“Blue Dog” Democrats Collin Peterson and Jeff Van Drew voted in October against the House impeachment inquiry of President Trump — the only Democrats to do so — and they may vote against the impeachment articles next week. As Agriculture Committee chairman, Peterson would be the most prominent House Democrat to oppose impeachment if he follows his current leanings.
“I just think it will be too divisive for the country — it doesn’t accomplish anything,” Peterson told a CNN reporter early this week, so he was leaning toward a ‘no’ vote. A press aide said on Thursday that Peterson has not said more on the matter. By contrast, Van Drew, also a member of the Agriculture Committee, was the first Democrat to oppose impeachment publicly. “I don’t see anything there worthy of actually taking a president out of office,” he said in USA Today.
House Democrats are pursuing two articles of impeachment against Trump: for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rivals and for obstruction of the House inquiry. A vote was expected next week in the House following approval of the articles by the Judiciary Committee.
Democratic aides told the Washington Post that a half-dozen party lawmakers might vote against impeachment. Van Drew said three or four might join him.
Peterson and Van Drew, members of the Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative, centrist Democrats, represent districts that voted for Trump in 2016. The president took 62 percent of the vote in Peterson’s heavily Republican district in the western third of Minnesota, making him the Democrat with the most Republican district in the House. Now in his 15th term, Peterson, an accountant by training, won re-election in 2018 with 52 percent of the vote, the same margin that Van Drew, a dentist and former state senator, recorded in winning his first term last November. Van Drew’s district covers the southern quarter of New Jersey. Trump carried the district by 5 percentage points in 2016.
Five candidates, including former Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach and two-time GOP nominee Dave Hughes, are running for the Republican nomination against Peterson in 2020, said the Grand Forks Herald. It quoted state GOP chair Jennifer Carnahan as saying, “People see there’s a huge opportunity to retire Collin Peterson.” The congressman says he’ll decide in early 2020 whether to run for another term.
For Van Drew, the challenge is coming from establishment Democrats who support impeachment, said the Philadelphia Inquirer. There is talk that Van Drew may face a contest for the Democratic nomination in 2020. The House district leans conservative but is a swing district, going twice for President Obama with 53 percent of the vote and then giving Trump slightly more than 50 percent of the vote. “Progressive activists have been seething ever since [Van Drew voted against the impeachment inquiry], even as strategists in both parties saw his vote as shrewd given the conservative leanings of his South Jersey district.”
Peterson is rated a toss-up for re-election and Van Drew as “leans Democratic” in an early size-up by the political analysis and handicapping newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball.