Mar.09

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Democrats See Chances in House Races

There have been some developments in House races of late that could be important.

• CA-48: First, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is throwing in the towel and will not run for reelection in CA-48. He doesn't need the damn $174,000 salary. He is one of the richest members of Congress. He got rich by inventing those annoying car alarms that go off all the time and drive people crazy. Issa is as annoying as his car alarms. His district is was R+7. But in the Great Redistricting caused by Proposition 50, it was turned into a blue district, he had no chance to be reelected and he is just giving up. Good riddance.
  
  Last week, we described the stunt in which Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) announced his retirement 3 minutes before the filing deadline so his chosen successor would be the only one to file on time. His Senate colleagues were upset with that maneuver. Issa did the same thing. He wants his successor to be San Diego Supervisor Jim Desmond (R), who filed Friday morning, the last day to file. The only difference is that Daines' chosen successor, Kurt Alme, has a decent chance because Montana is pretty red. Desmond doesn't have much of a shot on account of the new map. Quite a few Democrats are in the mix on account of the hue of the new district. We may soon get to the point where people who will run only if the incumbent quits will pro forma file, and then 1 minute before the deadline withdraw if the incumbent is still in. But the voters don't like this gamesmanship.
  
  
• CA-06: Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) also has a problem. His former district, CA-03, ran from the Sacramento exurbs to Lake Tahoe. It was R+2. Prop. 50 broke it up, so he moved to CA-06. He is also trying a different tactic: He filed to run as an independent, rather than as a Republican. Maybe he thinks no one will notice that he has always been a Republican. Good luck with that. He said: "Gerrymandering is a plague on democracy." Yeah, right. He could have said it when Texas started this round and he seems to have missed it then. Only when it affected him personally did the light go on. True independents, like Dan Osborn in Nebraska and Seth Bodnar in Montana, do have a chance, but he is just a Republican in sheep's clothing. Kiley has a lot of money in the bank, so he might be able to make it into the top two and the general election, but he is very likely to face a Democrat then, and it will be all over for him.
  
  
• TX-23: Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) had an affair with one of his staffers and she killed herself, in violent fashion (self-immolation). When this came out, Gonzales swore he would stay in and ran in the primary. He was forced into a runoff with Brandon Herrera on May 26. After a lot of pressure and threats, Gonzales was forced out. This means that Herrera will be the Republican nominee.
  
  Herrera brings his own set of problems to the race, though. He is a hard-right gun nut who has a YouTube channel where he gives advice about which military weapon civilians should be toting. He is known as "The AK Guy." He is the proud owner of a copy of Mein Kampf. In one of his videos, he holds a Nazi submachine gun and calls it "the original ghetto blaster" and also "Hitler's street sweeper." The background music is a Nazi-era German war song.
  
  The district runs along the Rio Grande valley from just east of El Paso to all the way to San Antonio. It is heavily rural and Latino. It has a very low population density, with a lot of farming, ranching, mining, and some tourism. It may not be a good fit for someone who is, at very least, Nazi curious. The Democrat is Katy Padilla Stout, who was a teacher before becoming a lawyer. She is going to call him a carpetbagger (he moved in from North Carolina in 2021). She is also going to say that a gun nut who loves automatic weapons should not represent a district that includes Uvalde, where another gun nut killed 19 children and 2 teachers in 2022. Although the district is red (R+7), a extreme right-winger and gun nut with Nazi tendencies is probably going to make it competitive. National Democrats are likely to send some money to Ms. Stout to make it even more so.

A year ago, none of these districts were seen as competitive. Now all three are. In a blue wave, Democrats could possibly win all three of them, something that would have been inconceivable at this point in 2025. (V)