The incoming chief of the House Republicans’ campaign arm believes the GOP’s losses in the 2018 midterm election cycle were only a political blip.
“There’s a narrative that people are trying to build out there that somehow there’s been this shift, this political realignment in the suburbs,” Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., told National Journal in an article published Tuesday. “That’s not true. It isn’t there.”
The next National Republican Congressional Committee chairman’s comments come as Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., on Monday called for the GOP to conduct an autopsy to understand why they lost 40 seats in the November elections, the biggest net gain for Democrats in the House since the Watergate scandal. Stefanik had earlier stood down from her position as the NRCC’s first female head of recruitment over a disagreement on whether the body should involve itself in its party’s primary process.
Emmer told the Journal Republican defeats could mostly be attributed to a failure to court independent voters with talking points on the economy. While he said the immigration rhetoric in the final stages of the campaigns did not help the party win over moderates, the Minnesota congressman was reticent to blame Trump and the White House.
“You’re definitely impacted, but you don’t rise or fall based on the executive,” Emmer said. “You get to run your own race, but I think this is a customer-service business. You have to have your own independent brand.”
Although Emmer remained mum on whether he would commission a thorough assessment of 2018, he said he planned to introduce structural changes to the NRCC, including encouraging member in-put in how it can better fundraise and recruit.
Stefanik in a Monday letter to the NRCC said Republicans “fell short across multiple demographics, including women,” in this year’s election cycle.
“Minimizing or ignoring the root causes behind these historic losses will lead us to repeat them,” she wrote.
Stefanik’s letter was also signed by Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and outgoing Reps. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., and Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., the latter of whom lost their re-election bids to Democratic challengers.
