C-SPAN/NEWSMAKERS

Host: Steve Scully

Guest Chris Van Hollen, (D-MD), Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Reporters: David Wasserman, Jonathan Allen

STEVE SCULLY, HOST, C-SPAN’S NEWSMAKERS: Joining us on NEWSMAKERS on this Sunday is the Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen. Thanks for joining us.

And here for the questioning, David Wasserman, the House editor of the “Cook Political Report,” and congressional reporter Jonathan Allen of Politico.

Congressman, let me begin. What worries you the most about next year’s mid-term elections?

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, (D-MD), DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Well, look. This is a very difficult cycle, historically.

If you go back over the span of our history, a new president, his party often does not do very well in the first mid-term election. In fact, since Abraham Lincoln was president, there have only been two times when a new president’s party has picked up seats in the first congressional election, the first mid-term. So, we know history presents us with a headwind.

The good news is that we recognized that pretty early on – very early on – at the DCCC. And on January 1st we said, look what we’re up against historically. Let’s try and do everything we can to plan for this, to make sure that our candidates are battle-tested, our incumbents as well as our candidates.

So, what worries me most is just looking at that historical pattern. The good news is, I know that we’re doing everything possible to prepare for that.

SCULLY: Part of that, of course, is recruitment. Can you explain the process you’ve undertaken to recruit candidates in 2010?

VAN HOLLEN: Yes. We’ve been very successful at recruiting candidates over the last two cycles. And that success, I think, has been reflected in the fact that we picked up 54 seats between 2006 and 2008. So, you can understand that the territory that’s sort of open to us is obviously narrowed.

But we believe very strongly that staying on offense is a very important part of our strategy. So, we have put in play at least 20 seats. There may be more than that as the months go by. But one of the things we’re very focused on is looking at seats where we think the incumbents do not reflect the views of their constituents – or in open seats. And there are a number of open seat possibilities for Democrats this cycle.

So, staying on offense is a very important part of our strategy this time around.

SCULLY: Jonathan Allen.

JONATHAN ALLEN, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Congressman, if you could look forward a year – and I know we’re a little ways out – but if you could look forward a year, what is the one House race that you think is going to be exciting, could come down to the wire, would be maybe a bellwether that people could look at and say, that’ll be a fun one and an exciting one to watch, maybe one that’ll have you biting your nails at the end of the day?

VAN HOLLEN: That’s a tough question. I mean, you’ve got a whole lot of House races. There are going to be a lot of exciting races. And our members know that these are going to be very competitive races.

One race where we’ve got a terrific candidate is in Nebraska, Tom White. Not on people’s radar screen right now, but he’s an example of a candidate that really fits that district. He’s a moderate. And it’s the district that Obama won in Nebraska. As you know, in Nebraska they have electoral seats based – divided up within the state. And that was one that the president won. And again, we have a terrific candidate there.

ALLEN: That’s the Omaha district.

VAN HOLLEN: Yes.

ALLEN: The one represented by Lee Terry?

VAN HOLLEN: Yes.

SCULLY: David Wasserman.

DAVID WASSERMAN, HOUSE EDITOR, “THE COOK POLITICAL REPORT”: Chairman Van Hollen, I want to move to a different part of the country. This past week there was a special election that you worked very hard on up in Upstate New York, the north country of New York. And you won that election for the new congressman, Bill Owens.

Can you take us behind the scenes and explain to viewers how the DCCC approaches these special elections?

A Politico story noted that the last six times a House seat has changed hands in a special election, the Democrats have won. You guys seem to have some sort of secret sauce involved in this.

Yet, it’s sort of a stealth operation in the districts, is it not? Voters don’t often know that the party is actually parachuting in and working really hard.

What goes on behind the scenes?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, there are a couple of components to the special elections operations. And you’re right. We’ve got a good record at the DCCC on special elections. The New York 23rd was a great example.

The first thing is you need good candidates. And Bill Owens was a candidate that fit that district very well, had a military background and then was very involved in economic development there.

But you’ve got a good candidate, but you’ve got to make sure your candidate gets the message out. And then, of course, you need to get the vote out. So, we worked very closely with Bill in making it clear that he needed to identify his strengths and how they fit the district.

Then we had a terrific get-out-the-vote operation. And we planned it very, very early on. And it went like clockwork, as opposed to places like Virginia and New Jersey, we had a good turnout on our vote. We also got a very good share of the independent vote, because our candidate was able to appeal on a bipartisan basis.

