Why Are So Many Republicans Leaving Office

The 2022 Midterms Will Be The First Time Many Federal Lawmakers Face Voters Since The Deadly Pro

As the Republican party works to determine its identity in the post-Trump presidency era, at least five GOP senators won’t be seeking a second term — and that has big implications for both parties. For Republicans, it’s either a chance for more moderate or more Trumpian candidates to run and win, while Democrats face the challenge of holding onto their narrow majority in both chambers of Congress. The 2022 midterms will determine how much President Joe Biden can get done legislatively during the second half of his term — and it will be the first time many federal lawmakers face voters since the deadly, pro-Trump U.S. Capitol insurrection.

In 2021 so far, three Republican U.S. senators — Roy Blunt , Rob Portman , and Richard Shelby — have announced they won’t be seeking another term. Meanwhile, two others — Pat Toomey and Richard Burr , both of whom voted to convict former President Trump in his impeachment trial — had announced their retirements prior to January.

While one of the retirees, Shelby, is an octogenarian — others are retiring at an age either younger than or close to the average in the gerontocracy that is the U.S. Senate: nearly 63 years old.

Here’s who definitely won’t be running in 2021:

Its Leaders Made A Decision To Push Out Blacks That Helped It To Dominate Southern Politics

It’s easy to forget that President Trump’s surprising victory in 2016 depended more on the South than Rust Belt states. Trump won all the former Confederate states except Virginia. Combined, those 10 states provided 155 electoral votes — more than half of his total.

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Of course, the South has gone for Republicans for quite some time. Since 1972, Republican presidential nominees generally have carried a majority of Southern states. In five elections — 1972, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 — they swept the region. Since support for the Republican Party is notoriously low among black voters, this means that the party’s contemporary base consists of white, Southern voters.

Before the 1970s, Republicans didn’t do nearly so well in the South. With the exception of the short period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, the GOP was notoriously ineffective in the ex-Confederacy. The region was dominated by the Democratic Party from the late 1870s through the second half of the 20th century.

Why the shift? Historians and political scientists traditionally emphasize how the national Democratic Party began supporting civil rights, which alienated white Southern voters. But our research shows that it wasn’t just the Democrats who changed. The Republican Party in the South consciously chose to exclude blacks early in the 20th century, which helped it to dominate Southern politics decades later.

Why are Republicans using Putin’s talking points? This study helps explain.

Analysis: Exodus Of Republican Voters Tired Of Trump Could Push Party Further Right

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WASHINGTON – A surge of Republicans quitting the party to renounce Donald Trump after the deadly Capitol riot could hurt moderates in next year’s primaries, adding a capstone to Trump’s legacy as president: A potentially lasting rightward push on the party.

More than 68,000 Republicans have left the party in recent weeks in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, crucial states for Democrats’ hopes of keeping control of Congress in the mid-term elections in 2022, state voter data shows.

That’s about three times the roughly 23,000 Democrats who left their party in the same states over the same time period.

Compared to the Republicans who stayed put, those who fled were more concentrated in the left-leaning counties around big cities, which political analysts said suggested moderate Republicans could be leading the defections.

If the exodus is sustained, it will be to the advantage of candidates in the Republican Party’s nomination contests who espouse views that play well with its Trump-supporting base but not with a broader electorate.

That could make it harder for Republican candidates to beat Democrats in November, said Morris Fiorina, a political scientist at Stanford University.

“If these voters are leaving the party permanently, it’s really bad news for Republicans,” Fiorina said.

U.S. elections are administered by state governments rather than by Washington.

Florida House Republicans Leave State Gop Offices Say Relationship Remains Intact

TALLAHASSEE — The campaign arm of the Florida House Republican caucus has physically moved out of the Republican Party headquarters, and is increasingly raising money for a political committee outside of the party.

