These 30 House Races Will Determine if Republicans or Democrats Win the Majority

Most political leading indicators point to a red wave in November, with Republicans poised to regain the House majority for the first time in four years. President Joe Biden’s sagging approval ratings, due in part to stubbornly high gas prices and the worst inflation in 40 years, make House Democrats’ sagging political fortunes seem worse by the day.

House Republicans also have new chances to go on the offense in November due to redrawn district lines. The 2022 election cycle is the first since the 2020 census, with 44 of 50 states redrawing political boundaries (six small-population states have a single House member.)

SIX 2022 RACES WHERE THE SUPREME COURT’S ABORTION RULING COULD TIP THE OUTCOME

The once-in-a-decade redistricting process will likely help House Republicans net a couple of seats in the 435-member chamber since state GOP lawmakers controlled the bulk of the map redrawing processes. That by itself will help the GOP effort to overturn the slim House majority Democrats have held in the 117th Congress.

In composing redistricting maps, though, state Republicans largely were careful to protect incumbent GOP lawmakers at the federal level. So, the broader effect of redistricting will be to limit the amount of truly competitive seats. Seats that could go one way or another are below 10% of the chamber.

To be sure, the House campaign landscape includes a series of unknowns. National political fallout remains to be seen from the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision overturning the half-century-old ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortions nationwide, giving states the power to determine limits on when a woman can terminate a pregnancy.

Meanwhile, the influence of former President Donald Trump remains an open question in the months ahead. Trump is eyeing a bid for the 2024 Republican nomination, having lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Top Republicans are keeping a wary eye on Trump, worried the former president might announce a 2024 bid before Election Day this year, distracting voters from Biden’s embattled leadership and galvanizing Democratic turnout.

Moreover, recent wave election years when the House changed party control — Republicans in 1994 and 2010 and Democrats in 2006 and 2018 — show that many of the top races don’t appear competitive until a few weeks before Election Day. Surprises can and will happen. And conversely, races that seem tight at this stage of the campaign can end up being blowouts one way or another.

But a bit over four months from Election Day 2022, it’s clear Republicans have the momentum to claim the majority and make current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) the next House speaker. Here are 30 House races most likely to decide which party holds the speaker’s gavel in January 2023.

Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District

Rep. Tom O’Halleran arguably has the toughest reelection slog of any of the incumbent Democratic lawmakers. O’Halleran will face the winner of a crowded Aug. 2 Republican primary field in this new, sprawling northeast Arizona district, which includes many deeply conservative towns and cities. First elected to the House in 2018, O’Halleran is a relatively centrist Democrat who has focused on issues such as training and education on tribal lands, investing in education, supporting community colleges, and workforce development.

In what looks increasingly like a Republican wave year, the GOP nomination is a prize very much worth having. Republican primary candidates include state Rep. Walt Blackman, businessman, retired Navy SEAL Eli Crane, and Williams Mayor John Moore.

But O’Halleran has at least one thing going for him as he seeks reelection. His personal profile reflects that of many in Arizona, where so many people moved between 2010 and 2020 that the state gained a new House seat. The Illinois native, 76, was a member of the Chicago Police Department from 1966 to ’76, starting as an officer and rising through the ranks to sergeant, and later homicide investigator. Like many Arizona snowbirds, O’Halleran, after a business career, moved south with his wife to warmer environs.

After the couple settled in the Tucson area, O’Halleran went into politics. He was elected a member of Arizona’s House of Representatives in 2000 and its state Senate from 2006 — as a Republican. But O’Halleran left the GOP in 2014, saying he disagreed with how the party handled education, water, and child welfare issues. That reflects broader political trends in Arizona, long a Republican redoubt that is now decidedly purple. President Joe Biden in 2020 and President Bill Clinton in 1996 were the only Democratic nominees to win the state from 1952 on. And both of Arizona’s senators now are Democrats, for the first time since the early 1950s.

