Nancy Pelosi alone can’t fix it.
That’s the sense among some Republicans who are increasingly anxious about the 2018 political environment in the wake of a loss in a deep-red district in Pennsylvania last week, where their efforts to tie a relatively moderate Democrat to one of the most detested Democrats in conservative circles failed.
As a small but growing number of Democrats follow in the footsteps of Conor Lamb, the apparent victor of the tight race in Pennsylvania’s 18th District who repeatedly said he wouldn’t support the House minority leader, some Republicans say there needs to be a recalibration in messaging around a person the GOP base still sees as toxic—with the understanding that anti-Pelosi rhetoric, which has driven so many other campaigns, can’t be the sole focus.
“Obviously with [Lamb] bringing that up, it’s a recognition that it’s a factor, she is a ball and chain around the Democratic candidates, I think you’re going to see more running away from her—but it’s not enough,” said Tony Perkins, the head of the socially conservative Family Research Council, referencing Lamb’s direct-to-camera TV ad disavowing support for Pelosi.
“You can only scare so many people to the polls,” Perkins said. “You’ve got to cast a vision to get the rest of them there.”
Trump won the Pennsylvania-18 district by around 20 percentage points, and the fact that it swung back to the Democrats on Tuesday showed many in the GOP that the Democratic base is energized in a way that conservatives are not—and some people are willing to switch sides.
Republicans aren’t the only ones thinking anew about how to deal with the polarizing House minority leader. Lamb’s win has reignited a furious debate in the Democratic Party over how candidates from more moderate districts should approach her.
"Republicans are having tons of problems, there's lots of things working against us in this environment, but it's not like Democrats are setting the world on fire--Pelosi is less popular than she's ever been," said Terry Sullivan, a GOP strategist who served as Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign manager.
But the big question, he said, is how much leeway Democratic candidates get—from their base and the party infrastructure—to create space from Pelosi, a dynamic that has been challenging for some Republicans to manage with Trump, who remains enormously popular with the conservative base but is extraordinarily toxic with Democrats and increasingly, many suburban, more centrist voters.
"Are Democrats smarter and willing to do more to win than Republicans?” he said. “The second that Republicans are in a district where Donald Trump wouldn't be a positive, and denounce the president, suddenly he's on Twitter beating them up. Pelosi realizes she's a liability in [the Pennsylvania] district, that she's OK with the fact that Conor is having to distance himself from her, I think it shows at a minimum, Nancy Pelosi is smarter than Donald Trump" in this instance, he said.
"It appears that the Democratic national leadership seems to be a little more self-aware than the Republicans," he added.
A Republican strategist working on the midterms added that in an era of increased focus on digital campaigning, where TV ads alone don’t dictate the agenda, setting up the race as a binary choice between Pelosi and House Speaker Paul Ryan, and leaving it at that, doesn’t work anymore, especially when dealing with an opponent like Lamb, a candidate Republicans described as “straight out of central casting.”
While Lamb was a strong candidate and good fit for the district—and while many other Democrats will be battered in a primary process in the way that he wasn’t—he’s not unique. There are plenty of other moderate military veterans running in districts less conservative than Pennsylvania’s 18th.
“It takes more than just opposition to some cartoonish figure in Washington,” said the strategist. “Not that that can’t be a part of it, not that it shouldn’t be a part of it, but there’s a little bit more depth to a race than that. And if all they’re saying about their opponent is, they will be a part of Pelosi’s party, that doesn’t really give voters much color about their opponent.”
In the wake of Tuesday’s loss, Republicans have been urged by party leaders to ramp up their fundraising, to hone their messages touting GOP-passed tax reform and to take their opponents seriously. But certainly, they think there is still room for anti-Pelosi messaging, pointing to the fact that Lamb had to run an ad disavowing her—a sure sign, they say, that Pelosi talk remains one effective message in a broader GOP arsenal.
The National Republican Congressional Committee knows that a growing number of Democrats could attempt to distance themselves from Pelosi, and they are readying new lines of attack in an effort to tie them right back to her, focused on her extensive fundraising efforts for the Democratic Party.
"Candidates will not be able to, on one hand, say, 'I don't support Nancy Pelosi,' and on the other hand, benefit from her financially," NRCC spokesman Jesse Hunt told McClatchy Thursday.
“They’re supporting the same policies,” he said of most Democrats running. “It will strain credulity [to say] they don’t align, they won’t support her, if they’re saying the same things she’s saying.”
Katie Glueck: 202-383-6078, @katieglueck