Two freshman House Democrats buck the party

(Bloomberg Politics) — First-term Democratic Reps. Gwen Graham and Brad Ashford are showing an early willingness to buck their party’s liberal majority and align with some Republican priorities.

They were part of a small bloc of Democrats voting with Republicans in the first week of the 114th Congress to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, change the definition of a full-time employee under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) employer mandate, and ease some requirements under the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law.

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Look for Graham and Ashford to brandish these votes, and others to come, when they prepare to defend their seats in 2016 against Republican criticism that they’re toe-the-line partisans. They were the only Democrats who unseated House Republicans in 2014, which was a bad year for Democrats almost everywhere else. (It helped that their opponents, Representatives Steve Southerland and Lee Terry, respectively, made imprudentcomments.) They are also two of just five House Democrats from districts that Republican Mitt Romney won in the 2012 presidential election, and the 2016 Republican nominee is likely to carry their districts too.

“As it currently stands, Obamacare is forcing businesses to choose between providing health care for their employees and keeping their doors open—and Nebraskans are losing income as a result,” said Ashford, who represents Nebraska’s 2nd District in the Omaha area, in a statement Thursday explaining why he joined every Republican and 11 Democrats in voting to redefine the threshold for full-time employment under PPACA from 30 hours to 40 hours per week.