WASHINGTON — After a bruising election night for Democrats in Virginia, the House GOP campaign arm said Wednesday it was setting its sights on a new round of incumbents in the Old Dominion and beyond.
The National Republican Congressional Committee added 13 House Democrats to its existing list of targeted races as it aims to capture the majority in the 2022 midterm elections.
The committee is now targeting 70 incumbent Democrats, seeing opportunities in suburban districts that were once a stronghold for the GOP but defected to Democrats during the upheaval of Donald Trump’s presidency. It comes after Republican Glenn Youngkin beat former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, with Youngkin outperforming Trump in tthe commonwealth’s suburban enclaves.
“In a cycle like this, no Democrat is safe,” NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer said in a news release. “Voters are rejecting Democrat policies that have caused massive price increases, opened our borders, and spurred a nationwide crime wave.”
The NRCC added Virginia Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton, who represents a suburban Washington, D.C., district. Wexton joins fellow Virginia Democratic Reps. Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger, who had already been named as targets previously.
The other new NRCC targets are:
— Greg Stanton in Arizona’s 9th District
— Ed Perlmutter in Colorado’s 7th District
— Joe Courtney in Connecticut’s 2nd District
— Darren Soto in Florida’s 9th District
— Sanford D. Bishop Jr. in Georgia’s 2nd District
— Frank J. Mrvan in Indiana’s 1st District
— David Trone in Maryland’s 6th District
— Ann McLane Kuster in New Hampshire’s 2nd District
— Teresa Leger Fernandez in New Mexico’s 3rd District
— G.K. Butterfield in North Carolina’s 1st District
— Madeleine Dean in Pennsylvania’s 4th District
— Jim Cooper in Tennessee’s 5th District
House Democrats’ campaign arm said the NRCC was drawing the wrong conclusions from last night’s race.
“The NRCC is mistaken if they think they can easily emulate a campaign that skipped a messy GOP primary, had no political record to defend, and routinely kept President Trump at arm’s length,” said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“We have a year until the midterm elections,” he added, “and on top of passing historic legislation that includes game-changing investments in our infrastructure and working families, Democrats are working to ensure battleground voters understand the grave danger that House Republicans and their extremism present to not only our families, but our democracy.”
It’s too early to know whether the races added to the NRCC’s target list Wednesday will ultimately become competitive. Most states are still redrawing their congressional maps as part of redistricting and reapportionment after the 2020 census.
But the Virginia race — and a still-uncalled gubernatorial contest in New Jersey that few predicted would be competitive — offers some clues about the whims and policy priorities of potential suburban swing voters.
Youngkin sought to tap into parents’ outrage over how local schools handled the pandemic and how school districts handle race and racism. Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, discussed such matters during a conference call with reporters in mid-October.
He said parents were showing up at school board meetings and engaging in politics because “they have legitimate, real concerns. They want to have a dialogue, and instead these people are trying to crush them with the strong arm of government. They’re going to be held accountable for it in November of ’22, I believe.”
The contours of 2022 remain unpredictable with the Supreme Court taking on abortion rights cases and uncertainty about the future of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruptions to the U.S. economy and American life.
