House recruitment efforts complicated by redistricting delays

Dina Titus has announced she’s running for Congress again. She has a campaign website. She has supporters.

What she doesn’t have yet is a district, since Nevada has not completed its redistricting. A new district will eventually be added to the three existing ones, and will likely be in Las Vegas and its suburbs in the state’s southeastern corner.

{mosads}She is not alone. Only a handful of states have completed redistricting, and in some of the country’s largest states — including California and Florida — it is highly unclear what the final maps will look like.

This has complicated efforts for both parties trying to recruit candidates to run for the House, and creates an additional level of uncertainty for those who have decided to run.

“People have been trying to get me to say that I was going to run since the end of last year,” Titus told The Hill. “You just can’t wait that long to get started to run an effective congressional race.”

Titus said running without a district does limit what she can do at this point. “You can’t target your ground game, can’t set up a district headquarters, and it doesn’t help you raise money — you can’t make an argument against your opponent or argue that the district’s demographics are favorable,” Titus said. “As far as targeting, mailing, door-knocking, that’s going to just have to wait.”

Democrats are more focused on recruitment this year because so many swing districts currently have Republican incumbents after 2010’s wave election.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairman Steve Israel (N.Y.) admitted the process was creating some uncertainty but downplayed how much it has affected recruitment.

“It’s clear that there is tremendous enthusiasm from candidates who reflect the values of their district and are stepping forward to run. Just this week we reached 41 Republican and open districts with strong Democratic candidates, bypassing all our benchmarks and goals,” Israel said in a statement. “While some candidates will announce before redistricting is complete and others will afterwards, we have exceeded all recruiting expectations so far.”

Florida’s district lines are very uncertain. The state is adding two districts because of population growth, and voters passed a new law last fall that seeks to make the process less partisan. The DCCC is touting a number of recruits in the state, but it is as yet unclear whom many of them will be facing — or whether some of them will have to square off in primaries.

“Redistricting is the elephant in the room, the 800-pound gorilla,” said Christian Ulvert, the campaign manager for Luis Garcia, a Democrat who announced he will run for Congress in south Florida.

Garcia could face Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.), who faces FBI and IRS investigations into his personal and campaign finances. But there’s a possibility that a new seat will be created in south Florida whose lines would be unknown.

Up the coast, former West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel and businessman Patrick Murphy have come out guns blazing against controversial Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), even though the area they live in could gain a new Democratic-leaning House seat and insiders suggest they don’t plan on facing each other in a primary.

The strategy has worked so far: Frankel and Murphy had two of the strongest fundraising quarters of any non-incumbents. Former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) and former Orlando Police Chief Val Demings are in a similar situation as they await a new map.

While Murphy and Frankel have used a possible opponent to jumpstart their fundraising, other candidates have avoided picking a target.

Businessman Denny Heck lost narrowly to Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R) in a southeastern Washington district. This year he could challenge her again, or he could run in a new district if it is drawn around his hometown of Olympia by the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission. He has thus far avoided attacking Herrera Beutler, and still raised $230,000 in the first five weeks of his campaign.

Heck Campaign Director Phil Gardner said where Heck runs and whom his opponent is will have a minimal impact on his campaign. “We’re chugging ahead — the redistricting process will work itself out when it works itself out,” said Gardner.

Republican challengers face the same issue, and have handled it similarly.

Former California Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado is being touted by the National Republican Congressional Committee as a top recruit against Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), whose district could be made much less Democratic by the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission. But he did not mention Capps in his campaign announcement and told a local television station that he had no idea if he would face her or not in the next election.

Some other sought-after candidates are sitting on their hands until they can tell what type of districts they would be running in, according to campaign sources in both parties.

But as maps become law in some states, numerous candidates have quickly emerged.

Iowa was one of the first states to complete the process. The new map helped convince former Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack to challenge Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) in a district that is not as heavily Republican as the one King has represented for the past decade.

In Illinois, a number of Democratic candidates including former Rep. Bill Foster decided to run after the Democrat-controlled Legislature passed a redistricting map that offered its party many opportunities.

Republicans’ release of a map in North Carolina that could force as many as four Democrats from the House triggered a number of Republican campaign announcements in the past week.

This story was updated at 8:30 a.m. to elaborate on Florida’s redistricting process.