A group of newly elected House Democrats convened a meeting in a bland conference room in the Capitol not long after the November 2018 midterms to trade war stories about their campaigns. “We went around the table to introduce ourselves and talked about our races, how we won, and it was remarkable, you know, how similar some of our tactics were and our messages were,” recalled Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey).
All told, more than 60 Democrats joined that historic class of 2018 that swept their party to the House majority, galvanized to leave their nonpolitical careers by what they considered to be the first Trump administration’s controversial actions.
Those lawmakers knew right away their class was destined to leave its mark beyond the “lower chamber.” They set their sights on higher offices pretty quickly, with Kim and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) winning tough Senate races last year.
At least seven more members of that class are running for Senate or governor next year, including in the voter-rich states of California, New York and Texas.
Their next battle comes Tuesday, when voters in New Jersey and Virginia will decide whether to elevate Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, respectively, into those states’ governor’s mansions.
In 2018, Sherrill flipped a North Jersey seat to the Democratic column for the first time since the early 1980s, while Spanberger won a GOP seat outside Richmond that had not been in Democratic hands since the Carter administration.
A victory by Sherrill would extend Democratic dominance in the Garden State, after a surprisingly strong showing by Donald Trump there last year, while Spanberger is trying to return the Old Dominion into her party’s column. Term-limited GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s upset win four years ago signaled that Democrats had shifted too far to the left on cultural issues for many independent voters.
Just seven years removed from winning their first political races, these two have positioned themselves like other members of that class to become the “bench of the party,” Slotkin said, in the mix for national roles in the Democratic future.
And that goes across ideological wings. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) won a stunning primary upset in 2018 over a 20-year incumbent and has become a star on the far left.
“I knew very early on that this class would likely see a lot of people rising up, whether through the House, the Senate, governors, and eventually there will be someone from the 2018 class that will run for president,” Kim said.
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