The 2020 Congressional-Retirement Tracker
Congressional retirements are an early indicator of the political environment, and for the second consecutive election, more Republicans than Democrats are heading for the exit.
House Republicans learned this morning that they will lose one of their most prominent members, as Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina announced that he would not seek reelection next year. The unexpected move will end a short but influential tenure in the House.
Meadows arrived in Congress in 2013 and quickly became a thorn in the side of then-Speaker John Boehner. In 2015, he co-founded the House Freedom Caucus, which spent the next three years pushing GOP legislation to the right. A fixture on cable TV, Meadows has become one of President Donald Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill, and he told Politico that he could vacate his seat before the end of his term if a job in the administration were to open up.
In all, 24 GOP House members and four senators are forgoing reelection next year without declaring their candidacy for another office, while just seven Democrats in the House and one in the Senate are retiring outright. The trend mirrors 2018, when more than two dozen Republicans retired ahead of the midterms, foreshadowing the blue wave that swept in a Democratic majority.
The announcements may indicate that GOP members have little confidence that their party will regain power in the House anytime soon. It’s a familiar dynamic: In 2006, after Democrats won back the House majority for the first time in a dozen years, Republicans saw a high number of retirements in the following term. The departures helped Democrats pick up even more seats in the 2008 election.
In the Senate, Republicans are losing four veteran committee chairmen: Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, and Mike Enzi of Wyoming. While Alexander, Roberts, and Enzi represent solidly red states that will likely stay Republican in 2020, Isakson’s decision to resign at the end of 2019 for health reasons sets up a second Senate election in Georgia, where David Perdue is already up for reelection next year. The Democrat Stacey Abrams nearly won Georgia’s governorship in 2018, making the race for Isakson’s Senate seat potentially competitive next year—and one that could have big implications for control of the chamber.
In the House, the GOP departures point to a pair of ominous trends for the party: the loss of several members of its dwindling contingent of minority and women lawmakers, and an exodus from Texas (or what Democrats are already calling a “Texodus”).
The of Texas stung—and surprised—Republicans the most. As the lone
