Josh Gottheimer's uneasy search for a political middle ground: Kelly

Mike Kelly | NorthJersey

Josh Gottheimer pushed through the door of Abbie’s Dinner not far from his home in Wyckoff and headed toward a corner table. He dropped into a chair and ordered coffee.

It was the morning after Gottheimer, a Democrat, won a second term in Congress in a district once dominated for more than three decades by Republicans, including the Republican Tea Party conservative Scott Garrett.

Gottheimer looked exhausted. He also seemed energized.

With one hand, he thumbed through text messages on his cell phone. In his other hand, he held a wrinkled piece of unlined, white paper.

The list.

For much of Election Day and into the next morning, Gottheimer, a blue pen in hand, had been scratching names on the paper for what he hopes will be a newly energized coalition of Democratic and Republican centrists – the group, he says, that could break a decade or more of Congressional gridlock.

He took a long sip of coffee and looked up from the paper. Two dozen new names. He crossed out one or two, circled a few others, underlined a few more.

“The middle has just grown substantially,” he said, smiling slightly.

This is Gottheimer’s dream: A coalition of middle-ground moderates, exerting control of the House of Representatives, pushing the fringe elements of both parties – “wingnuts,” says Gottheimer — to the sidelines. The result, he hopes, would be meaningful compromises among Democrats and Republicans on gun control legislation, federal investments in roads and other infrastructure projects such as the Gateway Hudson River Tunnel, as well as reforms to health care, immigration and tax laws.

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In other words, no gridlock.

Will it happen? Gottheimer falls silent for a moment, then mentions the post-election calls by progressive Democrats for an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.

“I don’t know,” he says. “If all people hear about is impeachment, that’s going to turn the country off. I think they’d much rather hear about infrastructure.”

If there is going to be a change in the way Congress operates — in particular, an unlocking of legislative gridlock — there is a good chance Gottheimer will be among the leaders. And whatever role he plays in that leadership will likely begin with that list of names on a piece of paper he brought to breakfast at Abbie’s Diner.

Gottheimer, 43, grew up in Essex County, but spent much of his teenage years and early adult life on a guided tour of politics.

At 16, he was a U.S. Senate page. Later, he interned with C-SPAN and with Senate and House leadership. After college — at the University of Pennsylvania and Oxford — and before graduating from Harvard Law School, he wrote speeches for the Clinton administration. Hillary Clinton even described him as “something of a family member.”

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Then, after more stops — Ford Motor Company and Microsoft, Gottheimer moved with his wife and children to Wyckoff and decided to run for Congress in one of the most weirdly diverse House districts in the nation — a boomerang-shaped landscape that stretches across the top of New Jersey from the ultra-liberal enclaves of Teaneck to the ultra-conservative hills of Sussex County. On any given day, Gottheimer could spend a morning on one side of his district with a group of yoga enthusiasts who sip herbal tea. By afternoon, he could be rubbing shoulders on the other side of his district with camouflage-clad hunters. If you want to keep winning as a Democrat on that kind of multifaceted turf, you need to find some sort of middle ground.

That’s why I wanted to talk to Gottheimer after Tuesday’s election.

He has long promoted a moderate set of policies that is part of a strategy that appeals to liberal Democrats as well as conservative Republicans, where bipartisan legislation can be forged and where compromise is not considered the equivalent of treason. In Congress, with Republican Rep. Tom Reed of New York, he co-chairs the Problem Solvers Caucus, a coalition of 48 moderate Democrats and Republicans with an unabashed goal of proposing compromise legislation. He was also rated in 2017 by Georgetown University’s Lugar Center as the eighth most bipartisan member of Congress.

In his victory speech on Tuesday, Gottheimer seemed to have the Problem Solvers agenda and bipartisanship in mind.

“Tonight’s victory is a clear win for all those in the common-sense middle and for the values we hold so dear,” he said. “Now it’s our time to bind up our nation’s wounds. It’s our time to come together, and move forward, remembering that extremism, on either side, holds our country back. Division isn’t the answer. Neither is obstruction for the sake of it, or attacking success, and old-time class warfare.”

What was striking in that speech is that Gottheimer did not call for a House investigation of Trump. Certainly, he was not advocating for Trump’s impeachment, as numerous Democrats have.

The next morning, at Abbie’s Diner, Gottheimer said his call for compromise in his victory speech did not sit well with some Democrats in the audience.

“I thought I was going to get booed off stage,” he said.

That may be a bit of an exaggeration. But the statement underscores how Gottheimer’s strategy of compromise has made him something of an of an outlier — at least, in his own mind. Democratic progressives have criticized him for his moderation. Republican conservatives have pooh-poohed his ties to the Clintons, trying to paint him as something of a closet liberal. Even a recent Atlantic magazine article that mentioned Gottheimer predicted that the 2018 elections "could kill the American moderate for good."

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Gottheimer is a Democratic loyalist. No doubt about it. You can’t pass through the char-broiled Clinton White House without understanding that politics is ultimately a game of remaining loyal to your friends.

But Gottheimer is not naïve either. His moderate policies, he says, are geared to him remaining popular in his diverse district – and winning re-election. At the same time, however, being a moderate and looking for compromise makes you a target for the political crossfire from both sides.

In recent months, he emerged as a leading Democratic voice in opposing Democrat Nancy Pelosi being restored as Speaker of the House unless she agrees to a series of rule changes proposed by him and other members of the Problem Solvers that would allow for more moderate compromises on legislation.

So far, Pelosi has only hinted that she might be open to the changes proposed by Gottheimer and others. Gottheimer says he is awaiting a flat-out commitment before he endorses her as Speaker.

Which brings Gottheimer back to that wrinkled piece of paper and the list of names.

Politics is about numbers. Right now, Gottheimer says he thinks he can build a coalition of nearly 60 centrist Democrats who would be willing to work with Republicans to craft modest changes in immigration and health care laws, as well as push through a major infrastructure bill that would include the Gateway project to build new commuter rail tunnels under the Hudson River.

The problem, he says, is that many House Democrats don’t want to pass any legislation that would make Trump look good – especially with the 2020 presidential election season just over the political horizon.

“You can’t stop getting things done for the country because it’s going to get a win for the president,” he says. “Are we supposed to ignore our challenges?”

Such is the challenge for the new Congress – and its new Democratic majority. Should it take aim at Trump and launch investigations of his chaotic, ethically challenged White House, especially in the wake of the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the possible challenge to the investigation of Russian meddling into the 2016 presidential election? Or should Congress fix the roads and perhaps the Hudson River rail tunnels?

Gottheimer shakes his head and gazes out the Abbie’s Diner window at a road crew filling potholes. He is no fan of Trump and would like to see the president defeated in 2020. But too many problems remain and Congressional gridlock won’t solve them.

“This is the moment,” he says, quietly.

How long this moment lasts may depend on Josh Gottheimer's ability to stand in the middle.

Email: Kellym@northjersey.com