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Democrats Struggle With Their Own Tea-Party Moment
Janet Hook, 10/27/2017, Wall Street Journal, Pages A1, A9

Six Democrats are crowding into a House primary race here to challenge an incumbent Republican in next year's mid-term election. One identifies with the anti-Trump "resistance" movement. Another calls himself a "practical progressive". Two already have more campaign cash that the incumbent, Rep. John Culberson. It's exactly the kind of congressional seat Democrats will have to win to seize control of the House in 2018. It's also a vivid example of the family feud now dividing the party across the country.

While Democrats are unified in their opposition to President Trump, they are at odds over which strategy and message are needed to end the party's losing streak. Democratic candidates are split on Sen. Bernie Sanders' proposal to create a national single-payer health system. They disagree about whether the party should focus on mobilizing its liberal base or instead try appealing to swing voters in the middle. Since the November general election, the Democratic National Committee has posted lackluster fundraising numbers, and the party has failed to win back Republican seats in four high-profile special House elections.

Some political strategists warn that contentious primary races could produce nominees too liberal to flip a Republican-held district, (Page A9) despite GOP divisions that have become increasingly and loudly aired in public. "The Republicans went through their tea party phase," says Tom Davis, a former GOP congressman from Virginia who led the party's national campaign committee. "Now, Democrats are going through their herbal tea party phase."

There is a stampede of Democratic candidates for the 2018 midterm elections. A total of 391 Democratic challengers had filed and raised at least $5,000 apiece for their House campaigns as of Sept. 30, according to the analysis of federal data by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. There wer 184 Republican candidates by September 2009 for House seats held by Democrats during President Barack Obama's first term. The 2010 midterm election ended up being a GOP landslide.

At least four Democrats have filed to run against Republican incumbents in at least 26 battleground House districts, setting up expensive, potentially bruising primary fights. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party's campaign machine in the House, is targeting the 23 seats held by Republicans in districts that Hillary Clinton won, including Mr. Culberson's. The crowded midterm primary races are likely to offer a preview of the interparty debate that will go national in the 2020 presidential race.

"This will be a Democratic family discussion. This won't be a family fight," says Pete D'Alessandro, who ran Mr Sanders' presidential campaign in Iowa and is one of 10 Democrats running in Iowa's Third District. "We are going to decide what we are about, what we stand for." Steve Israel, a former Democratic congressman from New York who was DCC chairman from 2011 to 2015, says having "a multitude of candidates...is the best problem a party could have." In the past, party leaders sometimes had to beat the bushes to recruit candidates in key districts.

After Mr. Trump's election victory, Democrats were in a tailspin as they confronted the unexpected loss of the White House, which few of them saw coming. There also was a downside of Mr. Obama's eight years in office. While he held together a coalition that won the White House twice, the party deteriorated at the state level. Its national infrastructure crumbled.

In the past several months, new progressive groups have popped up to encourage Democrats to run for office and donate money. Grass-roots activists and party leaders have united against Mr. Trump, celebrating the defeat of efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Democrats are favored to win next month's gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, although the Virginia race is closer than many Democrats would like.

Those successes have masked problems of leadership, money and message. The Democratic Pary's congressional leadership, especially House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, is facing rumblings of discontent from restive, younger lawmakers. Rep. Pelosi was blamed after Democrats lost a special House election in Georgia in June. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 84 years old and the oldest member of the Senate, is being challenged in next year's Democratic primary in California by Kevin De Leon, 50, a top Democrat in the California State Legislature. He has said Californians are owed "resistance" to the Trump agenda and criticized Ms. Feinstein for counseling "patience" with Mr. Trump.

The DNC is in debt and suffering from a fundraising drought, raising $4.8 million in September, $6 million less than the Republican National Committee. The RNC has hauled in $104 million so far this year, double the DNC's total.

Some critics say Democrats still lack a message to reach the many working-class voters who deserted Mrs. Clinton last year. "When you ask people what the Democrats stand for, there's a pause and a silence," Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, said in September. Despite its traditional support of Democrats, more than a third of union members voted for Mr. Trump in november. Mr. Trumka said Democrats "really do need a face lifting. It's not enough to just have a message. People have to believe you will fight for the agenda you espouse."

In past election cycles, Democratic Party leaders such as Mr. Israel worked behind the scenes to clear a path for preferred candidates, hoping to avoid intraparty battles. Now, though, the DCCC is in a quandary. With so much grass roots activism and suspicion of the party establishment, its endorsements could carry little weight - or even trigger a backlash against candidates.

