Weekly House Cleaning
A DCCC News Roundup
This Week’s Winners: Donald Trump (and Lindsey Graham)
This Week’s Losers: Speaker Paul Ryan and NRCC Chairman Greg Walden
THE PRESIDENTIAL SHINE
SUMMARY OF THE WEEK: Donald Trump is a forest fire raging within the Republican Party, fueled by the overwhelmingly passionate support of the rapid Republican voter base. Paul Ryan is trying to fight the fire with an unpopular, squirt gun of recycled ideas.
In late breaking news Friday, former establishment Presidential candidate Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump. This surprising development signals that even the establishment is coming to the realization that they are the Party of Trump, and they need to fall in line.
Christie clearly sees the writing on the wall. Nevada marked Donald Trump’s third consecutive win in the Republican nominating contest. Not only is he the party’s frontrunner, he’s becoming more and more inevitable rolling into Super Tuesday, which is bad news for House Republicans and their reelection prospects.
Paul Ryan has put all of his eggs in the “ideas” basket (we can litigate whether any of his ideas have proven to be at all new, bold or substantive at another time). But, if there’s one takeaway from the Republican primary contests and Donald Trump’s rise, it’s that ideas don’t seem all that important or necessary from the perspective of the Republican primary voters.
Clearly, an endorsement of Trump and his bombastic personality, is a vote against policy or real solutions. This is particularly bad news for Paul Ryan in his quest to lead the party with a bold policy agenda.
Or, as Zeke Miller put it in TIME, “Trump’s rise is setting up to thwart the careful planning of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who is looking to turn the GOP into a party of serious policy. Trump’s freewheeling style and rhetoric fly in the face of the Speaker’s efforts over the last five months and Ryan will be loathe to simply fall in line.
Another Bummer for Paul Ryan this Week: The Telemundo Debate
Ahead of the debate last night, DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján made a sadly accurate prediction of how the evening would go.
“I am pleased that the Republican presidential candidates will be participating in the Telemundo debate tonight, but it is clear that their positions on issues that matter to the Latino community will continue to fall dramatically and unacceptably short.
“Whether it’s Donald Trump doubling down on building walls to divide – rather than build bridges – in the Latino community, Ted Cruz’s readiness to deport DREAMers, or Marco Rubio sensing the personal political gain in sprinting away from the immigration reform bill he once supported, Latino voters across the country are sure to be disappointed in these candidates.
“Even though the Republican Party has acknowledged repeatedly that they must do more to appeal to this emerging majority, they continue to hurt Latinos with their positions on education, healthcare, jobs and immigration, rather than help.”
And why might this Telemundo debate have come at a slightly sensitive time?
Poll: Trump’s negatives among Hispanics rise; worst in GOP field
Washington Post
By Dan Balz and Scott Clement
2/25/16
Donald Trump has used the issue of immigration to help make himself the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, but his harsh rhetoric also has earned him the highest negative ratings among Hispanic voters of any major GOP hopeful, according to a Washington Post-Univision News poll.
[…]Strongly negative views of Trump have intensified over the past seven months, as the New York billionaire has repeatedly pressed his call to build a wall along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border and seek to deport undocumented immigrants currently residing in the country.
Today, 8 in 10 Hispanic voters have an unfavorable view of Trump. That includes more than 7 in 10 who have a “very unfavorable” impression of him, which is more than double the percentage of any other major candidate.[…]
Full story here
THE DIRT FROM THE DISTRICTS
NJ-05: Vulnerable New Jersey Congressman Scott Garrett is running out of corporate donors. PNC Bank just joined the long list of corporate donors who are ceasing contributions to his campaign after Garrett garnered local backlash and embarrassing headlines this past summer for trying to prevent LGBT candidates from getting elected to office. Garrett’s anti-equality views are not only driving corporate donors away, they are jeopardizing the 6-term congressman’s chances of keeping his seat this November.
NY-19: A former Albany politician (Long Island GOP Congressman Lee Zeldin) endorsed another former Albany politician (NY-19 GOP candidate John Faso) this week. This isn’t really a surprise –Zeldin and Faso have both been mired in past scandals dealing with the culture of corruption in Albany.
NY-23: Now that Tom Reed’s presidential horse (Jeb Bush) is a loser horse, Reed is stuck between endorsing the rightwing authoritarian views of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. And Reed is already running as far as he can from Trump.
IL-10, C0-06: Trump and Rubio’s extreme views towards Muslim Americans served as a reminder of the time Mike Coffman and Bob Dold attended the conference of “nation’s leading anti-Muslim hate group.”
NV-03: Nevada Republicans said “hell no” to establishment politician Marco Rubio on Tuesday, indicating political insider and Rubio supporter Michael Roberson will face the same kind of backlash during his tough June primary.
NV-04: Cresent Hardy made things super awkward when he “struggled to point to one specific thing he has seen over the course of the last year from” Marco Rubio that “demonstrates presidential character.” Hopefully he learned something at last night’s debate – like how little daylight there is between the two on their extreme immigration positions.
CA-10: DC insider Jeff Denham’s presidential pick Jeb Bush flamed out this week, but now he refuses to answer which of the leftover extreme candidates he’ll support. We have a suggestion – his buddy Donald Trump. Denham not only helped Trump with a ‘job-creating’ hotel project in Washington (to be clear: jobs in DC, not the Central Valley), Denham has also made Trump-like extreme comments about immigration.
