This is a fascinating interview with Representative Mikie Sherril of New Jersey - and one of the authors of the WaPo Op-Ed that sort of opened the floodgates to Dems supporting impeachment- It walks through the thought processes of shifting from No to yes on impeachment:
NYT Link
After months of caution, since Monday, dozens of House Democrats have announced their support for an impeachment inquiry of President Trump. Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a moderate first-term Democrat, is one of them. Moments before Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared the formal initiation of the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s actions, Ms. Sherrill spoke with Michael Barbaro, the host of “The Daily,” about why she’d changed her mind on impeachment.
The following is a transcript of the interview from the episode.
REPRESENTATIVE MIKIE SHERRILL: Hello?
MICHAEL BARBARO: Hey, it’s Michael Barbaro from The New York Times. I’m trying to reach Congresswoman Sherrill.
SHERRILL: Hi, it’s Mikie Sherrill, how are you? We’re try — we don’t use our landline very often, if you can’t tell.
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BARBARO: You pick up your own phone!
SHERRILL: [Laughs]
BARBARO: I could have been anybody.
SHERRILL: Right? I know. Well, we don’t get tons of calls, I think. I shouldn’t even say that, because I never answer the landline, so who knows? I just saw it ringing and grabbed it.
BARBARO: Right. I’m just kidding. I have to imagine this feels like a pretty historic day in your office and in your chamber of Congress.
SHERRILL: It does feel like a historic day. It does feel important. But I am hoping that we can, after today, get back to the reasons I’m really here — to legislate on health care and taxes and infrastructure.
BARBARO: Well, but this conversation is going to be about impeachment, with apologies, because —
SHERRILL: No, certainly.
BARBARO: — after months and months of saying that you don’t think impeachment is the right step, you have released a statement saying that you’re open to the possibility that it is, so let’s talk about that. To start, I wonder if you could read from the statement that you released on Monday night about this.
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SHERRILL: O.K. “We are now faced with accusations from numerous sources that our president attempted to pressure a foreign government to investigate one of his rivals in the next presidential election. In other words, the president of the United States is attempting to fix the election. I think these accusations should be addressed with all of the tools at Congress’s disposal, including articles of impeachment. I did not run for Congress to impeach the president. I ran to make the lives of New Jerseyans better, but I’ve long said that Congress is a coequal branch of government and has constitutional oversight duties, as well as duties to legislate for Americans. The president of the United States is threatening our national security. I believe it is my responsibility as a member of Congress to ensure that I protect our country from any and all threats. And that is what I intend to do.”
BARBARO: I can’t imagine that you made this decision lightly. I want to talk about what happened in the lead-up to your decision to release this statement, and an op-ed you released with six other moderate Democratic colleagues from the House. Tell me about those conversations that you were having with those colleagues, if you would, that led to this decision to come out together, as you did.
SHERRILL: So all of us, as military veterans and C.I.A. officers, have been trained to make hard decisions in tough circumstances. But this wasn’t one of those. This wasn’t a tough decision for us. This was sort of an obvious decision. And someone asked me earlier, “Well, who led on this?” Nobody led on this. We’re all in a chat group. We all text back and forth routinely. And when this news came out, we started talking and saying, this is a huge issue, this is a national security issue, this is different from what we’ve seen before, and we need to act. And because we all felt the same way about this, and we all saw the national security implications, we thought it would be best to act as a group. Quite frankly, the hardest part of all of this was getting seven congresspeople to agree on the language of the op-ed — we had people putting commas in and taking commas out, so that was probably the hardest part of all of this.
BARBARO: Hmm. I’m quite surprised to hear you say that this wasn’t a tough decision. You represent purple districts, swing districts, and so it feels like inherently, it’s a very tough decision, in the sense that it may not represent the will of the majority of your constituents.
SHERRILL: I think it would be a tough decision if this was in some way a political decision.
BARBARO: Hmm.
SHERRILL: But for all of us, it’s always been about what is the best decision for this country? And I’ve often said, you know, if I look back on this in 10 years or 20 years, how is our country going to be on better footing because of a decision I made today? And so when you have that as your compass, then a decision like this and seeing the threat to our national security and seeing these grave breaches, the flagrant disregard for our law, it became an easy decision. You know, certainly there will be people in my district who don’t support this, and across the country. But, you know, I’ve already heard support from several Republicans in my district who felt like this really was different, and this was a line that had been crossed.
BARBARO: I want to be sure I understand the line that you’re describing, that you feel was so clearly crossed here.