California’s 22nd Congressional District

Rep. David Valadao is one of the most endangered Republican House members, representing a newly drawn Central Valley seat where party registration strongly favors Democrats. Not surprisingly, Valadao has tried to distance himself from Trump, joining nine other House Republicans in voting to impeach the former president over the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. So far in 2022, this has not proven a winning formula. While four pro-impeachment Republicans are retiring from the House after this term, one so far has lost renomination, Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina.

Unlike most of his pro-impeachment House GOP colleagues facing pro-Trump primary opponents, Valadao’s reelection test will in November come from a Democratic rival, Assemblyman Rudy Salas. But Valadao has a fighting chance of holding on, particularly in a Republican-leaning election year. Despite a strong Democratic political base in the 22nd Congressional District, Valadao has proven popular. He won a similar-shaped House seat in 2012 and held it through the 2018 Republican wave. Valadao rebounded from his 2018 loss to Democratic Rep. TJ Cox by turning the tables in 2020 and defeating Cox in a rematch.

California’s 27th Congressional District

Democrat Christy Smith is betting third time’s the charm in her efforts to win a House seat based in northern Los Angeles County. In a March 2020 special election and in November of that year, then-Assemblywoman Smith came up short against Republican Rep. Mike Garcia, who had not previously held public office.

Garcia, a son of Mexican immigrants, is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and decorated Iraq War veteran. He later worked in the defense industry, all of which made for a good fit in the district to which he was elected, where a considerable number of retired military and law enforcement officers reside.

But that version of the district expires in January 2023, since California’s independent redistricting commission redrew the seat significantly. Taking in Santa Clarita and Antelope Valley, the 27th Congressional District no longer includes the traditionally conservative bastion of Simi Valley, which was grafted on to a neighboring House seat.

California’s 45th Congressional District

Republican Rep. Michelle Steel ‘s first reelection effort will be a test of how much Orange County, California, has changed politically. The county directly south of Los Angeles was famously a Republican stronghold for decades. But in 2016, Hillary Clinton was the first Democratic presidential nominee to win a majority in Orange County since 1936, and four years later, Biden ran up the score further there against Trump. In 2018, House Democratic candidates swept Orange County, suggesting a political realignment was in order.

Republicans clawed back two of the seats in 2020, including the coastal district now held by Steel, then a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. That year, she beat a first-term House Democrat, and now, she’s seeking reelection for a newly configured seat, thanks to California’s independent redistricting commission. Steel faces Jay Chen, a community college trustee, businessman, and Navy Reserve officer. The new, racially and ethnically diverse district starts in Fountain Valley, near the Pacific Coast, curves north to pick up Cerritos in Los Angeles County, and rounds out in Placentia, on Orange County’s norther edge.

Colorado’s 8th Congressional District

Colorado picked up a new House seat due to strong population growth in the decade before the 2020 census. The state’s independent redistricting commission added a new seat in communities northeast of Denver, a swath of booming suburbs on the northern Front Range. The 8th Congressional District will make for the most evenly divided seat, giving Republicans and Democrats a shot a nabbing it.

Yadira Caraveo is the Democratic nominee. Caraveo is a practicing pediatrician and daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her campaign has focused on healthcare policy and voting rights. The Republican nominee is state Rep. Barbara Kirkmeyer, who was previously a Weld County commissioner.

Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District

Efforts to defeat Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop have been a perennial disappointment for Republicans. Bishop first won his west Georgia House seat in 1992 and has beaten back consistent efforts by Republicans to defeat him in a state that has become deep red in its rural areas. Bishop has maintained a carefully calibrated voting record that can at times appeal to rural voters and the district’s significant black population.

The newly drawn district is a mix of rural areas and the city of Columbus along the Alabama and Florida state lines. The Republican nominee is Chris West, an attorney and officer in Georgia’s Air National Guard. The 2nd Congressional District is Georgia’s only competitive House seat in November.

