GOP bid to unseat Fletcher coming into focus
Facing a roomful of conservative voters at a meet-and-greet earlier this month, Republican Wesley Hunt laid out the stakes for his party’s primary in Texas’ 7th Congressional District.
“This is about putting the best candidate forward who can beat Lizzie Fletcher. Period,” Hunt said.
Republican voters still are smarting from their 2018 loss in this suburban west Houston district, where Fletcher, a Democratic Houston energy lawyer, toppled nine-term GOP incumbent John Culberson. Her five-point win flipped the seat blue for the first time since the 1960s, prompting Republicans to take aim at the district almost as soon as Fletcher took office.
The GOP primary field already has come into focus, setting up a clash between Hunt, an Army veteran who works for Perry Homes, and Cindy Siegel, a former Bellaire mayor and Metro board member. Battle lines are sharpening, but not around the two candidates’ conservative bona fides or the strength of their policy proposals. The early contours of the race instead have centered on the question: Who is best positioned to snatch the seat from Fletcher?
Threatening to upend the primary is the potential candidacy of Pierce Bush, CEO of the nonprofit Big Brothers Big Sisters Houston affiliate and grandson of former President George H.W. Bush, who once represented the district.
Bush in an email earlier this month said he still is mulling a run for the seat and has been “flattered by people who are encouraging me to consider running,” though he did not lay out a deadline for a decision.
Meanwhile, both declared Republicans have their electability pitches ready to go. Hunt, 37, contends the party could use a “new generation of leadership,” and he peppers his stump speech with references to his time as a helicopter pilot in the Army, including his combat deployment to Iraq. Siegel, meanwhile, pitches her governing experience serving on the Bellaire City Council and as mayor, along with a number of boards and commissions.
She contends that it will take a Republican woman to beat Fletcher.
“I feel that way strongly,” the 64-year-old Siegel said. “It’s coming as no surprise to anyone, on a national basis: Women have moved away from the Republican Party.”
Hunt bristled at Siegel’s suggestion, calling it “identity politics at its finest.”
“We cannot assume that a woman will automatically vote for a woman just because she’s a woman,” Hunt said. “I think we need to assume that these women are intelligent enough and smart enough to make their own decisions.”
Siegel made clear that she expects to draw votes not purely over her gender, but because she sees herself as the most qualified candidate and is “known in the district, known for listening to people and working hard on their behalf.”
The candidates have more than eight months to litigate the best strategy for winning back the voters who helped turn the election to Fletcher last November.
“Suburban, college-educated women were the primary swing constituency in ’18, and they will be again in ’20,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “So whoever wins the hearts and minds of those voters is likely to come out on top.”
Finding a coalition
In 2018, Fletcher faced an intraparty electability debate within her own primary, when she faced a runoff against activist Laura Moser.
The race crystallized an ongoing question in Democratic circles: Should the party elect someone who embraces the party’s left-most flank, spurring new voters to the polls? Or is the best bet a candidate who disavows policies, such as “Medicare for All,” perhaps preserving the chance to scoop up moderate suburban voters disillusioned by President Donald Trump?
Fletcher represented the latter choice, and voters chose her over Moser by a 34point margin. An analysis of the general election results revealed Fletcher’s winning coalition included right-leaning moderates, particularly white women living in the suburbs.
A spokesperson for Fletcher’s campaign declined comment.
This time, the electability debate in the opposite primary has little to do with ideological distinction, though there will be plenty of time for Hunt and Siegel to draw policy contrasts. For now, identity and background — and the candidates’ political connections — appear to be drawing the clearest distinctions.
“Experience matters,” Siegel said. “I think what differentiates myself from Lizzie Fletcher or any opponent is the years I have working on complex issues, both in a public policy format and as a CPA.”
A newcomer to politics, Hunt noted that he is not a “lifetime politician,” comparing his first-time candidacy to Trump’s run in 2016.
“Not being somebody that’s been entrenched in this system for so long actually kind of gives me an outsider’s advantage as to how to approach some of these issues,” he said.
Trump effect
In 2018, Trump’s name did not appear on the ballot, but scores of voters in Texas’ 7th said they viewed the election as a referendum on the president nonetheless.
Now, the president’s down-ballot impact is set to become amplified, for better or worse, with his name likely atop the Republican ticket in 2020.
After the president lost the district to Clinton in 2016, 48 to 47 percent, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took notice and weighed in heavily on Fletcher’s behalf, spending more than $3.5 million on the seat in 2018.
This time, House Democrats’ campaign arm again figures to play a heavy role, making early attempts to muddy the GOP waters. When Trump visited Houston in April, for instance, the group sent reporters a news release with the subject line: “With Trump in Houston, How Far Will Hunt and Siegel Go to Win Him Over?”
“The path to winning a Republican primary runs through Donald Trump,” Brooke Goren, a DCCC spokesperson, said at the time. “As the president campaigns in Houston today, will Republicans like Wesley Hunt and Cindy Siegel embrace his attempts to devastate Texas’ economy and gut health care for middle-class families?”
Neither candidate sees it that way. Both express avid support for the president’s policies while acknowledging that Republican voters still can reasonably take issue
with his brash rhetoric and style.
Siegel credited Trump for loosening “overbearing and overreaching regulation” that she said has produced a healthy economy with low unemployment, even if she would “maybe approach things, personally, a little bit differently” when it comes to the president’s style.
To Hunt, the choice becomes particularly evident when boiling the options down to Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Both candidates tied Fletcher to Pelosi, alleging that she has voted along party lines despite presenting herself as a moderate Democrat.
“There is a stark contrast between the policies of President Trump and the policies of, let’s say, Nancy Pelosi,” Hunt said. “My message will be that President Trump’s policies are best for us.
“I guarantee you I will conduct myself in a manner that’s probably more conducive to what you would like to see,” he added. “But nevertheless, Trump’s policies are still going to rule the day.”