While a few dozen House Democrats are clamoring to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump, a faction of party moderates are quietly dampening the enthusiasm for trying to oust the president and could ultimately serve as the wall that protects him from impeachment.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has informed rank-and-file Democrats her goal is to keep control of the House in 2020, which requires protecting the 40 lawmakers who put them into the majority by winning seats previously held by Republicans.
Constituents in those districts tend to favor Trump and have little interest in an impeachment inquiry, which has prompted Pelosi to steer the caucus away from impeachment and instead toward oversight investigations of the Trump administration.
Among the lawmakers Pelosi hopes to protect is Rep. Katie Hill, a Democrat who represents California’s 25th District.
Hill won the seat in 2018, flipping a district that had been held by Republicans since 1993.
Hill told the Washington Examiner the top concerns in her district, which includes northern Los Angeles County and parts of Ventura County, are healthcare, prescription drugs, and the opioid addiction crisis.
Hill recently held a tele-town hall with 50,000 constituents and impeachment was not the leading topic.
“We heard really devastating stories about people who can’t afford their cancer medication,” Hill said as she walked to a hearing on opioid addiction, which is a major problem in her district.
“These are the things that are affecting peoples lives, that are literally killing people,” Hill said.
“I believe we may very well have to do impeachment. That’s not off the table at all. But we can’t lose sight of these other things and that is what you are hearing from the American people.”
In South Florida, Rep. Donna Shalala flipped the 27th District, part of an area largely dominated by Republicans for three decades.
She’s held many town halls with constituents and nobody is urging the House to oust Trump.
“Once I’ve been asked about impeachment,” said Shalala, who as HHS secretary in the Clinton administration witnessed impeachment drama up close in 1998-99. “Once.”
Constituents in her Miami district want to talk about out-of-pocket costs for healthcare, the environment, and education.
“And infrastructure,” Shalala said. “Transportation issues in Miami.”
The list of impeachment hold-outs in the Democratic caucus goes far beyond the 40 freshmen from swing districts.
Other centrist Democrats from safe districts are also lukewarm about launching an impeachment inquiry.
Rep. Charlie Crist, who is the former governor of Florida, serving initially as a Republican, told the Washington Examiner constituents in his St. Petersburg district call him about healthcare and the environment and “not much” about impeachment.
Reps. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., and Collin Peterson, D-Minn., are among many other relatively safe centrist Democrats who aren’t eager to rush into an impeachment inquiry. Though Peterson’s district, straddling the western side of Minnesota along its borders with North Dakota, South Dakota, and Canada to the north, went for Trump in 2016 62-31%.
The number of lawmakers who favor impeachment within the Democratic Caucus has been slowly increasing, however.
This week, freshman Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, who in 2018 flipped California’s 45th district, based in Orange County, announced she believes the House should launch an impeachment inquiry because the Trump administration is ignoring the subpoenas of House investigation committees and is refusing to allow administration officials to testify.
“The administration has refused to respect the rule of law,” said Porter, who came to Congress from a career as a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., who represents a swing district, also came out in favor of impeachment.
The vast majority of House Democrats and particularly the moderates, continue to side with Pelosi, who isn’t planning to greenlight an impeachment inquiry anytime soon.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed only 27% of Americans back an impeachment inquiry, although that number is a ten-point increase over last month. Support increased most among Democrats.
Pelosi told reporters Wednesday she’s not feeling pressured to try to impeach the president, noting at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast that the GOP-led Senate would never vote to oust Trump even if Democrats voted to impeach him.
“It can’t be Democrats impeaching in the House and Republicans exonerating in the Senate,” Pelosi said.
Hill told the Washington Examiner she’s not under pressure from any of her constituents to join the pro-impeachment bandwagon, either.
Hill said those constituents who call to urge her to impeach Trump are provided information about the more than one-dozen House oversight investigations into the administration that are beginning to yield results.
The Justice Department, for example agreed last week to turn over some of the underlying documents Democrats had been seeking that are part of the Mueller report into alleged Russian collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign.
“People understand building a case,” Hill said. “You have to have everything laid out. We don’t need to rush this.”
