Democrats in competitive House races want Harris’ momentum without running toward her

(CNN) — Democratic Rep. Susie Lee of Nevada is in the fight of her political life as she tries to hold onto her seat in one of the most competitive House races in the country.

Lee, who prides herself on focusing on local issues and staying away from the top of her party’s ticket, says that her region has seen a 400% increase in volunteers since Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, injecting a critical surge in her House race that was always going to come down to turnout.

“That type of enthusiasm, increased volunteerism, that is what is going to get us over the finish line,” Lee told CNN.

But just because Harris has potentially enticed voters off the couch and to the table, does not mean Democrats like Lee, whose race could determine whether her party regains control of the House of Representatives, are planning to change their message and further align themselves with Harris.

“I will continue to run the race the way I’ve always run my race, which is focusing on hyper-local issues,” the Nevada Democrat added.

In conversations with nearly a dozen Democratic lawmakers and candidates running in competitive races across the country, a common theme emerged. With Harris and her new running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democrats have felt a tangible bump of energy in their districts, through spikes in volunteers, donations and event turnout. But that hasn’t resulted in a shift in campaign strategy, with most in nail-bitter races still wanting to keep the top of the ticket at an arm’s length from the campaigns they have built around local issues.

Southeast of Lee, former Arizona legislator Kirsten Engel is trying to flip a Republican district in Arizona that partially rests on the US-Mexico border and described the recent grassroots enthusiasm she is experiencing inspired by Harris as “undeniable.”

Engel sees Harris as an effective advocate on abortion rights but said she will continue to call out both parties when it comes to handling border security and immigration reform.

“Neither party has done well by Arizona and the border,” Engel said. “The Trump administration separated families at the border. The Biden administration was very late to realizing, you know, the crisis at the border.”

The pair of Democrats said the distancing from their party on the border would happen regardless of who was at the top of the ticket, dismissing Republican attempts to label Harris as the “border czar” and criticizing Republicans for blocking a bipartisan border package in Congress that could have had real impact.

Candidates in places like western Pennsylvania however have had more Harris-specific questions, particularly on her previous position to ban fracking, the primary mode of extracting gas for energy in battleground states – including Pennsylvania, which provides crucial jobs throughout the Rust Belt.

A Harris campaign official said last month she no longer supports a fracking ban, but Democrats acknowledge that Harris will need to make that case directly to voters and quickly build inroads with key unions and constituencies that President Joe Biden had fostered for decades.

Rep. Chris Deluzio, who supports Harris, told CNN he was glad to see that she has moved away from her previous position on fracking.

“I’m glad to hear her say that’s not what she intends to do. That’s not what this administration has done. I think it’s important to continue the work that President Biden has done to frankly help our energy security and help us meet our climate goals,” the Pennsylvania Democrat told CNN.

“I know that is a priority for a lot of folks in the building trades and those industries around here, and they certainly have made their views very clearly known all the way to the top,” he added.

The Republican campaign arm has seized on some of her past positions from his first presidential run, including fracking, as they’ve attempted to develop a strategy to target Democrats in tough races. But that hasn’t meant Republican lawmakers have stayed on message, with some resorting to calling her a “DEI hire.”

Others remain blunter in their distancing from the party, and by extension Harris.

Democrat Rudy Salas, who is looking to flip a competitive Republican-held district in California that Biden carried in 2020, told CNN that campaigning with Harris is “not like a make-or-break thing” and is one of a number of Democrats across the country who plan to skip the convention.

He sees the energy that Harris has brought to the race as up to him to capture but doesn’t plan on shifting his message away from local issues.

Roughly three hours south of Salinas, Democrat Will Rollins is singing a different tune.

As a former federal prosecutor running to unseat GOP Rep. Ken Calvert of California, Rollins sees Harris’ background as the state’s attorney general as a huge boost for his campaign. He said Harris’ refrain on the stump of being a prosecutor who has taken on perpetrators of all kinds who knows Trump’s type, is the exact theme he is trying to use against his opponent, and he often starts his events with parroting some of her signature lines.

