The Shrinking Democratic Majority

Following the 2016 election, Republicans held 241 seats in the House of Representatives.  That number did nothing but go down throughout the 115^th Congress. Republicans held their own in the special elections that took place throughout 2017; which primarily took place to replace members who took jobs in the Trump administration.  However, the Republican majority began to shrink in 2018, when Democrats flipped a solidly Republican seat in western Pennsylvania formerly held by Republican hypocrite Tim Murphy; who told his mistress to have an abortion in violation of his professed pro-life values.  The number of Republicans in the 115^th Congress continued to dwindle as two Pennsylvania Republicans resigned prior to the end of their terms. Pat Meehan resigned because of fallout from the #MeToo movement while Never-Trumper Charlie Dent resigned for no discernible reason.  The seats remained vacant until Election Day 2018, when special elections to finish the remainder of Meehan and Dent’s terms took place concurrently with the general election.  Democrats ended up winning both of those elections.

The number of Congressional Republicans decreased dramatically following the 2018 election, when Democrats picked up more than 40 seats.  Following Never-Trumper Justin Amash’s decision to become an independent and special elections to fill two vacant seats in North Carolina, Republicans held 199 seats.  Currently, Republicans only hold 197 seats in the House of Representatives because of the resignation of  Congressman Sean Duffy to spend more time with his growing family and the resignation of Chris Collins, who pled guilty to insider trading. Republicans should have an advantage in both of the special elections to fill those seats, since President Trump carried both of the districts with greater than 55 percent of the vote.  But as the election of Conor Lamb in an equally red district in Western Pennsylvania proved, never say never when it comes to an upset.

The number of Congressional Democrats in the Trump era sat at a high of 235 during the first nine months of the 116^th Congress.  By the end of October, due to events unforeseen at the beginning of the month, that number shrunk to 233.  The sudden death of Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings brought the number of Congressional Democrats down to 234. Ten days after the death of Cummings took nearly everyone in the beltway by surprise, Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill announced her resignation after the House Ethics Committee announced an investigation into her alleged relationship with a Congressional staffer. 

Just because the number of Congressional Democrats decreased does not mean that the number of Congressional Republicans has increased. But that could soon change.  While the only special elections to fill vacancies for Democratic-held seats have taken place in overwhelmingly Democratic districts, a special election pickup opportunity for Republicans has emerged in California’s 25^th Congressional District.  Hillary Clinton only carried the district with slightly more than 50 percent of the vote in 2016. 

As recent history demonstrates, the President’s party can pick up a seat previously held by the other party in a special election. In 2011, Republican Congressman Chris Lee resigned because of his own sex scandal. Lee represented a district in upstate New York that gave Republican John McCain a slightly larger share of the vote than Hill’s district gave to Hillary Clinton but the margin of victory enjoyed by Clinton in CA-25 exceeded McCain’s margin of victory in NY-26.  Anyways, Democrat Kathy Hochul ended up winning the special election in the redder-than-average district despite the fact that a Democratic President sat in the White House. Hochul ended up losing her re-election bid in 2012, when redistricting made her district even redder, to now-former Congressman Chris Collins.

California’s 25^th Congressional District may present Republicans with the only opportunity to pick up any seat at all in a special election during the 116^th Congress. Republicans have absolutely no shot at winning Cummings’s old seat in Maryland’s 7^th Congressional District. The circumstances that led to Hill’s resignation have a similarity to the events leading up to the resignation of Congressman Murphy two years ago, in other words, a sex scandal.  The stench surrounding the Murphy scandal, as well as the fact that the Democrats picked a candidate palatable to the district at a convention, likely contributed to Lamb’s narrow victory against Rick Saccone in the race to replace Murphy.  Republicans don’t necessarily need to pick a RINO to win in California’s 25^th Congressional District but people shouldn’t expect the Republican candidate to immediately join the Freedom Caucus upon election to the House of Representatives. 

