‘Tis the season for congressional departure announcements.
Heading into the holidays, an increasing number of lawmakers are saying they plan to quit after the 2024 elections. Eighteen House members are retiring. Thirteen House members are seeking other offices, most of them running for Senate. In North Carolina, Reps. Dan Bishop (R) and Jeff Jackson (D) are both running for state attorney general.
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Some congressional retirements are unsurprising, like House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-TX). The western Fort Worth and suburbs 12th Congressional District congresswoman, age 80, first won her House seat in 1996 and steadily rose through the GOP ranks. But she faces House Republican Conference term limits for committee chairs, and it makes sense she wouldn’t want to return to being a rank-and-file member.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), too, is hanging it up at a seemingly natural time. She’s former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) closest friend in the House, dating back far before their congressional days, as Democratic activists in northern California. Eshoo, 81, was first elected to the House in 1992 and represents the Silicon Valley 16th Congressional District.
Others have made it clear they wanted to stay in Congress but couldn’t.
Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), first elected to the House in 2020, said on Dec. 7 that she would not run again due to “the egregiously gerrymandered congressional districts, which the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly passed into law.” The new maps, which go into effect for the 2024 elections, transform Manning’s current Greensboro 6th Congressional District from a seat that in 2020 would have voted 56% to 43% for President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump, into a much more rural constituency. The redrawn district would have favored Trump over Biden 57% to 41%.
North Carolina is also home to one of the highest profile House departures, Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R). First elected to the House in 2004, as President George W. Bush won a second White House term, McHenry went from conservative rabble-rouser to a well-liked lieutenant of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). McHenry was acting speaker during the frenetic three-week search for a replacement following McCarthy’s ouster. (McCarthy is ditching Congress at the end of the year, after overnight going from king to commoner in the chamber.)
Beyond age, and district line changes, it’s not hard to see why some members want to leave the House amid acrimony and dysfunction. Just since September, the chamber has dealt with a government funding crisis and ejection of a speaker — McCarthy was replaced in that role, second in presidential succession behind Vice President Kamala Harris, by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA). Moreover, potential government shutdowns still loom in late January and early February, when a pair of stopgap federal spending bills expire.
And just since the Thanksgiving recess, the House expelled fabulist Rep. George Santos (R-NY), and censured Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) for pulling a fire alarm. While supporters can point to justifications for both measures, it’s hardly the sort of serious policy work lawmakers claim they want to focus on.
So far, five senators are retiring. For Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), it’s the end of an era in a political career that goes back to his 1966 election to Maryland’s state House of Delegates. Cardin was state House speaker for the last seven years of his two decades in Annapolis, followed by 20 years in the House representing a Baltimore-based district, and as a senator since early 2007.
And just east in Delaware, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) also will step down from a government career that began with his election as state treasurer in 1976 at age 29, followed by 10 years in the House, eight as governor, and as senator since early 2001. That creates a political ripple effect in the First State, as Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D) is a heavy favorite to nab that Senate seat. She’ll be the first black member of Congress from Delaware after becoming its first female federal lawmaker when she joined the House in 2017.
Congress Increasingly Becoming a Parody of Itself
Congressional departures have in recent years been a source of pointed humor and satire for freshman lawmakers in both parties. At a February 2022 House Republican retreat, first-term Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) premiered a parody video about the growing number of Democratic retirements that year, which ended up at about 22. At that earlier point in the election cycle, though, the House Democratic retirement watch ranged into the dozens, in what was expected to be dozens of Republican pickups that year, sweeping in a sizable House majority.
“Ten, Twenty, Thirty, Maybe Forty and the more” House Democratic retirements, went the chorus, a knock-off of the 1966 Royal Guardsmen song, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.” Then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was a stand-in for the famous cartoon dog, with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the tune’s main foil, Manfred von Richthofen, a German fighter pilot who was the deadliest flying ace of World War I — before he was killed in a 1918 aerial dogfight over France.
Republicans did end up winning the House majority in the 2022 midterm elections, but barely. With an edge over Democrats that could easily be counted on one hand, GOP lawmakers since the start of this Congress also have been beset by infighting, contributing to McCarthy’s unceremonious departure as House speaker after nine months on the job.
On Dec. 8, freshman Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) released his parody video about departed or departing GOP lawmakers. It’s set to Sarah McLachlan’s 1998 hit single, “Angel,” which these days is best known for accompanying anti-animal cruelty commercials.
“To all the Members of Congress who are leaving us too soon. They are gone but not forgotten,” Moskowitz recently posted puckishly on X.
McCarthy comes in for some mockery, on the way out of the congressional door. But the central character is Santos, who on Dec. 1 became only the sixth House member ever expelled after a scathing House Ethics Committee report over allegations of campaign finance breaches and other issues. Additionally, two 2023 federal indictments allege 23 fraud-related charges against Santos, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
With that, here are all congressional departures in this election cycle. It’s a list likely to grow after the holidays when lawmakers have the chance to reflect with their families on whether to try and stay in Congress.