“I wish I had seen her line before we filmed all of our ads,” Rollins said. “I mean, I try to work it into my own remarks, at least in the same theme because I do think it really resonates with swing voters.”

And given the surge in donations his campaign has seen in the last month and increased following on social media, Rollins said he had the budget to hire a videographer to help with his social media team, part of his strategized attempts to attract young voters to his campaign as a result of the organic content the Harris campaign has been providing that he says led to an increase in his own social media platforms across the board.

“It’s definitely part of a targeted effort to get young people out to vote, which I definitely believe she will help me do in a way that nobody else could,” Rollins said of Harris.

Walz serves ‘meat-and-potatoes’ politics

In selecting Walz, the Harris campaign provided many down ballot Democrats running in competitive races with a welcomed partner.

Rep. Ann Kuster of New Hampshire, who chairs a large group of moderate Democrats running in battleground districts, told CNN she had been fielding a flood of calls from lawmakers who wanted to campaign with the Minnesota governor.

Walz previously served 12 years in Congress, representing a conservative-leaning rural district that, both before and after his tenure, has been mostly dominated by Republicans.

“I think he is going to be spectacular for us,” Kuster told CNN. “He can go into those districts and campaign with us. You have to be able to communicate. Tim is the person who can do that. He has walked the walk.”

Lawmakers and candidates pointed to Walz’s history as an educator, specifically a football coach, and his ability to bring businesses to his state as governor as some aspects of his record they plan to highlight.

Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who served with Walz in Congress said the governor is about “basic, you know, meat-and-potatoes politics,” adding, “I think he is going to bring a lot of stability to the next administration.”

Meanwhile Republicans, led by Donald Trump’s running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance stepped up his attacks on Walz’s portrayal of his military career, accusing him of ducking service in Iraq when he left the Army National Guard and ran for Congress in 2005.

Democrats reflect on the reasons behind the Harris excitement

Across the country, lawmakers and candidates attribute the palpable on the ground surge in enthusiasm to Harris being the historic messenger that Biden could not be.

Beyond being a historic nominee, Harris also provides fresh energy to a party that spent three weeks in turmoil after Biden’s disastrous debate performance raised serious questions about his mental acuity.

While Democrats championed Biden’s record, it felt like, according to Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, “those people were having to explain, explain, explain.”

Now, Hayes says, the grassroots enthusiasm is palpable: “I wouldn’t have expected it to last this long but every day it’s just building upon itself.”

With Biden not seeking reelection, Democrats no longer have to spend time deflecting attacks from their Republican opponents about Biden’s age and defending their support of him. That relief has been felt most palpably, candidates and campaign officials say, through the surge in volunteers for door knocking.

Democrat Sue Altman, who is looking to unseat Republican Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. of New Jersey, attributed the doubled turnout she saw at a recent door knocking event in part to voters no longer feeling concerned about Biden and excited by the prospect of Harris. Instead of being motivated by “fear and trepidation” she said, her voters are showing up fueled by “hope, exuberance and joy.”

“I think there was a lot of nervousness about Biden’s ability to make the case against Trump,” Altman told CNN. “And now, with Harris at the top of the ticket, I think we’ve proven we could meet the moment when our presidential candidate wasn’t ready to run again.”

Altman was not the only Democrat to see turnout increase during a party-wide effort to mobilize volunteers across battleground districts. The Democratic House campaign arm saw its highest number of doors knocked in a single week this cycle and had a 58% increase in volunteers during the week to mark 100 days until the November election.

Democrat Shomari Figures, who is running in a newly drawn Alabama district that he calls “the birthplace of the civil rights movement,” said Harris’ candidacy and her potential to be not only the nation’s first female president, but first Black and South Asian female president, carries extra importance for him and his voters.

Home to the iconic civil rights leader Rosa Parks, the Montgomery bus boycott and where Martin Luther King Jr. had his first pastoral assignment, Figures said, “The historical context here is, I think, significantly different.”

“When you see a Black woman at the top of the ticket, you know, especially given the historical role that Black women played in the civil rights movement, it just means a little more in this district and in this state,” he added. “We’ve seen that reflected in the response here lately.”

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