Cartwright headed back to DC with chance at more influence

Dec. 4—For weeks, the television commercials bombarded U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright for voting with President Joe Biden or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time.

"Your congressman should stand up to Joe Biden, not hang out with him," Cartwright's Republican opponent, Jim Bognet, said in one commercial.

As it turned out, just enough 8th Congressional District voters didn't mind Cartwright's tightness with the president and speaker. They voted to send Cartwright to Washington, D.C., for a sixth two-year term, earning $174,000 a year. He won by fewer than 7,000 votes, a 2.4-percentage point victory, his second straight win against Bognet and the closest of all his elections.

For the fourth straight election, he won a district that President Donald Trump won. He's the only Democratic incumbent to do that nationwide, said David Wasserman, a senior editor for The Cook Political Report, which tracks congressional elections.

Now that he's won, Cartwright, 61, a Moosic resident, chuckles about the Republican ad assault.

"There are a lot of voters that if you told them, Cartwright voted 51% in favor of bills that Biden liked, that would be too much for them. Just because of the polarization," he said during a post-election interview with The Sunday Times. "I was on a car ride with a fellow last week, who said, 'Yeah, I saw those ads that said you voted 100% with Biden.' And (he) said, 'Good boy, glad you did.'"

Co-chairman of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee for the last four years, Cartwright will head back to the Capitol with an opportunity to move up in the Democratic leadership. Pelosi, House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer and House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn will step aside, though Clyburn will assume the assistant leader role.

On Wednesday, House Democrats created a new battleground leadership position. Cartwright, strongly tested in his last three elections, will seek that job but has competition from Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7, Virginia. The position is restricted to members who qualified for major Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee support.

"I think what's really important is that I get on the (House Democratic) Steering and Policy Committee," Cartwright said.

The Steering and Policy Committee, consisting of about 30 House members, decides Democratic committee assignments and legislative priorities. Pelosi appointed Cartwright to the committee in 2016, and he was an automatic member the last four years because of his policy and communications co-chairmanship. This time, he is seeking one of 12 regionally elected positions. He would represent Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Regardless of what happens there, Cartwright will remain on the House Appropriations Committee, but will lose some appropriating power when the new Congress is sworn in Jan. 3. During this term, with Democrats the House majority, he served as chairman of the Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee. That allowed him to bring home tens of millions of dollars in earmarks for local governments' and nonprofits' special projects.

With Republicans taking the House majority next year, Cartwright will lose the chairmanship, but should remain the subcommittee's top-ranking Democrat. He thinks his good relationship with Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-7, Alabama, will help him keep bringing home federal money. Aderholt is the subcommittee's top Republican. Republicans voted Wednesday to keep earmarks, which Congress did away with more than a decade ago because of corruption scandals.

"I intend to spend the next two years very focused on why I ran for Congress in the first place," Cartwright said. "And that is to improve the economic horizons of the people in northeastern Pennsylvania."

At or close to the top of the list: the long-awaited passenger train between Scranton, the Poconos and New York City. In late October, Gov. Tom Wolf committed $3.7 million in state money to upgrade tracks between Scranton and the Poconos, the project's first major state funding. Cartwright said he convinced Wolf to commit the money as both stood in line to attend a political campaign event.

The day after the election, when Biden called with congratulations, Cartwright said thanks and immediately asked about the train. Biden brought up the call during his post-election news conference.

"For example, I was on the phone congratulating a Californian recently and then someone in — up in Scranton, Pennsylvania — the congressman who got elected," Biden said, according to a White House transcript. "And he (Cartwright) said, 'Can you help us make sure we're able to have high-speed rail ser-, rail service from Scranton to New York, New York City?' I said, 'Yeah, we can. We can.'"

Cartwright called 2023 "a critical year coming up for this train project" because applications for engineering funding are due early next year.

"We have to stay on top of it," Cartwright said. "So I'm trying to make sure that I'm available to do a lot of bird-dogging of this project this coming term ... We're not going to have a chance like this."

Ed Mitchell, the veteran Democratic political consultant familiar with Washington's ways, said Cartwright would retain significant influence as a steering and police committee member and even in the lesser appropriations post.

"Being on the steering and policy committee is a very important position," Mitchell said. "When you're on that committee, you have a lot of members coming to you, because they want to get their legislation on the calendar and all that kind of stuff. And that committee decides things like the message of a party."

He pointed out the late U.S. Rep. Joseph McDade, a Republican who represented the region from 1963-1999, routinely served on the Appropriations Committee while Republicans were in the minority. McDade forged relationships with Democrats who helped him bring home federal money.

"I don't know, maybe it's not that way anymore. But when they made these deals, they gave to both sides," Mitchell said.

Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9147; @BorysBlogTT on Twitter.