In a couple of Midwestern states, Democrats tried to recycle former senators. To oppose incumbent Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, they chose Russ Fein-gold, who had served three terms before losing to Johnson in 2010. Johnson had an unremarkable record, and most oddsmakers rated him as the under-dog. He fought back by casting Feingold as an insider, making it seem as if the former senator were the incumbent. In one Johnson radio ad, the narrator spoke of “Senator Feingold,” while Johnson referred to himself only as a “candidate for Senate.”47 Working in Johnson’s favor was the decline in union membership, which had been sharper in Wisconsin than in any other state, meaning that Democrats had less labor money and people-power.48 Late polls showed a tightening race, and Johnson’s 3.4 percent victory margin was a major upset. Meanwhile, a Democratic former colleague of Feingold ran aground in Indiana. Evan Bayh, who had stepped down in 2010, was initially the favorite to replace retiring Republican Dan Coats. Bayh had devoted most of the previous six years to getting rich in the corporate world, spending more time in Washington than Indiana. His Republican opponent, Representative Todd Young, ran ads saying, “After the economy crashed, Indiana families were struggling. We turned to Senator Evan Bayh to protect us from the Washington insiders and Wall Street bankers, who got us into that mess. But instead of going to work for us, Evan Bayh went to work for them.”49 Bayh, like Feingold, could not escape the “insider” label and he lost by nearly ten points.
Two Republican senators had unexpectedly tough races. North Carolina’s Richard Burr faced civil liberties lawyer Deborah Ross, and Missouri’s Roy Blunt contended with a challenge from secretary of state Jason Kander. In both cases, charges of insiderism plagued the incumbent. Burr had been on Capitol Hill since 1994, first as a House member, then as a two-term senator. Blunt had been in office even longer. His wife and three children were lobby-ists, including his son Matt, a former governor of the state. Ross proved to be a strong fundraiser, and Kander made a memorable TV ad rebutting Blunt’s attack on his support for gun control. Wearing a blindfold, Kander assembled an AR-15 rifle while discussing his army record and explaining that he wanted background checks “so the terrorists can’t get their hands on one of these.” With a click of the assembled rifle, he ended, “I approve this message because I’d like to see Senator Blunt do this.”50 Despite their energetic campaigns, both Democrats fell short, and the GOP incumbents won.
In Florida, Democrats thought they had a shot when Marco Rubio announced that he would forgo a second Senate term to focus on his presidential race. After that campaign failed, McConnell persuaded him to change his mind and run for reelection. The good news for Democrats was that they had a couple of House members willing to run for the seat. The bad news was that both were poor candidates. Alan Grayson already had a reputation as the chamber’s most obnoxious member—amid abundant competition—and in the summer, allegations of domestic abuse relegated him to also-ran status. On his way out, though, he tried hard to take his primary opponent down with him. Of Representative Patrick Murphy, he said, “He’s a 33-year-old nobody who’s done nothing in his life. He’s never had a serious relationship, never married, no children, never had to support himself, never had a real job, and lived off a trust fund on his daddy’s yacht for the first 30 years of his life.”51 The Rubio campaign picked up on the theme, effectively accusing Murphy of padding his resume. In debates, Rubio displayed the rhetorical skill that had deserted him in the presidential primary campaign, and he won the election by a comfortable margin of more than 800,000 votes.
There were a few bright spots for Democrats. In Illinois, they found a dream candidate: Representative Tammy Duckworth, who had lost her legs as a helicopter pilot in the Iraq War. Republican incumbent Mark Kirk, who had narrowly won in 2010, was always on politically shaky ground in this heavily Democratic state, and most political observers marked him as a sure loser against a war hero. If Kirk ever had an outside chance, he destroyed it during an October debate. After Duckworth called herself a “daughter of the Revolution,” Kirk replied, “I forgot that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.”52 Duckworth’s mother was born in Thailand, but her father’s family did fight under George Washington, and the Illinois Daughters of the American Revolution had honored her with a bronze statue.53 The racist stupidity of the remark was out of character for Kirk, and some observers speculated that his massive 2012 stroke was to blame.54 Whatever the reason, he was toast and Duckworth was on her way to the Senate.
