2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[Voronwë the Faithful]

But until that happens, it will be one less GOP vote in the tight House.

[N.E. Brigand]

Today in Ohio, Steve Stivers, the Republican Congressman who since 2011 has represented OH-15, the district encompassing the western and southern suburbs of Columbus (as well as a number of adjacent rural counties), has announced he's resigning next month to become CEO of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. Stivers had been considering a run for the Senate seat to be vacated by retiring Rob Portman, and to that end, he'd raised some $1.3 million in the first quarter of this year, but he says he won't be running in that election after all.

Excepting just two years (2009-2011), the district has been held by a Republican since 1967 and presumably will remain so when Stivers is replaced.

Ohio's governor has announced that the primary election for this seat will be in August and the general election will be in November, which is the same schedule previously announced for the seat formerly held by Marcia Fudge, who resigned in January to become Biden's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Doesn't seem right that a Democratic seat will be held open for four months longer than a Republican held seat in the same state, but there it is.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Are you at all surprised?

[N.E. Brigand]

Are you at all surprised?

Not much. I remember when Mike DeWine, now Ohio's governor, was first elected to the Senate in 1994. He seemed quite conservative at the time. In the interim, the average Republican position has shifted much further to the right, and that has at times made DeWine seem more moderate than he actually is.

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Meanwhile, down in Georgia, former Congressman Doug Collins, who gave up his seat to run for Senate in a race in which he finished behind Kelly Loeffler (who went on to lose to Raphael Warnock), has announced that he won't be running for office in 2022.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's a bit of a surprise, but I believe that Trump would like to see former University of Georgia star running back Hershel Walker be the Republican nominee and may well have discouraged Collins from running despite the fact that Collins' announcement that he is not running is being reported as a "setback" for Trump. Though I would guess that Trump would have liked Collins to have run against Gov. Kemp in the Republican primary for that office.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Demings ‘seriously considering’ challenging DeSantis or Rubio

I would love to see her run against Rubio.

[N.E. Brigand]

When I first posted about Gaetz in this thread, I did so in the expectation that he'd end up resigning, which I thought would be relevant for the 2022 elections. But maybe he won't? And even if he does, his is a reliably Republican district, so it's unlikely to matter for the overall results.

Today the Daily Beast reported on a letter and text messages that Matt Gaetz's associate, Joel Greenberg, apparently wrote in late 2020 and early 2021 to Roger Stone in which Greenberg claimed, among other things, that he and Gaetz both paid a 17-year-old girl for sex. Greenberg was seeking a presidential pardon from Donald Trump and offered $250,000 to Stone to achieve that end. In some responses, Stone cautioned that it would be difficult to make a pardon happen, but at one point he seems to believe it's likely, writing that he is "feeling confident" that Greenberg will soon have cause to pay him that amount.

[N.E. Brigand]

J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a 2016 memoir that was widely praised for its insight into Appalachian values (and adapted into a 2020 film directed by Ron Howard), has been mooting a run for Senate here in Ohio to replace Rob Portman, who is retiring. Vance is a conservative, but until making various Trumpist comments in the past few weeks, he's been viewed as a moderate. Today Vance tweeted this:

"Establishment Republican apologies for our oligarchy should always come with the following disclaimer: 'Big Tech pays my salary.'"

So it's interesting to read this on Vance's Wikipedia page:

"Peter Thiel has given $10 million to Protect Ohio Values, a super PAC created in February 2021 to support Vance in running for the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Ohio."

The website for J.D. Vance's "exploratory committee" for his potential Ohio senate campaign earlier today featured an issues page that opens with this line: "John believes in fighting for Michigan first." (Emphasis added in both cases.) But that page seems to have been taken down since reporters first noticed it.

(There's a well-known sports chant in Ohio that goes, "We don't give a damn about the whole state of Michigan." Although apparently the chant originates in New York.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, more bad news for Matt Gaetz.

Gaetz ally plans to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors

Of course, it is possible that Greenburg's plea deal and cooperation won't lead to charges against Gaetz, but I would not bet on that (if I were a bettin' man, which I ain't).

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile, more bad news for Matt Gaetz.

Gaetz ally plans to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors

Of course, it is possible that Greenburg's plea deal and cooperation won't lead to charges against Gaetz, but I would not bet on that (if I were a bettin' man, which I ain't).

And the bad news for Gaetz doesn't stop there:

Rep. Matt Gaetz Snorted Cocaine With Escort Who Had ‘No Show’ Gov’t Job (The Daily Beast)

And it appears he did this on the taxpayers' expense.

[Dave_LF]

And he's still less troubling to them than Liz Cheney

[River]

Snorting coke isn't as bad as telling the truth when Trump's holding the party by the purse strings.

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile, more bad news for Matt Gaetz.

Gaetz ally plans to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors

Of course, it is possible that Greenburg's plea deal and cooperation won't lead to charges against Gaetz, but I would not bet on that (if I were a bettin' man, which I ain't).

