Vexed with minority status and rancor, GOP lawmakers retire
The House’s only black Republican has become the latest GOP lawmaker to say he won’t seek reelection next year, jolting the party’s efforts to appeal to minority voters and wounding its already uphill chances of regaining House control. Rep. Will Hurd, a moderate Texan who’s clashed with President Donald Trump over race and immigration, used an evening tweet to announce he would not seek re-election next year. That made him the ninth House Republican to say they will depart — the sixth in just over a week — and gives Democrats a strong shot to capture a district that borders Mexico and has a majority Hispanic population. Hurd’s exit put the GOP ahead of its pace when 34 of its members stepped aside before the last elections — the party’s biggest total since at least 1930. It also underscored how Republicans are struggling to cope with life as the House minority party, today’s razor-sharp partisanship and Trump’s tantrums and tweets. Republicans say they don’t expect this election’s retirements to reach last year’s levels.But their more ominous problem is embodied by Hurd, one of several junior lawmakers to abruptly abandon vulnerable seats and a visible symbol of the GOP’s attempt to shed its image as a bastion for white males. The recent spate of departures puts perhaps four GOP seats in play for 2020 and suggests an underlying unease within the party about the hard realities of remaining in Congress. “There’s a mood of tremendous frustration with the lack of accomplishment,” Rep. Paul Mitchell, Republican-Michigan, said in an interview this week, days after stunning colleagues when he said he’s leaving after just two House terms. “Why run around like a crazy man when the best you can hope is maybe you’ll see some change at the margins?” Mitchell, 62, who said he originally intended to serve longer, blamed leaders of both parties for using the nation’s problems “as a means to message for elections” instead of solving them. He also expressed frustration with Trump’s tweets last month telling four Democratic congresswomen of color — including his Michigan colleague, Rep. Rashida Tlaib — to “go back” to their home countries, though all are American. The tweet was “below the behavior of leadership that will lead this country to a better place,” Mitchell said. In a statement, Hurd did not mention Trump but pointedly said he’d held onto his seat “when the political environment was overwhelmingly against my party.” The former CIA operative said he was pursuing opportunities in technology and national security. Hurd, 41, was a leader in a failed bipartisan effort last year, opposed by Trump, to help young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally stay in this country. He was also among just four Republicans to last month back a Democratic condemnation of Trump’s “go back” insult as racist. Just a day earlier, Rep. Michael Conaway, Republican-Texas, also said he won’t seek reelection, which he attributed to his loss of a leadership role atop his beloved House Agriculture Committee. Conaway, 71, represents a central Texas district that is safe Republican territory. Republicans say it can be demoralizing to be in the minority in the House, where the chamber’s rules give the majority party almost unfettered control. That leaves them with little ability to accomplish much, even as they must continue the constant fundraising that consumes many lawmakers’ hours. “When you’ve been in the majority, it’s no fun to be in the minority,” said veteran Rep. Tom Cole, Republican-Oklahoma. But other Republicans in the Capitol and outside it — several speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating colleagues — say the frustration runs deeper. They describe worries that they won’t win back the majority in 2020, which would mean two more years of legislative futility, and exasperation over Trump’s outbursts, including his racist tweets taunting the four Democratic women. “The White House isn’t helping the atmosphere up to this point for these guys. They’re having to answer every day for things they didn’t say or do,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, Republican-Virginia. “That’s not a good place to be.” Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the retirements are “what happens this time of year.” He said Republicans are “in a prime position to pick up seats and recapture the majority.” In another blow to the GOP’s reach for diversity, it is losing two of the mere 13 House Republicans who are women. Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama , 43, like Michigan’s Mitchell, is vacating a deeply red seat, while the retirement of Susan Brooks, 58, could put her Indiana seat at risk. Reps. Rob Woodall of Georgia, 49, and Pete Olson of Texas, 56, would have faced difficult races had they run for reelection. Their departures are unhelpful for a party that must gain at least 18 seats to win the majority. In next year’s House contest, history favors Democrats, who have a 235-197 majority with two vacancies and one independent. The last time a president ran for reelection and any party gained at least 18 House seats — the minimum Republicans need to take over — was 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide netted Democrats a 37-seat pickup. Party control of the chamber hasn’t changed during a presidential election since 1952, when Republican Dwight Eisenhower won the White House and majority Democrats lost the House. On the practical side, the House’s 62 freshmen Democrats and the party’s other vulnerable lawmakers have energetically raised money for their reelection campaigns. Even first-termers in GOP-friendly districts in Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City and Charleston, South Carolina, have banked significant early funds. The GOP’s rules for seniority are also a factor. Texas’ Conaway and fellow retiree Rep. Rob Bishop, Republican-Utah, will both exhaust the self-imposed six-year limit the House GOP allows for lawmakers to chair a committee or serve as its top Republican. Bishop, 68, will be ending his run atop the Natural Resources Committee. Another retiring Republican, Alabama Rep. Bradley Byrne, 64, is running for Senate
