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Swing District Democrats Offer Counter to Ocasio-Cortez’s Squad

Swing District Democrats Offer Counter to Ocasio-Cortez’s Squad

(Bloomberg) -- Dean Phillips has a message for his House Democratic colleagues and the party’s presidential candidates: slow down on impeachment, stop sniping on Twitter and cut some deals with Republicans to get things done.

Last November, Phillips became the first Democrat elected to the U.S. House in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional district in 60 years. He was one of 40 Democrats who won formerly GOP-held seats, and holding on to them is central to the party’s 2020 election strategy.

Treating himself to soft-serve ice-cream this month at a branch of the Penny’s coffee shop chain he co-owns in the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phillips said he didn’t get to Congress by being a “rabble-rouser.”

Swing District Democrats Offer Counter to Ocasio-Cortez’s Squad

“I’m hearing from people questions about what’s been achieved, and I realized that impeachment, trade wars, the racist tweets, they command these news cycles,” Phillips said.

Phillips’s district abuts that of Representative Ilhan Omar, who along with New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib has been a regular target of President Donald Trump. The president ignited a firestorm on Thursday by successfully urging Israel to prohibit Omar and Tlaib from entering the country, and saying they “hate Israel & all Jewish people.”

Despite all the focus Trump gives to the vocal progressives, they aren’t setting the agenda for House Democrats. That’s being done by voters in states like Minnesota and Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who elected candidates like Phillips in 2018 and will be pivotal in 2020.

The political realities for Democrats elected in those areas explains House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s cautious approach to topics such as impeaching Trump, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and gun control. It also illustrates the intra-party struggle.

Losing Voters

“If you spend all your time being the party of no and the party of resistance and you don’t talk about helping people, you are just losing them,” Michigan Representative Elissa Slotkin, who flipped a Republican seat in a district won by Trump, said after a town hall this month in Mason.

Swing District Democrats Offer Counter to Ocasio-Cortez’s Squad

While impeachment and Medicare for All are at the top of the agenda for the party’s liberal wing, as well as leading presidential candidates such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the formula for winning, according to Phillips, Slotkin and other swing state Democrats, is emphasizing the economy and more modest steps to improve health care -- and finding ways to work with Republicans.

Yet the increasingly bitter partisan battles in Washington and the near constant attention drawn by a faction of progressives threatens to take the lawmakers off message and stoke frustration among voters.

“They have forgotten the reason why they are there,” said Margie Surato, a retired loan officer and Mason resident. “I want a lot of bipartisan action.”

After 200 days in power, the Democratic House doesn’t have an impressive record of legislation becoming law, as bills Pelosi has steered though the House have languished in the Republican-led Senate. But those measures will be a starting point for Democrats in 2020 in both congressional and presidential campaigns.

In the meantime, Pelosi has also had to mediate squabbles and deal with disputes involving Ocasio-Cortez and her allies.

Heading into the 2020 election, Trump and the GOP are attempting to make Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts -- all in their first term and all women of color and who refer to themselves as the Squad -- as the face of a party bent on pushing the country toward socialism.

Phillips and other swing district Democrats have risen to their defense against Trump’s attacks while distancing themselves from some of their stances.

“I don’t so much mind other members having different ideas than I have,” said Minnesota’s Angie Craig, another first-term Democrat who won a GOP-held district adjacent to Omar’s. “But we also want to present common sense ideas that can be implemented quickly.”

Phillips, a long-haired businessman who ran the Phillips Distillery Co. before running for office, fits easily in the suburban Minneapolis portion of his district. He is also attentive to constituents in more rural areas. On an August evening, he ventured west to Corcoran, bringing along a friend, the actor Woody Harreleson.

Less Confrontation

At a “Night to Unite” neighborhood gathering, he met Brent Anderson, 53, who like many people in the area said he wants more legislation and less confrontation with Trump.

“I’m a typical Minnesota: I’m a tree hugging, fiscal conservative with a little bit of a social moderate mixed in,” Anderson said. “I’m tired of the extremism and I think everyone is, especially in Minnesota.”

