Key to our future success. Weve proven and special elections in 2014, we believe going into 16 we have we have the right makeup of what the electorate will look like. The United States is never static nor are our analytics. We feel very strongly that we will maintain the House Majority this election cyclecycle, being president ial, is a little more volatile. We feel very confident that we will maintain the majority. I know my friends, he is on my Telecommunications Subcommittee and we do a lot of Work Together but we have these other jobs on our off time. I was here and they said they think they could win 60 or 70 and maybe 70 or 80 after the republican convention. My rebuttal to that is simply show me the list. If you look at the list, you get down and along the way they failed to recruit anybody again. I think it was a bit of a stretch to say they were going to get to 60, 80 or 40. Our members are in very strong shape. In the last three weeks we have been pulling district after district. I would say as a footnote here, we do not run statewide other than wyoming and alaska and a few singlemember states. We run in district so the data you often see is statewide data. We care about whats happening in the competitive district. We were out there surveying in these districts and i can tell you if you look at the 24 most competitive districts that weve polled in august collectively, the generic ballot is 40 41 favoring republicans. That question is would you vote for the republican or democrat for congress in your district. We lead on the generic in the district. On the compilation of the congressional ballot, these are actually the headtohead. If you compile them, republican candidates lead 49 39 over the democrat candidates in these 24 districts. President ial ballot, trump trails by two. President ial image, trump 38, 58 unfavorable, clinton 48 56. There is distinctly Something Different happening below the president ial when you get into the congressional district. This is probably not news to you. They can go in their districts and do their job and have their own identities in their district and if the members have been doing what they needed to do or are, whichever it is, then they have their own image and their own following and their own support base. something to talk about positively. Everybody knows we were not big fans of obamacare. The same is true for energy and poverty in america. Its all in here. On the agenda how to solve americas problems which by the way is how we get elected. Finally, paul ryan. I know there was speculation when he was considering the speakership that somehow he would be incapable of raising significant funds the case he may not work some days and he was fully equipped to raise money. He has said a record for any sitting speaker over the course since hes been the speaker of transferring 30 million to the nrc see. Thats an enormous record. We feel good about where we are apt and im confident we will hold of the majority and welcoe your questions. How big of a concern to you have about the impact especially the electronic version. Hispanic my question is about mr. Trump is the Fourth District of utah where mr. Trump is not popular at all i eight of you cn respond to the comment yesterday that she believes there is a chance that the democrats will take the house. Hispanic i appreciate the question and i see now how the perks of being president of the organization as you can get the question. One, th the data that i assuredr that the 24 competitive races showed that mr. Trump and mrs. Clinton are not popular in the districts. We are not seeing a significant down ballot affect at this point in time. Thereve been folks on the other side have made th that have madm all they have to do is type your number to donald trump and its game over. Im not seeing Empirical Data that shows that in terms of how they operate in the campaign because i think American Voters first of all are a lot smarter than that and understand that the person they are voting for in their House District is somebody they know and its clear that president ial candidates are running for their own office. Where is the data, we are not seeing that. As for the leader pelosis comments i would draw your attention to the sites in the 2010 on the day of the election she said we are on pace to maintain the majority of the house of representatives. That was the morning of 2010. They lost 63 seats an in the 12, she said that it was aimed reach and very doable but we ended up with the second since world war ii coming of the biggest majority in 2010. Have them produced a lis prot and show me the data. You mentioned obamacare and mitt romney said after he lost on fox in a clip that he played because of the benefits for obamacare and constituency for it you mentioned that you would fix and replace it. What would you do now but it just came out that there is the lowest uninsured in 30 years and there are lifetime benefits, millions of kids covered, preexisting conditions covered. What will you do to replace it that will not take away from the 20 million new people that are insured . It would draw your attention to better dot gop and find a host of proposals to address the issue of Affordable Healthcare. Clearly what we have is not Affordable Healthcare. In my own state it was announced a day before yesterday that the Medicaid Expansion will put the state into a 1. 3 billion hole in the next so youd have continuing costs rising that i dont think were fully anticipated. I remember when the state took on its obligation. I quizzed the governor and his people and he thought they would see the cost savings, not any kind of increase now multiple years later we see 1. 