“Look, I’m not going to be satisfied until half of Congress is women,” Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) said at the DCCC’s headquarters near the Capitol. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo Elections New DCCC chair Bustos vows to stay on offense in 2020 She has ambitious plans for the DCCC, vowing to create a structure unlike any House Democrats have ever ‘seen in history.’

Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) rose to prominence as one of just a handful of House Democrats from Trump districts. Now, it’s her job to protect — and even expand — that growing caucus.

Bustos, the newly elected chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, ran through the numbers of the new House of Representatives in an interview: Democrats captured a whopping 22 out of 25 GOP-held districts that Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, but they also expanded their ranks in districts President Donald Trump carried from 12 to 31, cementing a House majority.


Bustos’ primary task is to defend that majority. But the four-term Democrat says there is also room for her party to expand: Fully 50 House members won by less than 5 percentage points in 2018 — 24 Democrats and 26 Republicans — and Bustos intends to press into those marginal districts in the next two years.

“Look, I’m not going to be satisfied until half of Congress is women,” Bustos said at the DCCC’s headquarters near the Capitol.

Bustos has ambitious plans for the DCCC, vowing to create a structure unlike any House Democrats have ever “seen in history.” She plans to unveil the first round of members in the DCCC’s Frontline program, which protects incumbents in vulnerable districts, as early as January.

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“There will not be one battleground district, not one, that we will leave unprotected or uncontested,” Bustos said. “Any chance we have to pick up a seat, we will go in full force. For all of what we call our Frontline members, the brand new members who are in these tougher districts, we will go in full force.”

Bustos’ own district is unlikely to be among them: Though Trump carried it in 2016, it had gone strongly for Democratic presidential candidates in the past, and Bustos won by 20 points in 2016 and then 24 in 2018.

But Bustos’ experience representing and campaigning in her western Illinois district, along the state’s borders with Iowa and Wisconsin, has informed her intentions for the DCCC. She went into the last election expecting to be targeted by Republicans after Trump’s showing in her district, a rare position for the head of a party committee. After 2016, Bustos authored a report warning Democrats that the path to the House majority ran through rural districts and saying the national party had to pay more attention to rural areas.

Bustos “understands more than the rest of us the politics of small town America,” said Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.).

Bustos had little patience for litmus tests during the midterms, deriding fellow Democrats for pressuring candidates on impeachment and warning that a focus on social issues could cost the party wins in the Midwest or Trump country districts. In 2018, Bustos would ask her constituents what they want her to know before she flew back to Washington each week.

“That is what guides me, and it is not impeachment, it is not Russia,” Bustos said last year. “It is healthcare, it is ‘I’m not making the kind of money I was a decade ago, I’m working two jobs, I don’t have a retirement plan.’”

That could put Bustos on course for conflict with progressives bent on challenging sitting Democratic representatives. Groups like Justice Democrats — and allies including new Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — have said they want to mount primary campaigns against members they see as out of sync with blue districts.

Bustos is going into the next election cycle focused on building consensus. When you have an “open line of communication,” she said, “you can get to a good place.”

“I want to build a relationship with all the different groups and learn from someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Bustos said. “Look, she’s got 1.6 million Twitter followers. She’s the youngest woman ever to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. I think there’s a lot I can learn from her, that we can learn from her.”

But Bustos quickly added that at the DCCC her “focus is on defeating Republicans, not defeating fellow Democrats,” adding that she supports “Democrats who are in the House.”

“I hope we don’t have to deal with a lot of primary angst because it takes a lot of resources when that happens,” Bustos continued. “We’ve got a tough two years ahead, with the other side of the aisle, so I hope those are the battles we can focus on.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a Justice Democrats backer, praised Bustos as a “big consensus builder” within the caucus.

“Obviously our politics aren’t the same, I’m more progressive, but I still supported her because I think she’s willing to listen and build coalitions,” Khanna said.

As Bustos attempts to reshape the DCCC in preparation for an expansive 2020 battlefield, she has to manage one final 2018 race in North Carolina.

On election night, Republican Mark Harris appeared to narrowly win North Carolina’s 9th District, but the election board subsequently refused to certify the results, citing irregularities with absentee ballots. The state election board is set to hold an evidentiary hearing in January and Democrats expect a new election will be called shortly thereafter.

“We’ve had more than a dozen people on the ground,” Bustos said. “We literally were going door to door to get signed affidavits from voters who were cheated. We’ve got lawyers, we have field people, we have campaign people, we have communications people. We’re very, very involved.”

“I think the end result will be there will be a special election, and we’ll do everything we can to make sure we’re successful and we don’t have a guy like Mark Harris, who hired a felon to cheat people, that he is not seated,” Bustos added.

CORRECTION: Rep. Cheri Bustos’ district was incorrectly characterized in an earlier version of this article.