‘Watergate babies’ see Democratic wave coming

“Until now I have not encountered the same level of disgust with politics and government,” said Rep. Rick Nolan, D-Minn., who was first elected to Congress in the ‘74 wave. “Today rivals 1974, and I never saw anything quite like it in between.”

Democrats are hoping this year to retake a Republican-controlled Congress, boosted by the ongoing turmoil in President Trump’s White House. But where the Watergate babies were, as John Lawrence writes in The Class of ‘74, young, male, and “almost exclusively white,” the 2018 candidates are young, diverse, and in record numbers female.

“You’re going to see not only a Democratic wave, but a female Democratic wave,” said former Rep. Tom Downey, the youngest member elected in 1974 in New York’s 2nd District.

That year Democrats secured a veto-proof majority, 291 seats. Fifteen of those seats were flipped in the Midwest alone.

The class of ’74 sees something similar happening this November.

“People are not going to appreciate the size of the wave until it actually hits the shore,” said Downey.

The warning signs

In the run-up to the ‘74 midterm, a number of special elections swung toward Democrats, but Dick Vander Veen’s victory in the seat left vacant by Vice President Gerald Ford hit Republicans the hardest.

Ford’s Grand Rapids district in Michigan hadn’t elected a Democrat since 1910. That changed in February of 1974 with the election of Vander Veen, who had pledged to oust President Richard Nixon if he won.

Following Vander Veen’s upset, Democrats won three more special elections, taking Republican seats in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

“The way things started unfolding before the 1974 election are very very similar to the way they’re unfolding as we approach the 2018 election,” said Nolan, “In that there was very very widespread disapproval, disillusionment with the office of the presidency — Nixon and now Trump.”

Nolan is the last of the Watergate babies in the House. After flipping a Republican seat in 1974, Nolan served three terms and then left to pursue private business. More than 30 years later, Nolan ran again and ousted Republican Chip Cravaack in a different Minnesota seat in 2013. He plans to retire after this term because Democrats are well positioned to hold his seat.

“Our polling shows this is the best prospect we’ve seen in a long time to elect a Democrat in my congressional district,” Nolan said. “The last several cycles the polls have shown it with a four to six point advantage on the generic question. I’ve managed to win in close elections but for the first time my polling looked the best it’s ever looked, but more importantly the prospects for electing another Democrat looked the best they’ve ever looked.”

It’s time for a younger Democrat to step in, said the 74-year-old lawmaker: “It’s just a good time to pass the baton on.”

The “strong” similarities add up, said Lawrence, author of The Class of ‘74, and former chief of staff to Democratic Rep. George Miller, elected in California in 1974.

“The fact it’s an off year election, fact that you have an unpopular administration, the fact that you have, as you did in 1974, evidence of early primaries that Democrats are winning traditionally Republican seats or coming close,” Lawrence said in an interview.

In the federal special elections, Democrats have on average over-performed by 17 points against the partisan baseline, according to CNN and FiveThirtyEight analyses. On the generic congressional ballot Democrats only lead by 7 points, meaning control of the House could go either way. Nonpartisan trackers reason that Democrats could see their lead grow as more voters become involved in the general election races in their districts.

“So you got the president who is not well regarded because of his personal behavior, you have a looming investigation that could conceivably top him from office, there’s been an assault on all the fundamental institutions in the country and people are just deeply disillusioned and ready for change,” said Nolan.

The combination creates an environment that is “worse for the Republicans” than 1974, Lawrence said, because “if you’re unhappy with anything there’s only one place to direct your attention.”

Young, unapologetic, disruptors

The surge in first-time Democratic candidates in 2018 has provoked scuffles with party establishment and cries of favoritism.

Fearing weak candidates will emerge from crowded primaries, party leaders jump in, pressuring candidates quietly, and in a few cases publicly, to drop out.

In 1974, former Rep. Toby Moffett, D-Conn., was one of those candidates.

“I had to win the nomination against the party establishment, that’s true of a lot of these races,” Moffett said.

