STROUDSBURG, Pa. — For those who’ve listened to Democrats discuss immigration coverage this election cycle, you’ve undoubtedly heard them blame former President Donald Trump for killing a border safety deal negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators.
It’s the guts of Vice President Kamala Harris’ argument on the subject — and never with out good purpose: The deal collapsed in February shortly after Trump got here out publicly towards it.
However not each Democrat is singing that tune. Embattled Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) doesn’t point out Trump in any respect when describing what occurred. He pins the blame as an alternative on Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
“There were a bunch of bipartisan senators that were behind this, and all of a sudden, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, said, ’Don’t bother bringing that to the House. It’s dead on arrival in the House,’” Cartwright mentioned in his Oct. 23 debate with Republican challenger Rob Bresnahan. “Imagine for us to be able to stop fighting over the border, and Mike Johnson didn’t want anything to do with it.”
In a quick interview after the early Veterans Day parade Sunday in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Cartwright cited Johnson’s insistence that Trump’s strain had not performed a task in his determination to oppose the border safety deal.
“I am not privy to the firsthand discussion, but when Mike Johnson said, ‘No, it was my own idea,’ I’m going to take him at his word,” Cartwright instructed HuffPost.
There’s greater than a bit fact in Cartwright’s evaluation. Even with out Trump’s opposition, Johnson would possible have confronted monumental strain from his proper flank to not put a Senate border invoice up for a vote.
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However for Cartwright, a trial lawyer who has represented northeastern Pennsylvania since 2013, there are additionally political causes to keep away from bringing Trump into the dialogue.
Cartwright represents a largely white, blue-collar stretch of Pennsylvania that has been drifting proper for years regardless of together with President Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton.
That makes him one thing of a Democratic Occasion unicorn. Certainly one of simply 5 Democrats within the Home working for reelection in districts that Trump carried twice, Cartwright is the only real member of the group to have been on the poll in such a district in each 2016 and 2020.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, one other longtime Democrat in that group, was solely drawn right into a district Trump would have received forward of the 2022 race; the remaining three Democrats — Reps. Jared Golden (Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.) and Mary Peltola (Alaska) — have been all elected after the 2016 race.
What’s extra, not like the newer members of the Trump nation quintet, who’re all members of the centrist Blue Canine Caucus, Cartwright has refused to again away from his help for “Medicare for All” and his membership within the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Cartwright has as an alternative discovered extra delicate methods to interrupt with Democratic Occasion leaders and domesticate help from the Trump-voting majority, whereas nonetheless portray Bresnahan — and the Republican majority he might assist cement — as a risk to voters of all ideological stripes.
“I’m not going to be beholden to anyone, not Donald Trump, not Mike Johnson.”
– Rob Bresnahan, Republican challenger and building inheritor
Certainly one of them is tying Bresnahan, the inheritor to a union electrical contracting firm, to Johnson, who has visited Cartwright’s district — Pennsylvania’s eighth — to lift cash for and marketing campaign with the GOP challenger.
In his opening assertion on the debate, Cartwright mentioned he has “always stuck my thumb in the eye of the huge corporations that are raising the costs for everybody by profiteering and gouging us again and again.”
“They don’t need anybody’s help,” he continued. “They don’t need my help. They’ve got Mike Johnson and his handpicked candidate.”
Whether or not Cartwright succeeds in nabbing one other time period might decide how Democrats working in pro-Trump districts pitch themselves to voters sooner or later.
His destiny stays unclear. The Prepare dinner Political Report charges the race a toss-up.
But when Cartwright falls quick, it received’t be for lack of fabric supplied by the gaffe-prone Home speaker.
Along with Johnson’s function within the demise of the bipartisan immigration invoice, Cartwright has singled out Johnson’s latest promise to attempt to undo the Inexpensive Care Act, or Obamacare. In accordance with video obtained by NBC Information, Johnson was talking about well being care reforms with supporters in an adjoining Pennsylvania district on Oct. 29, when an occasion attendee requested him, “No Obamacare?” Johnson replied by rolling his eyes whereas saying, “No Obamacare,” whilst he acknowledged dislodging the deeply embedded regulation would require “massive reforms.”
