Democrats think they have a chance to pick off a House Republican who was one of the loudest congressional opponents of the Obama administration during President Obama’s tenure.
A Democratic survey released Thursday said Rep. Darrell Issa is trailing 46-42 percent in his effort to get re-elected. Issa represents a GOP-leaning district, but Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is unpopular in the area and thus creating a drag on the California Republican lawmaker.
“Democrats have a legitimate opportunity to turn this district blue in 2016,” according to the summary of the survey, which was conducted on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and first reported by Roll Call. “Issa, an eight-term Republican incumbent, is currently attracting just 42 percent of the vote — and his support of a deeply unpopular Donald Trump makes him highly vulnerable.”
Issa is trying to fend a challenge from Democratic challenger Doug Applegate, a retired Marine colonel who hopes the district’s military voters and Hispanics will help him pull off the upset.
A victory in the race wouldn’t bring Democrats much closer to their goal of retaking the House — Republicans have too large a majority for that — but it would have national symbolic significance. Issa was the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee during the first two years of the Obama presidency, and he launched numerous investigations of the administration when he took over as chairman from 2010 through 2014.
“Issa has spent 16 years in Congress trying to establish himself as the lead conservative attack dog going after Democrats,” Applegate campaign manager Robert Dempsey told the Orange County Register. “Now they are desperately trying to position him as a moderate. I think voters will see through that.”
Issa hopes that Applegate’s wholehearted embrace of left-wing policies espoused by former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will render him too much of a “left-wing extremist” for the GOP district.
The campaign has also gotten personal. Issa’s campaign has seized on court records that show Applegate was accused of harassing his ex-wife during their divorce, allegedly “look[ing] through her window while she was getting dressed,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Applegate is airing ads that accuse Issa of using his position as a congressman “to line his own pockets [by] steering millions in taxpayer money to help properties he owned.”
Issa has threatened to file a libel lawsuit over the ads.