Like the fresh faces running in 2018, Moffett, decided to run at the age of 29. He launched his campaign more than a year before the election.

“The president at that time, Nixon, had won the most overwhelming victory in history and so even my mother and father were mad at me,” Moffett said. “They said, ‘What are you doing? What is wrong with you?’ Then the vice president resigned, then the Saturday night massacre in October, and then you could feel things change.”

Downey, who ran in a suburban, heavily Republican district in a Long Island district, capitalized on his youth and frustration with the Nixon administration. Democratic Party figures told him he was “too young” to win.

“I was 25 when I got elected to Congress,” Downey said “What [voters] thought about being young is you have less of a chance of being corrupted.”

He advised candidates running this year not to talk about Trump and “to reach independents and thoughtful Republicans with a much more positive economic message.”

Money and partisanship

A strong, focused message isn’t enough to win in today’s elections. The biggest difference between 1974 and today, the Watergate babies say, is the amount of money in politics.

“My race, if there had been polling, would have shown me closing the gap on the incumbent, would have resulted in today’s formulation where the Republican Party would then have poured millions of dollars into the race and the Democratic Party would have poured millions of dollars into the race,” Downey said. “And the candidates wind up losing control of their elections.”

The corrupting influence of money in politics is a central issue for many 2018 candidates. In recent conversations with six candidates in primaries across the country, nearly all of them said reversing Citizens United — the 2010 Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections — is one of their priorities. Swearing off corporate PAC money is rapidly becoming a litmus test for Democrats.

“There were no call centers across the street in 1974,” said Nolan. “My first election contest in 1974 was a couple hundred thousand dollars — all money in on both sides. This last one was approaching $25 million, that’s a pretty monumental change.”

Another difference is the deep polarization in American politics, which could translate to fewer Republicans turning to Democrats for an answer.

“1974 had a significant moderate wing in the Republican party — not that difficult for those people to vote for Democrats,” said Lawrence.

The likelier scenario in 2018 is that Republicans who feel abandoned by their party don’t vote.

Still, six months from Election Day, the constant revelations about Trump’s campaign dealings aren’t slowing and could push disenchanted Republicans toward Democrats. A steady stream of departures from the White House, one Cabinet secretary forced to resign over abuse of taxpayer money, a fired secretary of state, and two more Cabinet members facing ethics violations feed the Democratic message of a White House on fire.

‘They flipped over like dominoes falling’

The allegations of nefarious dealings with Russia, and Trump’s attacks on the press, the FBI and the CIA, Nolan said, parallel the “chaos” of 1974.

When the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release the Oval Office tapes he previously refused to turn over, including one that would later be known as the “smoking gun,” Republicans abandoned the president.

“They flipped over like dominoes falling,” said former Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., who entered his third term when the Watergate babies stormed into Congress.

“Voters were disappointed with the president no matter what their party was, they were just ashamed of the conduct of President Nixon,” Rangel said. “We have the same thing happening every day here, and the voters are just waiting for the opportunity to thrust themselves.”

Though Trump’s shown no indication he’d resign in the face of a “smoking gun,” Nolan said he could see it playing out exactly like Watergate.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if Trump did end up resigning here before the election and Pence, in the same kind of position that Gerald Ford was having agreed to pardon him,” Nolan said. “Both of those events, Nixon’s resignation and everything leading up to it and [Ford’s] pardon were big factors” in the wave.

For Downey, the pardon changed everything.

“Nixon left office in August of 1974 so what really propelled my campaign, what made a huge difference, was when President Ford pardoned Nixon for the crimes that he may or may not have committed in Watergate,” Downey said. “The polling that was done by the party — we didn’t have money to do serious polling — apparently that’s what shifted a lot of people away from the Republicans.”

Rep. James Grover, the Republican Downey toppled, won 66 percent of the vote in 1972. in 1974, Glover got 44 percent of the vote.

“Nobody expected me to win,” said Downey, “I didn’t expect me to win.”