Mike Johnson’s Leap of Faith

Leigh Ann Caldwell (0:02)

Trump does not understand that people don't like him. Like, it just doesn't even compute.

Peter Hamby (0:14)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Pucks podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby.

It's Friday, September 18th. Today, I'm joined by Leigh Ann Caldwell. For a vibe check on the midterms, with less than seven weeks to go until election day. Looking at the polls, along with the late spending and tactical decisions of campaigns, it seems like the storm clouds are gathering for Donald Trump and Republicans, while Democrats are feeling pretty good. But as Leigh Ann tells me, some Republicans are still hopeful, especially the happy warrior Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Friday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. Go Tigers, beat Ole Miss. Speaking of Louisiana, we're gonna talk a little bit about Mike Johnson today and his hopes for the midterms, which are not looking great. My colleague, Leigh Ann Caldwell, is joining me today to talk all things midterms, not just the House, the Senate. She joins me from Capitol Hill today, if you're watching on YouTube. You can see my LSU shirt.

Leigh Ann Caldwell (1:40)

You can also see- You can see my beautiful backdrop.

Peter Hamby (1:42)

Yeah, you can see that Leigh Ann's in the booth. Is it our booth? Do we have a booth on the hill?

Leigh Ann Caldwell (1:47)

No, it's the communal booth for reporters to do TV hits, podcasts. You know, we're so up to date.

Peter Hamby (1:57)

Well, you know, when I joined Snapchat, Leigh Ann, I went to Capitol Hill to talk to the gallery, whoever runs it. By the way, if you're listening and all these terms make no sense, don't worry, like I work in politics and I still don't speak Capitol Hill. Leigh Ann does, she knows the vernacular, but I went to whoever was in charge of granting press passes for Capitol Hill and it was like-

Leigh Ann Caldwell (2:19)

Did they give you a pass for Snapchat?

Peter Hamby (2:21)

No, no, this was 2015

They gave me temporary passes and day passes for when I need to be on the Hill. This was at a time when I didn't have a camera crew and I was mostly just like filming on my iPhone, and they looked at me like I was like smeared in manure. They're like, what the hell are you talking about? So I'm glad they've come up with the times now that they accommodate multi-platform journalists, but oftentimes Capitol Hill is not the most forward looking place, at least when it comes to technology. Actually, here's a question. Can you get on the subways and ride with people underground?

Leigh Ann Caldwell (2:59)

With members and senators, you can?

Peter Hamby (3:00)

Have you always been able to do that?

Leigh Ann Caldwell (3:02)

Yeah.

Got it. Okay, cool. The access is great here. So not that we need to talk about Capitol Hill press access, but back in 2015, there was a huge fight about what's the difference between a reporter with an iPhone and a tourist with an iPhone who can go and publish things. This is very early days. So Peter, as you were on the vanguard of technology and the press access fight back then, I'm sorry you lost it though.

Peter Hamby (3:31)

Yeah. Look at me losing my fight for the First Amendment.

Leigh Ann, so reporting from Capitol Hill, there's a couple of things I wanted to start with before we talk about Mike Johnson. Our colleague, Marianna Sotomore, by the way, was in Dallas at the midterm convention and embedded with Mike Johnson as he rode around his motorcade, spoke to donors wearing Stetsons down there in Dallas. It's a really good piece. But first, two things I want to bring up.

Three actually. One, the generic ballot. If you look at Nate Silver's average here of the generic ballot, Democrats are at 49.5, Republicans at 41 So basically an eight point lead. But what jumps out to me is that just over the last 10 days, Democratic chances in these polls have started to take up, up, up, up, up. And 49.5% is mighty close to 50% for Democrats. That is not what Republicans want to see. Anyone reaching 50% on a ballot question is in good shape. But there are of course a lot of other factors. The second thing I want to talk to you about is one of those other factors. Republicans, namely Trump Super PAC and affiliated groups have started to go in and spend so far, they booked almost $140 million just in the last week on Senate and House races. And they're coming in late. And a lot of Republicans in various states from Texas to Michigan were worried that Trump was sitting on all this money and hadn't deployed it yet. On the flip side, the fear from Democrats was, you know, you've got leads in polls from Georgia to New Hampshire to Alaska, but Republicans haven't started putting money behind paid media yet. The third thing I want to talk about, and this gets more of the poll numbers, is an interesting item that popped Thursday. Maria Elvira Salazar, who is a Republican in a plus 15 Trump district in Miami-Dade. I think her district is like 75 percent Hispanic, lots of Cubans down there. She cut a straight-to-camera ad that went out Thursday where she said, Mr. President, you have done too much on ICE.