SHERRILL: The fact that our president is trying to induce a foreign power to threaten our elections — I think that’s a huge national security risk. The fact that a president is withholding support from a security partner that is trying to fight off Russia, which has presented multiple national security threats over the past several years. To withhold this kind of support, knowing how critical it is that we deter Russian aggression across the world, and to have that aid not arrive to our security partner, not arrive in Ukraine as they are trying to fight that aggression — I just think it’s so incredibly offensive to put that kind of support and that kind of fight that they have going on in jeopardy and in peril. I think those are clear national security threats, and the fact that they are being conducted by the president leaves no other option than for Congress to act. Because Congress is the body that the founding fathers anticipated would be a check on the executive branch.
BARBARO: So let’s talk about how you came to this moment. The last time that we spoke with you, a few months back, you were very much not in favor of impeachment. I wonder if you could remind us why you weren’t?
SHERRILL: I didn’t think that we had made our case to the American people. I, you know, simply had watched the responses to some of our hearings. I was concerned about how we were presenting things to people throughout my district and throughout the country. And I simply did not think that we were bringing the American people along with us based on the evidence we were presenting. And not just how it was presented, but also the actual evidence we had was the type of case that I could bring to the American people and convince them that there had been enough wrongdoing to go against the democratic will of the people.
BARBARO: One of the reasons we understand that Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not pursue impeachment following the Russia investigation is because she did not want to endanger House members such as yourself. It now appears that your coming forward helped lead Pelosi to the place that she’s in, where she says that the House will pursue an impeachment inquiry. Did you speak with Pelosi before you came forward?
SHERRILL: So we put together our op-ed — we had all been speaking — and then when we finalized it and sent it to The Washington Post, we called up the speaker to say, “Look, this will be coming out, and this is our thought process, and this is why we did this.”
BARBARO: So you weren’t really seeking permission, you were telling her you were doing it. What did she say?
SHERRILL: Right, because we’d done it. But we also — maybe it’s our military background. We don’t like to surprise other members of the unit. So we had sent the op-ed off, and then, you know, said, “We’d like to sit down and just talk through what we’ve been working on.” And she said, “Thank you for coming to me. You know, this is a very strong case. You’ve really presented some critical voices in national security, and I appreciate that.”
BARBARO: So when did you realize that she was going to, in a sense, follow your statement, your lead, and back the idea of an impeachment inquiry?
SHERRILL: I think about half an hour ago, maybe.
BARBARO: Wow. So just within the last hour or so.
SHERRILL: Right.
BARBARO: And what did you think when she did that?
SHERRILL: I wasn’t surprised, given our conversation and her response to what we had said and what we were doing. So when she came out and said, “This is where the House is going,” that seemed like a logical continuation of the conversation we’d had last night.
BARBARO: Mm-hmm. I wonder if it feels to you, as it does to several of our colleagues here at The Times, that your statement and the statement of these six others made a very big difference and may have actually kind of broken the dam.
SHERRILL: I think it was an important statement. I think our party needed to lay out the case, and I think to have that case come from a group of people that have a history of service to the country, that don’t have a history of being partisan, I do think that was a powerful statement.
BARBARO: You said you’ve heard from people in your district, including Republicans, but obviously it’s far too early to understand how your voters will come down on this. I wonder, does that matter to you? Are you comfortable with the idea that this decision could theoretically cost you your seat in Congress?
SHERRILL: It matters to me in the sense that I have a vision for the future of this country that I think is important and that I think will help not just New Jerseyans but all Americans. So I think it would be a shame if, after 2020, we still had President Trump in office, because I don’t think he’s been good for this country. In that sense, no, I’m not totally comfortable with the possibility that this will cost me, because to me, that means I haven’t made the case well enough, that I haven’t done what I think I and I think, you know, other freshmen members that I’ve written this op-ed with — you know, the case that I think Gil Cisneros and Jason Crow and Chrissy Houlahan and Elaine Luria and Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger and I can make — to the American people about what the president has done. And if we don’t do that well enough and we lose our seats, yeah, I’m not really comfortable with that, because I think we have a better vision for the future than the president does. And yet it’s a risk that I think we all felt we had to take to defend our national security.
BARBARO: Congresswoman, in your letter, you said that if the allegations are true — and you emphasized if — this is an impeachable offense. The way you’re talking now, it seems like you’re pretty clear that this is an impeachable offense. Do I have that right? Am I missing something?
SHERRILL: I think we have a group of people that have signed on to this op-ed, and this is where the group is. I think I am pretty confident that these are impeachable offenses. Now, whether that’s the decision that we as a caucus will make, that’s a different thing. And I think there’s many things that will go into that decision for the caucus. But I certainly think these actions do represent an impeachable offense.
BARBARO: Congresswoman, thank you very much for your time, I really appreciate it.
SHERRILL: Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Have a good day.
BARBARO: You too.
SHERRILL: Bye-bye.