GOP sees signs of a wave in 2022

Republicans eyeing retiring Dems’ seats

WASHINGTON — With 18 months left before the midterms, a spate of Democratic departures from the House is threatening to erode the party’s slim majority in the House and imperil President Joe Biden’s far-reaching policy agenda.

In the past two months, five House Democrats from competitive districts have announced they won’t seek re-election next year. They include Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida, who on Tuesday launched a campaign for governor, and Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, who will run for the Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman.

Three other Democrats will leave seats vacant in districts likely to see significant change once they are redrawn using the data from the 2020 census, and several more are weighing bids for higher office.

An early trickle of retirements by House members in competitive districts is often the first sign of a coming political wave. In the 2018 cycle, 48 House Republicans didn’t seek re-election — and Democrats won 14 of those vacancies. Now Republicans are salivating over the prospect of reversing that dynamic and erasing the Democrats’ six-seat advantage.

“The two biggest headaches of any cycle are redistricting and retirements, and when you have both in one cycle it’s a migraine,” said former Rep. Steve Israel of New York, who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Com

mittee in 2012 and 2014.

Democrats face other vexing challenges as well: Republican legislators control redistricting in key states where they can draw boundaries in their favor. Reapportionment alone — with red states picking up additional seats — could provide Republicans the seats they need to control the House. And historic political trends almost always work against the president’s party in midterm elections.

Urgency for Democrats

The prospect of losing the House majority adds a greater level of urgency for the Biden administration and congressional Democrats eager to push through expansive policy proposals. It also raises questions about the staying power of Democrats, after an election in which they ousted an unpopular president while suffering a surprising number of down-ballot losses in races they expected to win. The results appeared to blunt the momentum the party generated in 2018 when it picked up 41 seats in the House.

Democrats’ failure to qualify for the runoff in a Dallas-area special House election Saturday only added to the party’s anxiety. While Republicans were always heavy favorites to retain the seat, which became vacant when Rep. Ron Wright died from the coronavirus, not placing a candidate among the top two finishers is likely to hurt recruiting efforts, Democratic officials said.

This could be just the beginning of the Democratic departures: The high season for congressional retirements typically comes in early fall after members spend the August recess taking the political temperature of their districts.

Further complicating the picture for Democrats is the Census Bureau’s monthslong delay in completing the reapportionment process and delivering to states the final demographic and blocklevel population data. That has left the parties’ House committees in a state of suspended animation, unable in many instances to recruit candidates and devise electoral strategy.

While each day brings announcements of new 2022 candidates, many are not being specific about which district they are running in. Dozens more are waiting until the fall, when they will see the new boundaries, to decide whether they will formalize their campaigns.

“It’s like going to war on a battlefield but you don’t know where you’re fighting, when you’re fighting or who you’re fighting,” Israel said.

Focus on Florida

The largest concentration of competitive and vacant House seats may be in Central Florida. In addition to Crist, who represents St. Petersburg, two other Democratic representatives, Stephanie Murphy of Winter Park and Val Demings of Orlando, are weighing runs for statewide office.

All three now hold seats in districts Biden carried handily last November, but with Republicans in control of Florida’s redistricting process, the state’s congressional map is likely to soon be much better for Republicans than it is now.

Each of the districts would be exceedingly expensive for a new candidate to run in because of the high cost of media in Florida, further stretching the party’s resources in what is expected to be a difficult election cycle.

“You have to assume that because Republicans get to control reapportionment that it’s not going to get any easier,” said Adam Goodman, a Florida-based Republican media strategist, who predicted that the GOP would take two of the three seats now held by Crist, Demings and Murphy. “The Crist seat — it took a Charlie Crist type of person to hold that seat in ’20. The Democrats won’t have that person this time.”

Republicans, optimistic about being on offense for the first time since 2014, cited potential pickup opportunities in western Pennsylvania, where Rep. Conor Lamb is weighing a run for the state’s open Senate seat; New Hampshire, where Rep. Chris Pappas may run for governor rather than seek reelection in a district likely to become more Republican; and Iowa, where Rep. Cindy Axne told the Storm Lake Times last month that her first two options for 2022 were running for Senate or governor.

“House Democrats are sprinting to the exits because they know their chances of retaining the majority grow dimmer by the day,” said Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, who last year entered an alcohol rehabilitation program after falling on the Washington Metro, also chose not to seek re-election. Rep. Cheri Bustos, whose district covering a swath of Central and Northwest Illinois swung to Donald Trump, announced her retirement last week. Last year Bustos led the House Democrats’ campaign arm through a disappointing cycle, when the party lost 13 seats after it expected to flip Republican-held districts.

Along with Florida, Republicans are expected to draw themselves more favorable congressional districts in Georgia, where Democrats hold two competitive districts in Atlanta’s northern suburbs, and Texas, which will add two new seats for the 2022 elections.

“This is where Democratic underperformance in 2020 really begins to hinder Democrats down ballot,” said Ken Spain, a veteran of the House Republicans’ campaign arm. “Republicans fared well at the state level last cycle, and now they’re going to reap the benefits of many of those red states drawing a disproportionate number of the seats.”