Laura Moser is headed to a run-off after placing second in the Democratic primary for Texas’s seventh district. That’s despite the best efforts of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which published opposition research on Moser in the middle of the campaign. Roll Call explains:
Last month, the DCCC released research accusing her of being a “Washington insider.” In a 2014 magazine article, Moser, then a Washington, D.C., resident, said she’d rather have her “teeth pulled without anesthesia” than live in her grandparents’ hometown of Paris, Texas, which is not in the 7th District.
The DCCC also alleged that Moser’s husband has benefited from her campaign spending, since he works at Revolution Messaging, which her campaign has paid for online consulting and advertising.
In the same article, Moser referred to a neighbor as a “deaf-mute drug addict,” for which she has apologized. As Jia Tolentino recently noted at The New Yorker, those remarks may not be the real source of the DCCC’s concern. “What’s really happening is that the DCCC is using one strategic worry—that Texans won’t vote for a prodigal daughter—as a stand-in for the real concern: that Moser is too far left,” she wrote.
Cook Political Report says the seventh is a “Republican Toss-Up.” Whoever wins the Democratic run-off faces a tight race, and the DCCC isn’t wrong to be worried about running a controversial candidate. But they may have underestimated Moser’s appeal, and their attacks certainly appear to have backfired.