Swing-district Democrats gamble that voters will follow them on impeachment
Several House members in crucial swing districts rolled the dice this week by supporting an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, betting voters will eventually agree that such an inquiry is the best path forward.
The support from members whose victories helped flip the House from red to blue last year may have spurred Speaker Nancy Pelosi to apply the impeachment description Tuesday to ongoing investigations.
Yet Democratic strategists and lawmakers admit they do not yet know whether reports about Trump’s July conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy — in which he allegedly asked Ukraine to investigate corruption claims that could damage former Vice President Joe Biden after holding up congressionally approved military aid to the country — have convinced more voters to favor impeachment.
“There’s people who call my office pushing for impeachment. There’s people who call my office saying, ‘Please don’t drag us into this,’” Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin told reporters Tuesday, explaining her decision to co-author a Washington Post op-ed with six other vulnerable freshman Democrats endorsing “impeachment hearings.”
“It wasn’t that I read the tea leaves in my district, it’s that the specter of this particular set of incidents crossed the Rubicon for me on a national security issue, on a constitutional issue,“ Slotkin said.
Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria, another op-ed co-author, said that of the 30 calls her offices had received on the issue since publication, 23 were positive.
So far this week, Slotkin and Luria have been joined in their new positions by moderate Democratic freshmen Dean Phillips of Minnesota, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Haley Stevens of Michigan, Gil Cisneros of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, and Antonio Delgado of New York, among others.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/campaigns/swing-district-democrats-gamble-voters-will-follow-trump-impeachment
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