|
 |
PN is supported by paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️
Earlier this month, four more Republicans announced their pending retirements from the House of Representatives: Darrell Issa (CA-48), Tony Gonzales (TX-23), Burgess Owens (UT-4), and Ryan Zinke (MT-1). Their decisions to retire raised to 34 the number of House Republicans not seeking reelection this November.
Entering Donald Trump’s second presidential midterm, those 34 vacancies are tied for the most GOP House retirements in a midterm cycle during the past 100 years.
What year shares the record? Answer: 2018, Trump’s first midterm cycle.
That November, Trump lost his House majority when the Democrats flipped a net of 40 seats. And 2026 is not over yet: More House Republicans could still announce they are packing it in.
 |
|
Most of these Republicans are not retiring from politics entirely. Twenty-one are giving up their seats to seek other offices; of these, 20 are running for either US Senate or governor. The twenty-first is GOP firebrand Chip Roy, who announced his retirement to run for Texas attorney general. (Roy is in a runoff with state Sen. Mayes Middleton to be party’s nominee.)
To be clear, 21 Democrats have also announced their retirements, so the pattern is hardly one-sided. And the departure of the embattled Gonzales, whose sordid affair with a female staffer led to her suicide, is probably more of a blessing that a liability for House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican colleagues, some of whom have called upon Gonzales to resign immediately.
But retirements are significant because they can serve as both a symptom and a cause of a bad cycle for the party suffering most of them. Why?
Because even though most House districts are strategically gerrymandered to provide safe seats for one party or another, rookie candidates are qualitatively different from veteran incumbents. These candidates often must spend a lot of resources winning a contentious primary, and tend to have fewer connections and lower name-recognition with district constituents.
Incumbents aren’t just a surer bet to hold a seat for their party, but a less expensive one, too. Open seats force the so-called “Hill committees” — the Republican National Campaign Committee (RNCC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) — to spend resources they would prefer to dedicate to other contests.
Still, what matters more than who is retiring and whom the two parties will nominate to fill vacant seats is how competitive those open districts might be in the general election. With Johnson’s razor-thin House majority, any and every advantage for either the Republican RNCC or the DCCC is crucial. (California Rep. Kevin Kiley’s recent declaration that he has left the GOP and filed for reelection as an independent gives Johnson yet another headache.)