Some former members of Congress don’t know how to take a hint.
Nine of 12 ex-House members who have tried to return to their old jobs in 2022 so far have fallen short. The latest is former Florida Democratic Reps. Corrine Brown and Alan Grayson, both of whom lost badly in their party’s Aug. 23 primary in Orlando and the eastern suburbs’ 10th Congressional District. Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old gun control activist, won the Democratic primary in the newly drawn blue-tilting district and is expected to glide to victory in November.
That same day, Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY) lost a comeback bid for the Democratic nomination in New York’s 10th Congressional District, covering lower Manhattan and northwestern Brooklyn. Holtzman has been out of the House since January 1981 — her eight-year Capitol Hill career ended after narrowly losing a 1980 New York Senate race. Holtzman made a name for herself nationally nearly a half-century ago as a scourge of Republican President Richard Nixon. She promised to be just as aggressive in trying to prevent former President Donald Trump from returning to the White House. But voters weren’t buying, instead choosing former Trump House impeachment counsel and political newcomer Dan Goldman for the crucial Democratic nod.
Other former House members to lose comeback bids in 2022 are ex-Reps. Paul Broun (R-GA), Jim Bunn (R-OR), Donna Edwards (D-MD), Renee Ellmers (R-NC), Cresent Hardy (R-NV), and Mike Sodrel (R-IN).
Each election cycle brings out a batch of former lawmakers seeking their old jobs, and the gambit can sometimes work. Fifteen current House members returned to office after leaving due to defeat for reelection or in a bid for higher office. But they represent only a fraction of ex-House members who have tried for comebacks.
Trying to win election to the House after previously being rejected by voters can be a tough sell, said former Rep. Bob Carr. The Michigan Democrat was first elected to the House in 1974 as part of the large and formidable “Watergate baby” class. But Carr lost his Lansing-area seat in 1980 to Republican rival James Dunn, 50.6% to 49.4%, with President Ronald Reagan cleaning up at the top of the ticket.
Carr quickly pledged to try to return to Congress but was careful about how he approached voters, he told the Washington Examiner. Carr’s district had been altered ahead of the 1982 midterm elections, as happened in 44 states going into this year’s elections.
“It’s very tough to try to campaign with a message that the voters have made a mistake. I had to be very careful about my message,” Carr said. “I just assumed the responsibility and accepted the blame, in the old part of the district. In the new part of the district, I could campaign anyway I wanted.”
The strategy worked, with Carr winning the 1982 rematch with Dunn 51.4% to 47.5%. Carr’s second House stint lasted 12 years, during which he became chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation. Carr was the unsuccessful Michigan Democratic Senate nominee in 1994 during the “Republican revolution” wave year.
The 2022 election cycle is likely to include at least one comeback success story for a former House member, Ryan Zinke, the Republican nominee in Montana’s new 1st Congressional District.
Zinke won what was then Montana’s sole House district in 2014 (due to population growth, the state is now gaining a second seat.) In March 2017, Zinke became then-President Donald Trump’s interior secretary in what turned out to be a rocky tenure. The department’s inspector general investigated Zinke over travel expenses, including pricey flights; he denied any wrongdoing but resigned after less than two years in Trump’s Cabinet amid a wave of negative headlines.
Now the GOP nominee in Montana, Zinke is favored against the Democratic nominee in Montana’s 1st Congressional District, Monica Tranel, a former Olympic rower and attorney.
The chances for political redemption are dicier for former Rep. Bruce Poliquin, the GOP nominee for Maine’s 2nd Congressional seat. Poliquin represented the sprawling northern Maine congressional district, the largest east of the Mississippi River, for four years. But in 2018, Poliquin lost to Democratic challenger Jared Golden.
Golden has often voted against House Democratic leadership, a not-so-surprising move since the largely rural district backed Trump in 2020 over President Joe Biden. The Golden-Poliquin rematch is effectively a toss-up two months out from Election Day and will be a political barometer of which party controls the House in January 2023 and beyond.
The toughest general election comeback bid to come is in New York, where former Democratic Rep. Max Rose is running against the Republican lawmaker who ousted him in 2020 after a single, two-year term, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis. Rose originally jumped into the race when the district, taking in Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, was drawn by Democratic state legislators to favor their party. The idea was to give Democrats a likely 22-4 edge in New York’s House delegation.
But a state court threw out the Democratic-drawn lines, scrambling the Empire State’s congressional map and giving Republican candidates the chance to win several more seats. Malliotakis was a big beneficiary, with Staten Island already a Republican redoubt and the new district lines tilting the Brooklyn section of the district to more conservative-leaning areas, such as Bensonhurst. All of which makes Rose’s path back to Congress thornier.
