<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1655299429460,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-079e-d172-a563-4ffe40be0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1655299429460,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-079e-d172-a563-4ffe40be0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_55244537", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1032720"} }); ","_id":"00000181-6788-d082-a1ad-7ff9b8630000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedThe Republican special election victory in Texas’s 34th Congressional District is an ominous sign for Democrats that political conditions leading into November are every bit as bad as presumed.
Drawing too broad a conclusion from irregularly scheduled special elections with lower turnouts is risky. But in midterm election cycles, these contests have often been trendsetters, even if just in the short term. And the 2022 trends established Tuesday, with Republican Mayra Flores’s 7.7 percentage points win over Democrat Dan Sanchez in the open South Texas seat, were laid bare.
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The seat is open due to the March 31 resignation of Rep. Filemon Vela, to join a Washington, D.C., law and lobbying firm, about nine months before his already-announced retirement from the House. The majority Hispanic, working-class district is anchored along the Mexican border and supported President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump by 4 percentage points in 2020.
But that hardly made the district a safe harbor for the Democrats on Tuesday — neither, all of this suggests, will dozens of other House seats this fall, where the terrain is more favorable to the GOP.
“Electing the first Republican Latina from Texas is a historic moment and it’s only appropriate that it happened in the Rio Grande Valley where voters are fast jettisoning Democrats and their out-of-touch agenda,” Republican operative Dan Conston claimed in a statement. Conston runs the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Sanchez blamed his loss on insufficient resources and lack of support from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Too many factors were against us,” he said. Perhaps. And under new boundaries approved by Texas lawmakers in Austin during decennial redistricting, the 34th Congressional District is becoming a Biden +15 seat, which means Flores’s tenure in the House will be short-lived.
But Flores’s decisive victory confirmed the durability of Republican gains among Hispanics that surfaced in 2020 in Texas’s previously Democrat-dominated Rio Grande Valley. That year, in the 23rd Congressional District, straddling hundreds of miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, political newcomer Tony Gonzales (R-TX) won a seat Democrats largely assumed would fall back into their hands after the six-year House career of former Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), who didn’t seek reelection.
And past special elections in political wave years have signaled trouble ahead for the party in residence in the White House. Think California’s 50th Congressional District in 2006, Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District in 2010, and Kansas’s 4th Congressional District in 2018, to name just a few.
In 2004, then-President George W. Bush won California’s 50th by 11 points. Nearly two years later, in a June special, Republican Brian Bilbray barely held the San Diego County-based seat for his party, beating Democrat Francine Busby 49% to 45%. That signaled the blue wave about to sweep GOP congressional majorities from power that November.
In May 2010, then-Republican Charles Djou won a special election in Hawaii’s solidly Democratic 1st Congressional District. He was helped along by the two Democrats who split the liberal vote in that contest. But a GOP victory of any kind in Hawaii was rare and a sign of things to come national for the party, which flipped a net of 63 House seats in the ensuing midterm elections.
In 2016, Trump won Kansas’s 4th Congressional District by more than 27 points. In a special election held soon after to fill this seat, vacated when Mike Pompeo resigned from Congress to join his administration as secretary of state, Republican Ron Estes had to fight to secure a 6.8-point win over the Democrat. His struggle foreshadowed the Democratic wave that would cost Republicans 40 House seats the following year.
Meanwhile, a spate of Republican primaries Tuesday revealed both the reach and limits of Trump’s influence with GOP voters.
In South Carolina’s Charleston-area 1st Congressional District, which unfolded as a proxy war between Trump and former Ambassador Nikki Haley, the former president came up short. Rep. Nancy Mace comfortably defeated her Trump-endorsed Republican primary challenger, Katie Arrington, 53.1% to 45.3%, after receiving considerable assistance from Haley, a former South Carolina governor who lives in the district.
Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, raised approximately $400,000 for Mace, cut campaign advertisements for the congresswoman, and put the muscle of her political organization, Stand for America, to work for the Republican incumbent. That proved more effective with GOP voters in the district than Trump’s endorsement of Arrington. The former president opposed Mace because she was critical of his handling of the post-2020 election period.
“It’s a great day in South Carolina!” Haley, who like Trump could be a 2024 presidential candidate, said in a statement. “The Lowcountry came out big for our congresswoman, Nancy Mace. Nancy has fought for us, now we need to continue to fight for her.”
Trump ran up the score in Republican primaries nearly everywhere else, demonstrating authority over the GOP that is far from absolute but still substantial.
In South Carolina’s Myrtle Beach-area 7th Congressional District, Trump asked Republicans to toss out Rep. Tom Rice because the congressman voted to impeach the former president over his culpability for the ransacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6. They complied — and in a big way, nominating the Trump-endorsed state Rep. Russell Fry with 51.1% compared to a meager 24.5% for the incumbent.
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In Nevada, Trump-endorsed and Trump-inspired candidates were successful in a range of top-of-the-ticket and down-ballot primaries, led by Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who won the Republican nomination for governor, and former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who won the party’s Senate nod while holding off a spirited challenge from military combat veteran Sam Brown.
Laxalt also was endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