House GOP campaigns, which are led by House Speaker-designate Paul Renner , moved out of the Florida GOP’s Tallahassee headquarters, known as The George Bush Republican Center, in the early weeks of the 2021 legislative session. It has also increasingly used fundraising committees outside of the party, a move the caucus said should not be seen as completely severing ties with the Republican Party of Florida.

“House Campaigns are operating administratively and financially with as before, no change there,” said Andres Malave, the spokesperson for the House GOP caucus. “We moved into a new space before session to make it more accessible.”

The new office is less than a half-mile from RPOF headquarters, but Malave said the new space has made it easier for House Republican campaigns to meet with lawmakers as the caucus plots out its 2022 political strategy.

Though House campaigns continue to raise some money for the Republican Party of Florida, there are public signals that some of that fundraising attention has been directed to committees more closely controlled by Renner, and outside of the Florida GOP’s formal control.

The House physically leaving RPOF headquarters means the building no longer houses much of the Florida Republican campaign infrastructure.

House Republicans Have Lost Reelection Or Left Congress Since Trump Took Office

New York Rep. Peter King is the latest to announce he won’t seek election in 2020.

New York Republican Rep. Peter King’s announcement on Monday marked a major milestone: He is now the 101st House Republican to leave Congress since Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

When Trump was sworn in, Republicans held the House majority with 241 members. Since then, 101 of those members either retired, ran for another office, took up jobs in the Trump administration, or lost reelection — a massive 42% drop, according to an NBC News analysis.

Major names are among that list, including former House Speaker Paul Ryan. And the exodus could be a that Republicans do not feel the majority is within reach in 2020.

Republican retirements helped pave the way for Democrats to ride a so-called “blue wave” in 2018, when they won the majority back from the GOP for the first time in nearly a decade.

Many of the retirements were in districts that Democrats won at the presidential level, but the Republican lawmaker in the seat was able to win thanks to their own personal brand.

King fits that mold. Former President Barack Obama carried King’s suburban Long Island district in 2008 and 2012, but King was able to notch victories by painting himself as a moderate Republican — despite his Islamophobic rhetoric and support of a U.K.-designated terror group, the Irish Republican Army.

Now that he’s gone, Democrats have a better shot at picking up his seat.

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List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2020 Presidential Campaign

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This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who opposed the re-election of incumbent Donald Trump, the 2020 Republican Party nominee for President of the United States. Among them are former Republicans who left the party in 2016 or later due to their opposition to Trump, those who held office as a Republican, Republicans who endorsed a different candidate, and Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the presumptive nominee. Over 70 former senior Republican national security officials and 61 additional senior officials have also signed onto a statement declaring, “We are profoundly concerned about our nation’s security and standing in the world under the leadership of Donald Trump. The President has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term.”

A group of former senior U.S. government officials and conservatives—including from the Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Trump administrations have formed The Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform to, “focus on a return to principles-based governing in the post-Trump era.”

A third group of Republicans, Republican Voters Against Trump was launched in May 2020 has collected over 500 testimonials opposing Donald Trump.

Trumps Takeover Of Gop Forces Many House Republicans To Head For The Exits

Republican Rep. Paul Mitchell’s surprise retirement began with a President Trump tweet. 

Moments after Trump’s July 14 missive telling four U.S. congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries of origin, the congressman from Michigan phoned a fellow House GOP leader and asked him to get Trump to stop. “It’s the wrong thing for a leader to say,” he told the leader, whom he declined to name. “It’s politically damaging to the party, to the country.”

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Three days later, Mitchell was awaiting a prime-time CNN appearance when he saw footage of Trump rallygoers chanting “send her back,” aimed at one of the congresswomen, Rep. Ilhan Omar . Stunned, Mitchell said he scribbled question marks on a notepad to silently ask an aide: “How do I even respond to this on TV?” 

But one of the final straws was the unwillingness of people in Trump’s orbit to listen. Mitchell implored Vice President Pence, his chief of staff, Marc Short, and “any human being that has any influence in the White House” to arrange a one-on-one conversation between him and the president so he could express his concerns.