One result is a glut of candidates in many primary races. In the Dallas suburbs, 10 Democratic candidates are trying to topple Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican who was first elected in 1996 and had no Democratic opponent in 2016. In upstate New York, Rep. John Faso, elected to the House in 2016, has eight Democratic opponents. Eight Florida Democrats are running for the seat held by GOP Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is retiring. DCCC spokesman Tyler Law says the record number of candidates is a welcome sign of party enthusiasm. The primary races haven't turned negative, he adds, and a long primary season might be good for the many candidates who have never before run for office.

In Virginia, national party leaders encourage state Sen. Jennifer Wexton to run for the House seat in the 10th Congressional District held by Rep. Barbara Comstock, a Republican. Mrs. Comstock is one of the Democratic Party's top targets, partly because Mrs. Clinton won the northern Virginia district by 10 percentage points over Mr. Trump last year. Ms. Wexton entered the race in April with endorsements from two House members and almost all of her Democratic colleagues in the state senate, a shoe of force that typically discourages other candidates from running.

Not this time. Nine other Democrats jumped into the race. All are political novices compared to Ms. Wexton, yet two raised more money than she had as of Sept. 30. The leading fundraiser among the Democratic candidates, human-rights activist Allison Friedman, has been endorse by feminist icon Gloria Steinem. "I do think there is an opportunity for an outsider in this cycle," says Ms. Friedman. Ms. Wexton says her legislative experience and "raising my family here have given me a deep understanding of what matters to my neighbors."

In Nebraska, Brad Ashford, a buisness-friendly Democrat trying to win back the House seat he narrowly lost to Republican Don Bacon in 2016, is being challenged from the left by Kara Eastman, a nonprofit executive who has accused the party of favoritism on Mr. Ashford's behalf. Mr. Ashford recently dropped his past support for building the Keystone XL pipeline, a bete noire of environmentalists. The Trump administration approved the project in March after about 4 1/2 months after it was blocked by Mr. Obama. A spokesman for Mr. Ashford says the shift wasn't motivated by politics.

In Colorado, lawyer Jason Crow, an Army veteran, is seen by Democratic Party leaders as the strongest candidate to run against FOP Rep. Mike Coffman in the Sixth Congressional District. Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Trump by 9 percentage points there last year. Mr. Crow is viewed with suspicion by party outsiders running against him in the primary. Gabriel McArthur, a Sanders delegate at last year's Democratic convention, dropped out in July, endorsed technology entrepreneur Levi Tilleman and claimed Mr. Crom benefited from "establishment favoritism". A spokesman for Mr. Crow responds that he has received support from across the party spectrum.

In Houston, the Seventh Congressional District is ethnically diverse, well-educated, suburban and includes some of the city's wealthiest precincts. Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Trump by 1.4 percentage points, but Mr. Culberson won by 12 points. The DCCC sent a full-time organizer to Houston in February. She has been working to recruit volunteers and train organizers to defeat Mr. Culberson, without favoring a specific Democratic challenger. The top fundraiser is Alex Triantaphyllis, founder of a nonprofit group that mentors refugees. He says the party's "best approach is to be as connected and engaged in this community as possible."

Primary opponent Laura Moser said at a recent candidate forum that many people in the party are "trying too hard to win over the crossover vote while abandoning our base." She became a national activist last year by starting an anti-Trump text-message service for "resisting extremism in America." In August, Ms. Moser criticized Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D.-N.M.), the current DCCC chairman, in Vogue magazine for saying last spring that the party shouldn't rule out supporting antiabortion candidates.

Elizabeth Pannill Fletcher, a lawyer also running in the Democratic primary, says she welcomes the lively primary race because it helps to have "a lot of people out there getting people motivated" about next year's midterm election. She also acknowledges a downside: "We are raising money to spend against each other rather than against John Culberson." Another candidate has already run unsuccessfully for the seat three times.

Some Democratic candidates worry they will face pressure to tack to the left because people who attend political events early in the campaign tend to be the party's most liberal activists. A questioner at a foum in July sponsored by the anti-Trump activist group Indivisible demanded a yes or no answer on whether candidates support the legalization of marijuana. "There is definitely a danger if you have a circular firing squad over who is the most leftist in the room," Democratic candidate Jason Westin, an oncologist, said in an interview. "This is not a blue district."