Illinois’s 17th Congressional District

Rep. Cheri Bustos headed House Democrats’ campaign arm in 2020 when the party unexpectedly lost 12 seats and saw its majority sliced considerably. Bustos had an unexpectedly close call herself, beating her Republican opponent, attorney and Army Reserve officer Esther Joy King, with only 52%-48%. Bustos is retiring from the House and the end of this term, and her district is even more competitive, even though lines were drawn by state Democrats.

The central Illinois district includes most of Peoria and Bloomington-Normal. King is back on the ballot, as the Republican nominee. The Democratic nominee is former television meteorologist Eric Sorensen.

Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District

Iowa has turned sharply right since Trump’s election in 2016. Trump won the state against Clinton that year and Biden four years later, and Republicans are on the ascent politically. That puts Democratic Rep. Cindy Axne at a real disadvantage as she seeks reelection in the 3rd District.

The Republican nominee is state Sen. Zach Nunn, an Air Force veteran who served in the Middle East. Axne and Nunn will face off in November in a Des Moines-based seat that would have voted for Trump over Biden 49.2% to 48.8%. The seat is a top Republican target in the fall.

Kansas’s 3rd Congressional District

Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids was always somewhat of an endangered political species in Republican-dominated Kansas. But her personal story, combined with strong campaign skills and a top-notch constituent service, helped her win reelection in 2020. Davids is the first openly LGBT Native American elected to the House, the first openly lesbian elected to the chamber, and one of two Native American women who have been members.

The Cornell Law School graduate first won her seat in 2018 by beating an incumbent Republican. This year, she faces a rematch with her 2020 opponent, former state GOP chairwoman Amanda Adkins. Two years ago, Davids beat Adkins 54%-44%, with Biden winning by an identical margin over Trump in the suburban Kansas City seat. But state Republicans enacted a gerrymandered map of Kansas’s four House districts. In Davids’s district, Biden would have won by a narrower 51%-47% margin.

Maine’s 2nd Congressional District

Former Rep. Bruce Poliquin is set for a rematch against Democratic Rep. Jared Golden. Golden, a retired Marine, beat Poliquin in 2018 and has since held the rural seat north of Portland, the largest House district by square mileage east of the Mississippi River. But the district backed Trump in 2020 over Biden and, in a strong Republican primary, could flip back to the GOP.

One wild card in this race is Maine’s use of ranked-choice voting in general elections. In 2018, Poliquin was ahead in the initial tally of votes. But Golden won the House seat since under Maine’s rules, voters rank candidates in their order of preference and then transfer their votes if no office-seeker gets more than 50%. Poliquin sued in federal court to block the result, but a district court judge rejected the defeated congressman’s claim.

Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District

The fight to hold this western Michigan seat is playing out in two parts: the Republican primary and the general election. Freshman Rep. Peter Meijer is one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021. He faces an Aug. 2 Republican primary challenge by Trump administration HUD official John Gibbs.

If Meijer can make it to the general election, he’ll face Hillary Scholten, his 2020 Democratic opponent. Meijer won that race 53%-47%. It was the closest race in the district covering much of the same territory since 1982. The one-time deep-red area, including the longtime congressional district of late Republican President Gerald Ford, continues to become more politically diverse. The 3rd Congressional District is among a handful of House seats Democrats are hoping to flip in November.

Michigan’s 7th Congressional District

Rep. Elissa Slotkin has been among the most visible and vocal of the Democratic “wave” class of 2018, which gave the party its first House majority in eight years. The former CIA analyst and Department of Defense official beat a sitting Republican House member that year. Once in office, Slotkin generally voted with the House Democratic leadership but has kept her distance from the more left-wing clutch of lawmakers who were elected to Congress in the same year as her.

Slotkin has until now represented the Michigan state capital of Lansing and surrounding areas. But Michigan lost a seat in redistricting due to comparatively slow population growth, and Slotkin’s district lines shifted significantly. She’s now running for a more rural and suburban seat, in a perennial toss-up state. Slotkin’s likely Republican opponent in November is state Sen. Tom Barrett.

