SPOTSYLVANIA, Virginia— Surrounded by dozens of Corvettes and rallying voters ready to caravan in style to their local polling place, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) approached a “Souls to the Polls” event on Saturday at a pace hovering between a speed-walk and a jog.
She seized the megaphone: “I love the job of representing communities. I love the job of representing Spotsylvania… I want to continue serving you,” she said. She later met up with the group as they approached the polling station, taking photos and working the crowd. She was chipper and smiling through every shot—but not missing the chance to remind the group of the stakes.
Spanberger is one of Democrats’ 39 so-called “frontline” members: a title given to incumbents whose chances at re-election are especially fraught. Having won her district in 2018 and again in 2020 during historic Democratic turnout and anti-Trump sentiment, members like her are tasked with generating enthusiasm among the party base in a year that’s forecast to be difficult for the left.
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With only a week left to plead her case with voters, the congresswoman says her closing argument is “a bit of everything.” She’s talking about the economy. She’s talking about rights—both reproductive and voting. She’s talking about the supply chain. At a separate stop later Saturday, Spanberger gave pointers to a crowd of volunteers on issues best to chat about while knocking on doors, like her work on congressional ethics reform and meat processing.
The congresswoman’s grab-bag of messaging echoes the sometimes hodgepodged narrative of national party leaders.
Earlier this electoral cycle, the party was desperate to pass legislative priorities that members could campaign on, like the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure framework. After the downfall of Roe v. Wade this summer, that narrative was on the backburner, as Democratic strategists and lawmakers forecasted abortion would shake voters to their core and cause a seismic shift toward the left. But as the summer waned, the scorching heat surrounding abortion rights slowly began to cool, and the classic, always-lingering issue of the economy came back into the limelight.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a letter to her House colleagues this month warned the midterms would “be decided at the kitchen table” and that Democrats needed to “communicate a clear, convincing message on why families are experiencing higher prices, what House Democrats have done to ease that burden, and what a future Democratic Majority will do to further drive down the cost of living.”
Between all of that, President Joe Biden has been dropping speeches on MAGA Republicans, abortion, gas prices and more, in apparent attempts to rally voters in these final weeks.
Much of the left’s varying messaging is in contrast to the right this cycle, which has been laser-focused on crime and the economy. The economy also continues to rank as the number one issue among voters this cycle.
“Certainly people who wanted to see a change after the 2016 elections, they voted in 2018, they voted in 2020. Right? We have a new president, and a little bit of a, ‘OK, now everything’s better.’ Right? And so, that was the thought when they cast that ballot in November of 2020,” Spanberger told The Daily Beast.
“And then we got to an insurrection, and then we got to, kind of, COVID didn’t go away as quickly. And even though people were vaccinated and far fewer people were dying, it’s been hard. And so I think a lot of the conversations that I’ve been having with people is, like, progress is a process,” she added.
Between all of that—a mix of legislative successes and things she still wants to get done—Spanberger believes she has her winning formula. Other frontliners who spoke with The Daily Beast expressed similar scatter plots of closing arguments as their fates rest on the line.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) said she’s talking about abortion and the economy. She argued those things aren’t zero-sum, or one over the other. “Congress cannot be a one-trick pony. We’re handling the issues of the most powerful nation in the world,” she said.
Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) told The Daily Beast he wants the chance to continue “building on the foundation that we've created.” He talked about protecting democracy, tackling the economy and protecting reproductive access, among other tenets of his pitch to voters.
Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ) said his closing argument—as evidenced by the final ad he’s launching this cycle—is about water. “This is an issue that I’ve been a leader on… It’s one of the issues that I probably will spend more time when I’m re-elected on than any other. And so I think it's an issue of, just, transparency,” he said.
But issues like infrastructure and prescription drugs are coming up in his conversations, too, he added.
Yet in the hyper-polarized environment this midterm, for some of these Democrats, there’s more dictating their race than just chats on policy. Being a heavily targeted district means ads galore—many of which boil these highly competitive races down to simple narratives of right-versus-left.
Spangberger, for instance, is one of the most conservative Democrats in the House and a member of the Blue Dog Caucus, which openly dubs itself as a centrist faction of the party. But still, she’s been targeted as “radical” and “far-left,” amongst other taglines that have risen in popularity in recent electoral cycles.
Casten, a moderate who won his intraparty primary against fellow progressive Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL), has received the same branding.
“It makes me chuckle a little bit because having just won a fairly loud, fairly expensive primary from my left within the last six months, the voters have heard that I'm a neoliberal shill and I’m a creature of the far-left. All these things can’t be true. But it’s whatever, it’s what people say,” he said.
Spanberger similarly laughed off the far-left suggestions—and Stanton brushed off similar attacks as wasted time. One Democratic strategist who spoke with The Daily Beast said candidates like these vulnerable Democrats can—and should—push back against these attacks, but questioned whether they’d stick in the first place.
“Republicans are going to try to make every Democrat in 2022 and beyond out to be a woke socialist, right. That's the playbook,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president at the center-left think tank Third Way.
But there may only be so much these frontline Democrats can effectively juggle in these final weeks while keeping voters in step. Sherrill, though, pointed toward a bigger purpose in making sure she and her colleagues stick around.
“I think people are really concerned about our democracy. I hear that a lot, ‘Is our democracy OK?’” she told The Daily Beast. “And I think the answer is, ‘It will be, if everyone stays engaged.’”