It never happened. And 10 days after the Trump tweet, Mitchell — a two-term lawmaker who thought he’d be in Congress for years to come — announced his retirement.

“We’re here for a purpose — and it’s not this petty, childish b——t,” Mitchell, 62, said in an interview in early September. Pence’s office declined to comment.

His decision was difficult, said an emotional Mitchell.

Wave Of Gop Senate Retirements Complicates Party’s Path Back To A Majority

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At least 3 Republican members of the U.S. Senate have announced they will not seek reelection, which could lead to Democrats taking further control of the Senate.

Democrats gained a 50-50 split with Republicans in the Senate following the special January Senate elections in Georgia, in which both incumbent Republican senators were ousted. Democrats have an advantage over Republicans with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as President of the Senate. Harris is expected to break any tie votes in the Senate in favor of Democrats. Republicans would only need to replace one Democrat in order to regain a majority in the Senate.

Democrats holding a majority in the Senate would assist President Joe Biden‘s administration. Biden has already proposed a sweeping COVID-19 economic stimulus bill and issued executive orders reversing many of the policies set in place by the administration of former President Donald Trump. Republicans, some of whom still hold a modicum of allegiance to Trump, could attempt to block any of Biden’s future proposals.

During his 2016 reelection campaign, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr said he would leave office in 2022 if elected. At the time, Burr told reporters he “never envisioned retiring out of the Congress.” Burr said the announcement served to mollify his wife who “would like to know that the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train.”

As Republicans Pushed Out Black Leaders They Attracted More White Voters

Our analysis of the data shows that the Lily-Whites were correct.

During Reconstruction, when black voters were the Republican Party’s core Southern constituency, a whiter party leadership resulted in the GOP losing votes. Black voters were paying attention and punished their state GOP if black leadership declined.

However, after Southern Democrats passed legislation to disenfranchise black voters, that switched. The whiter the party leadership was, the better the GOP did in elections — whether those were presidential, congressional or gubernatorial elections.

This effect was mostly driven by the states of the “Outer South” — Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. In those states, as the local Republican Party became whiter, its electoral performance improved considerably — although the improvement was not enough for the party to begin winning elections right away.

However, the GOP began its electoral recovery earliest in those Outer-South states. It began winning Southern elections at the presidential level in the 1950s and at the Senate and gubernatorial levels in the 1960s.

Has Trump’s approval rating really shot up to 49 percent? Probably not.

Why Democratic Departures From The House Have Republicans Salivating

A growing number of Democrats in battleground districts are either retiring or leaving to seek higher office, imperiling the party’s control of the House and President Biden’s expansive agenda.

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 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 Representative Charlie Crist of Florida, who on Tuesday launched a campaign for governor, and Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who will run for the Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman. Three other Democrats will leave vacant seats 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 from 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 14 of those vacancies were won by Democrats. Now Republicans are salivating over the prospect of reversing that dynamic and erasing the Democrats’ six-seat advantage.

“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,” Mr. Israel said.

Retirements Shake Up 2022 Map As Republican Senators Eye Exits

Senate GOP leaders are bracing for more retirements within their ranks, as a handful of senior Republicans decline to commit to running again – following four tumultuous years in the Trump era and facing a polarized political climate ahead.

Three Republican senators have already decided to retire in 2022, including Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, whose announcement on Monday stunned his colleagues and ignited an all-out scramble in both parties to line up candidates to fill the crucial seat.

But in interviews with CNN, several other GOP senators sidestepped questions about their political futures or made clear they were truly undecided about running again, including Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Richard Shelby of Alabama.

Thune, 60, said he would make his announcement “at some point in the future” while brushing aside questions about his thinking. Johnson, 65, said he didn’t think he had to decide “for a while.” Grassley, 87, said he would make his announcement in “several months.” Shelby, 86, said, “I’ll let you know.”

