More House Republicans Bail on Re-Election Ahead of 2020

(Bloomberg) -- An early wave of Republican retirements in the U.S. House of Representatives is bolstering Democrats’ chances of holding the majority in 2020 and flipping key seats in GOP strongholds like Texas.

Texas Representative Kenny Marchant on Monday became the latest Republican to announce he’s not running for re-election, joining 10 House GOP colleagues who already have done so. He’s the fourth Republican abandoning a Texas seat at the end of his term, and his district is one of several in the state where demographic and political shifts are favoring Democrats.

A spike in Republican retirements in 2018 gave Democrats the chance to win some House seats that otherwise might have been out of reach. Democrats managed to flip 40 GOP-held districts, mostly in suburban areas where women and college graduates have soured on President Donald Trump.

While there probably won’t to be as many Republicans retiring in 2020, there likely are still more to come as the GOP faces the prospect of Democrats maintaining or expanding their 235 to 197 advantage in the House as both parties also contest control of the Senate and White House.

“Republicans aren’t feeling optimism about winning back the majority,” said Dave Wasserman, House editor of the non-partisan Cook Political Report.

At least four of the GOP-held seats now open are considered competitive. That includes those held by Marchant and two of his fellow Texans, Pete Olson in suburban Houston and Will Hurd, whose district stretches from the outskirts of San Antonio almost to El Paso and is most likely to flip to a Democrat, according to the Cook report. Rob Woodall’s seat in the outer suburbs of Atlanta also is rated as a toss-up.

Marchant’s announcement was greeted with a gleeful statement from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,. “In the last two weeks we got a whole new term in the American political vernacular: the “TEXODUS!”

Read More: 19 Members of Congress Are Not Seeking Re-election

The other Republicans retiring gave a variety of reasons, personal and professional, for leaving the House. Representatives Bradley Byrne of Alabama, Greg Gianforte of Montana and Rob Bishop of Utah, for example, are considering or planning runs for higher office. Martha Roby of Alabama and Susan Brooks of Indiana, who has been in charge of the GOP’s candidate recruitment for 2020, cited personal choices. Paul Mitchell of Michigan said frustration with Washington politics played a role in his decision.

Marchant didn’t spell out his precise reasons for retiring, saying, “I am looking forward to finishing out my term and then returning to Texas to start a new chapter.”

Part of the political dynamic that handed House control to Democrats in 2018 will be at work in 2020, and Marchant’s district is a case in point. Encompassing suburbs between Dallas and Fort Worth, residents there sent Marchant to Congress from 2004 to 2016 with an average of 63% of the vote. But in 2018, he squeaked by with 51% of the vote. Trump won the district with 50% in 2016, compared with the 60% share of the vote won by Republican Mitt Romney four years earlier.

Narrow Escapes

Likewise, Olson previously had been returned to office by comfortable margins but only won 51% of the vote in 2018. Hurd, the only black Republican in the House and one of Trump’s most outspoken GOP critics, had close calls in all three of his House runs. Woodall had consistently won re-election with 60% or more of the vote, but in 2018 he narrowly scraped by with 50%.

Other Texas Republicans who have not announced retirements also could face strong challenges in 2020, such as Representatives John Carter and Chip Roy, both of whom represent areas on the outskirts of Austin, Wasserman said.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California and his lieutenants dismiss the idea of a significant GOP exodus. He said on Fox News this week that some of the retirements are natural, as senior Republicans approach the typical length of a congressional career, or know their time in top committee posts are up because of term limits.

“Yes, there’s a very clear plan to win the majority, and it has not changed based upon retirements,” he said. He predicted other Republicans will retire, while pointing out that there are more than 30 House seats currently held by Democrats that Trump carried in 2018 and which Democrats will have to defend in 2020.

By comparison, only three House Democrats so far have announced they won’t run for re-election in 2020. Still, Democrats will confront a tough task holding on to the gains they made in 2018 in Republican-leaning districts. There are 17 Democratic-held seats currently rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report.

To keep those seats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been attempting to manage the demands of a vocal faction of progressives against the needs of members in those toss-up districts who need to appeal to Republican voters.

Demographic Shifts

Wasserman said Republicans will have to face population changes that have been pronounced in some parts of Texas over the past 20 years. In addition to more voters from racial minorities, a big factor has been the relocation of corporate outposts from high-tax, Democratic-leaning cities to Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The more liberal professionals who’ve moved with their companies brought their political values with them.

“We’re highly mobile here,” said Cynthia Ginyard, chairwoman of the Fort Bend County Democratic Party in Houston’s western suburbs. “The influx tends to be a whole a lot bluer than it has been over the years. Our population is changing.”

Houston native Vilma Aviles, 36, an assistant kitchen manager at Another Broken Egg Cafe in Sugar Land, Texas, which is in Olson’s district, said the arrival in the area of residents from cities such as New York and Chicago is reshaping the area.

“I don’t know if I would say the state is turning blue,” Aviles said, but she said there are more Texans who are a “toss up” now in terms of which party they will vote for.

There were already signs of a shift in 2018, when Democrat Beto O’Rourke, the former representative now running for president, narrowly lost a U.S. Senate race to incumbent Ted Cruz in state that has not elected a Democrat statewide since 1994. Though Cruz won, two veteran House Republicans, Pete Sessions and John Culberson, were defeated in the Dallas and Houston area seats.

Representative Cheri Bustos, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the House Democrats’ political arm opened an office in Austin and had already targeted Olson, Hurd and Marchant before they announced their retirements.

“Many of the GOP retirees had close calls in last election and likely expect no better in next election, especially given Trump’s apparent narrow focus on his base,” said Paul Brace, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston. “This doesn’t help GOP incumbents in close districts and likely energizes stronger opponents.”

--With assistance from Catarina Saraiva and Andres Guerra Luz.

To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton

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