And then, of course, you had the Republican civil war, where you had a Republican candidate. And our counterpart, the NRCC, spent close to $1 million supporting the Republican candidate, who then dropped out of the race when the Conservative Party candidate became the hero to the Tea Party movement around the country, and you had Sarah Palin weighing in.

And of course, then Dede Scozzafava, the Republican candidate, collapsed. And we worked very hard to get her support. We asked Steve Israel to go up and sit down with her, and talk with her. And she was persuaded, just as Wayne Gilchrest was persuaded in Maryland’s 1st District last cycle, that the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, really would fit her legacy better than the far right Republican candidate.

And we worked very closely with the White House. All cylinders came together.

So, it was, I think, a textbook example of how to just conduct the nuts and bolts of a campaign. And as you say, we won New York 20 a little while ago, and I’m just asking no more members to retire.

(LAUGHTER)

We want to stop these special elections at this point.

SCULLY: But did the events of last weekend surprise you? Were they to be anticipated by you and the Democrats?

VAN HOLLEN: Are you talking the New York 23, or generally?

SCULLY: The New York 23rd.

VAN HOLLEN: New York 23 we thought was a jump ball. There was a point when our candidate was ahead in the polling. And then, of course, when the Republican candidate dropped out, and you had a surge for the Conservative Party candidate, Hoffman, he went a few points ahead.

But there was still at that point 18 percent of the electorate undecided. And that 18 percent, clearly, a majority of them ended up deciding to vote for Bill Owens. There were probably a mix of people in there. Clearly, there were people who were undecided even before the Republican candidate got out. But then her voters I think either stayed at home or followed her lead and voted for Bill Owens, because she endorsed him.

And I should say, every local paper – to Bill Owens’ credit – every local paper ended up endorsing him. Originally, some of them endorsed the Republican candidate, and some of them endorsed Bill Owens.

But once it was down to Bill Owens and the Conservative candidate, they made it clear that he couldn’t answer any questions about what was happening locally.

WASSERMAN: That sort of turned out to be the highlight for Democrats on election night last Tuesday. But in Virginia and New Jersey, things didn’t go quite as well as they did in Upstate New York. And in Virginia next year you have potentially four Democratic members who will face really tough races for re-election.

Can you sort of diagnose what went wrong in Democrats’ effort to get out the vote there? President Obama was very active in trying to energize the Democratic base. Yet the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia got fewer than half of the votes that he did last year.

VAN HOLLEN: Right.

WASSERMAN: How is that going to change next year?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, I mean, you identified exactly where the problem was. It was very low turnout. I mean, the individuals and voters who came to the polls to vote for President Obama in 2008, many of them stayed home in this election.

And it’s my view that they were simply not motivated to come out in what were state races. I mean, in the state of New Jersey you have a lot of local issues. The turnpike issue was a big issue. State of Virginia, you have their own mix of local issues.

So what happened was, the more conservative part of the electorate was motivated to come out for a lot of reasons, including the national climate. But the Obama voters did not see the Obama agenda at stake in what are state races.

After all, the only two people who won last Tuesday who can vote on the Obama agenda were the Democrats – a special election in New York and a special election in California. Democrats won both those. Those are the only people who are going to be voting on the Obama agenda, and both of them were Democrats who won. So, that was clearly the problem there.

If we see a low turnout like that in 2010, that is going to be trouble for Democrats. I believe we’ll get a better turnout, just as got in New York 23. It’s the mix of voters that comes out.

And to get those voters out, they’re going to have to understand that the issues they voted on in 2008 in the presidential year are at stake, and that the success of the Obama agenda will be at stake, because if he doesn’t have a strong majority, he will not be able to move the country in the new direction that people voted for in 2008.

ALLEN: Congressman, let me springboard off that a little bit.

You have in Virginia now a Republican governor, and Republicans will control redistricting in a few years. And so, while your House candidates won on the ballot, the election results in Virginia may have had a lot of effect on their future, or could have a lot of effect on their future.

As DCCC chairman, how do you allocate resources and make decisions about how much you’re going to spend on Virginia candidates in 2010, who in 2012 may have very different districts designed to draw them out? How do you decide whether to allocate resources there, or maybe somewhere else in the country? And how do you view redistricting coming up in that state?