Harry Reid’s retirement gave the Republicans their best opening to pick up a Democratic seat. Their candidate, Joe Heck, had an impressive background as a physician, brigadier general in the Army Reserve, and three-term House member. He hurt himself by waffling on Trump. He pulled his endorsement after the infamous Access Hollywood video, then backtracked, thereby offending both pro-Trump and anti-Trump voters. Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto enjoyed statewide name identification as a former two-term attorney general. Strong Democratic turnout pushed Masto over the finish line and enabled Hillary Clinton to carry the state.
Like Heck, New Hampshire Republican senator Kelly Ayotte flip-flopped on Trump, at first saying that she would vote for him but that she did not endorse him. In a debate, she said that Trump could be a role model for kids but later took it back, explaining that she had misspoken. After Access Hollywood, she said that she would not vote for him at all. Democrat Maggie Hassan was the incumbent governor, so she was thoroughly familiar to the electorate. She won by a fraction of a percentage point.
New Hampshire and Nevada worked out the way that Democratic national strategists wanted. During the summer, they figured that the election would be a referendum on Trump. “If there was ever a national election. This is it,” said Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), who was prepared to succeed Reid as party leader. Democrat whip Dick Durbin (D-IL): “History tells us that when you have an extreme candidate, the party of that candidate stays home.”55
Overall, the Senate results did align perfectly with presidential results. No Democratic Senate candidate won a state that Trump carried, and no Republican won a state that Clinton carried. The problem for Democrats was that New Hampshire and Nevada were in the minority because Trump carried more states. Despite a gain of two seats, Democrats fell short of control.
Was Trump responsible for the Republican victory? It is possible that he helped the GOP by spurring turnout in key states, but it is unlikely that he deserves the main credit. He lost the aggregated popular tally nationwide, and his share of the vote was generally smaller than that of Republican Senate candidates. Table 5.2 displays the results for the ten states that RealClear-Politics listed as “tossups” or “leans.” Only in Indiana and Missouri did Trump get a greater share of the vote than the GOP winner. In Nevada, he won a larger percentage than Heck, but both lost the state.
Most Republican candidates did not reach for Trump’s coattails. On the contrary, just as the Democrats were trying to nationalize the election, Republicans were following an “all politics is local” strategy. NRSC executive director Ward Baker made this point explicitly:
[We] have a very clear messaging strategy. Republican Senators are talking to voters like they’re running for sheriff. Every message is highly targeted and purposefully local. Our Senators are making sure their voters know they’re focused on issues that matter in their states—Rob Portman and Kelly Ayotte are leading the fight against opioid abuse; Roy Blunt is a forceful advocate for mental health funding; John McCain and Ron Johnson are going above and beyond for reform and accountability at Veterans Affairs and VA hospitals. We want to make sure voters are casting votes for Senate candidates based solely on issues related to that Senate race—not up, down, or adjacent on the ticket.56
Republican candidates seldom appeared alongside Trump, with Ron Johnson being a rare exception. They could not count on Trump for much material support. When journalist Robert Draper asked him whether holding the GOP majority meant anything to him, he re
plied, “Well, I’d like them to do that. But I don’t mind being a free agent, either.”57