Michigan’s 8th Congressional District

Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee, first elected to the House in 2012 after a long career in local government, is seeking reelection in a newly drawn Flint- and Saginaw-based seat. The new 8th District would have voted in 2020 for Biden over Trump 50%-48%. That’s a small but meaningful drop from Biden’s 51%-47% margin in the 5th Congressional District.

The Republican primary front-runner is former Trump administration official Paul Junge, who lost to Slotkin in 2020. One thing that may help Kildee is name recognition. His uncle, Democratic Rep. Dale Kildee, was in office from 1977-2013, amassing a House floor consecutive voting streak admired by members of both parties.

Nevada’s 1st Congressional District

Democratic Rep. Dina Titus is seeking reelection in a House seat she’s admitted may not be favorable to her political fortunes. “I totally got f***ed by the legislature on my district,” the Nevada Democrat said during December 2021 remarks at a town hall event. “I’m sorry to say it like that, but I don’t know any other way to say it.”

The suburban Las Vegas district is among three Nevada Republicans are trying to snag from Democrats. In November, Titus will face financial planner Mark Robertson, a first-time candidate who won the Republican nomination in a crowded field. Titus has represented a similar district since 2013. She was previously in the House 2009-11 in a nearby district, losing reelection in 2010 during the Republican wave but returning to Washington two years later after a new seat opened up during the last round of redistricting.

Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District

After redistricting, the seat includes the western half of the Las Vegas metropolitan area as well as the southern tip of the state. Rep. Susie Lee, a Democrat, has held the seat since 2019, and the last Republican elected there retired in 2017.

In the fall, Lee will face April Becker, a lawyer and small-business owner. Becker was the top fundraiser in a multicandidate GOP primary field and received high-profile endorsements from the Nevada Republican Party, House Minority Leader McCarthy, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, and House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY).

Nevada’s 4th Congressional District

Republicans believe the odds are in their favor in Nevada this year in House races and have particularly high hopes for flipping this seat, held by Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford. The former state Senate majority leader first won the House seat in 2012, becoming Nevada’s first black member of Congress. He lost his seat in the 2014 Republican wave. Democrat Ruben Kihuen won it back in 2016 but bowed out of another term following allegations of sexual misconduct. Horsford ran for the seat in 2018 and won. He was reelected in 2020.

Since then, Horsford has admitted to carrying on a long-standing affair with a former intern for Sen. Harry Reid, the late Democratic Senate majority leader from Nevada. The woman, who goes by the pseudonym “Love Jones,” began sharing her story on the Mistress for Congress podcast. She has also shared a screenshot of a message between her and Horsford dating back to 2018. Even Horsford’s wife doesn’t want him to run again.

The Republican nominee in the 4th Congressional District is Sam Peters, an Air Force veteran and insurance firm owner. Peters has pitched himself as a pro-Trump conservative and ardent supporter of the former president. Peters lost a House Republican primary bid in 2020 but will likely be running in a more favorable political environment this fall.

New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District

This seat takes in the suburbs and exurbs of New York City west to the Pennsylvania state line. In November, it will see a rematch of the 2020 House contest between Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski and Tom Kean Jr., the former state Senate Republican leader. Malinowski won that contest 49.4% to 46.7%.

This is Kean’s fourth bid for Congress over a 22-year period. The political environment highly favoring Republicans would seem to give Kean his best chance yet of winning federal office. Name recognition also will likely help. The Republican nominee is the son of former Gov. Tom Kean, in office from 1982 to ’90, and later the 9/11 Commission chairman. Moreover, Malinowski faces a House Ethics Committee investigation, spurred by an April 2021 news report that he traded approximately $1 million of stock in medical and tech companies involved in the virus response during the COVID-19 pandemic.