VAN HOLLEN: Our goal is to maximize our wins in 2010. We have an effort going on to look at redistricting around the country. Mike Thompson of California was tasked to head that effort up – last year. In fact, it was almost two years ago that we asked him to take on that challenge. And so, they’ve been very focused on looking ahead.

At the DCCC we are looking at 2010. And we’re trying to maximize our wins in 2010. And then, obviously, the redistricting will come later, and we’ll work very hard to hold on to all the seats that we won.

That’s not to say there’s not an effort going on nationally, focused on gubernatorial races and state legislative races. That is just outside the immediate purview of the DCCC.

ALLEN: But do you worry about wasting resources on a seat in Virginia that may be redrawn significantly, that could be spent on winning a seat somewhere else?

VAN HOLLEN: I think it’s impossible to sort of game out ahead of time how districts are going to be drawn, and just tell a member of Congress or a candidate, you know, because it might be redrawn this way, we’re not going to compete to win in a seat we can win with the current district. We’re focused on the current lines.

WASSERMAN: Congressman, I wanted to ask you about a Democratic survey that was taken of battleground districts in October. And the group Democracy Corps is very good at gaming out where these competitive districts are going to be. And the survey found that in 40 of the most vulnerable Democratic districts, many of those members are in the DCCC’s Frontline Program to protect freshmen and sophomore incumbents.

But in those districts, only 40 percent of voters said that they would or were leaning towards re-electing their member, while 45 percent said that it was time for someone new. And majorities in these districts said that these members were too liberal for the district and spending too much.

Is that inevitable? Is that just a byproduct of having won so many seats in 2006 and 2008? Or is there something that needs to be done to rehabilitate these members’ images across these districts?

VAN HOLLEN: Right. Well, first I think it’s way too early to predict based on current polling information what the exact state of the voter’s mind is going to be in 2010.

But I do think it means that members from those districts need to make sure that when they’re casting their votes here in Washington, D.C., in the United States Congress, that they are reflecting the views of their constituents.

And we’ve always told past members to do what they do on their own, which is to listen to their constituents, make your best decision and best judgment based on your conscience, your community and your country. And that’s what they’re going to be doing. And that’s why a lot of these members won elections in these districts.

Sometimes they’re going to agree with the position of President Obama and the majority in the House, sometimes they will disagree. And their voters appreciate the fact that they are independent-minded members of Congress.

The good news is, most of the issues we’ve confronted so far are issues that bring us together – getting the economy going again, making sure that we do have a health care system that keeps what’s best, but fixes what’s broken. These are issues that at least bring a majority of the caucus together.

But there’s no doubt, I mean, there are going to be issues where we’re not as united. And those are going to be cases where, you know, a member of Congress will say to his or her constituents, “Look. I agree with the president here, I may disagree over here.”

SCULLY: But to pick up on David’s point, as you well know, the size of government – a big issue in Virginia and in New Jersey. It will be an issue in 2010. The unemployment report on Friday, 10.2 percent, will likely be an issue again in the mid-term elections, regardless of where it is. It’s going to be nine, 10 percentage points.

How do you deal with that? How do you deal with those issues and the sentiment that taxes are too high in this country?

VAN HOLLEN: Right. Well, there’s no doubt that the state of the economy will be the driving issue in 2010. It’s only natural. People will look around them and look at their own circumstances, look to see how the country’s going and say, you know, we’re heading in the right direction, or we’re not heading in the right direction.

That’s why the very first order of business of the new Congress was to pass an economic recovery plan. And remember – and I think voters will remember. I think they know that when the president was sworn in, the economy was literally in freefall. It was in collapse. And that economic recovery plan helped stabilize things.

Things are not nearly back to where we would like them, especially with respect to unemployment. And during the next year we’re going to be focused like a laser beam on jobs, jobs, jobs and the economy, moving it forward.

We just passed continuation of employment compensation, recognizing there are lots of people out there who are hurting through no fault of their own. And we are going to look at infrastructure investments and other efforts going forward.

But I think the question voters will have is, “Was my member of Congress on my side during this very difficult economic time?”

And to a person in the House of Representatives, the Republicans voted against the economic recovery plan. In all three of the special elections that we have had to-date since that decision, in California and two in New York, the Democratic candidates have supported the economic recovery plan and getting the economy going again. And the Republicans have been against it, and our candidates have won.