Republicans have another potential hurdle to ensuring the presence of a Republican on the ballot in the special election: California’s top-two primary system.  Under the top-two primary system, all candidates run together on the same ballot in the primary; regardless of their party.  The two candidates receiving the highest share of the vote in the primary advance to the general election.  The top-two primary system has shut Republicans out of the two most recent Senate elections in California.  When it comes to House races, the top-two primary system has led to contests between two Democrats only in the bluest of deep blue districts.  While it seems unlikely that two Democrats will make it out of the top-two primary in the special election, Republicans should not rule it out. 

Unlike regularly scheduled California elections, where a general election takes place regardless of whether or not one particular candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary, a general election might not take place at all in the special election because clearing the 50 percent hurdle will enable a candidate to win outright.  This would require all of the Democrats (or all of the Republicans) to rally around a single candidate.  While a Democratic candidate securing 50 percent of the vote definitely remains in the realm of possibility, it seems unlikely because Hillary Clinton only won a bare majority in the district.  In the 2018 primary election, the Democratic candidates only received a combined 47.1 percent of the vote. While the turnout obviously became more Democratic in the general election, it seems unlikely that the turnout for a special election primary will mirror that of a general election. Since the Republican candidate received a majority of the vote in the 2018 primary, one Republican but that prospect remains a reach as long as the sheer number of Republican candidates remains so high.

As for potential Republican candidates, George Papadopoulos has thrown his hat into the ring. Papadopoulos, a low-level Trump campaign aide nicknamed the “coffee boy,” spent a short period of time in jail for lying to the FBI.  Two of the candidates who had planned on running against Hill next year, Mike Garcia and Angela Underwood Jacobs, plan on running in the special election. The Republican Congressional Campaign Committee has included the duo on its list of “On the Radar” candidates.

While he declined the opportunity to have a rematch with Hill in 2020, former Congressman Steve Knight, who represented California’s 25^th Congressional District until Hill defeated him, has indicated a willingness to run in the special election. While a pickup in California’s 25^th Congressional District would come as welcome news to the Republican Party, it will do little to blunt the efforts of #TheResistance to derail the Trump presidency.  That task will likely require Republicans taking back the House in 2020. 

That task may have gotten easier now that 47 of the 49 Democratic members of Congress I have identified as “vulnerable” voted to proceed with the “impeachment inquiry” earlier this week.  Take a look at my updated list of vulnerable, pro-impeachment Democrats; which has become exponentially longer than the original one I posted at the beginning of the summer.  As a reminder, when creating the vulnerability index, I took into account President Trump’s margin of victory in 2016, the difference between the Republican Presidential candidate’s share of the vote in 2012 and 2016, and the incumbent’s margin of victory. In every case, I treated the incumbent’s margin in 2018 as a negative value; since the incumbency advantage will work against Republicans.