New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District

State Democrats took a play from Republicans’ redistricting playbook and upended a political map status quo that had held for decades. Traditionally, two of the Land of Enchantment’s three House seats strongly favor Democrats. The third has been in the state’s southern tier, along the U.S. border with Mexico. This is conservative country where the oil and gas industries dominate, making the district more like neighboring west Texas than liberal Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the north.

But the new, Democratic-enacted map scrambled the state’s district lines, stretching this seat much further north and making it highly competitive. Freshman GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell is seeking reelection against Democratic Las Cruces City Councilor Gabe Vasquez. Herrell’s current House district backed Trump over Biden 55%-43%. But the seat she’s now seeking favored Biden over Trump 52%-46%, making her one of the more at-risk members of the House Republican Conference, even in a strong GOP year.

New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District

Rep. Chris Pappas is among the luckiest Democrats of the 2022 cycle. Pappas, first elected to the House in 2018, emerged relatively unscathed from the redistricting process that had been entirely in the hands of state Republicans.

New Hampshire’s pair of House districts have had mostly the same shapes since the 1880s, with lines moved a few miles this or that way across the Merrimack River once a decade. Republicans, holding narrow majorities in both chambers of the legislature, wanted to upend that status quo, turning the 1st Congressional District into a GOP-leaning seat. That would have had a political ripple effect of turning the 2nd Congressional District, in New Hampshire’s western half, into a safely Democratic seat by effectively poaching the bulk of GOP voters from it.

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu had other ideas. He sought to make both seats competitive and ultimately could not reach agreement with state lawmakers over a House map. New Hampshire’s Supreme Court ended up appointing a special master to draw the lines, and the political map that became law included only tiny changes to both House districts.

Not that Pappas has an easy path to reelection. The 1st Congressional District is one of the most politically volatile House seats in the country, often shifting according to the national political winds. In the 10 general elections from 2002 to 2020, Democrats won the seat six times and Republicans four.

Still, Pappas has some advantages. The new district would have favored Biden over Trump 52%-46%. Republicans also have a late primary, on Sept. 13, giving Pappas the playing field to himself for two-and-a-half months more.

GOP primary candidates include ex-television reporter Gail Huff Brown, wife of ex-Sen. Scott Brown, elected as a Republican in Massachusetts who, after losing his seat, ran unsuccessfully for the Senate from New Hampshire. Also in the GOP House primary scrum are ex-Trump White House aides Karoline Leavitt and Matt Mowers, who have endorsements from, respectively. House Minority Leader McCarthy and House Republican Conference Chairwoman Stefanik.

New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District

Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster beat a Republican incumbent in 2012 and hasn’t had a tough race since. But that’s likely to change in a political climate in which Democrats are on the defensive, even in a district where Biden would have beaten Trump 54% to 45%. The 2nd Congressional District, straddling the Vermont state line, has drawn seven Republican primary candidates, with Keene Mayor George Hansel considered the favorite.

New York’s 18th Congressional District

No House seat has stirred more Sturm und Drang than this newly drawn district north and west of New York City. It’s a relatively late-campaign cycle creation of New York state’s upended redistricting process.

New York lost a House seat due to comparatively slow population growth from 2010 to ’20. State Democrats, fully in control of the redistricting process, drew a deeply partisan map likely to produce a House delegation with 22 members of their own party and four Republicans. But Republicans sued in state court and won, throwing the process to a special master charged with drawing congressional lines. A court in May finalized a congressional map that obliterated Democratic gains in the state and positioned several incumbents on a collision course with each other.

That included none other than the lawmaker charged with holding House Democrats’ already tenuous House majority, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. His current district overlaps much of the 18th. But he opted to run in the neighboring, newly created 17th District, which includes parts of Rockland and surrounding counties.

It’s a safely Democratic seat but would have forced a member-on-member primary with freshman Rep. Mondaire Jones. After sniping between the pair in the media, Jones decided to run in the New York City-based 10th Congressional District, clearing the way for Maloney to claim the new 17th Congressional District.