SCULLY: Jonathan Allen.

ALLEN: Congressman, if I could ask you something a little bit personal. My parents are constituents of yours. And they look at your future, and they want to know, I think, whether they’re going to be asked to support you as you move up in the House leadership, or if they may someday be asked to support you in a Senate campaign.

So, which of those two things do you foresee in your future?

VAN HOLLEN: I’ve got plenty on my hands right now. I mean, we’ve got our hands full in doing the job that I’ve got right now, both as the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as assistant to the speaker and, of course, as the representative from the 8th Congressional District.

I have not had time to think ahead in that respect. I think that we’re going to try and do our best as the representative from the 8th District and working on the issues that people care about, and then, you know, think about the future at some other point. I mean, we’ve just got our hands full.

WASSERMAN: There’s obviously a lot of energy on the right these days. But your campaign committee has also taken some heat from the left, from bloggers, from folks online, and others who may be concerned that the party is giving away too much in crafting these deals on major issues.

And in particular, I want to ask a question that one of those folks on the left might ask, which is, Parker Griffith, a newly elected Democrat from northern Alabama, had said at one point back home in his district, that he thinks that the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is too divisive, and that he’s not sure if he would vote for her again as speaker if he’s re-elected.

What value to your caucus is a Democrat who can’t support any major agenda item in a vote, and can’t commit to supporting Speaker Pelosi?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, first of all, as you know, if you had a Republican there, you’d be 100 percent sure they would not have voted for Speaker Pelosi in the last election for the speaker. And you’d be 100 percent sure that, in addition to not supporting the Democratic majority in leadership going forward, they would also vote against the agenda on every issue, from economic recovery to health care – 100 percent no. Again, every Republican voted no on the economic recovery plan.

So, look, Parker Griffith has to stay in touch with his constituents. And sometimes he will agree with the president and the majority position in the Congress, and sometimes he will disagree. And he’ll have to leave it to the voters to be the best judge.

But again, what I would tell my colleagues about that case or any other case was, if you had a Republican there, imagine how they would vote, what they would say. And the fact of the matter is, yes, we have a large tent party. But without a large tent party, we would not be able to make progress on the important issues that we are making progress on.

It doesn’t mean that we get every member of the caucus on every vote, but it does mean we have the ability to put together what are often shifting coalitions to get things done.

ALLEN: Presumably, a significant percentage of the people who are watching us today are Democrats around the country. I wonder what your thoughts are for them heading into 2010, particularly in light of what you saw in the 2009 election. You talked about some of the portions of your coalition not showing up.

What do Democrats across the country that want to see a successful 2010 election need to be doing right now to ensure that?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, I think that the House Democrats, the Senate Democrats working with the president – and to the extent we can get Republican support, we always do welcome it – need to follow through on the agenda the president articulated in the last election, and that many of our members of Congress articulated.

But job number one is to get the economy moving again. Now, things have begun to stabilize. The thing that, of course, remains frustrating is the slow rate of improvement in the unemployment numbers. So, we need to be focused on getting the economy back on track.

Health care reform is an important component of that, both in the short term and the long term. There are some measures that are going to take place immediately in the short term. We’re going to allow young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies until they’re age 27. We’re going to eliminate the exemptions that insurance companies currently have from antitrust laws that allows them to, you know price rig in certain occasions. So, there are lots of things we are doing right now.

But what we need to do is show success, whether it’s on health care reform, on getting the economy moving again, and other major issues that are on the agenda. And I think that will not only make sure that those voters who came out for Obama in 2008 come out in 2010, but if we do it right, we will also continue to get support of independents in 2010, because they will see the Republicans for, unfortunately, what they have become, which is captive to the far right in this country.

We saw that in New York 23, where the far right just put up a big sign to the Republican candidate that said, “Moderates, do not apply.” And just the other day, Michael Steele essentially said the same thing. And this is not a far right country.

And what we saw in New York 23 was in a seat that Republicans had held for 150 years. People said, we don’t want that kind of extremist agenda, and just say no.

So, I think that if we send the right messages through the legislative work we do, get the economy stabilized and on the right track again, people will say, “I want to vote with the folks who are on my side.”

WASSERMAN: You’re going to be applying a lot of defense next year in these elections, considering that you have 258 seats now in the House, which is the same number, yearly, that Democrats had at this point in 1993, before they lost their majority last time in 1994.

