House Democrats plot Harris-Walz power play
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Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Photo: Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images
House Democrats are amped up about a Harris-Walz administration as a clean break from the long-simmering perception that the Biden team favored the Senate.
Why it matters: "The House would get screwed [under President Biden]. We'd get asked to take tough votes and then after those votes were on record, he'd veto or do whatever he did," one senior House Democrat told Axios.
- "It was apparent on so many occasions he had what [Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi] would call Senate-itis," said Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) — referencing the decades Biden spent in the Senate before becoming vice president.
- With Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a 12-year House veteran, on the ticket, House members are hopeful that dynamic will shift.
Between the lines: There is a strong feeling Biden favored the Senate his first two years in office, often letting senators run the show on legislative negotiations and initially picking a legislative affairs chief with a Senate background.
- Some rank-and-file House members held off on calling for Biden to drop his bid for re-election out of a belief that he would only listen to input from senators and a handful of House icons like Pelosi.
- Several Democrats pointed to an incident last year in which Biden left House Democrats fuming by waiting until after they'd voted on a controversial D.C. police reform bill to give senators cover to vote for it.
- "There were some people that felt that House Democrats were kind of thrown under the bus there. I would think a guy like Tim Walz would instantly understand the need for communication," said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.).
Zoom out: Walz's House tenure is "one of the reasons" Pelosi pushed Vice President Harris to pick him as her running mate, the senior House Democrat told Axios.
- Harris, the lawmaker said, will likely focus on building relationships with House Democratic leaders, particularly House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), while delegating rank-and-file relations to Walz.
- "I think Tim is going to become a de facto office of congressional relations ... he's got, obviously, a huge reach in the House," said Takano, who succeeded Walz as the top Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee.
- Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) told Axios that House members "understand how busy the president is ... and so I would hope that folks are not expecting her, every single day, to call them."
What we're hearing: Walz has dozens of close friends from his time in the House, particularly Midwesterners and lawmakers who served under him on Veterans Affairs or entered Congress with him in 2007, lawmakers told Axios.
- Those relationships have already paid dividends, with staunch Walz allies like Reps. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) and Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) leading a successful campaign for Harris to pick him as VP.
- Harris, who served four years in the Senate, is closest to Californians and Black Caucus members, including Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).
The bottom line: "I am very hopeful and biased that they are the right partnership to work with us," Beatty, a former Black Caucus chair, said in an interview.
- Harris, she said, "has strong relationships already," but "picking a person that will serve as her vice president that's from the Congress ... makes them a great package."
