EDITORIAL: Horn and other vulnerable Dems are in a bind

The walls are closing in on Kendra Horn while she continues to dither on impeachment.

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Horn and other vulnerable Dems are in a bind

The Oklahoman Editorial Board

December 15, 2019

https://oklahoman.com/article/5649821/horn-and-other-vulnerable-dems-are-in-a-bind

Sometime soon, Rep. Kendra Horn will have to decide whether to join most U.S. House Democrats and vote to impeach President Trump. It’s quite the Christmas gift Speaker Nancy Pelosi is foisting upon her most vulnerable members, because their decisions will reverberate throughout their 2020 re-election campaigns.

It’s something Horn, D-Oklahoma City, isn’t particularly eager to talk about. She has consistently said she hasn’t made up her mind, and that she’s trying to cut through the noise and focus on working on behalf of her constituents in the 5th District.

“I ran to fight for Oklahoma, for education, for health care …,” Horn said at a town hall last weekend, “and that’s where I’ve been spending my time.”

Her approach mirrors that of 30 other Democratics who are hoping to hang on to districts that Trump carried in 2016. Michael Graham, politics editor for InsideSources.com, wrote last week that these members are “in a political bind” because while some polls show support for impeachment is slipping, the party’s base “is demanding it — 74% of Democratic primary voters strongly support impeachment.”

Horn represents a district in which Republicans outnumber Democrats roughly 187,500 to 160,000, and which Trump won by 11 percentage points in 2016. Horn’s surprise victory over a two-term incumbent Republican last year came by a margin of just 1.4 points.

On whether to impeach the president, Horn has tried to tread carefully.

She was one of the few House Democrats who didn’t come out in favor of an impeachment inquiry, saying Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s new president, which ultimately had many Democrats crying “quid pro quo” and “bribery,” could have been conducted outside the impeachment process.

She later voted to extend the impeachment inquiry into a public phase, citing the importance of Congress being able to conduct oversight. “I did not seek out and did not call for an impeachment inquiry,” she said at a November town hall, “and I was not one of those that was there saying, ‘We’ve got to do this.’”

The stakes grew larger Friday, however, when the House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment against Trump, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and sent them to the full House. A handful of vulnerable Democrats sought to hold a censure vote instead of impeachment, but they were rejected outright by leadership. Only two Democrats, both of whom represent districts Trump won in 2016, have said publicly that they oppose impeachment.

Horn is the target of a Republican-aligned group that’s using a flood of TV ads to criticize her for not opposing impeachment. Eight people have filed the paperwork to seek the Republican nomination for her seat, with the most active saying Horn is in lockstep with Pelosi and the most liberal wing of the party.

At last week’s town hall, reporter Chris Casteel noted, frustration about impeachment was evident among many independent voters who attended. “I think you’re in a lot of trouble if you vote for this impeachment,” one of those voters told Horn.

Whether she does, and how the dominoes fall afterward, we’ll know soon enough.