Centrist Democrats are back. But these are not your father’s Blue Dogs.

When Mikie Sherrill first ran into the congressional Blue Dog coalition in 2018, she wasn’t sure it would be the place for her.

She knew the caucus focused on fiscal and national defense issues, which she – a Democrat then running for a GOP-held seat in northern New Jersey – cared deeply about. But she also knew it had been founded by a group of white Democratic congressmen, most from the South, who felt they were being “choked blue” by the party’s leftward shift. She remembered that the coalition, back in 2009, had urged changes to the Affordable Care Act that some in the party say watered down President Barack Obama’s signature bill.

“I had some pause,” Representative Sherrill says in a phone interview. “I had some concerns about the policies, about the history.”

What won her over was Stephanie Murphy, the Vietnam-born Florida lawmaker who came to Congress in 2017

‘Democrats in name only’Newfound cloutSkepticism from both sides