Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts plans to campaign in two battleground states this weekend on the housing bill that recently became law, capitalizing on the fact that Republicans have struggled to fold it neatly into their messaging.
The Democrat played a key role in negotiating the major housing bill that took effect earlier in July. On Friday, she traveled to Georgia for several events across the state to support Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff. Warren is also expected to travel to North Carolina on Saturday, where she will campaign on behalf of Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s former governor and the Democratic candidate vying for retiring Sen. Thom Tillis’ seat.
That she’s able to tout legislation passed in a Republican-controlled Congress as a win is in part because of how it became law: President Donald Trump never signed the legislation and called it a “big yawn,” giving Democrats an opening to try to own it.
“Donald Trump took the legs out from underneath the Republicans,” Warren told NOTUS over the phone after speaking at a roundtable event with community leaders and advocates in Georgia. “He ran for office promising to lower costs on day one, and then turned around and said affordability is a hoax when Republicans and Democrats worked together to pass this bill to lower housing costs.”
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The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Warren will be the keynote speaker at Saturday’s North Carolina Democratic Party Unity Dinner, the party’s largest annual gathering in the state.
The Democrat, who was criticized during the bill negotiations by some lawmakers and stakeholders for leaving them out of the loop, is also trying to make her expertise on the bill a resource for other congressional candidates by briefing their campaigns on how to explain the housing package to voters.
“This is not a heavy lift for me,” Warren said. “Democrats across the country understand that the two big issues in this race are cost and corruption.”
By focusing on the housing package, particularly in states like Georgia and North Carolina, she said, lawmakers on the campaign trail can provide voters with “clear evidence that Democrats will deliver on their promises.”
Democrats face an uphill battle in their quest to flip control of the Senate this fall. For that to happen, Democrats need to net four seats in the chamber. Ossoff is one of the most vulnerable sitting Senate Democrats, and Cooper is running in North Carolina, one of the likeliest places for Democrats to pick up a seat.
In the meantime, Republicans’ campaign message on housing has been complicated by the fact that Trump never signed the bill. Republican lawmakers in some of the most competitive districts in the country are avoiding mention of the president’s involvement as they campaign.
The law is a product of the most comprehensive housing reform bill to come out of Congress in more than three decades. It includes a limit on institutional investors’ ownership of single-family homes, enforced through fines on corporations that own more than 350 units. It also modernizes federal housing programs and overhauls quality review standards to fast-track housing development.
The president had supported several versions of the bill, including the final one. In the end, however, he decided against signing it because Congress hasn’t passed the voter-ID bill that is top priority.
The president criticized the housing package, calling it a “Warren-centric housing bill,” which the lawmaker downplayed and called “a family-centric housing bill.”
“This new law is all about helping working families, but there’s nothing in it for Donald Trump personally,” Warren said. “As a result, he’s just not interested.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misdescribed Warren’s campaign stops. She is campaigning as a surrogate for the Democratic candidates.
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