But in the Democracy Corps survey that was taken in October, the pollsters also surveyed the districts of 15 Democratic veterans – not only freshman and sophomore Democrats, but veterans – whose re-elect scores were well below 50 percent. In other words, 43 percent of voters said that they would re-elect them next years.

You’ve said in the past that these members are aware of the challenges that they’re going to face next year, and that they’re preparing actively. But what is your committee doing to lay the groundwork for competitive races in their districts?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, you’re absolutely right. I mean, there are going to be politically choppy waters out there. We’ve already seen some signs of it. Although I will say that many of the polls and surveys we’ve looked at show things have improved somewhat since August, when it was really choppy weather out there.

But I agree with the premise, which is, this is going to be a tough cycle, not just for new members, but for many of our other members from some of these more moderate districts.

What are we doing? We are working with many of them, just as we are working with our Frontline Program. We are making sure that their campaign operations are getting up and running early, that they are bringing people on board, that they’ve got their grassroots operation up and ready to go, that they’ve got their campaign e-mail list.

And I should say, we’re continuing to work with them on the official side, just making sure that they’re doing the things that every new member of Congress does when they want to make sure they connect with their constituency.

WASSERMAN: And to make sure they don’t retire.

VAN HOLLEN: Well, that’s true. And we, at least so far – you know, knock on wood – have been successful in limiting retirements. So, you don’t see nearly as many Democratic retirements this time as you saw in 1994.

Look, I should just say on 1994 – I said at the outset here, this is going to be a tough, competitive election cycle. But I do not believe in the doomsday scenarios. So far, fewer retirements. We’re staying on offense. We did not do that in 1994.

And, at least as of right now, the confidence of the voters in the Republican Party is at an all-time low, because they’re not providing any answers, they’re not providing pragmatic solutions. They have become ideologues, just as we saw in New York 23, where they imposed a purity test and drove their candidate out of the race.

ALLEN: We haven’t seen a party switch in a while in the House. And usually after a party takes control, there’s a little bit of that rearranging that goes on. In 1995, you saw some Democrats turn Republican. Democrats have won big victories in the last two elections.

Is there anybody that you’re focused on trying to recruit to your side? Are you even making those efforts or overtures to moderate Republicans to say, “Hey, just don’t leave Congress” – because some of them are doing that – “come over to our side.”

VAN HOLLEN: I’ve had those conversations with members of the other side from time to time. Sometimes they’re just joking, and you’re hoping maybe – you know, you’ll be kidding around and they’ll say, “Hey, I am interested.” But so, I mean, those conversations have gone on both on a serious basis and a not-so-serious basis.

But as you mentioned, I mean, no one right now is thinking of changing sides, that I know of anyway. I mean …

WASSERMAN: Well, if I could …

VAN HOLLEN: … there may always be something someone’s thinking that we’re not aware of.

WASSERMAN: If I could piggyback real fast on Jonathan’s question, it seems as if a lot of the moderate Republicans who were left in House before 2006 are no longer here. Who are some moderate House Republicans who you still admire?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, look. There are lots of people I admire, moderates and conservatives, as individuals who stand up for what they believe it.

But you’re right with respect to the shrinking number of moderates. I mean, at one point the moderates were an endangered species in the Republican Party. Now they are virtually extinct – in the House.

You’ve got Mark Kirk, he’s running for Senate. You’ve got Mike Castle, he’s running for Senate. You’ve got Jim Gerlach running for other office. Those who were some of the moderate members in the Republican constellation in the House are mostly moving on.

And I do think that reflects the problem the Republicans have. And I would think that, if you were looking forward as the Republican Party, you would want to try and build a bigger tent. And in fact what they’re doing, instead of building a larger tent, is they’re shrinking the tent.

Right now they’ve got a little pup tent. And the people who are leading the charge for them are the Rush Limbaughs of the world and the right-wing talk show hosts of the world.

SCULLY: Do you want to make any predictions for next year?

VAN HOLLEN: I do not want to make any predictions, because it’s still way, way too early. It will be a competitive cycle. We know that, from a historical perspective, we’ve got a headwind.

On the other hand, we are working very hard to try and implement the agenda that the president talked about, focusing first on getting the economy going, trying to pass a decent health care reform through the entire process and get a bill to the president’s desk – while on the other hand you’ve got Republicans voting no, no, no, and hell no.