The party out of power typically gains seats in a president’s first midterm election, but Republicans will have to defend 20 of their Senate seats in 2022, while Democrats only have to defend 14 seats.

When asked why he would stay in the Senate, Johnson said “to be a firewall” against Democratic control of Washington.

Why Trump And Republicans Are Plotting To Undermine Democracy

Intelligencer

In the late 1990s, I was sitting in an off-the-record lunch with a very high-ranking member of the Republican Party’s congressional leadership. The purpose of these meetings was to give journalists a chance to hear the candid views of influential people, peeling back the spin and polish of their public talking points. Sometimes the guests presented themselves as more sane than they appeared on television. Other times, they revealed themselves to be even crazier. This was one of the latter occasions.

One of our writers asked the guest a question premised on the most recent election results. Bill Clinton had beaten Bob Dole by more than 8 million votes. But the guest rejected the premise of the question. He insisted that Clinton’s margin reflected mass-scale voter fraud, and the true intentions of the voting public could never be known.

If you want to understand why nearly the entire Republican Party is standing by Donald Trump’s deranged claims that Joe Biden stole the election, this belief is a good place to begin. The party is playing the same extraordinarily dangerous game it has played with Trump since he emerged onto the national stage: placating his bizarre lies in hopes they can be turned to their own benefit. They don’t expect Trump’s legal challenges to produce a victory. They do, however, sympathize with his position and believe they have every right to exploit it.

Why Are So Many Republicans Leaving Congress My Theory: Soul

Almost four times as many House Republicans as Democrats are retiring without seeking another office.

Leaving aside the four Democrats and three Republicans who are giving up their seats in the U.S. House to seek other offices

Of course, politicians do retire for various reasons. And of course the next election is still a year away. So some more retirement announcements may come, and perhaps the partisan ratio will change. And you could note that it’s less fun to be in the House when your party has lost majority control, as Republicans did in 2018.

But that 15-4 partisan ratio of retirements looks a tad — hmm — suspicious. Almost four times as many House Republicans as Democrats are retiring without seeking another office.

On the Senate side, four Republican senators whose terms are up next year have decided to leave their jobs without seeking any other office, while just one Democrat is doing so.

I often wonder, and I don’t claim to know, what sort of combination of party loyalty, fear of losing a primary if they deviate from the Trump line, sincere conviction that Trump’s agenda is what is needed to make America great , tribalism, and explains the general solidarity of Republican elected officialdom around Trump, especially given his many deviations from what used to be Republican orthodoxy and, of course, character flaws and obnoxious behavior.

These guys are just giving up their congressional sinecures.

List Of Us Congress Incumbents Who Are Not Running For Re

As of August 2021, 21 members of Congress—five members of the U.S. Senate and sixteen members of the U.S. House—have announced they will not seek re-election. Eleven members, five senators and six representatives, have announced their retirement. All five retiring Senate members are Republicans, and of the retiring House members, four are Democrats and two are Republicans.

Ten U.S. House members are running for other offices. Four Republicans and three Democrats are seeking seats in the U.S. Senate, one Republican and one Democrat are running for governor, and one Republican is running for secretary of state. No U.S. Senate members are running for other offices.

‘trump Nation’ And Its Alternate Reality Are Even Angrier

I spent significant portions of the last four years chronicling the dashed hopes, unsettled dreams and gut-level fears of “Trump Nation” — the slice of America that felt forgotten by the by Democrats and Republicans as jobs disappeared overseas and their faith in the American Dream of prosperity fizzled into paltry paychecks and dead-end jobs.   

Many spoke mournfully and intelligently of an America that had vanished. In turn, I walked away enlightened and often moved by their stories. These were real people, with real problems. They did not take their cues from Tucker Carlson or Jim Jordan.  

