By Alex Roarty and Katie Glueck
McClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON—When the elderly man who had just opened his door to Conor Lamb launched into a tirade about Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic candidate was ready with an answer.
“We need a new generation of leadership,” he said one afternoon last month, part of a well-rehearsed response in which Lamb reiterated he wouldn’t support Pelosi as a congressional leader (or Paul Ryan, for that matter).
His apparent victory in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District — the Associated Press had not called it but most election analysts consider Lamb’s tiny lead insurmountable — has reignited the deep and divisive debate inside the Democratic Party over whether candidates should disavow Pelosi to win independent and moderate voters, and whether party leaders should let them.
“We have got to realize she is unpopular, even if there are many people who like her,” said Linda Andrews, chairwoman of a local Democratic committee inside the 18th District. “So we have to make this change. If we expect to win, we have to be flexible. We have to be willing to change.”
Only a few Democratic candidates, such as Ken Harbaugh in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District or Clarke Tucker in Arkansas’s 2nd Congressional District, have said they wouldn’t back the longtime party leader and fundraising powerhouse. Most of them, including many of the party’s top recruits, have declined to say whether they would support her.
But party insiders say that could change, especially for those running in conservative areas.
“I don’t think the party has a choice to permit it or not,” said Chris Reeves, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Kansas. “That’s what the candidates are going to do.”
Reeves would know: Paul Davis, in Kansas’s 2nd Congressional District, is one of the handful of candidates to publicly oppose Pelosi, saying that Congress is “broken.”
Ditching Pelosi, however, is fraught. She’s unpopular among voters but retains a loyal base of support among some liberals and — most importantly — many of the party’s top donors. Issuing a statement of opposition could hurt a candidate in a Democratic primary, or make fundraising more difficult.
Plus, just disavowing her won’t stop Republicans from using Pelosi against Democratic candidates. The GOP tried to hang Pelosi around Lamb’s neck, but in that race, he was able to credibly claim distance from the party leadership because his strong fundraising meant national Democrats didn’t have to run a lot of ads on his behalf.
The more ads there are from national Democratic committees, the harder it is to claim independence from Pelosi.
“I would encourage Democratic candidates to game this out,” said one party strategist. “The second the (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) or House Majority PAC spends a dime on you, the ads will come asking why the Nancy Pelosi political operation is spending money to help you win.”
That is the exact message that came from the National Republican Congressional Committee on Thursday.
“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,” said NRCC spokesman Jesse Hunt, referencing Pelosi’s fundraising prowess for her party and previewing a point the committee plans to make repeatedly down the road.
While Lamb deftly gave the impression that he was more conservative on issues such as abortion than his policy positions actually indicate, Republicans say it will be very difficult for other Democrats to do the same, especially as many confront crowded primaries fueled by a progressive base. And not everyone can go on the airwaves to distance themselves from her, direct-to-camera, as Lamb did.
“The problem for them is, they align with her ideologically, they support her agenda, they parrot the same talking points she does, they’re incapable of distancing themselves from her policy agenda because they align with her, because they benefit from the money she’s raising,” Hunt said.
