GOP faces uphill battle to unseat California’s new House Democrats
In an all-out effort to show that their disastrous showing in the November elections was a onetime-only outlier, GOP leaders are targeting the seven California Democrats who flipped Republican-held congressional seats for defeat next year.
“Freedom or socialism — that’s the choice in 2020,” Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement naming 55 “vulnerable Democrats” his party is trying to unseat nationwide. “We are hard at work recruiting strong, accomplished Republicans who will deliver our message of individual freedom.”
Problem is, that’s the same antigovernment message that helped flip 40 GOP seats nationwide and give Democrats control of the House. And with President Trump on the top of the ticket in 2020, that’s going to be an even tougher sell in deep-blue California.
Democrats Josh Harder of Turlock (Stanislaus County), T.J. Cox of Fresno, Katie Hill of Agua Dulce (Los Angeles County), Gil Cisneros of Yorba Linda (Orange County), Katie Porter of Irvine,
Harley Rouda of Laguna Beach (Orange County) and Mike Levin of San Juan Capistrano (Orange County) all won seats that in many cases Republicans had held for decades. Now they have the considerable advantage of incumbency.
“We said all along that flipping those seven seats would be tough for Democrats,” said Darry Sragow, a former Democratic strategist who publishes the California Target Book, which focuses on state political contests. “But now that they have them, it’s the Republicans who have a very steep hill to climb.”
There’s a reason incumbents of any party are tough to pry loose, Sragow added.
“Once you’re in Congress, you work very, very, very hard to gain the trust of your constituents,” he said. That means making plenty of speeches to local groups and sending out a blizzard of emails about the great things being done for the district in Washington.
That trust is part of what GOP leaders are trying to short-circuit.
After freshman Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York came up with a “Green New Deal” that she called on Democrats across the nation to endorse, Republicans were quick to tie Democrats to the more controversial aspects of the plan.
Seizing on information in the congresswoman’s list of “frequently asked questions,” which was quickly withdrawn, a spokeswoman for the GOP congressional committee fired off emails asking whether Harder, Cox and Hill agreed with “the socialist Democrats’ plan to ban air travel,” ban fossil fuels and “eliminate millions of jobs in the energy industry.” The resolution introduced in Congress contains none of those things.
And where the Green New Deal website talked jokingly of ridding the county of “farting cows,” Republicans were happy to note that Cox’s 21st Congressional District “has the 12th-highest cattle population of any congressional district.”
But while emails are cheap, campaigns aren’t. Republicans found themselves heavily outspent in 2018, with little hope that the situation will get better next year.
“The Republicans just have so little in the way of resources,” Sragow said. Democrats hold every statewide office, two-thirds majorities in both houses of the Legislature and a 44-to-24 percent voter-registration gap that’s getting wider every year.
“It’s hard for them to recruit top candidates, and it’s hard for them to raise money for campaigns,” Sragow said. GOP candidates who do sign on “have to realize they may be on a suicide mission.”
The details surrounding the 2020 contests don’t make things any easier for California Republicans.
Democrats typically do better in presidential election years, which bring out more independent and occasional voters, who in California tend to vote Democratic. And with Trump on the top of the ticket, many of those voters are likely to show up to vote against the president and stay to back Democrats farther down the ballot.
A new poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that 67 percent of California adults disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, which doesn’t bode well for GOP candidates who have little choice but to back their party’s leader.
“There’s no market for Trump in California now, and it’s hard to conceive how that will change by next year,” Sragow said.
The best chance for a California Republican comeback may be in 2022. Midterm elections typically bring out a lower percentage of Democratic voters, and this one will feature congressional and legislative seats redrawn after the 2020 census.
“Since California’s lines are redrawn by an independent committee, it won’t be possible for Democrats to gerrymander the districts in their favor, regardless of how much they outnumber Republicans,” Sragow said. “The state will have a whole new dynamic, and it’s impossible to say what that will mean politically.”