Four years of Trump Nation road trips:America divided, but in search of common ground ahead of the 2020 election | Mike Kelly

Yes, many came to believe that a failed real estate developer and faded reality TV star with a Fifth Avenue address and a penchant for factual misstatements would be their political savior. But could you blame them? For decades, both the Democratic and Republican hierarchies ignored large swaths of middle America. 

Many saw Trump as a chance for change, even some measure of redemption. He promised to “Make America Great Again.” If your steel mill just shut down or your coal mining job disappeared, why wouldn’t you take a chance on Trump? 

You know what happened.

It was as if something broke again for them.

More Kelly:Dear Trump Nation: Are you happy now that you’ve stormed the U.S. Capitol? | Mike Kelly

This story is false. Floyd never appeared on “Judge Judy.” 

Republicans Are Leaving The House At A Record Pace Why

December 23, 2019 / 3:05 PM / CBS News

Three Meals: Virginia voters on 202006:22

So far this year, 22 Republicans in the U.S. House have announced that they will not run for reelection next November. This represents the most retirements for either party in a non-election year this decade, according to an analysis by CBS News.

From potentially competitive 2020 reelections, to a growing dread of life in the minority, here are some of the factors that play into this year’s Republican exodus. 

These Gop Senators Aren’t Seeking Reelection In 2022

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The battle for the Senate is heating up as Republicans look to win back the majority in next year’s midterm elections.

Several GOP senators have already said they won’t seek reelection in 2022, with Sen. Roy Blunt

The retirements are likely to pose some challenges for Republicans as Democrats eye pick-up opportunities in battleground states.

Here are the Senate Republicans who have announced they won’t run again.

Sen. Roy Blunt

Blunt announced Monday that he would not seek reelection.

“After 14 general election victories — three to county office, seven to the United States House of Representatives, and four statewide elections — I won’t be a candidate for reelection to the United States Senate next year,” he said.

Burr said when he was running for reelection in 2016 that his next term would be his last in the Senate.

“We can showcase all the work we have done for North Carolina families in the United States Senate in stark contrast with Deborah Ross who defended countless radical and out of touch ACLU policies,” Burr said in 2016, referring to his Democratic opponent at the time.

Robert Jones PortmanA tale of two chambers: Trump’s power holds in House, wanes in SenateCrypto industry seeks to build momentum after losing Senate fightHouse moderates call for immediate vote on bipartisan infrastructure billMORE

Portman announced Jan. 25 that he would not seek a third term as senator.

Southern Black Voters Used To Support Republicans

Right after the Civil War, black voters were the Republican Party’s main supporters in the South. When formerly enslaved blacks became eligible to vote and run for office, they voted for the party of Lincoln, and GOP state organizations in the South were biracial. Both blacks and whites held leadership positions in the party.

Beginning in the early 1870s, Southern Democrats — in cooperation with terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan — began to restrict black suffrage. They did so first through direct violence and intimidation and, later, by passing legislation to effectively disenfranchise black citizens. As a result, the GOP lost its core constituency.

In a recent article, and in our forthcoming book, “,” we look at Republican state party organizations in the South before the civil rights era. While the GOP consistently lost Southern elections between the late 1870s and the middle of the 20th century, each Southern state had its own Republican Party organization. These organizations focused not on winning elections, but on participating in national conventions and distributing federal patronage when a Republican held the White House.

Mitt Romney changed the impeachment story, all by himself. Here are 3 ways that matters.

Republicans Blame Democrats For Trumps Scandals

Second, they believe Trump’s refusal to accept the election results is fair play because Democrats did it to him. “Let’s not have any lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election,” proclaimed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

What on earth is McConnell talking about? Hillary Clinton, after all, graciously accepted the results of the election the morning after, once her razor-thin defeat had become clear. McConnell obviously does not have the election result itself in mind. Instead he seems to be referring to the broader pattern of resistance to Trump during his term.

