TRUCKEE, Calif. — Following their Election Day romp in Virginia, New Jersey and a handful of other states, Democrats rushed to fan the prospect of a wave election in 2018.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quickly added 11 more Republican-held districts — long-shot seats that aren’t typically in play — to its existing list of 80 targeted races. Candidates in those newly added seats got a sudden dose of fundraising and organizational assistance, in addition to help with budgeting and media operations.


The incumbent Republicans in those seats, some of them unaccustomed to vigorous challenges, are already feeling the squeeze.

California Rep. Tom McClintock, who represents one of the newly added districts, acknowledged “a huge enthusiasm gap that favors the Democrats right now.”

“I think in a lot of ways, it’s the 2010 dynamic in reverse,” he said.

Rep. Glenn Grothman — one of two Wisconsin Republicans on the list, which includes House Speaker Paul Ryan — told the local WISN-AM radio station last month that his campaign was “not raising as much money as we should.”

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“I am very apprehensive about the future,” said Grothman, who represents a Republican-oriented district in Central Wisconsin. “Right now it’s kind of the calm before the storm.”

Though Grothman and McClintock easily won reelection in 2014, they have good cause to be apprehensive. Aside from the potential drag of the president’s low approval ratings, both incumbents face the unusual prospect of well-funded Democratic challengers.

In Wisconsin, the state Democratic Party hired a campaign organizing director in an off-year for the first time this year, said the party’s chairwoman, Martha Laning.

She called the effort to unseat Grothman and Ryan “realistic.”

“People are frustrated,” she said. “They don’t see things getting done that are helping them.”

In McClintock’s sprawling, largely rural Northern California district — where Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by more than 14 percentage points last year — the congressman’s opponents are raising cash at a surprising clip. One of his Democratic challengers, Jessica Morse, raised more money than McClintock in the third quarter. Another potential Democratic foe, Regina Bateson, saw campaign contributions increase 10-fold the day after the Virginia election, her campaign said.

Organizers of Red to Blue California, a political action committee that works against Republicans in California House races, said month-over-month contributions shot up 16 percent in November over October.

“Had I had the grass-roots energy in ’16 as there exists right now,” said Michael Eggman, a California Democrat who opened the PAC after twice running unsuccessfully to unseat GOP Rep. Jeff Denham, “I’m very confident I would have won that race.”

Bill Burton, a Democratic consultant who worked at the DCCC when Democrats won control of the House in 2006, said “the similarities that we have between this cycle and that cycle are a massively unpopular president, scandals that are rocking the Republican Party and an electorate that is just desperate for some kind of change. … That puts a lot of districts on the map that otherwise would not have been on the map.”

California Rep. Tom McClintock, who represents one of the newly added districts, acknowledged “a huge enthusiasm gap that favors the Democrats right now.” | Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo

In total, Democrats must net 24 seats to win back control of the House. That will require that the party compete not only in relatively favorable areas, but also in some of the more conservative pockets of the country, courting whiter, less educated populations that, in some cases, have not gone for a Democrat in decades.

Burton, who is now working on congressional campaigns in California, Wisconsin and Kansas, conceded “the demographics in these districts are tough.”

“Democrats are going to have to get a lot of people who own guns and didn’t graduate from college to vote for them this election,” he added,

No Democrat has defeated a Republican in any state Assembly, U.S. House or statewide election in McClintock's district dating back at least five years, according to an analysis prepared for POLITICO by Darry Sragow and Rob Pyers of the California Target Book, which handicaps races in the state.



“Based on hard data, these districts are going to be very tough for the Democrats to win,” Sragow said.

With Republicans’ large registration advantage and record of victories in his district, McClintock said, “I’m pretty confident that we’re retaining the silent majority — the vast silent majority — in the district.”

Mark Graul, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin, was similarly skeptical about the prospect of Democrats toppling Ryan or Grothman. However, he said, “Anyone who thinks they know what’s going to happen a year from now is smoking crack rock.”

“You can certainly make a plausible argument that if you’re a Republican you’ve got to be on guard, and wary and ready to run a good race next year based on what we saw in Virginia,” he said.

In a memo last month, Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), the DCCC chairman, acknowledged the aspirational aspect of the Democrats’ map expansion. While many House races are already highly competitive, he said, “others have clear paths to competitiveness pending the right political environment.”