CA-25: Career politician Steve Knight proved how out of touch he is by once again siding with corporations and limiting victims’ ability to seek justice. Not a great position when his district is full of victims of the disastrous Porter Ranch gas leak.
CA-26: Rep. Julia Brownley continues to stand up for her district. The House Veterans Affairs Committee approved funding for a new Oxnard outpatient clinic that Rep. Brownley has relentlessly advocated for. McClatchy also reported this week that the $1.5 million Department of Transportation grant she secured will help prevent Metrolink crashes like the tragic crash in Oxnard last year.
CA-31: Rep. Pete Aguilar wrote in the Press-Enterprise about the resiliency of his San Bernardino community after the terror attacks last year and what needs to be done to address gun violence.
AZ01: Speaker Gowan served as important reminder this week that Sheriff Babeu has good company in the scandalized clown car. As we watch Babeu’s campaign go up in flames, let’s not forget that there are many other seriously flawed candidates in the primary. No matter who comes out of this primary, it is bad news for Republican attempts to take this seat. The Arizona Yellow Sheet highlighted Republican panic, with one GOP insider noting the “dearth of strong Republican candidates in CD1 (both Gowan and Babeu have troubles, both in the press and possibly in court)…”
Derivative of Gage Skidmore Photos. CC BY-SA 2.0.
IA03: Young was called out for the blatant hypocrisy of bragging about the passage of a Highway Bill that he tried to derail. This is about the most political insider move imaginable, which is to be expected from someone who has spent their ENTIRE career in Washington.
CO06: Shady business! American Rising and Colorado Republicans were exposed for seemingly working together to destroy Senator Morgan Carroll’s commonsense student loan reform legislation. This quote says it all: “Hanson’s [the tracker] presence in the Republican-controlled Senate “kill committee” was just a more obvious signal that the hearing on Carroll’s bill would be as much about electoral politics as about the practices of the student lending industry.”
NE02: Don Bacon has run a disastrous campaign. But this week, one of his supporters painted a wall. They also have a van wrap. So there’s that.
MN-02: GOP candidate and loudmouth Jason Lewis continues to shock Minnesotans with his bigoted and racist commentary – last week he compared same-sex marriage to slavery and made disparaging comments about women – this week he compared himself to Reagan in a defensive op-ed, while earning himself the endorsement of the secretive, ultra-conservative Minnesota Freedom Club. Stay classy, Jason. Meanwhile, Darlene Miller continues to run from her past, telling reporters that she “didn’t know at the time” that she had accepted stimulus money. Strange brew from someone who had nothing but praise for the stimulus in 2010, don’t you think?
MI-01: Tom Casperson, one of three Republican candidates for Michigan’s 1st District had the gall to defend Michigan Governor Snyder, claiming that people were going too far in criticizing him for his role in covering up what he knew about the Flint water crisis: “It’s almost like a poison in the heart, a poison in the spirit,” he said. We think the poison was actually in the water.
MI-08: Candidate Melissa Gilbert was praised by local radio for saying she’ll be the “Democrat to end 16 years of GOP representation” – meanwhile Republican incumbent Mike Bishop said he would definitely vote for Trump if he were the nominee, while practically endorsing Trump’s plan to give a huge tax break to the wealthy. So there’s that
FL-10: Former Orlando Police Chief, Val Demings continued to rally local support for her Congressional campaign with a visit from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Leader Pelosi and Chief Val Demings toured a growing small family owned business hub called The Village Square. Ending months of speculation, Congressman Dan Webster finally decided it was time to abandon Florida’s Congressional 10th district and run in an area more favorable to Republicans. In 2012, Chief Demings nearly beat Dan Webster in this district when it was gerrymander for Republicans. Congressman Webster saw the writing on all the wall.
VA-10: LuAnn Bennet called out Congresswoman Barbara Comstock for employing obstruction rhetoric, when Congresswoman Comstock suggested that President Barack Obama forgo appointing a candidate to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Comstock’s friends at the NRCC foolishingly attacked LuAnn for listing PO Boxes on FEC forms, not realizing that this is so common that the Republican Leader and Speak of the House Paul Ryan does the same. Comstock will wrap-up her week in a meeting with Senator Rubio’s supporters this Saturday. The DCCC sent Sen. Rubio’s Leesburg headquarters a FedEx package filled with articles highlighting her anti-immigrant record and offensive statements on American immigrants for Rubio and Comstock to discuss together.
PA-7: In Southeast Pennsylvania, leading Democratic candidate Bill Golderer called out Congressman Pat Meehan for “playing the worst kind of partisan games”, when Congresswoman Meehan blatantly said that Congress should do nothing to fill the Supreme Court vacancy until after November. Congressman Meehan’s dysfunctional tactics have become increasingly clear over the last few months. This could be a result of his primary challenger or the fact that his endorsed candidate Gov. Chris Christie just endorsed Donald Trump?
FL-26: Chaos has ensued in South Florida. Congressman Carlos Curbelo has panicked at idea of Donald Trump becoming the Republican Presidential nominee because he knows that Trump’s candidacy spells dooms for his campaign. After Gov. Jeb Bush dropped out of the race, Congressman Curbelo quickly endorsed his second choice Marco Rubio, but that doesn’t save him. It’s either Donld J. Trump at the top of his ticket, or the candidate who positions are drastically out of step with South Florida values.