Congress poised for significant changes ahead of November 5 elections

The job of House leaders in both parties includes trying to get veteran lawmakers to stick around and seek reelection. For House Republican leaders in 2024, it’s a more pressing matter of ensuring they finish out their current terms.

GOP House members’ early departures are aggravating the party’s existing problem of a perilously slim majority. Three previously Republican-held seats, in Colorado, California, and Ohio, are so red that a GOP candidate is sure to replace them in special elections scheduled through late June. The inverse holds in the deep-blue New York 26th Congressional District, based in the Buffalo area. A special election is set for April 30.

But for House Republicans the resignation that will sting the most is in Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District, a Green Bay-area seat which Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) is quitting on April 19. Due to Wisconsin election law, the seat will stay open through the remainder of this Congress, which ends Jan. 3, 2025. That will leave the House with a narrow 220-214 GOP edge.

House Republicans have little room to maneuver in what’s already a dysfunctional Congress, facing off against President Joe Biden’s Democratic White House and a Democratic majority Senate. And it’s contributed to the rapid turnover, with lawmakers complaining about the inability to move meaningful legislation.

Gallagher’s retirement announcement weeks earlier was already a surprise in the political world, as he had been considered a Republican rising star. Gallagher earned his B.A. at Princeton and a Ph.D. from Georgetown and was an intelligence officer in the Marines for seven years, including yearslong stints in Iraq. In the House he has chaired the House Select Committee on Competition with the Chinese Communist Party.

Nor is Gallagher the only Republican lawmaker giving up an influential position chairing a key committee. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is retiring after the 2024 elections. Even though under House Republican Conference rules, she’s still eligible to be the top GOP member on the committee for another two-year term.

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On the Senate side of the Capitol, one planned retirement could still change — that of indicted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), whose political future is entirely tied to his legal fortunes. In September 2023, Menendez was indicted on federal corruption charges that he aided and provided sensitive information to the government of Egypt. In an October 2023 indictment, Menendez was charged with conspiracy to act as a foreign agent of the Egyptian government; a superseding indictment in January 2024 also accused Menendez of working for the government of Qatar.

Menendez said on March 21 he will not run for reelection as a Democrat this year but is keeping the door open to an independent bid. Menendez is scheduled to go on trial in early May. The independent filing deadline is June 4, and the senator is keeping that option on the table to see if his legal troubles clear up. Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), representing the outer Philadelphia suburbs’ 3rd Congressional District of New Jersey, has a clear shot to the Democratic nomination and is favored to win the Senate seat.