{UAH} HOW DONALD WAS WORKING HARD FOR AMERICANS AS NANCY PELOSI WAS SUCKING THE FIRKIN IMPEACHMENT TIT
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How Trump and McCarthy wooed Jeff Van Drew to switch parties
Republicans worked for six weeks to persuade the New Jersey freshman, who opposed impeachment.
Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew had just voted against an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump in late October when the top House Republican gave him a message on the House floor.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), a key Trump ally, told the freshman from New Jersey that Trump would like to see him become a Republican, according to several sources familiar with the conversation.
But McCarthy also had a threat for Van Drew — Republicans “were going to beat you anyway,” he warned. Trump won Van Drew’s South Jersey district by nearly 5 points in 2016, and GOP leaders were already heavily targeting the seat next year.
What followed over the next six weeks was a stealthy effort by Republicans to woo Van Drew as Democrats intensified their drive to impeach Trump. The Republicans’ covert campaign will pay off this week for Trump and McCarthy when Van Drew formally switches parties in the coming days.
The GOP campaign to persuade Van Drew to defect — rare move that has led to mixed results for congressional party switchers — stretched from the confines of the Capitol up to Van Drew’s home state.
Behind the scenes, former New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie spoke to Van Drew about switching parties, said GOP sources. Kellyanne Conway, a top White House adviser who hails from that district, also sought a meeting with the congressman on an unrelated issue, which Van Drew’s aides suspected was a pretense for her to lobby him to switch parties. The meeting never happened, but it was clear the White House was upping the pressure on Van Drew.
McCarthy kept on reaching out to Van Drew, as did other House Republicans. Van Drew and Trump exchanged several phone calls in the past couple of weeks, brokered in part by McCarthy. Trump and McCarthy argued that Van Drew would be better off in the GOP. And they also noted that Van Drew's old New Jersey state Senate seat, which overlaps with his congressional district, had been carried by Republicans in recent Garden State elections.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
There was buzz in House leadership circles that he was going to switch, but the freshman lawmaker denied he was jumping parties.
“There’s rumors going around about everything. I had [heard] so many rumors over the years about all kinds of crazy things," Van Drew told reporters last Wednesday. “No, it’s not [true]. I’m just doing what I’m doing, I’m still a Democrat.”
But during the past week, Van Drew and his chief of staff, Allison Murphy — without the knowledge of other aides — sought an in-person meeting with the president. It was quickly granted and Van Drew went to the Oval Office on Friday, unbeknownst to Democratic leaders.
Van Drew told Trump he’d make the switch. Van Drew then went back to Capitol Hill and informed his staff of the decision, but asked them to keep it quiet until the following week. There was little chance of that happening.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office began reaching out to Van Drew aides that day to find out what was going on. Other top Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) also called Van Drew, although he wasn’t responding.
By Saturday, word leaked out about the Trump meeting, and press reports confirmed that Van Drew was switching parties. By Sunday night, most of the New Jersey lawmaker’s staff on Capitol Hill had quit, despite efforts by Van Drew and Murphy to persuade them to stay.
“Sadly, Congressman Van Drew’s decision to join the ranks of the Republican party led by Donald Trump does not align with the values we brought to this job when we joined his office,” five aides said in a joint resignation letter. It also states that “Trump Republicans” have worked to “aid and abet Trump as he shreds the Constitution and tears the country apart.”
Van Drew’s defection is a big public relations win for Republicans, who will argue that it shows impeachment has backfired on Pelosi and the Democrats. While it won’t change the impeachment result in the House — Trump will be impeached anyway and Van Drew was always expected to vote against it — the move helps the president get a positive headline in an otherwise rough week for him.
McCarthy and other Republicans also made overtures to Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota about switching parties, but he turned them down. "There have been overtures by the highest levels of the Republican Party in the last couple weeks to ask if I would consider it and I told them no," Peterson told radio station KFGO on Monday.
For Van Drew, it’s a huge risk with a big potential payoff. He was already in trouble with the Democratic base after voting against Pelosi as speaker on the opening day of the 116th Congress, and his opposition against the impeachment inquiry on Oct. 31 only incensed party activists even more.
Recent polling further underscored the trouble Van Drew was facing. An internal poll conducted by Van Drew’s reelection campaign earlier this month showed only 24 percent of Democrats wanted him to stay in office, while 60 percent wanted him out.
Van Drew’s chances of making it out of a Democratic primary looked bleak, and then he would face a well-funded Republican opponent, David Richter, in the general election. Van Drew faced defeat on two fronts.
Yet now, with backing from Trump and an expected new committee assignment from McCarthy — one that helps his political prospects more than current seats on Agriculture and Natural Resources — Van Drew will likely sail through the GOP primary and head into the general election. His odds of being reelected have dramatically improved.
“It’s not a huge surprise,” said Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, another freshman Democrat who flipped a GOP district in 2018. “And as long as Washington continues to function the way it currently does, self-preservation will always take precedence over principle.”
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