As Senate delays health care vote, fight heats up in California GOP districts

June 30--On the surface, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's decision this week to delay a vote on the Senate's health care bill might seem frustrating to the House Republicans who backed a measure to rip up the Affordable Care Act.

But some political analysts say the delay could actually be a political boon to vulnerable House Republicans -- especially the seven California representatives in districts won by Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The seven, from Reps. Darrell Issa and Dana Rohrabacher in Southern California to Reps. Jeff Denham and David Valadao in the Central Valley, are among the top targets nationwide in the Democrats' quest to retake the House.

"They've got to be praying for delay," said Bruce Cain, a Stanford political science professor. "It would be best for them if the delay leads to a fizzle and nothing happens. They'd be much better off than if they passed the bill and 15 million people lose" their health coverage next year, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected this week.

The Republican health care bill would have a dramatic effect in California because of its steep cuts to Medicaid -- particularly in the Central Valley. Polls released this week found that support for the Senate health care bill was as low as 12 percent nationwide.

All of the state's 14 Republican members of Congress voted for the House's version of the bill, in part due to pressure from House leaders and a desire to keep their promises on the campaign trail to repeal "Obamacare."

Still, some GOP strategists argue that successfully repealing Obamacare would energize Republicans to turn out at the polls and also attract votes from independents and some Democrats who've seen rising health insurance premiums under the plan.

"My guess is they'll come up with something and McConnell will pull it out at the last minute," said Kevin Spillane, a veteran Republican strategist in Sacramento. "If the Republicans don't pass some kind of health care reform, it's definitely going to be disappointing to the base in 2018."

Republican senators left town for their Fourth of July break without meeting their self-imposed deadline of sending a new bill to the Congressional Budget Office by Friday, as moderates and conservatives continued to bicker on how to amend it. But McConnell is still hoping to corral 50 of 52 Republican senators to vote for a retooled bill when they return from the recess.

Whatever happens in the Senate, however, Democrats aren't planning to let the House Republicans forget their health care votes.

While the seven Republicans "might be breathing a sigh of relief that the Senate seems to have kicked the can down the road for a couple of weeks, they're on the record supporting this health care plan that would devastate families in their districts," said Drew Godinich, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "That vote is going to haunt them."

The races for their seats are also heating up. In the last two weeks, two new political action committees have also sprung up specifically targeting the California seven. Former Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who represented an East Bay district from 1997 to 2009, launched a PAC, "Fight Back California," aimed at attacking the Republicans even before a Democratic nominee is chosen for their seats.

"These members voted for D.C. special interests and against their districts," said Katie Merrill, a Democratic strategist working on Tauscher's PAC. "The attention may be on the Senate for now, but they will never be able to disown it."

Michael Eggman, a Central Valley farmer and beekeeper who ran against Denham in 2014 and 2016, announced this week that he is starting a similar PAC, "Red to Blue California," which he said would provide funding and training to Democrats running against the seven GOP incumbents. "I'm taking what I learned on the campaign trail to make sure others succeed where we fell short," Eggman said in a statement.

There are big variations among the seven districts. A third of Denham's Central Valley constituents rely on Medi-Cal, which would face cuts under the Republican plans. In Issa's relatively affluent district in the San Diego suburbs, on the other hand, the specter of rising premiums under Obamacare is more worrying to many voters.

None of the seven House Republicans in districts Clinton won responded to a request for comment on the Senate health care vote delay. But during a telephone town hall with his constituents on Wednesday night, Denham criticized the larger process.

"In this health care debate, both the Affordable Care Act and this new bill have been done on partisan lines," he said. "We've got to get away from that."

He said that he had read the draft of the Senate bill, adding: "I can't defend the Senate. I get very frustrated with how they hold up a number of bills and the challenges they have with doing things in public."

The delay on taking action on the Senate's health care bill will be a good thing for more vulnerable Republicans such as Denham, argued Kevin Eckery, a Republican strategist in Sacramento. If senators had rushed through a health care overhaul with little debate or public understanding of the bill, it would have come back to bite them, he argued. And it didn't help when President Donald Trump publicly called the House bill "mean" earlier this month, undercutting representatives who stuck out their necks to vote for the bill.

The Senate's delay in taking action on the bill was "sort of a relief to a lot of people," Eckery said. "Probably the best thing that could have happened is what did happen."

If the Senate had succeeded in passing a bill, it would also have turned the spotlight back on the House of Representatives, which would have had to approve that bill or work on a compromise bill between the two houses. Now, Senate Republicans going home for the Fourth of July recess are the ones in the hot seats.

House Republicans would have some measure of political cover if McConnell isn't able to cobble together the necessary 50 votes to pass a bill.

"You can say, 'I tried to fix (Obamacare), and the Senate didn't go along,'" said Wayne Johnson, a California Republican operative who helped elect several of the members of Congress when they were first running for seats in the state Legislature. "You can say, 'I said what I was going to do. I'm keeping my word.' "

But, of course, it would also mean they took a potentially unpopular vote to get nothing in return.

Local groups, meanwhile, are still hounding the California House Republicans over their votes. On Thursday morning, a coalition of anti-Denham groups held a mock funeral in front of his district office in Modesto, showing up in black clothes and carrying a coffin to symbolize their argument that the bill would lead to more Californians losing their health care and dying. Locals who depend on Medi-Cal told Denham's staff members their stories.

"We want to put a face on these statistics," said Naramsen Goriel, a coordinator for an anti-Trump group, Indivisible Stanislaus County, who helped organize the protest. "It's real and raw when a constituent of Denham's district is explaining that his or her life is at risk because of this bill that he voted for."

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