House Democrats are ramping up their aggressive strategy of conducting town halls in Republican-held districts, vying to exploit the GOP’s advised moratorium on the events to make inroads with frustrated voters, pick up battleground seats, and flip control of the House in next year’s midterms.
A number of Democrats who ventured this month into GOP territory said they liked what they saw: anxious voters who are up in arms over both President Trump's dismantling of the federal government and the reluctance of the majority Republicans to provide a check on executive power.
Encouraged by their experiences, Democrats say they not only intend to return to those battleground districts, they're also eyeing plans to broaden their range in the weeks and months to come. The Democrats' campaign arms, in some cases, are helping to coordinate the effort.
"People are mad — they're mad and fearful that their health care might be taken away. That's the thing that I heard the most,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who recently staged town halls in three California districts held by Republican lawmakers — Reps. Ken Calvert, Young Kim and David Valadao — where he estimated crowds of roughly 1,000 people.
“It was just frustration of: What are you going to do to stop this?”
Khanna acknowledged that the crowds were made up largely of Democrats and independents who reside in those purple districts. “But they're angry and mobilized,” he said.
“And if you have 1,000 people in your district that are angry and mobilized like that — and knocking on doors and ready to get people out — that should be a huge red flag for these Republicans.”
Khanna is hardly alone.
In Wisconsin, Rep. Mark Pocan (D) has already staged two town halls in the neighboring district held by GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden, and a third just outside of it, with plans to do more.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has joined a national tour, launched by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), that’s dipped into Republican districts, including one in Colorado represented by first-term GOP Rep. Gabe Evans.
And in Maryland, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D) drove two hours from home to the expansive Eastern Shore district represented by Rep. Andy Harris (R), the head of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, where Raskin said he found 900 frustrated voters waiting to vent about the White House.
"People are outraged,” Raskin said. “It's a race between the anger of the people and the Trump administration's speed in moving to dismantle our democratic order.”
The aggressive gambit of diving into districts controlled by the other party is hardly ordinary. But Democrats say Trump’s unconventional approach to governing demands an unconventional response. And after House GOP leaders urged Republican lawmakers to steer clear of in-person town halls — an avoidance strategy adopted after voter outrage over Trump's actions erupted virally in some of those public forums — Democrats have stepped up their infiltration operations.
"First and foremost, we're filling a void that's left by our Republican colleagues who have been told by their leadership to not face your constituents because what we're doing is not popular,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said.
“And so as Democrats, we want people across the country, people in swing states, to know that when your representatives opt out of doing their job because they're trying to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, we're going to step in and we're going to fill that void no matter who you are.”
On Saturday, Frost was set to join Sen. Chris Murphy ...