Incumbent	District	2016 Trump Margin	Difference Between 2012 and 2016 Republican Vote Share	Incumbent Margin, 2018	Vulnerability Index
Anthony Brindisi	NY-22	+15.5	+5.6	+1.8	19.3
Jared Golden	ME-2	+10.3	+7.0	+1.0	16.3
Matt Cartwright	PA-8	+9.5	+9.7	+9.2	10.0
Max Rose	NY-11	+9.8	+6.3	+6.4	9.7
Andy Kim	NJ-3	+6.2	+4.2	+1.3	9.1
Joe Cunningham	SC-1	+13.1	-4.8	+1.4	6.9
Xochitl Torres Small	NM-2	+10.2	-1.6	+1.8	6.8
Antonio Delgado	NY-19	+6.8	+4.9	+5.2	6.5
Kendra Horn	OK-5	+13.4	-6.0	+1.4	6.0
Abby Finkenauer	IA-1	+3.5	+6.2	+5.1	4.6
Cindy Axne	IA-3	+3.5	+1.3	+2.1	2.7
Elissa Slotkin	MI-8	+6.7	-0.5	+3.8	2.4
Abigail Spanberger	VA-7	+6.5	-4.1	+2.0	0.4
Elaine Luria	VA-2	+3.4	-1.7	+2.2	-0.5
Haley Stevens	MI-11	+4.4	-2.6	+6.6	-4.8
Lauren Underwood	IL-14	+3.9	-5.5	+5.0	-6.6
Angie Craig	MN-2	+1.2	-2.5	+5.6	-6.9
Sean Patrick Maloney	NY-18	+1.9	+1.9	-11.0	-7.2
Chris Pappas	NH-1	+1.6	-0.4	+8.6	-7.4
Josh Harder	CA-10	-3.0	-1.5	+4.6	-9.1
Tom O’Halleran	AZ-1	+1.1	-2.7	-7.6	-9.2
Susie Lee	NV-3	+1.0	-1.2	+9.1	-9.3
Susan Wild	PA-7	-1.1	+1.7	+10.0	-9.4
Ron Kind	WI-3	+4.5	+5.5	+19.4	-9.4
Tom Malinowski	NJ-7	-1.1	-5.0	+5.0	-11.1
Kim Schrier	WA-8	-3.0	-3.7	+4.8	-11.5
Lucy McBath	GA-6	+1.5	-12.5	+1.0	-12.0
Steven Horsford	NV-4	-4.9	+0.9	+8.2	-12.2
Ann Kuster	NH-2	-2.4	+1.7	+13.4	-14.1
Peter DeFazio	OR-4	-0.1	+1.0	+15.1	-14.2
Charlie Crist	FL-13	-3.2	+2.5	+15.2	-14.5
Josh Gottheimer	NJ-5	+1.1	-2.2	+14.1	-15.2
Jahana Hayes	CT-5	-4.1	+0.5	+11.8	-15.4
Mikie Sherrill	NJ-11	+0.9	-3.6	+14.7	-17.4
Harley Rouda	CA-48	-1.7	-8.5	+7.2	-17.4
Conor Lamb	PA-17	-2.5	-2.4	+12.6	-17.5
Cheri Bustos	IL-17	-0.7	+6.8	+24.2	-18.1
Sharice Davids	KS-3	-1.2	-7.8	+9.7	-18.7
Colin Allred	TX-32	-1.9	-10.4	+6.5	-18.8
Lizzie Fletcher	TX-7	-1.4	-12.8	+5.0	-19.2
Ann Kirkpatrick	AZ-2	-4.9	-5.2	+9.4	-19.5
Katie Porter	CA-45	-5.4	-10.2	+4.2	-19.8
Kurt Schraeder	OR-5	-4.2	-3.0	+13.2	-20.4
Dan Kildee	MI-5	-4.2	+7.2	+23.6	-20.6
Ben McAdams	UT-4	+6.7	-28.1	+0.2	-21.6
Joe Courtney	CT-2	-2.9	+3.2	+26.8	-26.5

For the first time in more than two years, Republicans have the opportunity to pick up a seat in a special election to the House of Representatives.  While picking up that seat will definitely give them bragging rights, it will do little to blunt the influence of the radical left on Capitol Hill.  The formula for accomplishing that goal will require flipping most of the seats listed above from red to blue.  With the 2020 Presidential Election just a year away, all of the Americans who voted for President Trump have a special responsibility to make sure that the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives shrinks to the point of becoming a minority.  Unless that happens, a second President Trump will look a lot like the past ten months, with lots of investigations and obstruction and very little legislation. Mathematically speaking, Republicans only need a net gain of 19 seats to retake control of the House; assuming that none of the special elections end up flipping seats.  President Trump won 31 seats and Hillary Clinton only carried 18 additional districts with a plurality of the vote; giving Republicans plenty of opportunities to eliminate the Democratic majority that has hoisted the nightmare of impeachment on the American public.