Future Democratic stars at risk of getting wiped out in the midterms

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Democrats elected their political future in 2018. Now, that bench of potential statewideleaders could get wiped out.

The last midterm election saw a slate of Democratic rising stars roll into Congress on a wave of anti-Trump resentment and fundraising prowess built on top of that backlash. Now, with a few House terms under their belts, they are prime candidates to run statewide in the future — but first, they must survive their first election that isn’t dominated by former President Donald Trump.

“Everyone” in Michigan thinks Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), will “run statewide,” said Jason Cabel Roe, a Republican consultant who is working for Slotkin’s House opponent this year, Tom Barrett. “The buzz around” Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) is that she’ll be “running for governor in 2025,” when the seat is set to be open, said Mike DuHaime, a Republican consultant based in the state.

Reps. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Katie Porter (D-Calif.), Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.) and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) are also among those frequently name-checked by operatives in their states as formidable statewide candidates for the future. In Pennsylvania, many expected Rep. Chrissy Houlahan to run for Senate this year, but she opted against it and instead remains on the radar for a future bid, said J.J. Balaban, a Democratic strategist in the state. And Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) are closely watched by Democrats in their states for a future step up.

But much of Democrats' "Class of 2018" is under threat, staring down a brutal midterm climate in battleground districts, some made more difficult after redistricting, while a handful turned a shade bluer. Presidential approval ratings and historical precedence now weigh heavily against them — instead of working in their favor, as they did in 2018 when Trump was in office. It’s another opportunity to prove their strength and build their political careers, but it’s also a key moment that could knock many off course.

“Whether we're talking about me, whether we're talking about Slotkin, Houlahan, [Elaine] Luria, Sherrill, Sharice, Kendra [Horn] — yes, I can win really hard races, and I do,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) said in an interview on the sidelines of the campaign trail in her central Virginia district. She had been speaking with voters at a brewery for nearly two hours, even after losing her voice.

“And I am relentless in my campaigning,” she added.

Spanberger is another oft-mentioned Democratic star, who rose to viral fame in 2018 by standing apart from her national party — memorably declaring at a debate, “Abigail Spanberger is my name,” as her opponent repeatedly linked her to then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Now, Spanberger is facing her third tough, expensive campaign, this time against Republican Yesli Vega for a district that President Joe Biden won by 7 points in 2020 and GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin won by 5 points in 2021.

Virginia Democrats eager to peek around the corner to the next statewide opening may have to wait for a bit: both Democratic senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, are in their mid-60s. But the race for governor in 2025 will likely attract a crowded primary field, potentially featuring Democrats who have run in the past, including Sen. Jennifer McClellan and Jennifer Carroll Foy, who is running next year for the state Senate.

If Spanberger decided to run, she would enter a primary with a record of “working across the aisle in an incredibly polarizing Congress” and running in congressional districts that cover three different media markets, “so a lot of voters statewide are familiar with her record,” said Virginia state Sen. Adam Ebbin.

“I don’t know anyone else who has that kind of advantage before running statewide,” Ebbin said.

The built-in political advantages for members of the class of 2018 in the future include their ability to raise huge sums of money from small-dollar donors — and to do it fast. They drafted off the “green wave” of record online donations for Democrats during the Trump years, when small-dollar donors fueled seven-figure quarterly fundraising hauls, unprecedented totals for such a large number of first-time candidates.

That strength hasn’t waned in the years since: 15 of the 25 top raising Democratic incumbents so far this cycle were first elected in 2018.

Porter, who represents a chunk of Orange County, Calif., has raised $17.2 million through the 2022 cycle, a total only eclipsed only by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

“The money makes them bigger players … because they have access to small-dollar printing presses that aren't shut off at election time,” said Doug Herman, a Democratic strategist based in California. “It gives them the ability to be bigger than their districts in a way we’ve never seen [from members of Congress] before.”

“Absent that money, the conversation doesn't happen at anywhere near the level of intensity we’re seeing,” Herman added.

After redistricting, some of the class of 2018 saw their districts morph into safer seats, like Phillips in Minnesota or Houlahan in Pennsylvania. But for others, their path got much harder. Reps. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) and Cindy Axne (D-Iowa), along with Virginia’s Luria, are among the most endangered Democratic incumbents in the country.

“2022 is 2018 in reverse. It’s a referendum on the president’s job approval, and in many respects, voters are even angrier this year,” said Corry Bliss, who led the Congressional Leadership Fund, the flagship House Republican super PAC during the 2018 cycle. “The 2018 class, despite spending years blaming Donald Trump for everything and pretending to not be Democrats themselves, are actually Democrats. And now, they have voting records.”

It's a dangerous situation for many of them. It’s also one that will only enhance their electoral resumés if they make it past Nov. 8.

Spanberger has a theory for why she and her fellow 2018 classmates represent the Democratic bench: “When I said I was going to run for Congress, I had people say [to me], ‘Well, why doesn't she start with school board?’” Spanberger said in the interview. “The fact that there was a group of us who, when people said, ‘start local,’ we said, ‘why?’ And we want to beat that person because nobody else wants to beat that person, so let me do it.”

“I think there's a kind of personality that goes along with that,” Spanberger continued.

One member of the 2018 class already made the statewide leap, while others are trying to follow suit. Antonio Delgado, who flipped a seat in upstate New York in 2018, was appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) as the state’s lieutenant governor earlier this year, after former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin was indicted.

Both Reps. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) and Kendra Horn (D-Okla.) lost their 2020 reelection bids, but are now running for governor and Senate, respectively, in their states. Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.), who won a special election in spring 2018 that heralded the Democratic wave coming that fall, lost a Senate primary to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman earlier this year.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few governors and a senator or two in the bunch,” said Dan Sena, who served as the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2018 election.

To be sure, not everyone from the 2018 class took off. Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.) resigned following allegations of an inappropriate relationship with congressional staffers, while Rep. TJ Cox (D-Calif.), who lost reelection in 2020, was charged by the Justice Department with multiple counts of fraud, including campaign contribution fraud.

For Spanberger, the chatter about her statewide future is “flattering” and an “interesting” idea, she said, but she insisted that “the winning has to be for something.”

“I had very specific reasons why I ran for Congress,” Spanberger continued. For now, she’s intensely focused on winning in three weeks.

Even so, several voters at her “veterans for Spanberger” event earlier this month were more than willing to entertain the notion of what might be next for her in the future.

“I wouldn’t like losing her as my congresswoman, but she’d be phenomenal,” as a statewide candidate, said Patty Johnson, a 63-year-old veteran from Orange, Va. Elisabeth Piatt, a voter who lives in Culpepper, Va., gushed that Spanberger “may just take Nancy Pelosi’s job” or “be the next Madeleine Albright,” citing the first female secretary of State.

“She’s going to go big,” Piatt said.