The political maneuvering left open the 18th Congressional District, taking in a swath of communities between New York City and the state capital of Albany. The likely Democratic nominee is Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan. Assuming Ryan wins the Aug. 23 Democratic primary, he’ll face state Assemblyman Colin Schmitt.

New York’s 19th Congressional District

A court-ordered redrawing of New York’s House maps is likely a big political gift to Republicans, nowhere more than this seat, stretching from the Hudson Valley to Ithaca. It’s traditionally a GOP territory that over the past 16 years has become more politically competitive. Much of it had been represented in the House since January 2019 by a Democrat, former Rep. Antonio Delgado, who is now lieutenant governor of New York.

The Republican nominee for the new seat will be Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro. For the right to face Molinaro in November, Democrats will choose businessman and farmer Jamie Cheney, attorney and former congressional aide Josh Riley, or artist and LGBT rights activist Osun Zotique.

It’s possible Molinaro will enter the fall campaign as an incumbent congressman. That’s because there’s an Aug. 23 special election to fill the remainder of Delgado’s House term in the district where the lines are about to disappear. Molinaro is the Republican nominee in that contest against the November standard-bearer in the neighboring 18th Congressional District, Pat Ryan. Both candidates will immediately pivot to the fall campaign in their neighboring districts.

North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District

State Democrats won a series of lawsuits in state courts to block a Republican gerrymander in North Carolina, which, thanks to robust population growth, picked up a new, 14th House seat after the 2020 census. Most seats are safe for Republican or Democratic candidates, but the 13th Congressional District, just south of Durham, is near evenly split. Former Yale University football star Bo Hines, a graduate of Wake Forest Law School who Trump backed in the competitive Republican primary, will face Democratic state Sen. Wiley Nickel in November.

Ohio’s 1st Congressional District

State Republicans were mostly successful in shoring up GOP incumbents during the redistricting process they controlled. But with Ohio losing a seat due to relatively slow population growth in the decade before 2020, not all sitting lawmakers could be protected. Rep. Steve Chabot may end up as the odd Republican out, even in a likely strong GOP year.

Chabot initially won his Cincinnati-based House seat in the 1994 Republican wave, which ushered in the first House GOP majority in 40 years. Despite Democratic challengers over the years of various qualities, Chabot, with his strongly conservative voting record, has mostly held on. Chabot did lose his seat in 2008, as President Barack Obama led Democratic wins up and down the ballot. But two years later, Chabot rebounded against the Democrat who beat him, reclaimed the seat as Republicans also regained the House majority, and has been safe ever since.

This year, Chabot faces Cincinnati City Councilman Greg Landsman. And in a less favorable district than before. While the district still includes strongly Republican Warren County, it also takes in the entire city of Cincinnati, a blue bastion. And the long Chabot-friendly Western Hills area of Hamilton County has been grafted on to a neighboring district held by another House Republican.

In 2020, Biden would have won the new district by about 8.5 percentage points. Not surprisingly, the DCCC, put Ohio’s 1st Congressional District on its “Red to Blue” list of seats it believes it can flip in 2022.

Ohio’s 9th Congressional District

Of 2022 Republican House candidates who aren’t in office, J.R. Majewski can reasonably claim to be the biggest MAGA supporter. The Air Force veteran made news in 2020 when he used paint to transform his yard into a giant “Trump 2020 banner,” which the president praised on Twitter (six months before being banned from the platform after the Jan. 6 riots.) And Majewski attended the Jan. 6 Trump rally that preceded the president’s supporters’ attack on the Capitol.

Now, Majewski is running for Ohio’s newly redrawn 9th Congressional District. It’s a Toledo-area seat where, in 2020, Trump would have beat Biden 51% to 48%. Majewski defeated two Republican state legislators to win the nomination against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur.

The district is a massive change from the safely Democratic seats Kaptur has held since 1983, making her the longest-tenured female House member. For instance, the soon-disappearing district Kaptur currently represents would have picked Biden over Trump 59% to 40%.

