Questions about residency — including charges of “carpetbagging” — have become central to a handful of House and Senate races this year, with candidates from both parties angling to paint rivals as insufficiently familiar with their would-be constituents — a rhetorical tool many campaigns are hoping will help push them across the finish line in November.
“Calling somebody a ‘carpetbagger’ is saying: ‘They’re not one of us. They don’t share our values,’” said Peter Loge, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University in D.C. “And voters want to know that their elected officials, their candidates, share their values — that they really get them at a fundamental level.”
The term “carpetbagger” originally was used to describe people from Northern states who went to the South after the Civil War to profit from Reconstruction. It’s not a new line of attack, but its usage has become more common in politics. History holds several examples of candidates who have overcome the charge.
Robert F. Kennedy was elected to the Senate from New York despite growing up in Massachusetts. Hillary Clinton, the wife of an Arkansas governor, was also elected in New York. John McCain, a decorated military veteran, moved to Arizona just a year before his first campaign for Congress. And Mitt Romney was elected to a Senate seat in Utah after serving as governor of Massachusetts.
In explaining why so many candidates are trying to make the carpetbagger label stick this year, some analysts point to the success that now-Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) enjoyed in 2022 in his race against celebrity physician Mehmet Oz. Fetterman relentlessly sought to cast Oz as an interloper from New Jersey who enjoyed “crudités” and didn’t know the name of the well-known Pennsylvania grocery store he was shopping at.
Democrats are running similar playbooks across the country in states including Wisconsin, Michigan, Montana and, once again, Pennsylvania — where another residency issue is at the fore in the race for the state’s other Senate seat.
Businessman Dave McCormick is mounting a second Senate bid, this time challenging Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, a longtime incumbent.
McCormick rents a house in Connecticut, where he ran a hedge fund company, and continues to regularly travel there via private jet service to visit his daughter.
Democrats have sought to dub the Republican “Connecticut resident Dave McCormick.” A recent ad from the Casey campaign kicks off by saying McCormick is a “Connecticut millionaire” who “hadn’t voted [in Pennsylvania] for 15 years.”
McCormick’s campaign countered that the businessman is a seventh-generation Pennsylvanian who grew up on the campus of what’s now Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, where his father was president, and that he was nominated to attend the U.S. Military Academy by a Pennsylvania senator.
Despite having represented Michigan for 14 years in the House, even Republican Mike Rogers is being accused of being a carpetbagger in his Senate race in the state. Rogers, who was born and raised in a suburb of Detroit, retired to Florida after leaving the House in 2015. He moved back to Michigan last year.
Republican Senate candidates Tim Sheehy in Montana and Eric Hovde in Wisconsin are also facing attacks questioning their roots and allegiance to the states they seek to represent.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) has sought to depict Sheehy as a rich out-of-stater. Sheehy, a Minnesota native, moved to Montana in 2014 after leaving the military and founded an aerospace company in his barn. In ads, Tester emphasizes his own roots in Montana and suggests that “some folks moving here don’t understand — or frankly, don’t care — what’s happening out here.”
Sheehy’s campaign has defended his move to the state by telling Fox News that he is “proud” to have founded his business ventures in Montana.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), alongside political action committees aligned with Democrats, has sought to portray Hovde, a real estate developer and bank owner, as “pure California.” Hovde runs H Bancorp, a bank holding company in California, and owns a $7 million home in Laguna Beach.
Earlier this month, one of Hovde’s companies tore down an iconic Madison bar — an occasion Democrats used to accuse him of being out of touch.
A spokesman for Hovde noted that Hovde is a fourth-generation Wisconsinite who was born and raised in Madison and who graduated from Madison East High School and the University of Wisconsin.
“[He] has owned a business in Wisconsin for more than 20 years, and he and his wife have lived in Wisconsin since 2011,” Hovde spokesman Ben Voelkel said.
Authenticity, political analysts say, is a candidate’s best weapon against charges of carpetbagging. In Oz’s case, his gaffes on the campaign trail reminded voters that he is a wealthy celebrity doctor in Hollywood.
David Bergstein, communications director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said that the reason the carpetbagger charge has been effective in recent cycles is because “it reinforces the belief that these candidates are showing through all parts of their campaigns that they don’t understand the concerns and values of the state that they’re running in.”
But it doesn’t always work.
On Tuesday, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) prevailed in a new district in a race where her opponents sought to cast her as an interloper. Boebert chose to run in the state’s more Republican-friendly 4th District after barely surviving her 2022 general-election contest against a Democrat in the more competitive 3rd District.
During a debate in January, state Rep. Mike Lynch, one of Boebert’s Republican opponents in the 4th District, pointedly asked Boebert to define the word “carpetbagger.” Boebert sought to fend off the attack by saying she and her family needed a fresh start after a divorce.
“The crops may be different in Colorado’s 4th District, but the values are not,” Boebert told viewers.
In Texas’s 26th Congressional District, Brandon Gill, a former Wall Street banker who recently made a move to the state, was pegged as a carpetbagger in attack ads despite having grown up in Abilene, a town a three-hour drive from the district he seeks to represent.
Gill won his Republican primary with over 58 percent of the vote and will probably be the next congressman from the deep-red district in North Texas. Andrew Leppert, one of his advisers, noted the irony behind a non-Texas PAC trying to paint Gill as an outsider. The PAC, America Leads Action, is headquartered in Delaware and its major donors are based in Arkansas and North Carolina, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
In New Hampshire, Democrat Maggie Goodlander, who’s running in her party’s September primary in the state’s 2nd District, has drawn attention for running ads saying there should be more renters like her in Congress.
Goodlander does rent a home in the district in which she’s running — but she also owns a $1.2 million home in the district next door, according to property records first reported on by the Daily Beast and reviewed by The Post.
In a statement, Goodlander’s campaign said that she is running in a district where she was born and raised “until she began a career of public service in all three branches of our government and in the military.” Goodlander, the statement said, has returned to the district “throughout her life to serve as an advocate and an educator.”
While most candidates accused of carpetbagging bristle at the term, a challenger embraced his outsider status in at least one House primary. But his race did not end well.
At the start of the pandemic, insurance salesman Paul Bondar moved his family from Illinois to Texas, seeking, he said, a life with less government intervention.
In 2022, Bondar bought land in Oklahoma and decided that he wanted to run for Congress in the state’s 4th District despite being a newcomer. His campaign message centered on his belief that he’d do a better job representing the district’s constituents than their current congressman, Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican who’s held the seat since 2003 and has deep roots in the Sooner State.
Cole won the race on June 18 with about 65 percent of the vote — but Bondar vowed to remain in the district and challenge Cole again.
In an interview, Bondar said he meshed with his new neighbors, with whom he said he shared many values.
“They don’t care if I’m from Mars,” Bondar told The Post. “They care that I care.”
Cole’s campaign manager, Scott Chance, said he doesn’t believe Bondar “knows much about Oklahoma and couldn’t navigate the district without a map.”
Political scientist Christopher J. Galdieri, a professor at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, said that while there’s often “a lot of hand-wringing” when a candidate is accused of carpetbagging, “the nice thing about democracy is that voters get the final say on whether they think it’s disqualifying or not.”
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
