DEMS HEAD TOWARD HOUSE CONTROL
But add few seats as incumbents in GOP hold off challengers
Democrats drove Wednesday toward extending their control of the House for two more years, but their expectations of expanding their majority seemed to be waning as they failed to defeat any Republican incumbents in initial returns.
Freshmen Democrats Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and Donna Shalala became Election Day’s first incumbent casualties, falling in adjacent South Florida districts in a state where President Donald Trump seemed to consolidate his support among Cuban voters.
Democrats, as expected, picked up a pair of North Carolina seats vacated by GOP incumbents after a court-ordered remapping made the districts more Democratic. But as Tuesday turned into Wednesday on the East Coast, the day’s results were developing into a disappointing election for the party.
Instead, the parties swapped a handful of seats apiece, underscoring returns that early on suggested a status-quo House election, with Democrats holding on to their majority with modest gains at best.
There were no early victories by Democrats in long
shot races. Republicans retained seats that Democrats had hoped to capture, for example, in central North Carolina and around Little Rock, Ark.
And with expectations for capturing the House all but nonexistent, Republicans were likely to view an Election Day with little change in Democrats’ strength as almost acceptable. Even so, they are sure to face internal questions about why they remain trapped in the chamber’s minority. A major question would be how to regain suburban voters who have f led the GOP in droves, largely
over their distaste for
Trump.
Should Democrats retain the House majority, it would mark only the second time in a quarter century that they’ve controlled the chamber for two consecutive twoyear Congresses. The first period ran from 2007 through 2010, Nancy Pelosi’s initial run as speaker.
In another indication that the voting wasn’t producing dramatic gains for Democrats, four-term GOP Rep. Rodney Davis won in rural central Illinois in what was viewed as a tossup race. His victory came despite expenditures exceeding $5 mil
lion by Democratic groups.
While early surprises were few, dozens of hotly fought races remained undecided into the evening.
Scores of both parties’ incumbents from safe districts were easily re-elected. These included progressive star Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City and both parties’ No. 3 House leaders, Democrat James Clyburn of South Carolina and Republican Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Democrats’ hopes of protecting their majority and even expanding it were based on public anxiety over the pandemic, Trump’s alienation of suburban voters and a vast fundraising edge.
Both parties’ operatives agreed that the GOP was mostly playing defense and would be fortunate to limit Democratic gains to a modest single digits. Democrats control the House 232-197, with five open seats and one independent. It takes 218 seats to control the chamber.
Mucarsel-Powell lost to Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez. That race saw the two sides spend more than $26 million, making it one of the country’s most expensive, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Mucarsel-Powell and Shalala both represent districts that Trump lost badly in his 2016 presidential race. Shalala, 79, was the House’s oldest freshman and had been secretary of health under President Bill Clinton.
In one noteworthy but unsurprising result, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has espoused unfounded QAnon conspiracy theories, won a vacant seat in northwest Georgia. Trump has called Greene a “future Republican star.” QAnon asserts that Trump is quietly waging a battle against pedophiles in government.
Hanging over the contests were the coronavirus pandemic and the wounded economy, which voters ranked as top concerns, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate. The virus has killed 232,000 people in the U.S. and cases are rising in nearly every state, while millions have lost jobs.
Buoying Democrats was a coast-to-coast edge in campaign fundraising. Republicans were hoping to oust some of the 29 Democrats, mostly freshmen, in districts from upstate New York to rural New Mexico that Trump won in 2016. By late Tuesday, they had not defeated any.
Nearly all Democratic incumbents in potentially vulnerable districts were outspending their GOP challengers, often by vast margins.
Pelosi, D-Calif., was hoping to use control of the chamber to pass party priorities that include expanding health care coverage and creating jobs with new infrastructure projects. After a two-year run as one of her party’s most effective counterpoints to Trump, the 80-year-old Pelosi is all but certain to serve two more years running the House.
As in 2018 when they grabbed House control, Democratic ads emphasized pledges to make health care more accessible, preserve coverage for pre-existing conditions, and shield voters from Republicans out to terminate those requirements. Many Republicans say they want to dismantle Obama’s health care law while retaining its coverage for pre-existing conditions, but they haven’t presented a detailed proposal for doing that.