Jeb Bush calls courtship of minority voters integral to campaign
Following his own advice, Jeb Bush is taking his presidential campaign to the neighborhoods and churches where Hispanics and African-Americans live and worship in an effort to broaden his appeal among minority voters. The former Florida governor was in Florida this week, speaking to a diverse group of 150 pastors and other religious leaders, repeating his oft-stated pledge to campaign in “every nook and cranny” of the country. On Friday, he’ll be one of only two Republican presidential candidates to address the National Urban League’s annual conference, joining Hillary Rodham Clinton and two other Democrats seeking the White House. “Republicans need to campaign everywhere. Not just amongst Latinos, but amongst blacks. It’s okay to get outside your comfort zone. It’s okay that not everybody agrees with my views,” Bush said Monday at his event outside Orlando. “It’s not OK to not try. That’s the difference.” It’s a lesson from Bush’s time running for office in Florida that he’s now applying to his race for president. In his first run for governor in 1994, Bush campaigned as a self-described “head-banging conservative” who said he’d do “probably nothing” for African-Americans, explaining he instead wanted “equality of opportunity” for all people. Bush lost that race, and then took a different tack four years later. After traveling the state to meet with minority groups that typically align with Democrats, he ran a winning campaign focused on schools and spoke often in black churches. William Andrews, executive director of Mercy Drive Ministries in Orlando, credits a statewide program Bush started once in office for helping him conquer his heroin and cocaine addiction. “Mr. Bush sold me on becoming a Republican,” said Andrews, who is black. Should Bush capture the GOP’s presidential nomination, repeating the campaign strategy he credits for his wins in Florida could be essential to his general election success in 2016. According to exit polls conducted for AP and television networks in 2012, 93 percent of blacks and 71 percent of Hispanics nationally voted to re-elect President Barack Obama. In 2008, Obama won the vote of 95 percent of blacks and 67 percent of Hispanics, who are likely to be especially crucial in the 2016 presidential race because of their growing numbers in swing states such as Colorado, Nevada and Florida. Democrats are eager to hold onto their decisive advantage among such voters, and argue blacks and Hispanics will ultimately reject Bush because of his support for policies that include repealing Obama’s health care overhaul, opposing a federal minimum wage and his record of tax cuts in Florida. “Bush’s failed policies of the past are no different than every other Republican in the field: He wants to divide families, hurt our economy, and let those like Jeb Bush, and only Jeb Bush, get ahead,” said Pablo Manriquez, the Democratic National Committee‘s Hispanic media director. For his part, Bush said this week his campaign does not have a Hispanic outreach strategy, because “outreach is a term that makes it sound like it’s on the periphery.” “There is no outreach plan here, this is an integral part of my campaign,” said Bush, who is fluent in Spanish and whose wife, Columba, is a Mexican immigrant. “I have Hispanic children. I have Hispanic grandchildren. I’m part of the community.” Bush isn’t alone in making an overt appeal to minority voters. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has addressed historically black universities, held public events at pilot schools for predominantly minority students in inner-city Chicago and discussed revisions to federal sentencing laws, which disproportionately affect minority offenders. In late June, the same day NBC announced it was severing ties with billionaire real-estate mogul and GOP candidate Donald Trump, who described some Mexican immigrants in the country illegally as “rapists” and “criminals” during his campaign announcement, Bush met privately with a racially mixed group of pastors in grief-stricken Charleston, S.C. Last week, Bush attended another meeting of about 40 pastors in Spartanburg, also split evenly between black and white ministers. Among those in attendance was the Rev. Windell Rodgers, a black Democrat from Greenville, who is supporting Bush in the state’s early voting Southern primary. “He has a love for what I gather are all people, and is willing to go into their areas,” he said. That includes Friday’s meeting of the Urban League, one of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations. Bush and Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and African-American, are the only two Republican candidates speaking at the event, where White House hopefuls are being asked to “share their visions for saving our cities.” “We have to campaign all across this country with joy in our heart rather than anger,” Bush said Monday. “And go to places where Republicans haven’t been seen in a long, long while.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
