House Dems pick moderate New Yorker to lead campaign arm

WASHINGTON — House Democrats elected centrist Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney on Thursday to lead their campaign arm into the 2022 elections, picking a lawmaker who wins in a closely divided district as they dissect why they unexpectedly lost seats in November's voting.

Maloney, 54 and openly gay, defeated Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., by 119-107, according to a person familiar with a vote held virtually because of the pandemic. Cardenas, 57, has been leader of BOLD PAC, the fundraising organization for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Maloney will lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which helps recruit House candidates, raises money and provides campaign guidance.

Thursday's close election for the post underscores Democratic uncertainty over why they lost at least a dozen incumbents in last month's voting, despite widespread expectations that they would gain perhaps 15 seats. No House Republican lost. The outgoing chairwoman, Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., announced she was leaving the job shortly after Election Day.

Progressives have blamed the party's poor performance on inadequate digital campaigning, while moderates have faulted liberals for leaving Democrats vulnerable to GOP charges that they are all socialists who support defunding the police. The party's candidates also performed more weakly than expected with moderates in suburban districts and Hispanic voters, especially in South Florida.

The 2022 election looms as a difficult one for House Democrats. Besides defending a slender majority, House districts will be redrawn following this year's Census, and total Republican control in key states including Florida, Georgia, Texas and Ohio will let them reshape lines to help the GOP.

In addition, midterm congressional elections are historically difficult for the party that controls the White House, where Democratic President-elect Joe Biden is headed Jan. 20.

Also Thursday, Democrats elected Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., to chair the House Appropriations Committee. DeLauro is a 30-year House veteran who's long been on the Appropriations panel, which controls around $1.4 trillion in spending, a hefty chunk of the federal budget.

DeLauro defeated Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., 148-79. She replaces the retiring chairwoman, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, 67, of New York was chosen chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee while Georgia Rep. David Scott, 75, was elected Agriculture Committee chairman. They will be the first Black chairs of those two panels, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Meeks takes over Foreign Affairs from Rep. Eliot Engel, a 16-term New York Democrat who lost a June primary for his House seat. At the Agriculture panel, Scott replaces Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., who lost his House reelection after 15 House terms.

Maloney has been elected five times from a district in New York's mid-Hudson valley that Donald Trump carried narrowly in the 2016 presidential election. While campaigning for his new post, Maloney touted his ability to win in a competitive district, his fundraising connections and a five-month study he led of the campaign committee's 2016 performance that resulted in structural changes.

Maloney was reelected in November by a comfortable 11 percentage points.

Democrats are assured of controlling the House again in the new Congress that convenes in January. But with a handful of races still uncalled, their edge over the GOP currently stands at 222-208, and they're likely to have the chamber's narrowest majority in two decades.