House Republicans are about to serve in the minority for the first time in eight years, and speculation is already swirling that some members will dislike it so much that they’ll choose to retire in 2020. After Democrats took the House in 2006, over two dozen Republican incumbents decided to depart in 2008—a record until 2018—and some GOP operatives fear a similar exodus this cycle. In particular, Roll Call’s Bridget Bowman names four Republicans who are rumored to be considering jumping ship: Michigan’s Fred Upton, Ohio’s Steve Chabot, and Texas’s Pete Olson and Kenny Marchant.
So far, only Upton is publicly entertaining the idea that he might retire. The congressman said Wednesday that he’d wait “until next year” to decide whether he’ll run again, but added, “I’m happy with what I’m doing.” Last month, Upton won his 17th term in Michigan’s 6th District by defeating Democrat Matt Longjohn 50-46 in what was easily the closest race of his career—a tight result that came in spite of the fact that this Kalamazoo-area seat widened from 50-49 Romney to 51-43 Trump. While Democrats would probably have an easier time winning it with Upton gone, he should expect another tough contest if he seeks re-election.
Chabot, by contrast, seems more interested in staying around, declaring that he would run again “as long as I’m healthy and my constituents continue to love me as much as I love them.” But there may not be as much love in the air in Cincinnati as Chabot would like to think, since he only defeated Democrat Aftab Pureval by a fairly close 51-47.
Chabot is currently the top Republican on the Small Business Committee, but party term-limits mean that he’ll need to give up this post come 2021, which could give him an incentive to leave soon. Ohio’s 1st District is red but not especially so: It went for Trump 51-45 and backed Romney by a similar margin, so Chabot also may be in for another tough race if he sticks around.
As for Olson, Bowman says he’s also rumored to be interested in retiring, though his chief of staff denied such claims. Olson, like so many other Republicans, was used to easy re-election campaigns, but last month, Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni held him to a 51-46 win in a race that attracted very little national attention. Kulkarni expressed interest weeks later in trying for this Houston-area seat again, he’s likely to get much more outside help this time if he does. And like lots of other suburban areas, Texas’s historically conservative 22nd District did not take kindly to Trump, giving him just a 52-44 win after going 62-37 for Romney four years earlier.
But Republicans might actually be better off if Olson bails, because in 2018, he did not handle himself well on the campaign trail. In late October, the incumbent called Kulkarni, who is partially of Indian descent, a "liberal, liberal, liberal Indo-American who's a carpetbagger," and speculated without any evidence that donations raised through the progressive site ActBlue were "coming from overseas."
When Olson was immediately asked why he had mentioned his opponent's race, he offered an incredible response. "I didn't mention his race” he insisted, Trump-like. “Carpetbagger's not a race." Making this racist dog-whistling even more absurd is that Kulkarni is a descendant of Texas founding father Sam Houston via his mother, Margaret Preston. It wasn't quite enough to cost Olson his seat this time, but if he behaves like this in 2020, he could be in for an even tougher time.
Finally, Marchant, who represents a seat in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs, rejected retirement speculation by outright declaring that he was “absolutely” running again. In a way, though, Marchant might be the weakest incumbent on this list, since he only beat Democrat Jan McDowell 51-48 last month. While there were plenty of surprises amidst the blue wave, this performance stands out as shockingly bad, since McDowell brought in barely more than $100,000 during her entire campaign. (Kulkarni, by constrast, raised $1.6 million.)
After this narrow escape, Marchant should anticipate drawing a tougher opponent in 2020 … but he isn’t: Though he’d never taken less than 56 percent of the vote in any of his previous seven races, Marchant blithely dismissed his weak showing as an “anomaly.” But while he may still think of Texas’s 24th District as the red bastion it had been for decades, it's behaved much like the 22nd, backing Trump just 51-44 after favoring Romney by a far-wider 60-38 spread. A challenger’s best friend is a clueless incumbent, so Democrats should hope Marchant sticks with his plans to run again.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that Marchant—or Chabot or Olson for that matter—will be as determined to seek re-election in a year as they are now. For one thing, Republicans still have a few more weeks left in control of the House, so they haven’t yet gotten a refresher course on the agony of life in the minority. Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole put it well when he told Bowman that House Republicans are “going to figure out in the first three months it’s not nearly as much fun” to no longer be in charge. And he would know: Cole chaired the NRCC during the GOP’s miserable 2008 cycle, when so many Republican members decided to pull the ripcord.
And even members of Congress who loudly insist that they’re running again very well may change their minds. We saw that happen in 2018 with not one but two California Republicans in vulnerable seats. In mid-September of last year, an aide to Rep. Ed Royce responded to rumors that he’d retire by saying that his boss was “100 percent running for re-election.” That November, Rep. Darrell Issa also told CNN that he was “100 percent certain” that he’d run again.
In early January, the two congressmen announced within days of each other than they were actually zero percent running for re-election, and Democrats went on to flip both their seats. Royce reportedly didn’t even tell his party’s leaders that they were about to be stuck defending an open seat: They apparently only found out along with the rest of the world when he posted his retirement announcement to Twitter. And as bad as that may sound, Royce isn’t even the only departing member who has done this kind of thing.
If Republicans are convinced that they have a good chance to regain the majority in two years, many of them may decide to stick it out. But as political scientist Jacob Smith wrote in an analysis of party recruitment and retention efforts in early 2017, the first step toward winning back the House is believing you can. If the GOP's prospects don’t look so hot as we get further into the 2020 cycle, a lot of NRCC staffers are going to be spending the next 18 months anxiously checking their Twitter feeds.