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Today’s edition isn’t about turkeys. It’s about chickens. More specifically, it’s about the lawmakers who have decided that they’re finished with Washington. For all the discussions about the Democratic party’s aging political class, it turns out a lot more Republicans are heading for retirement, and not necessarily their older members. I’ll break down the details and make clear how much time you should spend gaming out whether Democrats could actually gain the House majority before next year’s elections.
In addition, one of Trump’s stranger nominees has a Thanksgiving turkey recipe that could burn your house to the ground. I don’t mean that figuratively. All that and more, below.
From Republican House to Retirement Home
Mike Johnson is watching dozens of his colleagues shuffle off toward the exits.
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Turkey dump
Serving in the House of Representatives just isn’t much fun anymore. It’s gotten so not fun that lawmakers have started retiring at a record pace to seek their fun elsewhere. In the House, forty members across both parties are not seeking re-election. In the Senate, ten are ditching D.C. (and two more might also leave if they win their gubernatorial races midterm).
Part of the problem is that Congress has become more and more of a sideshow to the main event at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a situation that has sapped morale among GOP lawmakers and encouraged many of them to look for the exits. Things have gotten so bad that some Republicans are speculating that the House might even change hands before the end of the session due to a flood of retirements. An unnamed senior House GOP lawmaker told Punchbowl:
“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms.
“More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”
But don’t put too much stock in the prospect of the House changing hands before voters next go to the polls. The idea that so many Republicans would depart early that they would give Democrats the majority is too silly for even Aaron Sorkin to dream up for one of his sentimental homages to an idealized American politics wherein politicians are not self-interested or incompetent.¹
The only time the House majority has ever changed hands in this way occurred nearly a century ago. The 1930 election gave Republicans a majority with margins about as slim as today’s. By a little more than a year later, the Grim Reaper’s lobbying efforts resulted in a change in the balance of power: Fourteen elected members died in that time, and through an agreement with third-party lawmakers (which no longer exist in the House), Democrats managed to take back the House by the end of the Congress.
If you recall the 118th Congress, which ranked among the least productive and most chaotic in history, Rep. Ken Buck’s (R-Colo.) sudden resignation sparked a similar panic. Not long after Buck, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) departed for a private sector career. But not nearly enough Republicans followed those two out the door to threaten the party’s majority.
Things have, admittedly, gotten even worse since then. The pains of coming to Washington with a sense of mission, only to be subjected to repeated censure votes and strong-arming from the White House, is taking a toll on the House—and providing lawmakers with an easy excuse to seek employment elsewhere.
What stands out about this trend is that age doesn’t appear to be the main motivating factor. That’s a major distinction between the two parties.
Consider this: After President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign crashed out with only months to go in the 2024 cycle, Democrats began worrying about their graying caucus. Their concerns were exacerbated by the sudden death of Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Texas) just two months into his first term at 70.
But if you look at the age spread of each party’s departing lawmakers, outgoing Republican lawmakers tend to be retiring in what should be the prime years of their political careers, while Democrats are hanging it up closer to the official retirement age of 65.
Among the twenty-three retiring Republicans, the average age is around 54.5 years old. Among the seventeen departing Democrats, the average age is a hair below 63.
The ideological breakdown of Republicans leaving the House is also more stark.
Seven retiring Republicans are members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. An additional two (Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and David Schweikert) are former members.
In the thick middle of the political horseshoe, six retiring members (including both Republicans and Democrats) belong to the Problem Solvers Caucus, the bipartisan working group that’s lost its purpose in today’s hyperpolarized political environment.
Still, when I reached out to a handful of Capitol Hill staffers, none them said they believed the House would change hands. One Democrat said, “Inshallah.” They meant it as a joke, but as the example of 1930 suggests, perhaps it’s true that only God alone could orchestrate a mid-Congress change of the majority.