House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (pictured), the longtime No. 2 House Democrat, has frequently traveled to meet with and fundraise for candidates, particularly in areas where House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s “liberal values” wouldn’t be welcomed. | Cliff Owen/AP Photo Hoyer plays Florida kingmaker

MIAMI — Facing a Democratic bloodbath in one of the party’s most coveted open congressional seats, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer flew to South Florida last weekend and met with first-time candidate Matt Haggman to pressure him to withdraw from the race and run in a neighboring district against GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, according to sources briefed on the discussions.

The trip was the latest in a series of Democratic Party efforts to cull crowded candidate fields and clear a path to the general election for the establishment’s preferred candidates — typically those seen by party officials as best suited to win in November.


Hoyer’s coffee-shop diplomacy failed to convince Haggman, who is one of seven candidates in the Democratic-leaning Miami district trailing the front-runner, Donna Shalala.

“We are running in District 27,” Haggman’s campaign, which didn’t deny having district-switching talks with Hoyer, said in a written statement to POLITICO.

“I don’t talk about my private meetings, but we did talk,” Hoyer told POLITICO when asked about his discussion with Haggman over running in the nearby 25th Congressional District. Asked about meeting Haggman in a Fort Lauderdale coffee shop that wasn’t in either district, Hoyer tersely said “we did.”

Hoyer is expected to make more recruiting and field-clearing trips like this in South Florida and in dozens of other races across the nation as Democratic officials attempt to shape the House election landscape and avoid bruising, cash-draining primary fights. The heart of the problem is too many candidates and too much money in some primaries, and not enough candidates and money in other races.

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“We are looking at the biggest House battlefield in at least a decade and recruiting aggressively, up to the filing deadline, to make sure there are strong candidates running to win those districts,” one Democratic official said when asked about Hoyer’s meeting with Haggman.

Hoyer, the longtime No. 2 House Democrat, has frequently traveled to meet with and fundraise for candidates, particularly in areas where House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s “liberal values” wouldn’t be welcomed.

But a growing chorus of Democrats have called for a leadership change after the election with an eye toward Pelosi and Hoyer, who have been in power for 15 years and are both in their late 70s.

With the possibility of recapturing the House majority closer than any time in recent history, there is extra pressure from within the caucus on current and hopeful Democratic leaders to show that they can deliver. Hoyer held a fundraiser with former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday bringing in $500,000, POLITICO Playbook reported. Hoyer’s total raised for House Democrats this cycle is $5.5 million.

Few areas in the nation highlight the complications Hoyer, Pelosi and Democrats in general face like South Florida.

In the vacant 27th Congressional District, Democrats have eight candidates raising hundreds of thousands of dollars per quarter. In the nearby 25th District represented by Diaz-Balart, the party has just one little-known and underfinanced candidate, Alina Valdes, who has raised a mere $1,653, as of the most recently reported financial disclosures in December.

Yet the 25th District voted narrowly for President Donald Trump — by roughly 2 percentage points — so few want to challenge the entrenched Diaz-Balart, who survived back-to-back blue waves when President Barack Obama crushed his opponents in Miami-Dade County.

If the anti-Trump wave is big enough in November, national Democrats hope, Diaz-Balart won’t be able to hold on against a well-funded candidate like Haggman. And they believe that’s even more true for a third Republican-held seat in South Florida, the 26th Congressional District, which Trump lost by 16 percentage points. There, Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is starting to post impressive fundraising numbers against Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other interested parties have polled South Florida’s congressional districts and concluded that Haggman and many of the Democratic primary candidates in the 27th have little chance of beating Shalala, the former Clinton Foundation chief and past University of Miami president.

After Shalala entered the race and posted a $1.17 million cash haul in only three weeks, Hoyer and others began trying to clear the primary field, to no avail. Aside from having more personal money and better name ID than Haggman or any of the other candidates, Shalala also draws money directly from the same donor pool as Haggman — the arts and philanthropic community that enjoyed his check-writing largesse when he led the Knight Foundation.

In recent weeks, the DCCC and other campaigns have polled the 25th District to determine whether Haggman should challenge Diaz-Balart.

One independent voter who was polled in the 25th District, 62-year-old Maribel Baliban of Miami Lakes, told POLITICO she was confused when she first got the call.

“Why are you asking about that? He doesn’t live in this district,” she said she asked.

Would she vote for Haggman, even though he doesn’t live in the district?

“Over Diaz-Balart,” she said, “yes.”

Haggman’s political adviser, Helena Poleo, said there’s no reason to look beyond the seat he’s already running for.

“What we are hearing as we walk and talk to the community is that people are hungry for new voices and new leadership in Congress, and Matt fits that profile,” she said.

