Democrats fear they might be reaching too far in push for huge House margin

By Annie Grayer, Manu Raju, CNN

(CNN) — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared Wednesday that the path to a Democratic majority goes through Trump country, with his party seriously battling for seats that the president won by double digits two years ago.

But with limited resources, there’s still friction over whether to play it safe, or try to run up the margin.

The tension inside the party came into focus this week when Democrats added six, fresh Democratic candidates to the list of pickup opportunities it felt worth prioritizing from districts in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, New York, Nevada and Tennessee – all of which President Donald Trump carried, two of them by more than 20 points. In a party already struggling with money – and trying to also win in places like Ohio, Oklahoma and Indiana, where the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified districts as in play – some lawmakers and strategists wondered whether the list missed the mark.

One Democratic lawmaker called the party’s House campaign arm on Monday, demanding an explanation on how it is deciding which races to highlight and invest in.

“We are dealing with a lot of upset candidates out there who are wondering why they didn’t make the cut. And it’s just a function of limited resources that have to be spread around an ever-expanding map,” the lawmaker told CNN.

That lawmaker raised in particular why the list of pickups didn’t include Democrat Fred Wellman, who is running to unseat GOP Rep. Ann Wagner in Missouri in a district Trump won by 7.9 points. That is a smaller margin than some of the other races added to the list. The lawmaker said party leaders shared there were about a half dozen other candidates in similar races that the party doesn’t have the resources to support. Wellman’s campaign declined to comment.

Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, who is running in New York’s 3rd Congressional District and is being outspent more than two-to-one during the final four weeks of his tough re-election bid, said he feels the party might be gambling by focusing too much on pickups, rather than holding on to seats like his.

“My life would be a lot easier if they gave me more money. It’s a risky strategy. But I support the leadership and their strategy and if we all win on Election Night, it’s going to be a great victory,” Suozzi told CNN.

DCCC Executive Director Julie Merz said in a statement, “We have calibrated our limited resources district-by-district to ensure we re-elect our Frontliners and flip enough seats to win the majority.”

“The simple truth is: the national environment continues to deteriorate for Republicans and the more we raise in these final weeks – the more we can expand the number of districts in play.”

Jeffries said the party is focused on taking back the majority – but he did not detail what margin they might try to create to help them govern more comfortably.

“We’re working hard to get to 218, and then to win as many seats as we can on top of it,” Jeffries said. He added that the “overwhelming majority of seats that we’re working hard to flip” in Trump-won seats are ones he carried from the “mid-to-low single digits into ones that he may have won by 12-15 points.”

The decisions are not easy. Trump’s popularity is plummeting, the cost of living and diesel prices are skyrocketing, and the unpopular Iran war rages on. But despite an eye-popping $230 million fundraising haul, Democrats have consistently had to contend with Trump’s $400 million war chest.

Even the House Majority PAC, the House Democrats’ political action committee, has publicly acknowledged that expanding the map requires more money.

“To maintain our momentum, we must close our $38.5 million budget gap by the October 21 operational deadline,” Executive Director Abby Curran Horrell said in an email to donors shared with CNN. “We recently announced that we’re expanding the battlefield and investing in additional competitive districts. Additional programming requires additional resources.”

Jeffries said he believed that Democrats had neutralized one of the GOP’s biggest advantages in this year’s midterms — the gerrymandering war. “Under no circumstances are Republicans winning five seats in Texas or four seats in Florida. In fact, they may not get the five when you combine the two biggest Republican states together,” he said, noting that GOP leaders had initially believed they’d win nine seats between the two states.

And he said Trump on the campaign trail was helping.

“The more Donald Trump campaigns for Republicans across the country, the better the opportunity for Democrats to further convince the American people that we are the only ones determined to make life affordable for them,” Jeffries said.

Some operatives, lawmakers and aides, though, argue that the party should not try to expand the map too far into new districts with the limited resources available, but rather make sure the safer seats are protected.

