For the second time this week, a senior Republican from Texas announced he would retire from the House. The Texas Tribune's Abby Livingston obtained an email from Lamar Smith, who heads the Science, Space and Technology Committee, declaring that, "For several reasons, this seems like a good time to pass on the privilege of representing the 21st District to someone else." But while fellow Texan Jeb Hensarling is leaving behind a safely red seat, Smith's 21st Congressional District is a bit more interesting.
Smith's very gerrymandered seat, which stretches from Austin to San Antonio and takes up part of the Texas Hill Country, backed Mitt Romney 60-38 in 2012, but it supported Trump by a smaller 52-42 margin. That's still a lot for Democrats to overcome, but this area could be a viable target in a good year for Team Blue, especially without an incumbent to defend it.
A few Democrats were already running before Smith hit the eject button, but only one has raised a notable amount of money. Joseph Kopser, an aerospace engineer and Army veteran who earned a Bronze Star in Iraq, raised $168,000 for the third quarter and an additional $45,000 from supporters via a special vehicle called the Serve America Victory Fund from a fundraiser organized by Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton (we explain why we categorize that donation separately here). At the end of September, Kopser had $219,000 on-hand. He and any other Democratic nominee will need a whole lot more to flip this seat, but it's a promising start.
As for Smith, Democrats won't miss him too much. Like so many other members of the GOP caucus, Smith is a global warming skeptic, but as the chair of the Science Committee, he was able to do real damage to climate research. Smith also infamously declared in the 1990s when discussing midnight basketball, “This vague social spending goes by the theory that the person who stole your car, robbed your house and assaulted your family is no more than a would-be NBA star.”
Like Hensarling, Smith had plenty of power in seniority in Congress; Smith is about to turn 70, so he could have stuck around and acquired more. Furthermore, Smith and Hensarling are only the latest prominent Republicans to call it quits, and it's hard to deny that after working with Donald Trump for less than a year, at least a good number of Republicans have had enough of Congress.