New Dems look to boost ranks and build clout

The New Democrat Coalition is already the largest ideological bloc within the House Democratic Caucus with more than 100 members. And Rep. Greg Stanton, who chairs the group's campaign arm, doesn’t see that changing next year.

“We expect that our numbers are going to swell in the next Congress,” the Arizona Democrat said in an interview Thursday.

The New Democrat Coalition Action Fund is taking big swings in hopes of a Democratic majority in the House. On Friday, the center-left group endorsed five new candidates, a move shared first with CQ Roll Call, bringing its total endorsements for the cycle to 50.

The new endorsees include Army veteran Dwayne Romero, a former Aspen City Council member, who is challenging GOP freshman Jeff Hurd in Colorado’s 3rd District, and former TV anchor Eliott Rodriguez, who is taking on third-term Republican María Elvira Salazar in Florida’s 27th. Both Romero and Rodriguez are in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” program for top recruits.

Rounding out the batch are Indiana state Sen. J.D. Ford, who is challenging Rep. Victoria Spartz in the state’s 5th District; attorney Callie Barr, who's in a rematch against Rep. Jack Bergman in Michigan’s 1st; and Army veteran Fred Wellman, who’s taking on longtime Rep. Ann Wagner in Missouri’s 2nd.

Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates three of those contests as competitive: Rodriguez and Salazar are locked in a race rated Lean Republican. Romero’s and Ford’s races are rated Likely Republican.

While candidates backed by the New Democrats make up 36 of the 46 names on the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” list, some of these races will be tough to win against often better-funded Republicans in longtime red districts that backed Donald Trump by double digits in 2024.

Stanton, though, is hammering home the importance of affordability as Republicans try to paint his party with a broad socialist brush.

“The American people know exactly who is responsible for the unaffordability in their lives, and they’re going to vote for Democrats because they know we’re going to fight to make life more affordable for them,” he said.

Asked how he manages expectations as polls trend in his party’s favor and some breathlessly predict big wins, Stanton, a former Phoenix mayor, said he’s going one race at a time.

“Let the prognosticators be prognosticators,” he said. “You’ve never once heard me make a prediction on the number of seats we’re going to win.”

A handful of candidates who identify as democratic socialists have won Democratic primaries in deep-blue districts this year, and Republican groups have made the most of it. They’ve sought to tie all Democrats to the party’s ultra-liberal wing, airing ads that warn of a far-left takeover of the country. But Stanton said he isn’t concerned.

“Are you going to call Nancy Lacore a socialist? She’s a three-star Navy admiral. Or Leela Gray, a brigadier general in Florida, a 30-year Army career,” he said of the Democrats running for battleground seats in South Carolina and Florida, respectively. “We’re going to go deep into Republican territory this election because of the quality of our candidates. And so if the Republicans thought that they could just mislabel these people and win, they’re going to fail miserably.”

Stanton said Democrats are also hoping to capitalize on voters’ anger at Trump over his handling of inflation, the economy and the Iran conflict.

“We understand what’s really motivating voters. We’re not naive. We know that the American people are really pissed off at Donald Trump because of his policies that are directly causing significant inflation,” he said. “But they’re more pissed off at the Republicans in Congress that have rolled over because of political expediency.”

The way Stanton sees it, the decision by many of his GOP colleagues to stick with Trump in the hopes of avoiding primary opposition is the “irony” of this midterm cycle.

“They thought they were safe in these R+5 or +6 districts, and we're going to win an overwhelming number of R+5, R+6, R+7 [seats],” he said.

And if House Democrats take the majority, Stanton sees the New Democrat Coalition as “a strong governing partner” within the wider caucus — and one that could even make headway with disaffected members across the aisle.

“[Republicans] are going to turn away from Trump and want to work with us as partners to actually pass policies to lower costs for the American people,” he said. “We welcome that.”