In any case, Republicans could fend for themselves. NRSC spent $31 million between August and September, compared with $13 million for its Democratic counterpart. In October, NRSC tapered off, expecting help from outside groups. McConnell and the Senate Republicans could not lawfully coordinate strategy with these groups, but they could “play bridge” by sending signals about what they wanted.58 Most of the people running such groups had experience in GOP politics, so they were adept at reading these signals. Steven Law, who headed both the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) super PAC and the 501(c)(4) “dark money” group One Nation, happened to be McConnell’s former chief of staff, and he could divine his old boss’s wishes. The two groups spent $165 million for Senate Republicans. Of that amount, the SLF spent nearly $38 million on television ads in the final two weeks of the campaign.59
HOUSE ELECTIONS
Ever since the 1970s, when Gallup started measuring public approval of Congress, the institution has rarely gotten high ratings. During the 2010s, the bottom fell out, with approval dropping as low as 9 percent and never topping 24 percent.60 At the same time, the House of Representatives experienced increasing reelection rates:
• 2010: 85%
• 2012: 90%
• 2014: 95%
• 2016: 97%61
The reasons for this disparity are familiar to those who study Capitol Hill. Lawmakers run for Congress by running against Congress, contrasting their own wisdom and empathy with the foolishness of many of their colleagues. Incumbents take political advantage of the perks of office, keeping up their popularity by providing constituent services and taking credit for federal spending in their districts. Accordingly, there is truth to the cliché that Americans hate Congress but love their own members of Congress. Partisan polarization and geographical clustering have enhanced the effect, leaving most districts uncompetitive under normal conditions. Exit polling in 2016 did not suggest a great deal of ticket splitting, as 92 percent of Democrats voted for their party’s congressional candidate, as did 94 percent of Republicans.62 In this light, it is unsurprising that Democrats scored a net gain of only 6 seats, for a total of 194, well short of the 218 they needed to control the chamber. Republicans ended with 241 seats, a slight comedown from 2014 but still their third-greatest post-election sum since 1928.
The GOP victory seems preordained in hindsight, but for much of the election cycle, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) had his worries. For starters, he came to the speakership under difficult circumstances. Facing pressure from the House Freedom Caucus, a faction of Tea Party conservatives, House Speaker John Boehner announced on September 25, 2015, that he would soon resign from Congress. Ryan, chair of the Ways and Means Committee and the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, was the one potential replacement who was broadly acceptable both to mainstream conservatives and the Freedom Caucus. Seeing the political pain that Boehner had endured, Ryan balked at taking the job, but he finally agreed. His reluctance proved to be well justified, as Freedom Caucus members soon started sniping at him. Ryan would spend the next year trying to mollify them without letting the House take actions that would jeopardize Republican seats. Above all, he worked to avoid another government shutdown.
At times during the campaign, Trump’s unpopularity loomed as a potential threat to House Republicans. Ryan kept his distance from Trump without repudiating him, and Trump was unhappy about it. During a speech in Florida, Trump said, “Wouldn’t you think that Paul Ryan would call and say, ‘Good going?’ . . . No, he doesn’t do that. There’s a whole deal going on over there. I mean, you know, there’s a whole deal going on [and] we’re going to figure it out. I always figure things out. But there’s a whole sinister deal going on.”63 Calling Ryan “nasty,” Trump suggested in an interview that he might not be able to remain as speaker: “I would think that Ryan maybe wouldn’t be there, maybe he’ll be in a different position.”64 In the end, though, Trump proved not to be ballot-box poison to the House Republicans. After the election, he and Ryan made a public show of unity.
