Engage or Not Engage When Trump Attacks? Democrats Face Risks

Political strategists have questioned the announcement’s timing, three weeks before the Nov. 6 midterm elections, and whether it did anything to extinguish the original debate over her heritage that first surfaced in her 2012 Senate election. Ms.Warren has said she would “take a hard look” at running for president after the midterms. She is widely expected to launch a presidential campaign.

“You know the one good thing about her test—she had so little” Native American ancestry, President Trump said of Ms.Warren at a recent rally. “I can’t call her Pocahontas anymore,” he said, but he plans to anyway to highlight how “phony” she is.

For many Democrats, the episode was a reminder of the challenges their presidential nominee will face against Mr. Trump, who is preparing to run for re-election in 2020.

“Three years later, people are still trying to grapple with how to respond to Trump’s attacks,” said Michael Czin, a veteran of the Democratic National Committee and the 2012 Obama campaign. “Do you engage directly, rebut it or just ignore it? There isn’t a proven playbook yet.”

The analysis of Ms. Warren’s DNA, from Carlos Bustamante, a professor of biomedical data science and genetics at Stanford University, found that while the vast majority of her ancestry was European, she likely had a Native American ancestor from six to 10 generations ago. The Oklahoma-born senator promptly asked Mr. Trump to make good on his July pledge to write a $1 million check to a charity if she released a DNA test showing Native American heritage.

While Mr. Trump responded that he would only donate the money if he oversaw the DNA test himself, Republicans unleashed criticism on her for claiming a connection to Native Americans based on such a distant ancestor. They had accused her of trying to use her ethnicity to advance her career.

A Boston Globe investigation found that Ms. Warren’s ethnicity didn’t play a role in her hiring, although she was identified as a “minority” law professor in the Association of American Law Schools annual directory for several years and in university records after she was already a tenured professor. Ms. Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, told the Globe she doesn’t remember deciding to change her ethnicity on forms, but noted her initial declarations occurred when many of her maternal relatives, who told stories to her about the family’s background, were dying.

Mr. Trump wasn’t Ms. Warren’s only intended audience. She has said she wanted to demonstrate how transparent she intends to be, setting a standard for her would-be Democratic challengers as well as establishing a contrast with the president, who has refused to release his tax returns and many details of his business.

Besides Mr. Bustamante’s report, she released dozens of forms she filled out when applying for faculty jobs in which she labeled herself white and 10 years of tax returns. She included a video, since viewed by more than five million people, which includes interviews with academic officials who said her ancestry wasn’t a factor in the decision to hire her. The release of tax returns could be challenging for several wealthy potential Democratic candidates, including former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and billionaire hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer.

“Now, the whole notion of confidence in government has really gone to a low point, and so for me, what I’ve done is I’ve just tried to put it all out there,” Ms. Warren said in a recent debate.

Members of Native American communities have offered mixed responses. A leader of the Cherokee Nation, in her native Oklahoma, objected to Ms. Warren’s ancestry claims, which are largely based on family lore. But Deb Haaland, the Democratic nominee for a House seat in New Mexico and a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, said she was persuaded by Ms. Warren’s test.

“She was not dishonest about what her DNA test revealed. She was on the contrary very honest about it,” Ms. Haaland said in an interview. “She had an idea from family stories that she had Native American ancestry —she proved that with her DNA test. She didn’t propose to do anything other than that.”

For some Democrats, Ms. Warren’s handling of the DNA information was reminiscent of Mr. Obama’s 2011 release of his long-form birth certificate. Then, White House aides sought to quell a Trump-amplified conspiracy theory about the Hawaii-born president’s birthplace.

Mr. Trump didn’t back down at the time. Republican officials echoed him, with the Republican Party of Iowa in 2012 enacting language in its platform that called on presidential candidates to “show proof of being a natural-born citizen.” Mr. Trump admitted in September 2016 that Mr. Obama was born in the U.S.

Some Democrats are wary of the risks of Ms. Warren engaging with Mr. Trump over his own derogatory nickname.

“She’s playing into Trump’s hands in an issue we already know Trump isn’t going to let go of,” said Pat Cunnane, who was a White House press official when Mr. Obama released his birth certificate.

Still, some Democrats who have been personally attacked by Mr. Trump have used that to raise money and boost enthusiasm among their core supporters, which could be helpful in a primary race.

The complex nature of analyzing family heritage and genetics also helped fan the debate. While Ms. Warren’s critics said she only held a fraction of Native American blood, experts said that determining the genetic effect of an ancestor isn’t a function of simple math.

“You’re not getting a perfectly equal amount of the genome from every ancestor,” said Sarah Tishkoff, a genetics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “It definitely appears that some parts of her chromosomes are originating from a Native American ancestor.”

That ambiguity is likely to keep the skirmish an open one, which would undercut Ms. Warren’s attempt to squash it before the presidential-election season heats up.

“She wanted to do it early and just address it while everyone was thinking about the midterm, instead of when everybody was thinking about the presidential,” said former Rep. Steve Israel of New York, who was a member of House Democratic leadership. But, he noted, “when you play on Donald Trump’s muddy turf, you’re just not going to win.”

Write to Kristina Peterson at [email protected] and Reid J. Epstein at [email protected]