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“The Johnson/Bresnahan plan to rip coverage away from northeastern Pennsylvanians is utterly consistent with their campaign mantra: Corporations over families,” Cartwright mentioned in a Wednesday assertion responding to the report.
Bresnahan has not responded or publicly outlined his views on the matter.
Bresnahan has no coverage report to talk of, however he has spoken positively in regards to the Trump tax cuts, calling them “incredible.”
The overwhelming majority of the profit from the Trump tax cuts went to the highest 1% of highest-earning People. Democrats like Cartwright say they need to enable the discount of the highest earnings tax fee to run out, whereas offering extra tax reduction for the center class.
Cartwright has used Bresnahan’s place on the tax cuts and ties to Johnson to depict Bresnahan as a stooge for Company America.
“He’s for cutting taxes for billionaires,” Cartwright instructed HuffPost. “I’m not.”
Bresnahan insisted on his independence from Republican Occasion management throughout his debate with Cartwright, vowing to go away workplace if he have been to ever vote with celebration leaders 98% of the time or extra. “I’m not going to be beholden to anyone, not Donald Trump, not Mike Johnson,” he mentioned.
Bresnahan’s best asset is probably going that the employees at his household’s electrical contracting firm, Kuharchik Building, are members of the Worldwide Brotherhood of Electrical Employees union.
“These are family-sustaining wages you earn while you learn,” Bresnahan mentioned within the debate. “These jobs will always be needed.”
However Cartwright’s Democratic allies have sought to transform an asset right into a weak point, seizing on the truth that Bresnahan took over as a high government when he was simply 19 and that he presided over the sale of the corporate to a personal fairness agency in July 2023. Bresnahan has mentioned the sale has spurred extra hiring on the firm, however personal fairness corporations have a historical past of compressing employees to slash prices over time.
Bresnahan “took over the family business as a teenager, cashed out by selling it to a foreign private equity firm, and invested his money in China,” says the narrator of a TV advert by Home Majority PAC, Home Democrats’ predominant tremendous PAC. “Now, Bresnahan and his allies have a plan to give a huge tax break to millionaires like themselves and risk your hard-earned Social Security and Medicare.”
“If you don’t do anything up until 2035 then all of a sudden, it’s going to be, ‘Oh, we have no more runway left, and our only option is to cut benefits for seniors.’ That’s the quiet part out loud.”
– Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.)
In contrast to Bresnahan, Cartwright additionally boasts the help of Pennsylvania organized labor’s umbrella group and backs the PRO Act, a sweeping invoice making it simpler for unions to prepare. Bresnahan doesn’t help the invoice in its entirety, in response to a CNBC report from mid-October.
And Cartwright faults Bresnahan for claiming to oppose Social Safety cuts with out getting behind a plan to shore up this system’s income in a approach that may make cuts avoidable. Cartwright is a co-sponsor of a invoice eliminating the cap on Social Safety’s taxable earnings for earnings higher than $400,000 a yr.
“It’s not about ‘not cutting.’ If you don’t do anything up until 2035 then all of a sudden, it’s going to be, ‘Oh, we have no more runway left, and our only option is to cut benefits for seniors,’” Cartwright instructed HuffPost. “That’s the quiet part out loud.”
For his half, Bresnahan has seized on the truth that Cartwright voted in line with Biden’s place 100% of the time in 2021 and 2022, in response to FiveThirtyEight. And the GOP challenger has cited Cartwright’s membership within the Congressional Progressive Caucus as proof of his radicalism.
Cartwright has responded by pointing to 16 bipartisan payments he launched that turned regulation. 4 of these payments handed beneath Trump, together with a measure to extend monetary restitution for victims of baby sexual abuse materials.
Certainly one of Cartwright’s TV advertisements additionally incorporates a Republican mom and Democratic daughter who bond over their shared help for abortion rights, police funding, and Cartwright, a champion of each. The same Cartwright spot final cycle featured a Biden voter and a Trump voter backing Cartwright.
As for the time period “progressive,” Cartwright harked again to the early twentieth century’s Progressive Period when requested about it, citing President Teddy Roosevelt as his mannequin.
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Roosevelt constructed the Panama Canal and sought to broaden well being care entry, Cartwright famous.
Roosevelt “believed in something that all progressives understand, that there are big things that government can do, and do well,” Cartwright mentioned. “Happy to align myself with him.”
