Calm, Cool, and Collecting
The Dems' new Congressional Campaign Committee chief has big shoes to fill
Five years ago, Chris Van Hollen got used to facing long odds. In the first congressional primary of his life, he was outspent and facing off against both a former top staffer to President Clinton, and Mark Shriver, the nephew of former President Kennedy. "It was pretty clear," Van Hollen says, "that I was the underdog." But he won that race by 5,000 votes in a Maryland district just outside Washington. And eight weeks later, he vanquished a popular 16-year veteran in the general election, becoming one of only two Democrats in 2002 to steal a Republican-held seat.
Holding on to his own seat has been pretty easy ever since. But now, as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in effect the House Democrats' campaigner in chief, he's got much more to worry about. He's in charge of retaining every Democratic seat and stealing from the GOP as many as possible on Election Day 2008. Those are always big shoes to fill, but they're just a bit bigger now after his predecessor, the bomb-throwing Rep. Rahm Emanuel, presided over a whopping Democratic gain of 30 additional seats last November, which put the Dems back in power after 12 years out.
Emanuel, son of an Israeli immigrant, is a hard-hitting Chicago pol. Van Hollen has a different style that reflects a different sort of upbringing. He was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and spent most of his youth overseas in Turkey, Sri Lanka, and India. His father was in the Foreign Service and later served as U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka; his mother, a Soviet specialist, worked at the CIA and later as an intelligence expert on South Asian affairs at the State Department.
Wonkdom. Van Hollen, a boyish 48 with red curly hair, three children, ages 16, 15, and 11, and a soothing academic tone, was on a similar path to wonkdom. At Swarthmore College, he was a student activist, working on the Nuclear Weapons Education Project and in a group lobbying the school to divest from South Africa; at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, he specialized in national security; and, as a young staffer on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he took on arms control issues and coauthored a report on Iraq's use of chemical weapons.
But a train ride to Baltimore in 1986 led to a change in direction. He was headed to a retirement party for his boss, Republican Sen. Charles Mathias of Maryland, and found himself standing next to Republican Sen. Richard Lugar. "He said if you're interested in getting involved directly in politics, you have to get involved with local issues," Van Hollen recalls. Soon after that chance encounter, Van Hollen left Capitol Hill to work as a Washington representative for the Maryland governor's office, while taking night law classes at Georgetown. In 1990, he was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates and turned his attention to legislation on the environment and school funding. After 12 years as a citizen legislator in Annapolis-during which time he mostly worked for a Washington law firm-Van Hollen took the plunge into his first congressional race.
But life with Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay at the helm wasn't exactly a thrill. "It's one thing to know intellectually what it's like to be in the minority," he says. "It's another thing to live it every day." He pushed his mostly liberal views hard and got nowhere. Being in the minority was "a major motivator," he says, "towards working to try to change things."
So he teamed up with Emanuel-who had earned the nickname "Rahmbo" as a tough-talking aide to President Clinton-on Democratic strategy and later at the DCCC, where Van Hollen became a top lieutenant. The contrasts are obvious. "Rahm's weapon of choice may be brass knuckles," says John Lapp, a former top DCCC staffer. "Van Hollen," true to his upbringing, "is more diplomacy and negotiation." Sure, jokes Van Hollen: "My four-letter-word vocabulary expanded dramatically working with Rahm." But underestimating Van Hollen's punch, says a top aide, is a mistake: "He's accustomed to being in the trenches."
Now in charge, Van Hollen is quickly adding his mark. He has brought almost all of the opposition research (which can cost up to $25,000 per district) in house and nearly doubled the size of the communications staff to fire salvos earlier and defend against Republican charges more quickly. In addition, he's planning to double the effort on turning out Democratic voters in states (e.g., Indiana) and districts that usually vote Republican, especially in a presidential year when the eventual nominee is unlikely to spend precious dollars there.
Van Hollen is also focusing on getting the 29 most vulnerable Democratic incumbents geared up for re-election and on recruiting new congressional challengers-31 have committed so far. "We never really stopped after the election," says freshman Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, one of the 29, who are each expected to raise at least $600,000 by July. States like Ohio will continue to be battlegrounds, but Van Hollen is looking to take the fight elsewhere: In Michigan, Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer says, "there were no targeted races" last year and no communication with Washington. Now he talks with Van Hollen's staff weekly about two seats they hope to target.
Money. And Van Hollen is raising funds at a feverish pace as well. He has pulled in $19 million since January, which is $7 million more than this time last cycle and $3 million more than his GOP counterparts. His goal is to personally raise $10 million this congressional cycle: The committee, with a big assist expected from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, hopes to have more than $150 million for the election. At one February dinner for six Democratic congressmen and 30 guests, Tony Podesta, a longtime Democratic lobbyist in Washington, D.C., netted more than $300,000 for Van Hollen's crew. The pitch to Democratic donors spread thin in a presidential year is blunt: "A dollar to a presidential primary campaign," Van Hollen says, "is a dollar that goes into a Democratic civil war"; a dollar to DCCC helps retain, maybe build, the majority.
The core of the DCCC strategy will be holding President Bush accountable, continuing to attack Republicans for a "culture of corruption" and highlighting Democratic legislation in Congress. None of the Dems' priority legislation has been signed into law yet, but Van Hollen argues it doesn't matter. The most important point, he argues, is "we need to be able to demonstrate that we've done everything within our power to follow through." That may be a tough sell. But Chris Van Hollen is doing his part. No doubt about that.
This story appears in the May 7, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.