And the bad news for Gaetz doesn't stop there:

Rep. Matt Gaetz Snorted Cocaine With Escort Who Had ‘No Show’ Gov’t Job (The Daily Beast)

And it appears he did this on the taxpayers' expense.

Of course, Gaetz has frequently called for drug testing of poor people who receive taxpayer money.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I missed this, apparently.

Mark McCloskey announces run for US Senate in Missouri

McCloskey's sole qualification, so far as I know, is that he and his wife were arrested for threatening BLM protesters with guns. It remains to be seen whether that will be enough for him to be considered a serious candidate by the state GOP. I would not bet against.

Meanwhile, more bad news for Matt Gaetz.

Matt Gaetz's ex-girlfriend to cooperate with federal authorities in sex trafficking investigation

[N.E. Brigand]

There was a special Congressional election today in New Mexico's 1st district, whose former representative, Deb Haaland, resigned earlier this year to become U.S. Secretary of the Interior in the Biden administration. Last November, Joe Biden won that district by 23 points while Haaland won by 16 points, so today's election was very likely going to be won by the Democratic candidate, Melanie Stansbury. The major questions were: by how much, and what will that imply for the 2022 midterms? Earlier today, Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report said that different Democratic margins of victory should be interpreted as follows:

>15: Democrats should be very happy
10-15: about what we might expect
<10: sign of a Democrat turnout problem post-Trump

With two-thirds of the vote counted, Stansbury is on track to defeat her Republican opponent, Mark Moores, by about 25 points.

It's just one election! Wait until we have a number of them completed before getting too bold in your 2022 forecasts. But the various special and off-year elections in 2017-18 did predict the 2018 mid-term elections fairly accurately. (I used those numbers in March 2018 to predict that Democrats would flip 40 seats in the House. And that turned out to be ... exactly right.) My hope is that Democrats can buck the usual trend, which is that the party who holds the presidency loses seats in the mid-terms.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Since 1870, there have only been three mid-term elections in which the party holding the White House gained seats: in 1902 the GOP gained 9 seats while T. Roosevelt was president. In 1998, the Democrats gained 4 seats (but the GOP kept the majority) while Bill Clinton, and the following mid-term, the GOP gained 8 seats while GWB was president. You can even go back to 1826 and only add one more to the list: 1866 when Andrew Johnson was president and was affiliated with the National Union party. Every other mid-term has seen the opposition party gain seats except 1834, when it was a net change of 0 under Andrew Jackson. (link)That is quite a strong "usual trend" to buck.

That having been said, never in my experience has the opposition party so closely aligned itself with its defeated presidential candidate, and never before in my experience has a party explicitly endorsed such anti-democratic ideas. On the other hand, will the trend shown by the New Mexico special election (if it is a trend) be counter-acted in many states by that very anti-democratic push, with the voting restriction laws and continued gerrymandering pushed by the GOP? I fear that it will be so, though I hope it won't.

[N.E. Brigand]

Since 1870, there have only been three mid-term elections in which the party holding the White House gained seats: in 1902 the GOP gained 9 seats while T. Roosevelt was president. In 1998, the Democrats gained 4 seats (but the GOP kept the majority) while Bill Clinton, and the following mid-term, the GOP gained 8 seats while GWB was president. You can even go back to 1826 and only add one more to the list: 1866 when Andrew Johnson was president and was affiliated with the National Union party. Every other mid-term has seen the opposition party gain seats except 1834, when it was a net change of 0 under Andrew Jackson. (link)That is quite a strong "usual trend" to buck.

That having been said, never in my experience has the opposition party so closely aligned itself with its defeated presidential candidate, and never before in my experience has a party explicitly endorsed such anti-democratic ideas. On the other hand, will the trend shown by the New Mexico special election (if it is a trend) be counter-acted in many states by that very anti-democratic push, with the voting restriction laws and continued gerrymandering pushed by the GOP? I fear that it will be so, though I hope it won't.

Yes, 2022 will be a tough road for Democrats, but maybe they can hold Republicans to just one or two lost seats and thus keep at least the House majority?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Or maybe the GOP will completely implode. I don't expect that, but I don't rule it out, either.

[N.E. Brigand]

In Texas mayoral elections today, Republicans seem to have done somewhat better than expected, retaining control over Fort Worth (which is either the largest or second largest U.S. city with a Republican mayor: Jacksonville, Florida is about the same size), and flipping the mid-sized city of McAllen (which is 85% Hispanic). Turnout was terrible, though: 16% in Fort Worth and just 6% in McAllen.

[N.E. Brigand]

In Texas mayoral elections today, Republicans seem to have done somewhat better than expected, retaining control over Fort Worth (which is either the largest or second largest U.S. city with a Republican mayor: Jacksonville, Florida is about the same size), and flipping the mid-sized city of McAllen (which is 85% Hispanic). Turnout was terrible, though: 16% in Fort Worth and just 6% in McAllen.

Well, apparently the Democratic office in Hidalgo County (where McAllen is located) did absolutely nothing to promote local candidates last week. You can't win if you don't try.

But in Fort Worth, where the Republicans held onto the mayoralty, Democrats did take control of the city council.