Why Nancy Pelosi Cares About House Delegations

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

We are a little over five weeks from the election, with nearly 70% of all states starting to cast ballots this week.  Suffice it to say, this is a time that Nancy Pelosi after her decades in office knows well, and knows what needs to be done.  Her focus, as Speaker of the House and leader of the House Democrats is simple-elect as many Democrats to the House of Representatives as is humanly possible, whether they be incumbents or challengers.  The focus, however, is on winning as many seats as possible, with little care on where those seats are happening.  It's a numbers game, not to be picky about what regions/states those are coming from...or at least it normally is.  Jake Sherman of Politico reported today, though, that Pelosi is trying a specific tactic to help select members of Congress win, and not for the reason of winning the House, but winning the White House.

You can click on the link to see Pelosi's letter, but essentially Pelosi is using this as a fundraising bid to try to get members to focus their donations on winning state delegations.  The reason for this relates to the 12th Amendment, and Donald Trump's seemingly strange behavior focusing more on contesting a potential loss than creating an actual win.  Trump is hoping that if he can't get to 270 through electoral votes, he can count on Republicans in the House to get him a victory.

How does this work?  Well, for starters we have to assume that either there was a tie in the electoral college (269-269) or that Trump was able to delay (through legal action) the electoral votes of key states like Pennsylvania and Florida, so that no one was able to secure 270 votes in the electoral college.  If this happened, we'd have what is called a "contingent election" where the Top 3 vote getters (likely just Trump and Joe Biden) would advance to the House of Representatives, whereas the Top 2 (note the difference) candidates for Vice President (almost certainly Mike Pence & Kamala Harris) will go to the Senate.  The vote is conducted by the incoming Congress, not the current one.

You might assume that Trump would be foolish to count on the House in this situation-after all, the Democrats are heavily favored to win the House in November, by bigger margins than the Senate or the presidency.  But the Constitution has a weird quirk for the House in this scenario.  While the Senate each person gets a single vote (more on this in a second), in the House each delegation gets a vote, rather than each member.  As a result, the president is whomever can win the most delegations. The Constitution is very clear that tied delegations don't count, and that the president needs an absolute majority of the delegations (currently 26) to achieve this number.

This is Trump's ace-in-the-hole, because the majority of the Democrats' delegations are centrally located.  Look at California, for example, where only 7 Republicans are currently sitting (one seat is vacant) while 45 Democrats are there.  The state would obviously go blue, but that's just one vote.  Other ruby red states like Wyoming or South Dakota would get the same amount of say in the election that California does despite having tens of millions less people.  Based on current math, the Republicans have the majority in 26 seats, the Democrats have a pure majority in 22, a complicated majority in Michigan (it would be hard to say who Justin Amash would vote for, and he won't be in the House then anyway since he's retiring), and there is a tie in Pennsylvania.

Essentially, as a result, two things happen if (and keep in mind this is a BIG if), the Democrats are focusing on delegations-they essentially have to find a way to keep Donald Trump below 26 delegations (in which case, provided the tie wasn't broken, whomever won the VP vote in the Senate would become president), and ideally they'd get 26 delegations themselves.  That's theoretically possible, but difficult to achieve.  Here's how/why:

Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN)

First, let's take a look at the 22 delegations that are already Dem, because they need to stay blue (that's the easiest way to keep Trump down).  Most of the states this is fine.  While a Democrat might lose in California or New Mexico, it won't be enough to change the outcome of the delegation...with two exceptions.  Iowa is currently 3D-1R in their delegation, with three Democrats potentially vulnerable.  A tie, of course, wouldn't help Trump, but if the Republicans won two of these, they'd take over the delegation, and if they won one, they'd take away a crucial option for Joe Biden (for the sake of this article, I'm going to assume that every person votes for their party's nominee, as the past four years have taught us politicians lean harder on their party label than they do on their voters).  While polling is hard to come by (and frequently partisan) for House races, most polls indicate that if a House seat is going to flip, it'd be the second congressional district, which is open, and features State Sen. Rita Hart (D) and State Sen. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R); the other two incumbents are vulnerable, but seem to be more favored.  So Rita Hart would be the first Pelosi "Delegation Builder" candidate.

The other state is Minnesota, which was upended on Thursday when Secretary of State Steve Simon announced that due to the death of a third party candidate, the MN-2 race (which is a seat held by Rep. Angie Craig, a Democrat) won't take place until February.  Craig is suing, but if she isn't successful, Minnesota runs into an odd situation, as the Democrats don't have an outright majority without Craig, and their majority is vulnerable if Rep. Collin Peterson (D) loses in conservative seat, and they don't pickup another seat to replace him (most likely MN-1, between Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R) and Democrat Dan Feehan (D).  If Craig stays, or if Peterson/Feehan are able to win, the Democrats would maintain their majority, but if Pelosi is focusing on delegations, every vote in close races is going to matter, and she's going to want to push to ensure Craig is on the ballot and wins (as she's expected to do so).  In that fashion, Craig is our second "Delegation Builder," or at least her legal fees are.

