Four House Republicans announced their retirements in July, and their colleagues fear that many more could be on their way out the door before too long. (Update: As the title predicted, the GOP got a new retirement after this piece was published when Texas Rep. Will Hurd called it a career in his 50-46 Clinton seat.) Politico’s Melanie Zanona writes that, while no one knows who will be next to go, a few members have shown up on the retirement watch list.
Zanona lists a few older members who have attracted chatter about their plans: Alaska’ Don Young, Kentucky’s Hal Rogers, and Wisconsin’s Jim Sensenbrenner. She also lists as retirement possibilities Oregon’s Greg Walden and Michigan’s Fred Upton, two members who are close to the party establishment.
Zanona goes on to name a trio members who are facing potentially tough re-election campaigns: Missouri’s Ann Wagner and Texas’ Michael McCaul and Kenny Marchant. Finally, there’s California’s Duncan Hunter and New York’s Chris Collins, who are under indictment and scheduled to go to trial well before Election Day.
Some of these members don’t sound like they’re going anywhere, though. McCaul announced that he would run again back in January, and Walden also denied he was thinking of retiring in April. So far, their fundraising says that they’re telling the truth: McCaul raised $646,000 during the second quarter of 2019, while Walden took in $531,000. Young, who is the longest serving member of the House, also kicked off his re-election campaign in late June, and while he brought in just $163,000 for the quarter, that’s more than what he raised two years ago.
However, the House GOP has learned the hard way that not everyone who says and acts that they’ll run again actually will run again. Back in 2017, both California Reps. Ed Royce and Darrell Issa raised plenty of cash ahead of what looked to be difficult re-election bids. That August, a Royce aide responded to rumors that his boss would retire by saying that Royce was "100% running for re-election." In November, Issa also told CNN that he was "100% certain" that he'd run again. The following January, the two congressmen announced within days of each other than they were actually 0% running for re-election, and Democrats went on to flip both their seats.
Two other Republicans have behaved the same way this cycle. In December, Roll Call wrote that Texas’ Pete Olson was rumored to be considering retirement, but his chief of staff denied such claims. Last week, Olson announced he’d retire.
Also in December, the New York Times alluded to the possibility that two Republican women who had just been passed over for leadership positions in favor of male colleagues could decide to leave. One of those women was Indiana’s Susan Brooks, who soon took over as head of recruitment for the NRCC and said in the early spring that she’d run again. In June, though, Brooks announced that she would retire without giving her colleagues at the NRCC any kind of heads-up. The other member the Times listed was Wagner.
So far, though, Wagner is very much acting like she’s going to fight for her suburban St. Louis seat. Wagner hauled in a hefty $613,000 for the second quarter of 2019, which was more than all but 10 other House Republican incumbents. However, Wagner also famously raised millions for a planned 2018 Senate bid only to announce in July of 2017 that she’d stay in the House.
P.S. To stay on top of all the House retirement action, bookmark our open seat tracker, which we update immediately any time a member of Congress calls it quits
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