President Trump is sure to lose his home state of New York by a wide margin in his 2020 bid, but former Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney is looking forward to having him at the top of the ticket.
“It looks like a lot of Trump voters stayed home in 2018,” said Tenney, who lost in her traditionally Republican central New York district last year after a single term to Democratic challenger Anthony Brindisi, 41, by a 49.1% to 50.9% margin.
“Obviously, having the president on top of the ticket will make a big difference,” Tenney, 58, told the Washington Examiner. “If you look at just the voter turnout between 2016 and 2018, it will probably be more similar to 2016, and you’re going to see a lot more enthusiasm coming out of Republicans than in 2018.”
Tenney, seeking a rematch against Brindisi, is among five House Republicans who lost in 2018 and are running to regain their old seats in 2020. Absent a “blue wave” like in 2018, when Democrats won their first House majority in eight years, the would-be comeback House Republicans think they can capitalize on Trump’s reelection bid.
Former Iowa Republican Rep. David Young, defeated by Democrat Cindy Axne in 2018, says the upcoming presidential election cycle looks more positive for him.
“The race is different between 2018 and now because we had low voter turnout in 2018. It was a midterm. The history of the midterms aren’t always on your side in this situation and we’ll have a higher turnout in a presidential year,” said Young, 51. “In 2016, the president won the 3rd District here in Iowa by 3 1/2 points and I won it by 14 points.”
Young lost to Axne in 2018, 49.% to 47.1%.
“We’re going to get a lot of those votes back of those folks who sat out in 2018, for whatever reason, and we’re seeing some real high anticipation amongst our ranks on the GOP side about getting out to vote,” Young told the Washington Examiner about his rematch with Axne, 54.
And former Georgia Republican Rep. Karen Handel, 57, is ready to take the state’s 6th Congressional District back from first-term Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath. In one of the biggest upsets of election night 2018, McBath, 59, defeated Handel by 1%.
“President Trump won the Georgia Sixth in 2016 and will win it again in 2020,” Handel’s campaign manager Chris Broyles told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “Republicans throughout the district are excited to help re-elect the President and Republicans up and down the ballot next November.”
Since House Republicans lost their majority in 2018, their campaign planners have been eyeing the 31 districts that elected a Democrat that year but voted for Trump in 2016. Former lawmakers are natural challengers, as they’ve been on the ballot before, and in some cases voters still think they’re the incumbent member of Congress.
One new issue they’ll have to run on in 2020 is the impeachment effort against President Trump by House Democrats. Though the outcome is far from known — hearings begin in the House judiciary Committee on Dec. 4 — former Republican lawmakers trying for a comeback are confident the issue will work in their favor in districts in which Trump is still popular.
Democratic incumbents have picked up on that in some cases.
Although Brindisi, 41, voted to go forward with impeachment hearings, he recently told a local news outlet in New York he is neutral on impeachment.
Tenney is not buying it.
“He’s afraid to say a word,” she said. “He never mentions Trump. He never mentions impeachment, if he can avoid it, even claims he’s not paying attention to any of that, which is kind of hard to do.”
