With voter anger toward Washington near all-time highs, congressional leaders might be expected to hide out until after Election Day to avoid giving their candidates any sense of establishment support.
Instead, some leaders are fanning out across the nation and appearing in public to try to boost candidates in the key races. House Speaker Mike Johnson trekked across the Northeast and Midwest last week to appear with Republicans in a handful of battlegrounds.
And over the weekend House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries jumped from North Jersey into the Philadelphia suburbs to boost a pair of challengers facing popular Republicans with longtime brands in their districts.
This fall is not playing out like the “Fire Pelosi” wave of 2010, when a sign with that motto hung outside the walls of the Republican National Committee for the final seven months before those midterm elections.
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The House speaker at the time, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California), became the face of Republican campaigns and starred in what her advisers estimated to be $50 million worth of negative ads — similar to how Democrats in the mid- to late 1990s made then-Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia a recurring image in their campaigns against Republican candidates.
This era’s congressional leaders simply lack the menace and notoriety in the public imagination to serve as political villains for ad makers in each party.
For Democrats, President Donald Trump is the larger-than-life figure who animates their liberal base, not Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
“The Republican Party is so defined by Trump that Mike Johnson and John Thune have not become high-profile figures,” said Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of Inside Elections, an independent political analysis publication.
Despite almost four years as Democratic leader, Jeffries does not draw nearly as much attention from the conservative political media machine as do Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“If Republicans are looking for a big-city liberal to demonize — even one from New York City — they have two higher-profile options in AOC and Mamdani,” Gonzales told The Washington Sun.
Polling on the favorability of these congressional leaders is not as plentiful as it is for presidents and those who have run for president, but it bears out the idea that they do not have large profiles among voters, particularly among the small percentage of independents who decide late in campaigns and tend to determine the outcomes of close races.
In early September, Marquette University’s polling outfit tested all four leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has been in the spotlight the longest and, not surprisingly, is the least popular of the so-called Big Four.
Only 20% of all adults have a favorable impression of Schumer, while 54% hold an unfavorable impression, with close to a third of Americans expressing very unfavorable views of the Democrat. His own party’s voters have soured on him: Just 32% of Democrats hold Schumer in a favorable light, while 44% view him unfavorably.
The other leaders have relatively better standings. Johnson draws strong favorability among Republicans, with a split of 49% to 17%, while 68% of Democrats view him unfavorably. Almost half of independents don’t know enough about him to hold a view of the speaker.
Almost 40% of all adults have no view of Jeffries, while 21% have a favorable image of the Democratic leader and 40% view him unfavorably.
Thune, who is not even two years into the post of majority leader, is the most unknown of the quartet, with 53% of adults saying they do not know enough about him to offer an opinion.
This anonymity, plus Trump’s omnipresence in politics, makes it easier for Johnson and Thune to parachute into battleground spots without turning it into a bad story for the candidates on the receiving end.
“Even though Democrats don’t like Johnson and Thune, they don’t really generate the same anger among base Democratic voters compared to Trump,” Gonzales said.
So, last week, Thune dropped into Minnesota to stump with former sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya, the Republican nominee who is a long shot to win the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Tina Smith.
He said the quiet part out loud, about how his presence there was meant to signal to Republican donors that they should support Tafoya’s campaign. “Obviously, translating that into financial resources and support coming here is something we hope to see happen,” Thune told local reporters.
In Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia, Jeffries appeared alongside the popular Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, both of them trying to raise the profile of Bob Harvie, who is challenging Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
Despite the slight Democratic lean of Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District — Trump has narrowly lost it three straight times — Fitzpatrick has regularly won by large margins. With Shapiro cruising to reelection, Democrats hope Saturday’s event draws attention to Harvie’s underfunded campaign.
“A vote for the current congressman is a vote for the status quo. It’s a vote for more of the same. But a vote for Bob Harvie is a vote for dramatic change,” told the crowd at a middle school in Yardley.
Johnson’s swing through four Pennsylvania battlegrounds included only a private stop with Fitzpatrick, who recently told The Sun that he doesn’t consider himself a member of the Republican Party anymore.
Otherwise, Johnson barnstormed across the state, drawing out local press to cover events that might otherwise get skipped if it was just Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan at a contracting services garage in Hazelton.
“He’s got a big target on his back because he’s very, very good at what he does,” Johnson said of Bresnahan to a local TV station.
The same day, he appeared in the Lehigh Valley touting Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, whose reelection bid is growing increasingly difficult.
“He’s very, very effective at what he does, and he has a passion that is contagious,” Johnson told local reporters.
Pelosi could not take this approach back in 2010, and in the ensuing years she was a sporadic presence at public events in swing districts. By mid-October 2010, only 29% of voters had a favorable view of the House speaker, and 56% had an unfavorable image of her, according to Gallup. Almost 60% of independent voters viewed her unfavorably.
The first woman to become speaker, she had a net favorable image her first term in the office, but then Republicans turned their political machine against her.
Democrats lost a net total of 63 seats in those midterms and remained in the minority until the 2018 elections, when then-Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin took a mixed approach to stumping for candidates.
Ryan did a whirlwind tour of a dozen key districts in the final couple weeks of the campaign, but some events were closed-door to avoid drawing attention to the Republican candidate being tied to an unpopular congressional leader.
He left Congress at the end of 2018 with a net favorability rating of negative 16%, just three years after starting off with a positive rating of 13%, Gallup found.
Johnson, who is less well known than Ryan or Pelosi, has more freedom to move about these days than did those two former speakers.
Democrats did issue a statement denouncing the swing-district Republicans for campaigning with Johnson.
“The best way to shake up a broken Washington is for Pennsylvanians to vote these bums out,” said Eli Cousin, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
But they have no plans to hang a “FIRE JOHNSON” sign outside their office.
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