House Republicans are targeting a mammoth 70 Democratic districts as they look to run a replay of 2010, when the party netted 63 seats in midterm elections on its way to recapturing the majority in a historic electoral swing.
In a memorandum issued exactly one year before Election Day, the National Republican Congressional Committee announced 13 Democratic-held districts have been added to its takeover list and bragged it had recruited a record number, and ethnically diverse array, of 2022 candidates. The total number of Republicans filed to seek the House is 831, with almost 90% of those running in the 70 targeted districts either a woman, military veteran, or member of a minority community.
Republicans need to flip only five seats to win the speaker’s gavel.
“One year from now, Republicans will retake the House majority and put a stop to Democrats’ big government policies,” Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the NRCC chairman, said in a statement accompanying the memo issued Monday.
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Democrats are not conceding any ground, arguing by the time the elections roll around next year, the political atmosphere will look much different than it does this fall.
“The NRCC’s ‘top tier’ recruits have built their campaigns on false election claims, dangerous COVID disinformation, and right-wing extremism that battleground voters widely reject,” said Chris Taylor, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Next November, voters will be thanking House Democrats for delivering a list of accomplishments that include record job growth, fixing our crumbling roads and bridges, and giving middle-class families and workers a tax cut.”
House Republicans were confident of reclaiming the majority before key off-year elections in Virginia and elsewhere. But the drubbing they delivered to Democrats last Tuesday has Republicans seeing visions of 2010. That year, on the heels of two Democratic wave elections and Barack Obama winning the White House, the GOP romped in a red wave. The Democrats’ 63-seat loss was the biggest shellacking a party had suffered since 1938, when Republicans lost 71 seats.
There is one key difference between 2010 and 2022, although it is unlikely to provide the Democrats with any comfort. Then, the Republicans were significantly outraised by the Democrats — and won big anyway. Heading into next year’s midterm elections, Republicans are not only benefiting from a political environment shaping up as a rebuke of President Joe Biden, they also are raising money at a healthy clip and building a financial advantage over the Democrats.
As the NRCC memo notes:
- The NRCC has raised over $105 million to date, a 74% increase over the same period last cycle.
- The NRCC has $2.3 million more cash on hand than the DCCC.
- In the third quarter of this year, 48 Republicans raised more than $500,000 into their campaign coffers, compared to 45 Democrats.
- Republican challengers have outraised their Democrat opponents in 13 races so far this year.
- Not a single Republican on the DCCC’s target list has been outraised.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California has begun saying that 2022 could be a bigger election for his party than 2010. Not all of the factors that boosted Republicans then are present today. Republicans entered Election Day 11 years ago controlling 179 House seats; today, they hold 213. Several districts that flipped in 2010 included many that had already started voting Republican for president and were primed to realign down-ballot.
But Republicans clearly have reasons to feel bullish.
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Biden’s job approval ratings have plummeted both overall and on a range of critical issues. And in Virginia, independents and suburban voters flocked to Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin, propelling the Republican to victory in a state Biden had won by more than 10 percentage points one year ago. Indeed, Youngkin won independents by 9 points. In 2020, the president won them by 19 points.
“This is a positive sign for Republicans and has to be a worrying sign for the White House,” Republican pollster David Winston said. Independent voters, Winston said, “are going to decide who finishes on top in 2022, just as they did in the Democratic waves of 2006 and 2018 and the Republican waves of 2010 and 2014.”
