The House Republican majority has been steadily eroding since Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) won the speaker's gavel last fall. And if Johnson hopes to remain in his position, the GOP will have to successfully hold onto every seat in November. That could prove difficult, thanks to a number of election deniers running for reelection in competitive districts.
In his latest column, the New Republic's Greg Sargent remarked on how Johnson's recent press conference with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida highlighted the GOP's biggest liability: Republicans' refusal to let go of the debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rife with fraud.
"Johnson publicly affirmed—with the same Mar-a-Lago shrine as backdrop that McCarthy paid homage to—that the party remains fully committed to the myth that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, here demonstrated by propping up the lie that our elections remain menaced by the same forces (fraudulent voters, many immigrants) that supposedly robbed Trump last time," Sargent wrote.
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Sargent named 10 House Republicans running in competitive districts that Democrats are openly aiming to flip in November. He opined that their reelection hopes have been "tainted with election denialism, some of it extremely serious or even deranged."
"These include representatives like Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who was extensively involved in Trump’s coup, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who co-wrote a children’s book falsely depicting the 2020 election as stolen, and Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin, who attended the Capitol rally on January 6," he wrote. "Meanwhile, GOP Representatives Mike Garcia and Ken Calvert of California, and David Schweikert of Arizona, all voted not to certify Biden’s electors. Representative Jen Kiggans of Virginia repeatedly fed doubts about the 2020 outcome. Democrats view all these as key targets."
Other Republicans on Sargent's list include "Scott Baugh in California, who refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory, Joe Kent in Washington State, who called for the rioters to be pardoned, and Mayra Flores in Texas, who spread crackpot January 6th conspiracy theories." He noted that Cook Political Report senior editor and elections analyst Dave Wasserman believes that those districts wouldn't be considered competitive in a typical race, but have become so due to their insistence on rehashing 2020.
Wasserman also said the upcoming special election in the House district currently occupied by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), who is running in another district's GOP primary, could mean a unified and motivated Democratic Party will have another election denier to target in November.
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"The margin in the House is so close right now that even things like that could affect the outcome," Wasserman said.
Currently, Mike Johnson can only afford one defection from his caucus if he hopes to pass legislation with full attendance. A wave of retirements and surprise resignations has made Johnson's paper-thin majority even more tenuous: Before he left Washington last moth, former Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colorado) hinted that there may be more Republicans leaving the House of Representatives prior to the election. Next week, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin) will officially depart the House.
Click here to read Sargent's New Republic column in its entirety.
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