So, I don’t think that “no” is a responsible answer to the problems that the American people are experiencing. And I think that’s why they have such trouble in terms of the polling that shows such small confidence in them right now.

SCULLY: Congressman Chris Van Hollen, thanks for joining us on NEWSMAKERS.

VAN HOLLEN: Good to be with you.

(BREAK)

SCULLY: We continue the conversation with David Wasserman of “The Cook Political Report,” and Jonathan Allen of Politico.

Let me go back to something that Congressman Van Hollen said in terms of being on offense. The Democrats lost 54 seats in 1994. The Republicans lost 27 seats in 1982.

What do the Democrats need to do that they didn’t do in ’94, or the Republicans didn’t do in ’82?

ALLEN: Well, I think one of the big differences, certainly with ’94 for the Democrats, is that I think a lot of Democrats were taken by surprise in 1994. I think they didn’t know that they were going to have a tough election until right before it. Remember, they had been in control for 40 years.

So, this is a Democratic Party heading into this election that is aware that, as Congressman Van Hollen said, they’re heading into a headwind. And it’s probably a cycle where they’ll lose some seats. He didn’t want to say that, but I think that’s the conventional wisdom.

There aren’t a lot of places where they’re going to win seats, win Republican seats, because they’ve won most of those winnable seats in the last few cycles.

But I think when he’s talking about being on offense, it’s not so much being on offense to win Republican-held seats. It’s more on offense in terms of message, in terms of moving the Democratic agenda and in terms of being able to tell voters that they have solutions to their everyday problems, rather than going before them and not having done those things.

SCULLY: What races are you watching?

WASSERMAN: Well, at least economically – to speak to what you asked before – this election cycle looks a little bit more like 1982 than 1994. But we’re watching races all over the country right now.

In particular, I think the most telling map in House politics right now is the map of places where President Obama did worse than John Kerry in 2008. And if you take a look at that red swath, from eastern Oklahoma all the way up to western Pennsylvania, there are Democratic veterans in the House there that may face tougher races than Democratic freshmen and sophomores who were elected from better districts in 2006 and 2008.

So, if I were Democrats right there, I would be pretty cautious about those districts and prepare very early for those fights.

The one thing that I think is encouraging to Democrats is that Republicans don’t just need 41 seats to take back the House. In actuality, they probably need closer to 45, because Democrats will probably pick up a seat here or there. In Louisiana, Joseph Cao, the Republican elected in a fluke in 2008, is probably an underdog for re-election. Democrats have a couple of open seat opportunities – Pennsylvania, Illinois, Delaware.

And so, Democrats are going to be able to have a tiny bit of offense to offset whatever they lose, which could be substantial.

SCULLY: And following the ethics investigations, let’s just focus on the Democrats – John Murtha of Pennsylvania, Charlie Rangel of New York. Do these issues affect how the Democrats approach 2010? Because they were an issue in past mid-term elections.

ALLEN: I think it’s going to depend a lot on what happens over the next year with the Ethics Committee and with federal investigations that are going on into some of these matters.

As to whether it looks like Nancy Pelosi is fulfilling her promise to join the swamp; that is, these guys are being caught for things, if they’re doing them and thrown out or punished in some way, or if these continue to just sort of hang out there, or in some cases, maybe people will be found to have done something wrong and stay in their seats, which would be kind of a worst-case scenario for the speaker.

So, I think it matters a lot what happens in each of these cases.

WASSERMAN: Well, timing is everything with these ethics investigations, isn’t it? And when you take a look at the Democrats who are under investigation, not a lot of them could potentially face races of their own.

But what I think it does is, it sets the tone for 2010, much as Republican scandal in 2006 set the tone for 2006.

And it ties back to Speaker Pelosi more than it does to President Obama.

And to the extent that Republicans are on the upswing because President Obama’s brand is a little bit lower than it might have been in 2008, they’re hoping that Democrats’ standing is even worse, because Speaker Pelosi’s brand and the Democratic congressional brand is even lower than President Obama’s.

And so, I think these ethics investigations tie back to that congressional Democratic brand and hurt Democrats.

SCULLY: David Wasserman, Jonathan Allen, thanks for joining us here on C-SPAN.

WASSERMAN: Thank you.

ALLEN: Thank you, Steve.

END