job.”
District 21: For nearly three decades, Lamar Smith, a San Antonio Republican and one of the GOP’s stalwart skeptics of climate change, has held the territory stretching from Austin to San Antonio. His retirement opened the seat, triggering competition between Republican Chip Roy and Democrat Joseph Kopser.
In a normal year, a Democrat might be given little chance. The district has a 10 percent structural tilt toward Republicans. And Roy has a GOP insider status after working in Washington as the top aide to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and stints in the employ of other top Texas Republicans.
But Kopser, one of an array of combat veterans recruited around the country, offers himself as a different kind of Democrat — a moderate, former Ronald Reagan supporter vowing to cooperate with Republicans. Also, the district has recently trended younger and more diverse, after acquiring some new precincts after redistricting.
Roy is getting strong support from the House Freedom Alliance, an group of staunch conservatives that he likely would join. “Meet the Next Ted Cruz,” reads the headline in an October issue of Politico Magazine.
Kopser, in his closing argument to voters, stays the course of presenting himself as “independent like Texas,” proclaiming in his latest television ad that “I’m sick of career politicians who are in it for themselves.”
District 2: The Houstonarea district where Republican Dan Crenshaw and Democrat Todd Litton are vying to replace retiring Republican Rep. Ted Poe offers more territory where Democrats see potential this year — real or not.
In most years, Litton, a lawyer who has worked in the education and nonprofit fields, would be given little to no chance against Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL with an appealing résumé. In 2016, Trump won the district by 9 percentage points.
Handicappers give Crenshaw a decided advantage. But the Cook Political Report in July shifted the race from “solid Republican” to “likely Republican.”
Litton held a cash advantage heading into the homestretch, enabling a television ad in which he assails both the work of Congress and “my far right opponent, Dan Crenshaw.”
Crenshaw, among Texas combat veterans running for Congress, lost his right eye in an IED explosion. Tshirts sold on Crenshaw’s website show his likeness with an eye patch and the phrase Texas Conservative Patriot.