In a New Jersey district represented by one of the conservative-leaning Democrats in the House, Democratic voters are disappointed and worried by the party’s inability to pass President Biden’s agenda.
RIDGEWOOD, N.J. — On Election Day in 2018, Cathy Brienza opened her light blue colonial in a New Jersey suburb to dozens of Democratic activists for a get-out-the-vote rally. A freshman congressman, Josh Gottheimer, addressed a crowd filled with voters angered by Donald J. Trump’s presidency and hopeful of regaining Democratic control of the House.
It worked. Fueled by a so-called blue wave, Democrats flipped four seats in New Jersey, re-elected Mr. Gottheimer and won the House.
Now, as another midterm election looms, Ms. Brienza is again thinking about Mr. Gottheimer. But this time she is disappointed — and scared.
“He is undermining President Biden’s agenda,” said Ms. Brienza, 62, the founder of Ridgewood JOLT, which grew after the 2017 Women’s March into a 1,400-member political organizing group based in Ridgewood, N.J.
“President Biden is under siege,” she said. “If he is not successful, we are going to end up with another Trump.”
A moderate in a swing district that bends at a hard right angle along the western and northern edges of New Jersey, Mr. Gottheimer, 46, has emerged as a key player in high-stakes negotiations that have cleaved the Democratic Party’s centrist and liberal factions and consumed Washington.
He is a leader among nine conservative-leaning Democrats in the House who initially said they would withhold support for a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that includes far-reaching initiatives, including measures to combat climate change and expand child care, until a landmark, $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill was approved.
Progressive lawmakers are now holding firm to a similar ultimatum, only in reverse, bogging down the infrastructure bill, which is seen as a pillar of Mr. Biden’s agenda. It includes funding to improve roads, bridges, airports and railways and expand high-speed internet access. It cleared the Senate with rare bipartisan backing, and polls show it has broad public support.
The standoff has imperiled both initiatives, and on Friday, after meetings with legislators on Capitol Hill, Mr. Biden said that a vote on the popular infrastructure measure would have to wait until Democrats passed his far more ambitious social policy package.
“These so-called moderates, who really are acting like Republicans, are getting in the way of the president’s agenda,” said Harry Waisbren, 36, a Democrat who lives in Mr. Gottheimer’s district in Glen Rock. Mr. Waisbren said he believed that delaying sweeping action on climate change would be “catastrophic,” noting the torrential flash flooding in New Jersey that led to at least 30 deaths last month in the wake of Hurricane Ida.
“I’m concerned that they’re acting on behalf of their corporate donors rather than our children,” he added.
Mr. Gottheimer represents a large and varied district that includes some of New Jersey’s few remaining Republican strongholds as well as populous, affluent regions closer to New York City that are filled with liberal-leaning Democrats who helped propel him to victory in 2016.
“What I have said consistently is I believe both parts of the president’s agenda are critically important to New Jersey and to the country,” Mr. Gottheimer said in an interview on Saturday. “I just don’t believe that we should hold one up for months on end.”
At lunchtime on Friday, Jeff Bolson, a self-described “die-hard Democrat” who, like Mr. Gottheimer, lives in Bergen County, said he was worried that the brinkmanship in Washington could jeopardize the infrastructure bill and the climate change initiatives, both of which he supports.
“We neglected the infrastructure,” he said. “If the economy is going to move forward, we need to build it up.”
Still, Mr. Bolson, a certified public accountant, blanched at the sheer size of the $3.5 trillion package, which includes paid family and medical leave, an expansion of Medicare, funding for universal prekindergarten and initiatives to slow and combat the negative effects of a warmer climate.
“There’s a lack of accountability when everything becomes free,” he said. “People need to have skin in the game.”
In rural Sussex County, where Mr. Trump won by nearly 20 percentage points in 2020, many residents said they were supportive of Mr. Gottheimer’s approach.
“Anybody that’s willing to take a pause and seriously look at things, I’m behind,” said Rick Wahlers, who twice voted for Mr. Trump and owns a clock and watch repair shop down the street from Mr. Gottheimer’s district office in Newton.
“The government hands them the money and does not have any accountability for how it’s spent,” he added, adjusting the magnifying loupe he wears on his eyeglasses and uses to repair tiny clock machinery. “It’s way too much.”
Nearby, in a bar run by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, men were gathered Thursday afternoon eating food left over from a funeral reception held the night before at the lodge.
Bill Schmitz Jr., an Army veteran who is the V.F.W.’s quartermaster and who voted for Mr. Trump, said he agreed with ending the country’s dependency on fossil fuels and supported anything that would create new jobs.
“Our infrastructure is crumbling — I get that,” Mr. Schmitz, 61, said as negotiations over the two plans were raging 250 miles away in Washington, where he worked for about 10 years for the State Department. But he said he feared the larger initiative would be filled with “pork.”
“Just to go out and drop trillions and trillions,” he said. “Where’s that money coming from?”
Colleen Waselik sees it differently. A mother of five who works for a school district, she recently left the Republican Party, yearning for a spirit of greater cooperation and bipartisanship.
“I was embarrassed — sickened — by the way Republicans were behaving,” said Ms. Waselik, 61, who said the need to improve internet connectivity in rural Sussex County and repair the country’s faulty infrastructure was urgent.
“It hasn’t been addressed for so long,” she said outside Hayek’s Market in Newton. “They have to go big.”
Much of the ambitious social policy bill would be paid for by rolling back Trump-era tax cuts. One version of the plan called for raising the corporate tax rate to 26.5 percent for the richest businesses and imposing an additional surtax on individuals who make more than $5 million.
Mr. Gottheimer, a prodigious fund-raiser, has $10 million on hand for his re-election campaign, according to a July report filed with the Federal Election Commission — nearly five times as much as Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington State, who has emerged as the voice of the left in the House.
Ms. Brienza, the Ridgewood activist, said she was concerned that Mr. Gottheimer was more worried about catering to the needs of wealthy donors than “creating an economy that works for everyone.”
On Friday night, after talks had reached a new standstill, Mr. Gottheimer issued a statement that criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not holding a promised vote on the infrastructure bill and pinned fault for the delay on a “small far left faction.”
“We can create these jobs and help invest in infrastructure this week if we just pass it and send it to the president’s desk,” Mr. Gottheimer said on Saturday. “The other one’s not written yet.”
Still, fear that it all might fall apart and intensify pressure on Democrats trying to defend a slim majority in Congress in next year’s midterm elections was not far from the minds of many voters.
“To show a rift makes it very easy for the Republicans — that I don’t like to see,” said Harriet Sausa, 71, a retired teacher who lives in Glen Rock and is a registered Republican, even though she said she rarely voted for that party’s candidates.
She is hoping for a quick compromise.
“I do think that a lot of the things in the big bill are important,” she said, “but not enough to jeopardize the infrastructure bill.”
Sherouk Aziz and Yusuf Waiel, a newlywed couple who live in Hackensack, a midsize city, said they were watching the negotiations carefully, worried that the process could spell trouble for the future of the Democratic Party.
“This is kind of just one more issue that makes them look more divided and more broken,” said Ms. Aziz, 28, a software engineer and a Democrat who said she “votes left.”
“We are going to lose an opportunity to reinvest in our own country,” said her husband, Mr. Waiel, 25, who is also a software engineer.
“And it’s going to cost them in the midterms,” he added.
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