Inside Republicans’ plans for a House takeover

“We are going to talk about all the things that matter to people,” said NRCC President Tom Emmer, citing the reopening of schools and job security. “We are going to follow a game plan. Fortunately, people will allow us to operate under the radar again, because they will not believe us. And we can surprise you all again in two years. “

And Emmer – now in his second stint leading the Republican Party’s campaign arm – dismissed the Democrats’ new strategy of linking the entire party to QAnon: “My colleague on the street may think that some marginal extremist theory is something that interests people” , he said in reference to Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (DN.Y.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But fewer people believe in QAnon, Emmer said, than they think the moon landing was faked.

Minority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, and Congressional Republicans are just five seats away from resuming the House after an unexpectedly successful election cycle, when they won a dozen seats. The GOP also controls the redistricting process in several key states, giving them the ability to design new favorable maps. And fueling even more hopes for a Republican takeover, the president’s party has lost an average of 22 seats in the mid-term in the past 40 years.

In an exclusive interview with POLITICO on Tuesday, Emmer outlined his roadmap for the 2022 midterm elections, which includes a list of 47 Democratic seats to be targeted and a draft message: Identify Democrats as job-killing socialists and emphasize the Republican Party’s commitment to reopening schools and protecting the gas and energy sector.

But Republican Party leaders, while confident that history is on their side, know that there are still many landmines ahead – especially with the potential for January 6 to leave a black mark on the party and the coronavirus still threatening to scramble the political terrain.

“In the end, I am optimistic that Republicans take the Chamber and McCarthy becomes the President of the House,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (RN.C.), who is close to the Republican Party leadership. “But there are a number of pitfalls along the way. And the playing field is much more complicated than it was in 2010. ”

Among these potential X-factors: some corporate donors have stopped their PAC dollars for Republicans, while Democrats are promising to go after vulnerable lawmakers who voted to overturn the election. Emmer himself voted to certify the results and was also quick to condemn the violence, which could inoculate the campaigning arm of some of these attacks and help raise funds. In contrast, the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm came under fire after Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, voted to reject the Pennsylvania election results.

There is also some precedent for voters in favor of political stability after the disaster. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, then President George W. Bush and the Republican Party challenged historic expectations of getting seats in the House in the 2002 elections.

“During the cycle, we can come across some unexpected things, like in a game when someone gets hurt,” said Emmer, a former Minnesota hockey player and coach. “You may have to make minor adjustments.”

The NRCC outlined three categories of collection opportunities in its initial 2022 memorandum, which was first shared with POLITICO. The first group consists of 29 Democrats that maintain districts with heated disputes in the last cycle at the parliamentary and presidential levels.

That includes Democrats from suburban areas that were once Republicans, where the Republican Party suffered in the Trump era, like Reps. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.) And Andy Kim (DN.J.); legislators in white working-class regions more favorable to the Republican Party, such as Reps. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), Ron Kind (D-Wis.) And Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.); and members in heavily Latin American districts along the Texas-Mexico border, where Trump saw a surprising increase, like Reps. Filemón Vela, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez.

In the second level of targets are eight less vulnerable Democrats, but they won by less than 10 points or Biden underperformed in his districts, including the Reps. Colin Allred (D-Texas), Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) And Katie Porter (D-Calif.), Who currently occupy seats in the suburbs that have turned most strongly against Trump, but retain some Republican DNA.

The final tier consists of 10 members whose seats can change significantly during the next redistricting, including Reps. Deborah Ross (DN.C.), John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Stephanie Murphy (D-Florida) and Maloney in Hudson Valley in New York.

If House Republicans succeed in getting Democrats out of power – something that could happen only through redistricting, based on the states where the Republican Party controls the process – that would mark the shortest period of a party in the majority since the early 1950s. .

“I would rather be us than them,” said Steve Scalise (R-La.) Of the House minority about his fellow Democrats. “With history on our side, the opportunity has never been stronger to win back Casa.”

But, he added: “We are not going to slow down or take anything for granted.”

Other elements of the NRCC’s strategy began to take shape: Emmer will call Rep. Carol Miller (RW.Va.) to serve as its recruiting president and take advantage of the party’s record-breaking efforts to elect more women to Congress – a key part of its success in 2020. Almost all of the Republican Party’s most recent gains in the House came from women and minority candidates.

