The National Republican Congressional Committee will support incumbents who backed the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Darin LaHood, a vocal ally of the former president named finance chairman of the NRCC, said the group would “absolutely” support the party members who voted with Democrats in making Trump the first president in U.S. history to be impeached in the House multiple times.
“Absolutely,” LaHood told Politico when he was asked whether the NRCC, the campaign arm of House Republicans, would support the 10 House Republicans who defected. “If we are going to become the majority party — which I think we will — you’ve got to accept that we’re a big tent.”
LaHood has not communicated with fellow Illinois Republican lawmaker Adam Kinzinger, who voted to impeach the president and subsequently decided to create his own PAC designed to separate the Republican Party and Trump.
The NRCC has a long-standing policy of not involving itself in primary challenges, instead waiting to back the Republican nominee in the general election. Committee spokesman Michael McAdams said that stance “has not changed.”
“We support our members in general elections and do not get involved in primaries,” McAdams said. “We look forward to building on last cycle’s successes and retaking the majority.”
Democrats currently control the House, but they hold the slimmest majority since 1930, currently sitting at 221 seats compared to the GOP’s 211 seats, with three vacancies resulting from two Republicans’ deaths and one Democrat joining the Biden administration. It sets the Republicans up for the chance to retake the House in 2022 as the party that controls the White House generally loses ground in Congress during the midterm elections.
During the 2020 cycle, Republicans shocked experts who predicted that the Democrats would gain House seats. Not a single Republican incumbent lost his or her election, and the party picked off 13 incumbent Democrats.
“The fact that we didn’t lose one incumbent [in 2020] is pretty incredible, and then to pick up all the seats that we did, so our job at the NRCC is to protect our incumbents, and the money we help raise will go to that,” LaHood said.
The NRCC announced a list of 47 House Democrats whom it hopes to knock out of office in 2022 earlier this week. Of the 47 Democrats, 29 are in battleground districts where President Biden lost or won by a margin within 5 percentage points. The NRCC is also targeting eight Democrats who won their district by less than 10 percentage points and who underperformed compared to Biden, as well as 10 Democrats who currently represent districts that could be affected by reapportionment.
Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives last month for “incitement of insurrection,” after he encouraged his supporters who attended a rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 to march to the Capitol to express their displeasure with Congress’s intent to certify Biden’s electoral victory, ultimately devolving into a deadly clash between Trump supporters and law enforcement officers. More than a hundred people have been arrested, and five people died the day of the riot. Two-thirds of senators present would need to vote affirmatively in order to convict the former president.
Trump was previously impeached on two Ukraine-related counts in December 2019 but then acquitted in the GOP-led Senate.
A representative for LaHood did not immediately reply to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
