Moderate House Democrats Grow Their Ranks

As House Demo­crats start their fourth con­sec­ut­ive Con­gress in the minor­ity, the mod­er­ate bloc of the caucus ap­pears to be sta­ging a comeback.

The party’s two cent­rist co­ali­tions, the Blue Dogs and New Demo­crats, are re­port­ing a boost in mem­ber­ship for the 115th Con­gress, with slightly few­er than half of the in­com­ing fresh­man Demo­crats join­ing their ranks.

Lead­ers of the groups are tout­ing the in­crease as a prom­ising sign for the party as it struggles to win back eco­nomy-minded voters in swing seats. And some mem­bers hope to lever­age their num­bers in­to a lar­ger stra­tegic role in pre­par­a­tions for the midterms.

“Our path to 218 is a New Dem, Blue Dog path. That’s be­ing real­ist­ic,” said Rep. Ron Kind of Wis­con­sin, chair emer­it­us of the New Demo­crats. “What we’re try­ing to really do here is build a co­ali­tion and a mes­sage that you can run on any­where in the coun­try, not just in the urb­an, sub­urb­an area.”

With six new re­cruits and three de­part­ing mem­bers, the Blue Dogs saw a mod­est in­crease from 14 to 17 mem­bers. The New Demo­crats, who star­ted the pre­vi­ous Con­gress with 52 mem­bers, are ex­pect­ing around 60 this year. Ten fresh­men in­creased the group’s mem­ber­ship to 54, but lead­ers said they are re­view­ing about half a dozen more ap­plic­ants.

Be­cause many mod­er­ate Demo­crats hold swing dis­tricts, the size of the co­ali­tions tends to grow and shrink with the Demo­crat­ic caucus as a whole. But the new num­bers are sig­ni­fic­ant for both groups—the New Demo­crats haven’t reached 60 mem­bers and the Blue Dogs haven’t seen net growth since the party’s House ranks were decim­ated in 2010.

The Blue Dogs took a par­tic­u­larly drastic hit that year, as South­ern Demo­crats lost en masse. At their apex com­ing out of the 2008 elec­tions, the Blue Dogs had 54 mem­bers and the New Demo­crats had 68.

Mem­bers of the co­ali­tions in­sist their mod­er­ate ap­proach has al­ways been the an­swer to grow­ing the caucus, and they say they are hope­ful for 2018. Blue Dog lead­ers said they’ve seen a “new em­phas­is” on col­lab­or­a­tion from the Demo­crat­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee and its chair­man, Rep. Ben Ray Lu­jan, as the next cycle be­gins.

“We’re go­ing to be more ag­gress­ive in look­ing for more can­did­ates early,” said Rep. Henry Cuel­lar of Texas, a Blue Dog co­chair. “We’re go­ing to co­ordin­ate that as much as we can with the DCCC.”

Lu­jan said in a state­ment that “par­ti­cip­a­tion and stra­tegic in­sight from the en­tire Demo­crat­ic Caucus is in­valu­able” as the DCCC re­cruits for an ex­pans­ive of­fens­ive play­ing field.

Blue Dog lead­ers have also spoken with House Demo­crat­ic Caucus Chair Joseph Crow­ley and will make a present­a­tion to House Demo­crats at their an­nu­al re­treat, said Rep. Jim Costa of Cali­for­nia, a Blue Dog co­chair.

In a brief in­ter­view, Crow­ley, a former chair of the New Demo­crat Co­ali­tion, in­dic­ated the lead­er­ship’s will­ing­ness to work with the mod­er­ate flank and to in­vest in win­ning areas of the coun­try where the party has been less suc­cess­ful in re­cent years.

“I do think that in or­der for us to be suc­cess­ful we need to go where few Demo­crats have gone be­fore, to take from a Star Trek term,” Crow­ley said. “But I think we have to real­ize that we are the big-tent party. We al­ways have been. We al­ways will be.”

On Cuel­lar and Costa’s 2018 tar­get list are rur­al dis­tricts they hope to win back by tout­ing the group’s fisc­al dis­cip­line.

DCCC chairs worked closely with Blue Dog lead­er­ship in 2006 and 2008 to elect con­ser­vat­ive South­ern Demo­crats such as Bobby Bright in Alabama and Trav­is Childers in Mis­sis­sippi, said Jon Vo­gel, a former DCCC ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or. The part­ner­ship proved help­ful in re­cruit­ing Demo­crats to seek GOP-lean­ing seats.

“If you’re a more mod­er­ate Demo­crat look­ing at run­ning for Con­gress, you want to know that there’s a place for you in the House Demo­crat­ic Caucus,” Vo­gel said. “You want to know that there are ex­amples of people who have run and won with a pro­file like yours.”

Demo­crats net­ted just six seats in 2016, but two high-pro­file gains came from mod­er­ate can­did­ates who joined both groups, Reps. Stephanie Murphy of Flor­ida and Josh Got­theimer of New Jer­sey.

Got­theimer and three oth­er Blue Dogs were the only Demo­crats who voted last week to al­low Con­gress to re­peal a slew of re­cent reg­u­la­tions from Pres­id­ent Obama all at once.

“I said throughout my race: Some days Re­pub­lic­ans are go­ing to like me, some days Demo­crats are go­ing to like me,” Got­theimer said shortly after be­ing sworn in­to Con­gress.

Of the nine seats that flipped red-to-blue in 2016 (Re­pub­lic­ans flipped three Demo­crat­ic seats), five of them will be held by Demo­crats who joined at least one of the mod­er­ate co­ali­tions, in­clud­ing Reps. Charlie Crist and Val De­m­ings of Flor­ida.

A hand­ful of new co­ali­tion mem­bers said in in­ter­views that they joined be­cause of the op­por­tun­it­ies the groups provide to be bi­par­tis­an.

“I al­ways said I’ll work with any­one who has an open mind, a good idea, and a will­ing­ness to tackle our prob­lems to­geth­er,” said Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, who won back his swing seat last year after be­ing un­seated in 2014. “I think these groups help me do that.”