3 billion. We fully support making sure people that have preexisting conditions continue to get coverage. There were lots of agreements leading childrens day, 26 stay on their parents insurance makes sense but you can create a competitive marketplace across state lines that would produce the kind of competition the new electronic technical age has given us for all kinds of other products and services that have dramatically empowered consumers to drive down price and expand competition in the market where we dont see much competition so i would tell you there are lots of ways when i was in the Small Business for 21 years we provided 100 insurance for the people that worked with us. I never had the ability to compete. We were in a small town and you have maybe one other option and all i did is throw a dart at the budget board to figure out how much my premiums were going to go up. Now people may have coverage but if you have to wait o lay down e first 5,000 in a deductible before coverage kicks in and of the median average income in my district i believe is 35,000, what kind of insurance do you have. There are problems we need to come together to fix them so that access to health care is affordable. I cant resist this with both of you there. There was only one major Party President ial nominee that was a licensed radio operator. Youve noted just before what were thought to be targets of the democrats never materialized with some spin opponents. I spoke just yesterday to a lady from Lancaster County pennsylvania, a republican who tells me that the open seat the congressman is giving up is now in play in the Democratic National committee and the super pack is backing the democrat who won the nomination for the open seat. That was on the screen for more than a century. Did you see situations popping up in the final two months of the campaign that you have to work with . Youve been reporting on politics for a generation if you will work couple of generations. Theres all these seats that come into play and go out of play. We believe very strongly that he is in very good shape and will win that seat. This is the seed for those of you that dont dig deep into every seat and every location. The best thing we want is for someone to retire because now you have an open seat and a new race that we know we have to pay special attention and we will. But when you look at the recruitment failures around as you mentioned, this is the democratic seat and they are left with a candidate who already lost the district by double digits in the last cycle. If you look at the michigan eight, melissa gilbert, star of little house on the prairie faltered so badly she dropped out and then they had to hustle around in august and find somebody else to run. If you look at new jersey number three, the candidate lost his primary to a perennial losing candidates that have 600 cash on hand. There was one where we spent or macarthur did spend millions. If you look at martha im not even sure they laid down any money. Good ohio where they were spending millions as late as 2012 on the ohio seats. I dont believe theyve laid out a single byte this cycle were last in ohio which you know is going to be a competitive president ial state. So as we look around the country there will be some takes. There always are in this business but i would much rather it be us than them. Thanks for the data for the intro. Can i ask you about two different situations. One is the libertarian candidate, this fellow in the race in new york 22 can you discuss the effectiveness on that and other races and also the funders like Randy Perkins in floridacan you identify where they are helping or hurting . You have to look at each of the races because in each one a certain thirdparty candidate can vote for the republicans or another they put from the democrats so you have to drill down race by race and i cant get each one in that case. I can say in the seat where you arscenes whereyou are talking aw york 22 that both candidates are really wealthy i think and the independenindependent is one ofy clintons major contributions, so my gut tells me if youve got an independent is a clinton supporter in the district that we now know supports donald trump, id seen the data dont you have two people on the left not one and then to underwrite antwo on theright and we alwaysn the left in a threeway race. In terms of the funding, Randy Perkins made a lot of money and hes been under investigation and had to testify in congress for how he made his money and thats pretty interesting when you are allegedly taking advantage of the victims in how you do your business that is a e topic of campaign as you know. So the quality of the candidate, the character matters a lot. Money isnt always the overriding decisionmaker. If it were, then the edge they had against us in the last cycle would produce a different outcome than the record majority we were able to do so is the quality of the candidates and i would say for whatever set of reasons, the Democratic Committee failed to do good recruitment throughout almost the entire cycle and that left them with weak candidates in the race is, and they are struggling to try to create races now. When you are doing that you aree bound here away and it becomes harder and harder. Theres been a lot of discussion about the strategy the republicans used arguing that bill clinton shouldnt be given a blank check the democratic congress. Weve already seen speaker ryan and fundraising emails use the blank check argument. Are you planning on using that strategy either in the continued fundraising emails or Television Advertising and when do you think that would be the most effective strategy . We are not in the habit of forecasting the emails were campaign strategies. But i would tell you this i think americans are concerned when you look at where the former speaker is in the polling. The notion that we could go back to the day that brought about this huge uprising in america in 2010 where there was no check and balance is clearly an anathema to the centerright americans. They want some sort of check and balance against the liberal take away so peaceful that play out in 2010. Every cycle is different. Remember the difference here thats important. After the big waves and 94 in the First Time Since 40 years there was no redistricting until you got to 2000. Then the most recent came in time in 2010 when literally the next cycle, there was redistricting and one of the big stories youve all covered with this enormous wave that