Within hours of Donald Trump’s felony conviction in a New York trial, Democrats turned it against Republicans defending key House districts.
In a highly competitive southern California district, Democratic challenger George Whitesides blasted Rep. Mike Garcia. “We need a congressional representative who is focused on the needs of our district,” he wrote in a statement, adding “Garcia is focused on defending Trump.”
Garcia countered that his voters are concerned with issues that tangibly affect their lives rather than criticism of the former president.
“If anything, there are more people now who are recognizing that this is a national security vote more than anything. This is an economic security vote. This is a border security vote. And that breaks towards President Trump,” Garcia said in an interview.
While President Joe Biden won his district by double digits in 2020, Garcia said it won’t happen again. “I can tell you there’s not a single additional Joe Biden supporter in my district right now.”
The early exchange reflects how Democrats are prosecuting the political case around Trump’s conviction on 34 counts by a New York jury, and how Republicans are responding in some of the critical races that could determine control of the House. Both argue that the other side is obsessed with Trump — and not the issues that matter in voters’ everyday lives.
To Democrats, the GOP reaction — including attacks on the judicial system and calls to strip funding from law enforcement — illustrate a party slavishly devoted to one man, not their constituents. Republicans argue that despite Trump’s conviction, inflation, border security, and other woes make Biden the more toxic candidate.
Those competing themes are likely to get a national airing when Biden and Trump hold their first debate Thursday night. Key House candidates who could decide control of the chamber have already been testing them out.
“They aren’t independent thinkers. They dress up like him and follow him around,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the chair of Democrats’ national House campaign arm, said of vulnerable Republicans. “We need representatives who stand up for their communities.”
Republicans, however, say it’s Democrats who are fixated on the former president.
“If the choice is, ‘You need to cast a vote to condemn Donald Trump,’” versus a referendum on Biden’s presidency, then “Democrats are playing a losing hand,” said Brock McCleary, a Republican pollster working on several top House races.
Across Districts
The fight has played out in a wide range of competitive districts.
In Nebraska, Democratic state Sen. Tony Vargas wrote on X that the incumbent Republican, Rep. Don Bacon, “has endorsed a criminally convicted felon for President and enabled this lawlessness.”
Bacon, in an interview, argued that inflation, border crossings, and Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan all cut against the president and his fellow Democrats.
“I’ve got a choice between two people and I think Joe Biden’s failed to lead,” Bacon said.
In Florida, Miami-Dade school board member Lucia Báez-Geller reposted a video of Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar defending Trump outside the hush money trial.
“María Elvira Salazar has made it clear that she is more interested in showing her allegiance to Donald Trump than allegiance to her constituents and to the Constitution,” Báez-Geller wrote on X.
Salazar called Trump’s prosecution “a banana republic type of trial” and said by supporting him she’s following the choices of her voters.
In her district, Salazar said in an interview, “Republicans and some independents and some of the registered Democrats like the guy, so who are we to pass judgment?”
Cutting Both Ways
Politically, early data cuts in both directions. Several Republican strategists, while noting that the fallout is still being assessed, said they’d seen private polls in battleground districts showing gains for Trump after the conviction. Trump and his GOP allies have also reported surges in fundraising since the trial ended.
“Extreme Democrats drove up costs for families, wrecked the economy, threw open the border, and allowed crime, drugs, and lawlessness to overrun our streets and campuses,” said Jack Pandol, a spokesperson for House Republicans’ national campaign arm. “No wonder they don’t want to talk about issues that Americans are confronting over their kitchen tables.”
But Democrats appear to see an opening. The Biden campaign, after some early hesitation, has sharpened its focus on the case, including with a $50 million ad blitz calling Trump “a convicted criminal.”
Some public polls have shown small but meaningful moves in Biden’s direction. Some 21% of independent voters said the conviction makes them less likely to support Trump and that it would be an important factor to them, according to a Politico/Ipsos survey released June 17.
Republicans said they were glad to see Democrats follow that playbook. The type of Democrat “preoccupied with trying to get Trump” isn’t going to win in competitive districts, said Chris Russell, a GOP consultant from New Jersey.
“No one has yet explained how anything with this pursuit of Trump has anything to do with an American’s life,” Russell said. “It has actually proved to be a distraction.”
Democrats believe it’s worth emphasizing.
“This is the Trump Party, and it’s not focused on solving problems for the American people, and it’s focused singularly on doing the bidding of Donald Trump,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said at a press conference. “They’re going to have to defend this approach that they’ve taken over the next several months in advance of November before the American people.”
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