House Republicans suffered their third retirement in as many days (and second in less than 24 hours) on Friday when Rep. Martha Roby announced that she would not seek a sixth term in Alabama’s 2nd District.
While the GOP doesn’t need to worry much about holding Roby’s seat, which includes part of Montgomery and the nearby Wiregrass region and voted 65-33 for Donald Trump, her departure means that the party’s miniscule 13-woman House caucus may yet grow even smaller. Indiana Rep. Susan Brooks decided to call it a career just a month ago, and Republican primary voters in North Carolina’s conservative 3rd District recently passed on the chance to nominate a woman in a special election.
Roby, who was a Montgomery city councilor, first ran for a previous version of this seat in 2010 against freshman Democratic Rep. Bobby Bright. Bright, who was mayor of Montgomery at the time, had managed to narrowly flip what was an open seat in 2008, and the GOP establishment wanted Roby as their nominee to reclaim it.
First, though, Roby had to get through a primary against businessman Rick Barber, a tea partier who made national news with an ad where actors dressed as the Founding Fathers listened to his diatribes against Barack Obama, and George Washington concluded, “Gather your armies.” Barber forced Roby into a runoff, but while his spots got even more feverish (Zombie Abe Lincoln compared Obamacare to slavery), Roby dispatched him 60-40.
Roby faced a tough campaign against Bright that fall. While John McCain had carried the seat 63-36, Bright was still well-liked from his time as mayor, and he made sure to vote against the Democratic leadership at key points. However, the hostile political climate was too much for him, and Roby pulled off a narrow 51-49 win.
Roby never had to worry about a general election again, and she quickly fit in well with the GOP establishment. Roby attracted some attention in 2015 during Hillary Clinton’s marathon testimony about the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi when she tried to shame the former secretary of state for introducing “a little note of levity at 7:15,” but she was generally a pretty low-key member. She also didn’t have a great relationship with ultra-conservative forces at home, and she pulled off an unimpressive 66-28 win over an underfunded tea party leader in 2016.
That was nothing compared to the firestorm Roby would ignite a few months later, though. After the Access Hollywood was released in October that featured Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, Roby announced that she would not support her party’s presidential nominee. Her conservative detractors then launched a general election write-in campaign against her, and while it didn’t come close to unseating Roby, the effort had a very noticeable impact. While Trump carried her seat 65-33, Roby turned back her underfunded Democratic rival by just a 49-41 margin, with the rest going to write-ins.
After that scare, Roby very quickly became a loyal Trump ally. Her enemies didn’t forget about her heresy, though, and four Republicans filed to challenge her for renomination. Unfortunately for anti-Roby forces, though, her best-known opponent was none other than Bright, the former conservative Democratic congressman who now was running as a Republican. Roby only attracted 39% of the vote in her primary, but Bright beat state Rep. Barry Moore 28-19 for the second spot in the runoff.
While Roby’s bad showing demonstrated how angry much of the base still was, they weren’t exactly onboard with Bright, who had voted to make Nancy Pelosi speaker a decade before. Trump also did Roby a solid in the runoff by tweeting out his endorsement for her, which may have killed any chance of victory for Bright.
Roby’s team didn’t leave anything to chance, though, and they used their massive fundraising advantage to run ads hitting Bright for his Pelosi vote. Roby ended up winning renomination 68-32, and that fall, she won her final general election without any write-in headaches.
P.S. This long streak of Republican retirements may only just be getting started. Republican Rep. Billy Long, a five-term congressman from Missouri who isn't usually known as a political prognosticator, sounded like a gleeful Democratic operative when he popped off in a Tweet on Friday afternoon. "Wow! That makes 3 in 3 days before the August break!" he exclaimed. "Wait until after - that’s when a plethora usually retire. Many decide over the break once they’ve been home for 5 weeks that it’s tough to come Back to DC." Congress is now on a luxuriant six-week hiatus, so we'll be very eager to see if Long's prophesy proves true come September
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