“Democrats need to expand the map, but we also need to be really focused on what are the winnable races,” a longtime Democratic campaign aide told CNN. “You don’t get extra points for only losing by one point. This is about building a majority and flipping the House and flipping the Senate. So, losing a couple states or a couple districts that were Trump + 16 and only losing them by one or two. I mean yeah, that’s a nice moral victory, but this shit matters. We need to win.”

Of the 46 races listed on the party’s coveted “Red to Blue” list, House Majority PAC has put money behind 28 of them and is scheduled to spend in at least 15 more between now and Election Day. There are 12 races the group is involved in where Trump won by 10 points or more, according to AdImpact. Between now and Election Day, they’ve made reservations in seven more districts that Trump carried by at least 10 points, according to AdImpact.

In races in Nebraska, California and Michigan, the group has taken money out, according to AdImpact, because they feel so confident about their chances there. Outside organizations like Michael Bloomberg’s group, Everytown, are filling in 8 high-profile races across the country that have long been on Democrats’ target list so the House Majority PAC can move its money elsewhere, including in more competitive and red-leaning areas.

From Friday through Election Day, the House Majority PAC is set to be the largest advertiser in the midterms, spending a total of $171 million, according to AdImpact. The Republican counterpart, Congressional Leadership Fund, has about $108 million booked over the same final stretch.

To be sure, lawmakers argue, deciding whether to play it safe or try to run up the score is a good problem to have, and the options are not mutually exclusive.

Adding members to the “Red to Blue” list is also not a promise of resources, but rather a signal to donors to pay attention to certain races. And many of the latest additions are in cost effective markets where a small investment late in the game can go a lot further than in places like New York or Texas, where the media market is expensive and crowded.

“Red to Blue is what you make of it,” a Democratic strategist who works with ‘Red to Blue’ candidates told CNN. “It’s kind of on you once you get that designation to go out and fundraise off of it and convince donors that it’s worthwhile.”

Some Democratic groups, like VoteVets, have taken a more targeted approach on where they put their money, focusing on “where Democrats can win, and not betting on the lucky loser,” according to a Democratic operative. Many in the party are still haunted by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Trump, which they blame in part on a desire to run up the score rather than win true battlegrounds.

“I think the question is, with the resources that we have, where do we put them? I always think about Hillary 2016 as something that no Democrat has forgotten,” a Democratic strategist told CNN.

The party has seen some early indications it can be successful in targeting an expanded map.

Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan had been advocating for the DCCC to add Mitchell Berman, the Democrat trying to unseat House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil in Wisconsin, to the list of races it felt worthy of trying to flip, but it wasn’t until the party’s own polling saw the gap closing in September that it finally happened.

At the time, some in the party were surprised given Steil’s outsized cash advantage.

“I was not a believer of this race two weeks ago. And in fact, if you called me and asked me about it, I would have been like no way in hell,” a Democratic operative, who worked on expanding the map for Democrats during the 2018 blue wave, told CNN.

Since then, Mitchell has closed the polling gap. Then the money started coming in: the DCCC has made a $271,000 ad buy, and House Majority PAC has bought $880,000 worth of digital ads, according to the HMP email shared with CNN. Strategists point out that going on offense in districts like Steil’s forced Republicans to then divert resources they could have spent elsewhere.

Now that operative is singing a different tune, telling CNN, “it’s just indicative of the environment.” And Pocan said the GOP’s fundraising advantage might not be the obstacle many feared.

“I think the real story we’re going to be talking about at the end of November or mid-November is going to be the story that money didn’t have, for maybe the first time, the same influence it normally does,” Pocan told CNN.

The stakes for Democrats are high. As the last two years have demonstrated, a narrow majority is harder to keep together to pass legislation and achieve your party’s priorities.

“The bigger majority we have going into January 3rd and the 120th Congress, the more ability we will have to govern, to actually make a difference in people’s lives,” said Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider, who represents a coalition of moderate Democrats in the House and is trying to help the party flip more seats. “I don’t think we should be backing candidates because they’re working really hard, and we just want them to know we love them for their effort, but we don’t think they’re going to win. We should be playing in races where we have a shot at winning.”

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CNN’s David Wright and Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.