Washington Wednesday - Headed out

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 23rd of February, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up today: Democratic retirements.

The number of House Democrats who will not seek reelection this year just hit a 30-year high.

Most recently, New York Congresswoman Kathleen Rice said she won’t run again. And that made her the 30th Democrat in the House to throw in the towel.

BROWN: It’s the first time since 1992 that so many Democrats have retired. And the Brookings Institution says it’s just the third time since 1978 that 30 members of either party have retired in a single cycle.

EICHER: Joining us now to help explain what this exodus could mean for midterm elections in November is Kyle Kondik. He is an elections analyst and director of communications at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

BROWN: Kyle, good morning!

KYLE KONDIK, GUEST: Good morning.

BROWN: Well, Kyle, as we mentioned, it’s pretty rare for one party to have 30 or more members retire in a single election cycle. What’s behind it this time around?

KONDIK: There are a combination of a number of factors that I think are contributing to the large number of Democratic retirements. You know, this is a redistricting year and so there are almost always more retirements or a higher level of retirements in redistricting years. Election years that end in two—the census comes out every 10 years—the states have to redraw districts to account for population changes. And what ends up happening is there are some states that actually lose a House seat or two because of slow population growth. There are other states that gain but particularly the states that lose, you know, there's going to be someone who ends up retiring or is forced into a primary general election with another member. So that contributes to the high number of retirements. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is the highest number since 1992, which also was a redistricting year that saw a lot of retirements prompted by redistricting.

However, it's also common for a party that perhaps believes in its heart of hearts that maybe they won't be in the majority after the next election, for members to decide that that's a good year to leave, either because the members themselves are afraid of losing their reelection bids. Or maybe they feel like they are going to win again, but they don't want to serve in the minority in the next Congress. And so I do think you can sometimes interpret the imbalance of retirements on one side or the other as being a bad sign for the party that has more retirements.

It can sometimes be a signal of pessimism, I guess, for the majority party, and I think it's probably fair to interpret some of these retirements that way for Democrats in 2022.

BROWN: You just mentioned redistricting. So how big of a factor is redistricting in this wave of retirements?

KONDIK: It's contributing to some retirements. One good example is Jim Cooper, a Democrat who represents Nashville. Of course, Tennessee is a pretty Republican state. And one of the things that Republican legislators did in that state was they chopped up Nashville into basically three different districts. And so instead of there being one safely Democratic seat in Nashville, there are now three pretty safe Republican seats that cover Davidson County where Nashville is. And so I think he would definitely classify him as a redistricting casualty. But you also have some other members who are from swing districts who, you know, in the case of Cheri Bustos in Illinois, a Democrat, she retired relatively early in the cycle. Her district was actually made better by Democratic state legislators, but she still decided to retire. You also have on the other side of the Illinois border in Wisconsin, you have Ron Kind. His district hasn't actually been drawn yet but he's retiring too. That's a district that covers a lot of places where Barack Obama did pretty well in 2008, 2012. But then shifted to Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. He's another swing district member who I think would have been in real danger of losing in 2022. You know, some other members like Kathleen Rice, you know, she's in a district that Democrats probably should be able to hold, but you know, there are all sorts of reasons why members retire and ultimately, only the members know, you know, in their heart of hearts, whatever they say publicly, you know, privately why they decided to retire. But I think the political environment could be contributing to some of these retirements.

BROWN: You said something recently that I thought was interesting. You said incumbency is not as valuable as it used to be. Explain that if you would.

KONDIK: It used to be that incumbents had an easier time running ahead or sometimes well ahead of the kind of partisan baseline in their districts. And it used to be pretty common for members of one party to win a district even though the district was voting for the other party for president. But the number of those kinds of districts has declined precipitously in recent years. There were only 16 districts out of all 435 that voted for one party for president, one party for House in the 2020 election. That was basically the lowest number on record going back to going back to the early 1950s. And is probably the lowest number in at least 100 years. So just the value of being an incumbent and being able to outspend your opponent and being better known, etcetera, it just isn't as electorally valuable as it used to be. Although a party generally would still rather have an incumbent defending a seat, than for it to be open, particularly in kind of a midterm wave year as this might be in favor of Republicans. You sometimes see more erosion in the presidential party performance in open seats, as opposed to incumbent held seats. But you know, incumbents just aren't as hard to beat as they used to be.

BROWN: Kyle, how many seats are vulnerable for Democrats as compared to Republicans?

KONDIK: That's yet to be determined because some of the districts aren't drawn yet. But the bottom line is that the Democrats are defending more seats that we rate as tossups. And there's also been some seats that have shifted from being—a handful have gone from being more Republican leaning to more Democratic leaning, but there have also been others that have gone from Democratic leaning to Republican leaning. I think that, you know, the Republicans only need to win five more seats than they want in 2020 in order to flip the House. I think they're in a good position to do that. How big the playing field is, I think it's, again, still to be determined because of redistricting and candidate recruitment and other things. It's not entirely clear yet. But I think for Republicans, one of the goals probably could be or should be to see if they can win 35 net seats this time, which would allow them to win 248 seats, which would be the biggest Republican House majority since right before the Great Depression. To be clear, I wouldn't necessarily pick them to do that right now. I would think their gains would be smaller than that. Although I do still think they're pretty clearly favored to win the House. But that's a number to keep in mind, that 35 number. And there are going to be enough targets for Republicans to get to that number, although they have to flip a lot of Democratic leaning turf in order to do so.

BROWN: What are the major storylines you’re watching right now in the battle for either the House or the Senate?

KONDIK: I think the big picture takeaway here, the most important thing is just that the president has a weak approval rating right now. Midterms are often a struggle for the president's party, particularly if the president has, you know, a low level of popularity as Biden has now. We saw this four years ago with Donald Trump being in a somewhat similar boat and the Republicans did poorly, at least in the House. The Senate was a little bit of a different story, because the Senate playing field was so good for Republicans, even though the environment was bad. And so they were able to make a small gain in the Senate. But at least in the House, you know, I think that Republicans are set up pretty well, so long as Biden remains unpopular. And so there are all sorts of things that go into the president's approval rating and what has hurt him over the past several months, but the bottom line is his numbers are weak and they're not necessarily getting better. I think Democrats need them to get better in order to have a fighting chance to hold the House.

BROWN: Well, Kyle, we've talked a lot about the House today. But how do you see the battle for the Senate shaping up?

KONDIK: You know, again, the Senate’s 50-50 right now. The Democrats are defending vulnerable seats in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire. The Republicans have to defend their own vulnerable seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina. There's some other races that may be competitive down the line. But, you know, again, with Biden's approval as low as it is, I think you'd expect the Republicans to be able to net at least the one seat that they would need to win to win the Senate. I think, again, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona stand out as being vulnerable on the Democratic side. Again, you probably expect the Republicans to flip at least one of them at the end of the day, you know, if Biden's numbers don't improve.

BROWN: Alright, Kyle Kondik with the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Kyle, thanks so much!

KONDIK: Thank you.

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