Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t taking a side in the debate over whether her party should be helping pro-Trump candidates win GOP primaries against more moderate Republicans.
Democrats, particularly the party’s House of Representatives campaign arm, have taken searing criticism in recent weeks as FEC reports reviewed by news outlets have shown that the party is actively involved in efforts to back far-right candidates against more moderate Republicans in primary races around the country.
In one glaring instance, impeachment-supporting Congressman Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican, lost his primary this year after the DCCC spent $400,000 on ads backing his opponent John Gibbs, who has said that the 2020 election was stolen.
Ms Harris addressed the issue in an interview that aired Sunday on Meet the Press, telling host Chuck Todd that she isn’t “going to tell people how to run their campaigns”.
And she wouldn’t even say whether she would take the same strategy, were she in a congressional race against a Republican who had supported the impeachment of Donald Trump.
Her refusal to take a position comes as a growing number of House Democrats have spoken out against the DCCC’s strategies. The issue raises the question about how serious Democratic leaders like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi really are when they say they want the GOP to be reclaimed by the faction that does not support Mr Trump’s ongoing false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. It also has the potential to cause friction between Democrats and those same moderate Republicans at a time when the party is hoping to pass legislation with the support of some GOP members in the Senate, including a key bill that would enshrine same-sex marriage rights into law.
That bill is set to be voted on in the coming weeks, and would require the votes of 10 GOP senators to avoid dying to a filibuster; the margin is expected to be close, with a number of GOP senators signaling support and Democrats expressing optimism even as Republican leaders say it will not pass.
The efforts are occurring as Democrats face the prospect of losing the House in November, with most analysts predicting a GOP takeover.
Moderate Democrats and progressives alike have derided the DCCC’s strategy to back far-right Republicans as a betrayal of the party’s own values. Others, however, including DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney and Congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas have defended the move.
“No race is worth compromising your values in that way,” outgoing Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy of Florida, a centrist, told Politico.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, considered one of the most progressive members of her party in the House, warned that it could backfire in a comment to The Independent.
“I don’t think we should be elevating dangerous elements of the right-wing,” she told The Independent. “Democrats who have that type of thinking should have learned that lesson with Trump in 2016, but I personally am not supportive.”