All other held delegations are likely to stay blue, so let's move on to the two ties: Michigan and Pennsylvania.  Michigan isn't tied, as Justin Amash is the independent incumbent, and so therefore the delegation is 7D-6R-1I.  However, Amash is not running for another term, and so this seat will go back to a Democrat or Republican, and Republicans are favored, but not overwhelmingly so.  This state shows little sign of losing a Democrat, so the best the GOP can hope for here is a tie, but if the Democrats were able to win this seat (polling shows the Democrat competitive, but under-performing) or take the sixth district (the only other plausible option), they'd be able to get a majority outright and take the delegation.  These are reach seats, though, so I'm not going with a
"Delegation Builder" here.

State Auditor Eugene DePasquale (D-PA)

Pennsylvania is an easier reach, in my opinion.  Here the delegation is 9D-9R, but there is no indication that any of the nine Democrats are in competitive races, so again, the best the GOP can do is a tie.  The Democrats have two options here.  The first is the 1st district, which is likely to vote for Joe Biden, but the Republican incumbent is quite popular (Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick), and as a result has a solid lead-the Democrat will need to figure out a way to convert Biden/Fitzpatrick voters to have a shot.  The better option is the 10th district, where Rep. Scott Perry (R) is running an underwhelming campaign, and State Auditor Eugene DePasquale (D) is a strong candidate.  DePasquale, for my money would be the third of the "Delegation Builders" that Pelosi is talking about here.

It's easy to see a situation where the Democrats gain/hold majorities in MN, IA, and PA (Michigan feels like a reach, though it's still a tie).  That'd put the race at Trump-26 to Biden-23-Pelosi would need to take three more delegations in order to win the majority, and win at least one to get Trump to a point where the Senate decides the president.  You might think a state like Wisconsin or Florida would make sense to go after, but Wisconsin is gerrymandered to the hilt, and Florida is similarly, and the Dems chances of winning either state went out the window when Ross Spano lost his primary. No, if there are any delegations that could outright flip from R to D (or at least R to Tie), they are Alaska, Montana, Kansas, and Texas.

Alaska & Montana are the easiest flips, since it's just one seat (easy being a relative term here).  Alaska has a frequently vulnerable, difficult-to-beat incumbent in Rep. Don Young (R), who came closer to losing than he has in a while to Alyse Galvin (I, but one who will caucus with the D's).  Galvin is running again, and polling shows she's close, but it's difficult to poll Alaska so I'd assume she's a "Delegation Builder" but not a race we'd probably normally focus on if we were just focusing on a traditional "focus on the best pickup opportunities" scenario.

The same is true for Montana, which is an at-large district, and one where Democrats are polling surprisingly well with State Rep. Kathleen Williams against State Auditor Matt Rosendale (R).  The most recent New York Times poll actually showed Williams up over Rosendale, though with a lot of undecideds.  If Williams wins (she's probably the best definition of a "delegation builder") this would be a huge coup for the Democrats, and arguably she's the most important person in getting Trump at the very least to only 25 states, which would mean if Pelosi held her caucus, the VP would become president.

Theresa Greenfield (D-IA)

The other two delegations are bigger stretches.  Kansas isn't going to Biden, but if the Democrats can win the open KS-2, they would push the state to a tie, thus depriving Trump of his 26th state.  Texas would require a lot of wins for the Democrats to get there.  They are currently at 13D, and would need to pickup five seats to get a tie, though it's not out-of-the-question.  The Democrats are currently favored to win both the 23rd and 24th districts, so let's bank them.  If that's the case, the 10th, 21st, and 22nd seats are the "Delegation Builders" (the Democrats running there are Mike Siegel, Wendy Davis, & Sri Preston Kulkarni).  They could theoretically break one of the bigger reach districts to get an outright majority, but at that point I think Texas went blue, and it's difficult to see Trump plausibly contesting this in the House if he lost Texas.

So for my money, it's possible, but not probable that Trump will not have a majority of 26 delegations in January, and considerably less likely that Joe Biden will have 26 delegations, and thus we expand our list of "Delegate Builders" to the Senate.  Again, assuming all of the senators vote for their own party (Joe Manchin would need to be watched like a hawk in this scenario), currently we are 53R-47D.  But four Democrats (Sara Gideon, John Hickenlooper, Mark Kelly, & Cal Cunningham) are leading the incumbents and the same is true for one Republican (Tommy Tuberville).  This would result in a 50/50 Senate.  It's not entirely clear what happens if it's actually 50-50; many legal scholars argue that the VP cannot break a tie in this scenario, and thus no one would become vice president if the stalemate stood (making Nancy Pelosi the president), but I would imagine put into this scenario, Mitch McConnell would try to push legal precedence by having Pence cast a vote to make himself president.  Therefore, the safest way for Kamala Harris to take the VP job (and thus the White House) in this (admittedly far-fetched) scenario would be one more senator.  While there are a lot of options here (the Democrats are playing a lot of offense this year), the obvious choice for a fifth pickup for the Senate is Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, who has been ahead of Sen. Joni Ernst in a number of polls.  Greenfield, thus, becomes the last "Delegation Builder" in this scenario, and would choose the president.