Phillips said he “weighs heavily” this command from voters to work with Trump.

The same message was repeated at Slotkin’s recent town hall in bucolic Mason.

Slotkin, a former CIA Middle East expert who was deployed to Iraq, plays up her willingness to strike deals with the president, without mentioning his name.

“He’s doing enough to dig his own hole, I don’t need to spend a lot of time helping him do that. What people want to hear from me is that I am going to fight for their kids and their pocketbooks,” Slotkin said.

Impeachment Debate

Slotkin’s district isn’t far from that of Tlaib, who drew a rebuke from senior Democrats shortly after taking office when she told supporters that “we’re gonna go in and impeach the motherf-----,” referring to the president.

At event in Mason, Slotkin was asked by a young voter waving a bound copy of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report why she doesn’t support impeachment. She said she fully endorses Pelosi’s careful approach to the matter of letting the facts dictate the outcome.

“We have got to bring Americans along with us,” she responded. “I think it is important that we do it in a way that makes it clear what we are intending and we do it in a way that doesn’t forget about the other part of our job, which is legislating.”

Many in the audience expressed agreement.

“I think the Democratic Congress has wasted too much time on the impeachment issue,” said antiques appraiser Alex Schultz, 54. “I suffer from pre-existing conditions and I am always fearful of my insurance or lack thereof.”

Craig also opposes impeachment at this point -- and talking too much about Trump.

“That’s not what the folks back home are talking about. They want us to legislate,” she said at Minnesota’s annual Farmfest in Morgan.

Health-Care Debate

The cautious approach also is being applied to health care. While Sanders, Warren and other progressives are pushing the party to embrace a single-payer government-run system that eliminates private insurance, Pelosi has relegated Medicare for All to the slow track.

“People here care about each other,” said Craig, a former executive of a medical device company. “At the same time they want me to look at the price tag before I support something. They want me to be realistic about, you know, where we go next and that maybe we need to take steps one and two before we take step 10.”

Craig, Slotkin and Phillips favor a Medicare buy-in option for those who don’t have or don’t like their private insurance. “If folks had more choice, I believe that that would promote competition,” Craig said.

“To me it’s not it’s not Medicare for all or repeal the ACA. It’s something in the middle,” said Phillips, referring to the Affordable Care Act enacted under President Barack Obama.

All three lawmakers say they are seeking a middle of the road approach on other divisive issues, including immigration.

Phillips pointed to his work with Republican Representative Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania as part of the Problem Solvers Caucus to explore a finding a “grand bargain” on reworking the immigration system.

“I feel compelled to at least inspire a conversation,” he said. “We’re going to put together a task force and invite all thoughtful ideas and participants to the table to at least see if there can be a framework that we can propose that will generate bipartisan support.”

Trade Policy

Trade policy played a major role in Trump winning Michigan in 2016 and having the best showing of any Republican since 1984 in Minnesota. For swing district freshmen there, the approach they have settled on is to support the idea of confronting China on trade and rewriting the North American Free Trade Agreement, while criticizing the tactics and calling for tweaks.

“We’ve asked the nation’s farmers to take a little bit of pain for long term gain. I see a lot of pain in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District and I don’t see a strategy in sight from the administration,” Craig told several thousand farmers at the Farmfest.

Slotkin said China should be accountable for cheating on trade, but that “the president has really done this ‘Yosemite Sam’ approach to respond to those problems that doesn’t necessarily help.”

The most recent Democratic presidential debate in Detroit, which was heavy on mud-slinging and light on policy, gave swing district Democrats heartburn.

After watching it, Slotkin said Trump’s chances of being re-elected is a “total toss of the dice.”

Craig, after praising Minnesota Republican Pete Stauber’s work with her on special education funding, said Democrats must show they can work with Republicans.

“I think we won in this district because we came forward with a vision and solutions for things they care about the most,” she said. “The thing my district cares about the most are kitchen table issues.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Wasson in Corcoran, Minnesota at ewasson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, John Harney

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