Ohio’s 13th Congressional District

This new seat, in the southern suburbs of Akron and Cleveland, is another Buckeye State toss-up. The district would have backed Biden over Trump 51% to 48%, but both parties feel good about their chances.

The Republican nominee is attorney Madison Gesiotto Gilbert. She’s had a measure of national exposure in recent years as Miss Ohio USA in 2014, which led her to compete in the Miss USA contest. She is married to former NFL offensive tackle Marcus Gilbert. Democrats have put forward Emilia Sykes, a state representative since 2015. Sykes was state House minority leader for nearly three years, starting in February 2019.

Texas’s 34th Congressional District

Rep. Mayra Flores became a GOP rising star when she won a special election in Texas’s 34th Congressional District. In doing so, Flores continued and likely sped up the trend of Republicans making serious inroads in traditionally Democratic South Texas, with its large Latino population. Flores is finishing the term won in 2020 by former Rep. Filemon Vela, who resigned to take a job at a Washington, D.C., law and lobbying firm. The historically blue 34th Congressional District stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border at Brownsville, Texas, north for hundreds of miles.

But in November, Flores will be seeking a full term in a different version of the 34th Congressional District, which will come into being thanks to the Republican-controlled redistricting process. The new 34th Congressional District would have backed Biden over Trump 57.2% to 41.7%. And this time, Flores will be running against an incumbent Democrat, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez.

Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District

The race for this southeastern Virginia seat, which has one of the largest contingents of active-duty military personnel, pits two female Navy veterans against each other. Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, first elected in 2018 when she beat an incumbent Republican, is seeking reelection against state Sen. Jen Kiggans.

Luria is a member of the House Jan. 6 committee investigating the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters in a bid to overturn President-elect Biden’s 2020 win. Luria, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, was a Navy officer for 20 years, operating on combat ships. Kiggans is a geriatric nurse practitioner and has represented Norfolk and Virginia Beach in Virginia’s 7th Senate District since November 2019. Prior to that, Kiggans was a naval aviator for 10 years, beginning in 1995.

The coastal Virginia district has the largest concentration of military personnel outside of the Pentagon, with more than 86,000 active-duty military personnel. More than 75 federal facilities and defense installations are in the district. Biden would have beaten Trump in the district 50% to 48%, narrower than in Luria’s current seat, which the president would have prevailed over his White House predecessor 51% to 47%.

Virginia’s 7th Congressional District

Since winning for the first time in 2018, Rep. Abigail Spanberger has been a high-profile Democrat. The former CIA officer has helped Democrats tout their national security credentials. Spanberger at times has also chastised her party about appearing to go too far left. Immediately after winning reelection in 2020 by a narrow margin, Spanberger admonished colleagues over “defund the police” legislative efforts in a phone call with fellow House Democrats. She argued further that party members should “not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.”

Spanberger got to Congress by beating an incumbent Republican in a district stretching from southern Virginia up through Richmond to the Washington, D.C., exurbs. The newly redrawn 7th Congressional District is more compact and is closer to the nation’s capital.

Spanberger faces Republican nominee Yesli Vega, a Prince William County supervisor. Biden would have won the new seat 52% to 46%, compared to just 50% to 49% in the district currently represented by Spanberger.

Washington state’s 8th Congressional District

Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier has kept a low profile nationally since winning her suburban Seattle House seat in 2018. The physician replaced a retiring GOP House member.

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Schrier’s newly drawn seat, like her current constituency, would have supported Biden over Trump 52% to 45%. But Republicans feel like they have a good shot at beating Schrier in a strong Republican year. In 2020, she only defeated Republican opponent Jesse Jensen 52% to 48%.

Jensen is running again this year, in the all-party primary on Aug. 2. So is another prominent Republican in the area, King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn. He is the son of the late Rep. Jennifer Dunn, who represented previous versions of the district from 1993 to 2005. Another candidate is in the race, too, 2020 attorney general candidate Matt Larkin, who lost to a sitting Democrat for the state’s top law enforcement job.