The GOP is particularly optimistic about Texas, which is expected to win three seats during the redistribution, although the figures will not be announced until April. In 2020, Democrats turned their eyes to the rapidly diversifying suburbs, only to see their party losing ground in rural Latin areas. Now Republicans are aiming for three chairs that were once dark blue in the Rio Grande Valley that Joe Biden almost missed in 2020.

And as a sign of how much the Republicans see the state as fertile ground, McCarthy – the Republican Party’s most prolific fund-raiser – has toured the state twice in the past two weeks. He also made several stops in Florida, with Scalise going there next week.

Donald Trump talked to Vladimir Putin on the phone at least a dozen times during his presidency. Now, Biden’s team is trying to find out if these conversations can come back to haunt them.

For now, the party’s strategists are walking, raising funds and recruiting and hoping that the confusion that consumed the beginning of the cycle will disappear when voters finally reach the polls.

“Today’s headlines, whatever they may be, are unlikely to be remotely relevant to what will happen in almost two years,” said Rep. Tom Cole, (R-Okla.), Former NRCC president.

But the party was involved in the conflict since January 6, with no signs that the fractures are healing soon. Capitol Hill was consumed on Tuesday with the start of Trump’s second impeachment trial, which showed emotional images of when protesters took over the building, amended with Trump’s own words urging his supporters to “fight like hell”.

Democrats took advantage of the turmoil by launching a $ 550,000 ad campaign linking incumbents vulnerable to QAnon, the rioters and the controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Eleven Republicans joined a unanimous Democratic caucus in removing Greene from his committee duties last week after McCarthy refused to do so.

“If we enter a circular firing squad as we have done, it will hurt us,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate Republican who was reelected by a seat in Nebraska, won by Biden by 6 points. “If we can heal, it must be a good election cycle.”

Trump’s tone, said Bacon, was toxic to the GOP in some suburban areas. “Personality defeated politics,” he said, describing the loss by the party of two seats in the Georgia Senate – and the upper house – last month.

Still, McCarthy traveled to Florida two weeks ago to make peace with the former president. After the Mar-a-Lago meeting, the California Republican made it clear that Trump would be an integral part of the Republican Party’s efforts to claim the House. McCarthy’s campaign even sent a fundraising email from a website with the domain name: “Most of Trump.”

Democrats have apprehended in the renewed connection.

“McCarthy reminded the country that he was too weak to face the dangerous QAnon conspirators who took control of his party and called for the violence of the crowd on the streets,” said Cole Leiter, a DCCC spokesman. “This is a contrast that American voters will not forget.”

Emmer made it clear that he is not running away from Trump’s populist policy, which he believes has attracted new voters to the party. But he swerved on whether or not Trump would be a presence in the campaign. “It depends on the ex-president how much he wants to do and where.”

And the NRCC will continue its long-standing policy of staying out of the primaries – a stance that allows them to remain conveniently neutral as pro-Trump forces mobilize against the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him last month. Still, Emmer praised two of those members, Reps. John Katko (RN.Y.) and David Valadao (R-Calif.), For their ability to beat districts that Trump easily lost.

Republicans are also preparing to play defense. The committee credits its Patriot Program to candidates threatened by its 2020 performance, Emmer said, when all Republicans seeking re-election won, including some veteran members who had to run difficult races for the first time in years. Emmer elevated John Billings, who was responsible for protecting the holder in the last cycle, to serve as executive director of the NRCC in 2022.

The party made remarkable gains in fundraising over the last cycle, finally launching a digital platform, WinRed, to compete with the Democrats’ online fundraising mammoth, ActBlue. But some Republicans acknowledged that events around January 6 could complicate the Republican Party’s ability to raise money, especially in the coming months, when emotions are still high.

But party leaders have also argued that it will be easier to raise funds in this cycle than in 2020, when the majority of the House seemed out of reach and higher positions took precedence in Republican Party money circles.

“I spent the past two years traveling around the country and listening often: ‘Well, Tom, you know, I think the game is in the Senate,'” recalled Emmer. But now, “they are more than willing to help us in the future,” he said.

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