Ten House Democrats from districts President Trump won in 2016 are doggedly resisting the majority of their caucus in refusing to support an impeachment inquiry.
They’re part of a rapidly-shrinking group following their House peers in holding out. Within 24 hours on Thursday and Friday, Rep. Conor Lamb, who represents a conservative-leaning stretch of Western Pennsylvania, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, came around to backing an impeachment inquiry.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday she was opening impeachment hearings into Trump. The California Democrat said Trump betrayed America’s security by seeking to enlist a foreign power, Ukraine, to tarnish a rival for his own political gain when he leaned on the president of that country to investigate business activities by Hunter Biden, son of former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Some vulnerable House Democrats are portraying the issue as a matter of semantics. They want to back committee investigations into Trump while shunning the word “impeachment.”
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said Thursday: “I support the investigation. I am opposed to the word inquiry or impeachment inquiry. This is ridiculous. There’s nothing going on today that’s any different than it was on Monday except that Nancy Pelosi stood up and put a name on it.”
Trump won by 31 points in Peterson’s district, which takes in the western edge of Minnesota, straddling the North Dakota and South Dakota state lines. “To ask me whether I’m for or against this is ridiculous. You know I’m OK with them investigating. That’s what they’re doing. We’ll see what they come up with.”
First-term Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham, whose coastal South Carolina district Trump won 54-40 in 2016, is taking a similar line. Cunningham said he is hesitant to support an impeachment inquiry but wants the Ukraine whistleblower allegations to be investigated.
“We need to be careful not to get ahead of the evidence and be as deliberate and judicious as possible during this process, while following the facts where they lead,” Cunningham said in a statement on Thursday.
Republicans are targeting his district heavily for 2020. Cunningham, 37, won his 2018 race against Republican state Rep. Katie Arrington, flipping the seat to the Democratic column for the first time since 1981. Cunningham took the seat of former Republican Rep. Mark Sanford, who Arrington had previously defeated in the June 2018 primary.
Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew, first elected in 2018 to represent a New Jersey district where Trump two years earlier beat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton 51-46, told the Washington Examiner this week he and like-minded impeachment holdouts are facing significant pressure from the Left.
“It’s not pressure like somebody is putting you in a headlock, but it’s pressure like, ‘Gee we’re all in this together and we’re all on board and we all have to have the same message.’ And that’s not true,” Van Drew said. “We’re Americans like everybody else, and we have an independent thought process and I think that’s important.”
Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden resides in a district won by Trump in 2016. Golden just won the ruby-red area in 2018, helped in part by almost $4 million in outside contributions.
New Mexico Democratic Congresswoman Xochitl Torres Small also narrowly won her 2018 race and was aided by a trove of outside campaign cash.
According to a poll released by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a House Republican PAC, Torres Small finds herself in another potentially dead-heat race in her South New Mexico district, similar to her 2018 campaign. Trump visited the state last month in an effort to flip it red, as he lost it to Clinton in 2016 by 8 points.
New York Democratic Rep. Max Rose won his Staten Island and Brooklyn-based seat in 2018 against Republican incumbent Dan Donovan. It was an upset victory in a district Trump won by 10 points in 2016.
He’s resisted calling for impeachment proceedings despite pressure from liberals in his district.
“Many of our members are disappointed, and even personally offended, that the representative they worked so hard to elect has refused to call for impeachment,” said Nichole Negron of Staten Island Women Who March. “Especially in light of the latest whistleblower complaint and the fact that a majority in the House now support impeachment.”
Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi is the other New York lawmaker who defeated a Republican incumbent in the Empire State in 2018. He resides in a district, previously represented by Republican Claudia Tenney, in the upstate region that Trump won by 16 points.
Utah Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams won his seat in 2018 after narrowly defeating Republican incumbent Mia Love. McAdams won his race for the Salt Lake City-based district by 694 votes, only 21 votes beyond the margin that would have enabled Love to request a recount at the time.
He is the only Democrat in Utah’s congressional delegation, but his criticism of the president is not a solo affair, as Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney also has an ongoing contentious relationship with the president.
“The phone call summary released by the White House today suggests the president was improperly using his influence with a foreign power to damage a political opponent,” McAdams said in a statement about the whistleblower. “On this and other matters we need to get all the facts on the table before deciding how to proceed.” McAdams stopped short of calling for an impeachment inquiry.
Oklahoma Democratic Rep. Kendra Horn upset Republican Rep. Steve Russell in 2018 by eking out a victory, finishing the race with 50.67% of the vote to Russell’s 49.33%.
Horn is the first Democrat to represent the district in 44 years.
One impeachment holdout falls into a different category. Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Ron Kind was first elected to his district in 1996, and, unlike most of the other lawmakers opposing an impeachment inquiry, he easily won his last election in 2018 with 59% of the vote. However, the district did vote for Trump in 2016 after backing Obama in 2008 and 2012.
“The reports of a whistleblower complaint alleging that the president actively coerced a foreign government to meddle in our election are extremely concerning,” Kind said in a statement. He continued, “The administration must hand over the whistleblower report, as required by law, so Congress can investigate these claims as part of its constitutional duties. As a former special prosecutor, I know no one is above the law — not even the president.”