Republicans blame the four-year stream of misconduct and outright criminality not on Trump but on the reporters and investigators who uncovered it. Trump faced “a political insurgency that refused in practice, if not in formal fact, to accept the outcome of an election its candidate had lost,” Wall StreetJournal columnist and recent editor Gerard Baker rants in his column today. “The members of this resistance spent four years using every lever at their disposal—bureaucracy, law enforcement, Congress, news media—to thwart, disrupt and try to bring down the duly elected president.”

Why So Many Gop Senators Are Retiring In 2022

Midterm elections are generally seen as being unfavorable to the incumbent president’s party. For example, Republicans made large gains during the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections during the Obama administration, while Democrats won back the House in the 2018 midterms during the Trump administration. So to see five Republicans announcing retirement in the 2022 election cycle is extremely unusual and surprising.

Currently, each party holds 50 seats in the Senate, with Democrats having the majority since Vice President Kamala Harris, who has the role of being the president of the Senate, can break ties and thus give her party the majority. Barring any special elections cropping up, there will be 34 seats up for election or reelection in the 2022 election. 14 of these seats are held by Democrats and 20 are held by Republicans.

Currently, five Republicans have already announced retirement. They are Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Richard Shelby of Alabama. No Democrats have currently announced retirement.

Open elections are typically much more competitive than races with an incumbent. In fact, an open race can make a typically safe state for a certain party somewhat competitive.

With so many pickup opportunities for the Democrats and relatively few for the Republicans , the 2022 midterms will likely not be as bad for the Democrats as so many people expect.

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Moderate Republicans Are Few And Far Between

Back in March 2019, FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon Jr. described five wings of the Republican Party from most to least Trumpian. The takeaway was clear. The fortunes of those who were the most solidly aligned with Trump were rising within the party, while the fortunes of the so-called Trump skeptics were falling. Some, like Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, have left the party. Others, like Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, are retiring. And then there are the anti-Trumpers, like former Ohio Gov. and 2016 presidential contender John Kasich, who are now endorsing Biden.

Anybody with any ambitions within the party has, in other words, embraced Trump and Trumpism.

These recent shifts aren’t entirely new, either. They are the latest iteration of a decades-long transformation of the GOP. In short, moderates have been bowing out. And more conservative, , more evangelical, and now more Trumpian Republicans have been stepping up.

In the 2018 midterms, for example, congressional Republicans’ biggest losses came among their most moderate members. The same could happen again in 2020. Not to mention, a good chunk of this cycle’s retiring Republicans are leaving because they not only are tired of Trump and Trumpism but also anticipate being in the House minority again, where they would be powerless.

How Did Members Of Congress Get So Wealthy

The highest net worth on Capitol Hill is nearly $360 million—and that’s before you even get to the Rockefeller heir.

Congress is rich. How rich? On Monday, Roll Call released its annual analysis of financial-disclosure forms, identifying the 50 richest members of Congress, and this isn’t an easy club to get into—it takes a minimum net worth of $7.4 million to crack this year’s list. So who has the most Benjamins? Darrell, Nancy, or Mitch? Here’s what the list tells us about our legislators.

Members of Congress are way wealthier than average Americans.

For the second year in a row, Representative Darrell Issa tops the lot with a net worth of $357.25 million, largely the result of his spectacular success at manufacturing car alarms. Issa’s wealth is triple that of second-placed Michael McCaul . House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi placed third , while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, with net assets totaling $11.97 million, slots in at number 32.

In 2012, the Center for Responsive Politics found that the median congressman was worth more than one million dollars. In an era when it costs an average of more than $10 million to win a seat, it’s no surprise that the wealthy and well-connected would be overrepresented. Nor is congressional wealth a new phenomenon.

They get their money from all over the place.

It’s a bipartisan, mostly male, and heavily white bunch.

Of the top 50, 20 are Democrats and 30 are Republicans, although Democrats occupy spots three through 11.