House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) visited South Florida over the weekend to pressure first-time candidate Matt Haggman out of a Democratic primary in order to run in a neighboring district.
Hoyer met with Haggman, one of eight Democrats running in the 27th Congressional District, in a Fort Lauderdale coffee shop to see if he would run in the neighboring 25th Congressional District, Politico reported. Haggman dropping out of that race would help clear the field for the frontrunner Donna Shalala, a former Clinton Foundation chief and past University of Miami president.
This meeting constitutes a continuation of the national party's efforts to meddle in Democratic primaries. Hoyer's coffee-shop diplomacy appeared to fail, however, after Haggman's campaign sent a written statement to Politico stating that he is still "running in District 27."
"I don’t talk about my private meetings but we did talk," Hoyer told POLITICO when asked about his discussion with Haggman over running in the nearby 25th Congressional District. Asked about meeting Haggman in a Fort Lauderdale coffee shop that wasn’t in either district, Hoyer tersely said "we did."
Hoyer is expected to make more recruiting and field-clearing trips like this in South Florida and in dozens of other races across the nation as Democratic officials attempt to shape the House election landscape and avoid bruising, cash-draining primary fights. The heart of the problem is too many candidates and too much money in some primaries, and not enough candidates and money in other races.
"We are looking at the biggest House battlefield in at least a decade and recruiting aggressively, up to the filing deadline, to make sure there are strong candidates running to win those districts," one Democratic official said when asked about Hoyer’s meeting with Haggman.
Hoyer, long the No. 2 Democrat in the House, has made dozens of trips to raise funds for candidates over the years, especially in districts where voters do not embraceHouse Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). As House Democrats attempt to take back the House later this fall, Democratic leaders Pelosi and Hoyer, who are in their late 70s and have received scrutiny within their own party, have attempted to show that they are up to the challenge in districts across the United States.
Maddie Anderson from the National Republican Congressional Committee said Hoyer's actions were another example of the national Democratic Party trying to force out progressives in favor of "coronated" candidates.
"Haggman has called himself the 'true progressive' in the race, so it’s no surprise that the national party wants him out," Anderson said in a statement. "Unfortunately for Pelosi and her acolytes, the only thing that came from Hoyer’s plea was a bad news story."
South Florida is a region of the country that exhibits the complications that Hoyer, Pelosi, and Democrats are generally facing this election cycle. The vacant 27th district has eight Democrats raising hundreds of thousands of dollars per quarter competing against each other compared to the neighboring 25th district, whose one Democratic candidate has little name recognition and has only raised $1,653 as of the most recently reported financial disclosures in December.
Hoyer was hoping to get Haggman to run against Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.).
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other interested parties have polled South Florida’s congressional districts and concluded that Haggman and many of the Democratic primary candidates in the 27th have little chance of beating Shalala, the former Clinton Foundation chief and past University of Miami president.
After Shalala entered the race and posted a $1.17 million cash haul in only three weeks, Hoyer and others began trying to clear the primary field but to no avail. Aside from having more personal money and better name ID than Haggman or any of the other candidates, Shalala also draws money directly from the same donor pool as Haggman — the arts and philanthropic community that enjoyed his check-writing largesse when he led the Knight Foundation.
This is not the first time that the national Democrats have meddled in Democratic primaries. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee received backlash in late February and last month for attempting to interfere multiple Democratic primaries. In particular, the group targeted Texas Democratic congressional candidate Laura Moser by publishing opposition research against her on its website, which backfired.
The committee was also accused by Greg Edwards, a black pastor running for a newly-drawn seat in Pennsylvania, of trying to push the only Democratic candidate of color out of the race. The DCCC denied this accusation and said its strategy was based on the district in question being new, saying it was a special situation where candidate-organizing became important.
UPDATE 8:47 P.M.: This article has been updated to include the National Republican Congressional Committee's statement.