All along, Democrats were not in a strong position to take advantage of any opportunities that Trump might have given them. A weak bench hampered recruiting. Just as diminished numbers in the House made it hard to find good Senate candidates, Democratic weakness in the state legislatures had thinned the ranks of potential House candidates. What is more, minority status made service in the House less politically attractive to Democrats than it was in the 1980s. Freshman Democrats quickly learned that their bills would go nowhere and that they might never chair a committee or subcommittee. In the minority, the only real chance for prominence is a party leadership post. The top three spots belonged to minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California (age seventy-six), party whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland (age seventy-seven), and assistant leader James Clyburn of South Carolina (age seventy-six), who were holding on to their positions. This gerontocracy thwarted the upward mobility of younger Democrats and sent a message to prospective candidates: you must wait a very, very long time to make your mark on Capitol Hill. “I was on the recruitment committee, and a lot of candidates decided to take a pass,” Representative Karen Bass told the New York Times. “There are people who are new to Congress and have a difficult situation because they are not going to be there for 20 years.”65
Democrats found it tough to hold onto the talent that they already had, as some well-regarded members hit the exits. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), ran for the Senate. Another former DCCC chair, Steve Israel (D-NY), did not seek reelection in 2016. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), chair of the House Democratic Conference, left Congress after the election to accept appointment as California’s attorney general, replacing Kamala Harris, who had won a Senate seat. Janice Hahn, also of California, ran for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. “The circumstances are that gerrymandering and the tamping down the votes causes members to not think we are going to win the majority any time soon,” said Alcee Hastings (D-FL). “That then causes people to say, what the hell, and go about their business elsewhere.”66
Some of the Democrats’ problems were self-inflicted. Thomas Mills, a political consultant who ran for a House seat in North Carolina, wrote that DCCC gave his campaign a rude brushoff.
I’ve spent 20 years working on political campaigns, and the political organization I encountered in 2016 was an utter disappointment. Back in the ’90s when I started out, the DCCC was tasked with contesting as many races as possible and providing staff, training and direction to the campaigns in the field. Today, they’re narrowly focused on a small number of highly targeted races. Other campaigns get little attention or support.
Despite their 60-seat deficit heading into 2016, the Democrats didn’t appear to do much candidate recruiting except in the most competitive districts. In Texas, Hillary Clinton won in a congressional district where Democrats didn’t even field a challenger. Numbers, not potential, guided the DCCC efforts. Instead of looking for possibilities, or trying to create them, the committee only paid attention to the districts that looked viable on spreadsheets.67
Mills was referring to the 32nd district of Texas, where Democrats failed to see that the Dallas-area constituency was becoming more Democratic, and thus missed a chance to challenge incumbent Republican Pete Sessions.68
Although nearly all incumbents who sought reelection were successful, a few did go down. California’s 17th district, encompassing much of Silicon Valley, was so deeply blue that both finalists were Democrats. In a rematch of their 2014 fight, incumbent Mike Honda squared off against law lecturer Ro Khanna. Thirty-five years younger than Honda, and with close ties to the area’s high-tech industry, Khanna was a better fit for the district. Though Honda won the first time, Khanna never really stopped campaigning. His efforts paid off in victory.
Court-ordered redistricting brought down several members. In Virginia, Repub
lican Randy Forbes switched districts rather than stay in a redrawn constituency that had become much more Democratic. Running in new territory, Forbes lost to Scott Taylor, who had represented part of the district in the state legislature. New lines in North Carolina placed Renee Ellmers (R-NC) into the same district as fellow incumbent Republican George Holding, who came out on top. Corinne Brown (D-FL) probably would have won the Democratic primary in her new district—except for her recent federal indictment for fraud. In the general election, Florida Republicans John Mica and David Jolly lost redrawn districts to Democratic challengers. Jolly had forfeited national GOP support earlier in the year when he went on 60 Minutes and criticized the fundraising practices of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The winner over Jolly was Charles Crist. A onetime Republican governor of Florida, Crist ran as an independent Senate candidate against Marco Rubio in 2010, then switched parties.
Pennsylvania Democrat Chaka Fattah lost his primary after his felony indictment on federal corruption charges, and he resigned after his conviction. In two of the few remaining marginal districts, Republicans Frank Guinta of New Hampshire and Robert Dold of Illinois fell in rematches with former members that they had previously defeated. In Nebraska, Democrat Brad Ashford lost a closely divided district that voted for Romney in 2012 and Trump in 2016. Conversely, Nevada’s Crescent Hardy lost a district that voted for Obama and Clinton.
Defying the Odds Page 23