played out at the legislative level. So, the state houses became more republican just in time to walk in the districts that were advantageous for maintaining the majoritthemajorities of the dyne different in terms of the number of seats that are at play this time, but in terms of messaging, it is a bold message for our districts and members to talk about do you want complete oneparty democratic rule because again we just got through that, and i think the answer is no. Despite the tightening of the polls is it true that more members than usual are running away from the republican president ial nominee . I think the other question is how many of them are embracing hillary and nancy pelosi . We are asking members that now are you going to vote for nancy pelosi for speaker in these competitive races. I think that is a valid question to ask. If you get out to nebraska, theyve made a career trying to avoid the person hes sharing the campaign with. You will find members will do what they believ believe, and wh the beauty of the voters in that district believe and run the races and so everybodys going to do their own thing. Mr. Chairman, politico, thanks for being here. You mentioned that you have done polling in the 24 battleground races recently. Do you know how many of those clinton is leaving and what is your advice to the candidates and the districts like that . The data is a compilation of them all and of the members are leaving their opponents and in some cases overwhelmingly. So ive seen those where trump for clinton leads but that being said members are strong. Are we going to have competitive races, of course. Im not going to stand here and tell you we wont have competitive races is that the president and . You cant come off the biggest majority since 1928 and not expect to have some competitive races. We know we have those. But its very limited that are the hypercompetitive i would call them and so i feel very good about where we are at. Do you have any particular advice to the candidates where clinton is leading from . I would say first of all, give the voters a reason to vote for them. Thats part of what you have to do. Voters expect to get solutions or at least proposed solutions from the people asking for their vote and so i think go talk about what matters in your district. Its one of those you get in a district like mine and it may be the threat of a monument being declared, that is an 80 to 90 plus issue. You get other parts of the district that need the safety and somewhere else its something else, forest fires are always big in the last. Theres so many issues that are important on the minds of the voters and what we try to do is help the candidates identified with those issues are in the district. We have seen races decided over the city council when they raised the toll on the bridge because thats what really mattered to those voters and thats how we go in and win the races. We dont look at it and say its only natural if you support the nominee or whatever. Okay. Youve got to deal with all that. But the bread and butter is issues that matter at home locally. Im from the washington post. I didnt want to ignore you. Stick to draw a threa the threah a couple things you talked about, you talked about the polling at this point and a lot of times particularly president ial years the voters dont start paying attention on tour right about now after labor day and thats when the messaging kicks up. I wonder if you are worried at all as it is kicking up its also the time when congress is about to have a fight about spending and thats the kind of thing that will be in the back of their mind as they are starting to look at the candidates. How do you message against that and do you worry they are good to start to change dramatically with the push is coming out now . Very good set of questions. When it comes to the polling itself, we have a much higher confidence level about the quality of the polling and certainly we had coming out of 2012 if you recall i believe governor mitt romney and his team believe we are going up Election Night to win and we were all shocked. That caused a deep dive review of what went wrong with. You got it wrong, we paid for it lets figure out what went wrong. Weve got a lowe found a lot ofd made the changes. Weve been able to pressure test those so we be the first of all the quality of the data are pretty good. Second, timing matters. In august it matters because this is the first wave of messaging that helps you lead the first wave in the end. This will not be the only time obviously and it wont be the only messages we put out so we will adjust accordingly as time goes. Its a snapshot looking backwards in the Rearview Mirror if you well and so we realize we have to continue to look and dive and figure out whats going on. We will continue it so its not static. Third, the issue that always matters and what happens here in Washington Matters but i dont think it would be enormous news to americans that congress has a fight over spending. It probably wont make many places around the country but its something we need to get our work done and that we will address in the Conference Tomorrow and we would like to have as the speaker said yesterday low drama september, get work done and finish up. We have major work to finish. We will get it done. Dallas morning news which means im asking about the district 23 race. Since i last asked you about this we had the address and the hispanic republican kind of i dont want to say give up but thats basically what happened. When we look at the majority hispanic district, how do you insulate him from the attacks this week democrats have been doing it for a while an and it seems worse now when he has another republican in his state agreeing. I think the voters in his part of texas now have got into note the very effective legislator. He is not only done well legislatively but hes worked his district hard and they know him and what hes about and what his views are and they will distinguish between his and where there is disagreement with others so i feel good about where he is. Hes been very eff