The race for House control is a political game of inches. Democrats need to net four seats in the 435-member chamber to win a majority after two years in the political wilderness of the House minority. That’s no easy task because most House seats are drawn to favor one party safely.
Obvious targets for Democrats and, conversely, Republicans trying to expand their slim majority are seats held by lawmakers from the party opposite of the presidential candidate that would have prevailed there in the 2020 election. That includes 18 House districts represented by Republicans where Joe Biden would have won more votes in 2020 than then-President Donald Trump, who is seeking his old job as the 2024 Republican nominee. On the other side of the political ledger, Democrats hold eight seats in districts where Trump would have won more votes than Biden.
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The race for House control is playing out amid the fierce presidential fight between Trump and Biden’s successor as Democratic nominee after his weak June 27 debate performance led him to bow out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris. Each White House hopeful figures to offer some coattails to congressional candidates of their party, though local issues are often higher priorities.
Here are 10 of the most competitive 2024 House races. Some are in presidential battlegrounds, including two Michigan contests, while others are in deep blue or red states.
Alaska’s At-Large Congressional District
Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) won an August 2022 special election and then a full, two-year House term by taking advantage of a split among Republicans in a GOP-leaning state. Plus, Alaska’s ranked choice voting system helped Peltola, a former state lawmaker, prevail against the same pair of Republicans in both contests. Peltola’s 2024 reelection bid will likely be tougher, with Trump expected to easily beat Harris in The Last Frontier.
Peltola again faces Republican Nick Begich III, a technology entrepreneur with a long Alaska political lineage. His grandfather and namesake, the late Rep. Nick Begich, won Alaska’s lone House seat in 1970, before a fatal plane crash in which his body was never found.
An uncle, Mark Begich, was a senator from 2009-15. Both were Democrats. But running as a Republican Nick Begich III has raised considerable campaign funds and has received major financial contributions from House Republican leaders, confident of his chances.
California’s 27th Congressional District
On paper, this northern Los Angeles County seat should be an easy pickup for House Democrats. After all, in 2020, the district, taking in the suburban and desert-area cities of Lancaster, Palmdale, and Santa Clarita, would have backed Biden over Trump 55.1% to 42.7%. But Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA) has proven an elusive target for Democrats, winning a May 2020 special election and twice nabbing full House terms.
This year, Garcia faces George Whitesides, a former NASA chief of staff who then was CEO of Virgin Galactic. Negative campaigning in the race is hotter than the 100-degree-plus temperatures in the district for much of summer and into fall. Whitesides contends that Garcia is too conservative for the district, citing his sponsorship of anti-abortion legislation in the House and his vote against certifying Biden’s 2020 presidential win.
Meanwhile, Garcia has benefited from campaign ads by House Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which links Whitesides to pedophiles — charges that the Democrat denies. It references his hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to progressive candidates and causes, including Equality California, a group that advocates legislation advancing LGBT rights.
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California’s 45th Congressional District
Charges of communist sympathies hurled between Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA) and Democratic opponent Derek Tran could be straight out of a Cold War campaign in 1984, let alone 2024. Rather than the old Soviet Union, the foreign bogeyman is now China. The campaign of Steel, first elected to Congress in 2020 as a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, recently sent a campaign mailer showing Tran smiling in front of the hammer-and-sickle emblem of the Chinese Communist Party.
The campaign of Tran, an attorney and Army veteran in his rookie bid for office, is running a Facebook ad alleging that Steel’s husband, a lawyer, “brought Chinese spies into American politics in exchange for money.” The ad tells viewers that they “cannot trust Michelle Steel to stand up to China.”
These are sensitive charges in a House district with a considerable Chinese American community, with many voters having fled the Beijing regime. The Asian population share in the western Orange County district is 38.44%, the highest in the country. Both candidates reflect that. Steel was born in South Korea and grew up in Seoul and Japan before moving to Los Angeles as a student. Tran is the son of refugees from Vietnam.
The district has the nation’s largest Vietnamese American population. In 2020, it would have backed Biden over Trump 52.1% to 46.0%, but it still has lots of traditional GOP territory. Both parties covet the seat in their bids to win the majority, and the acid negative attacks between the candidates are a sign of it.
Maine’s 2nd Congressional District
Republicans are confident that not all that glitters is Golden. That would be Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), who is seeking reelection in a sprawling, rural district that Trump won easily in 2020 and where he remains popular. Golden, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has long kept his distance from national Democrats, frequently voting against House party leadership. He faces Republican state Rep. Austin Theriault, a former NASCAR driver.
The northern Maine House district that Golden and Theriault are fighting over is the largest east of the Mississippi River and among the most rural. Many residents share Trump’s politics and attitudes. Tucker Carlson broadcast his now-defunct Fox News show from a cabin in Woodstock, Maine, near the New Hampshire state line, where moose easily outnumbered people. Republicans are optimistic about Theriault’s chances with Trump heading the ballot on Nov. 5.
Michigan’s 7th Congressional District
Democrats are playing defense in this Lansing area and northwestern Detroit exurbs district. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is vacating this longtime swing seat for a Senate run. Republican Tom Barrett, a 21-year Army veteran who was a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan and a former state legislator, is making another run at it after losing to Slotkin in 2022. The Democratic nominee is former state Sen. Curtis Hertel, scion of a prominent local political dynasty who previously was Ingham County register of deeds and a county commissioner.
In 2020, Biden would have prevailed over Trump in the district by a smidge, 49.4% to 48.9%. But Hertel has lagged behind Barrett in polls, albeit narrowly. His struggles reflect those of Harris as she fights to keep the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin intact, along with her White House chances.
Michigan’s 8th Congressional District
The third time may be a charm for Paul Junge, the Republican nominee in this district covering Flint and the Tri-Cities areas. The attorney, former news broadcaster, and one-time Trump administration official lost to Slotkin in 2020 during the congresswoman’s first reelection bid, representing a previous version of her current south-central Michigan district.
In 2022, Junge unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI), elected in 2012 after a career in local politics, to succeed his retiring uncle, the late Rep. Dale Kildee, a 36-year House Democrat. With no Kildee on the ballot, Junge has a clearer path to Congress, even though the district would have narrowly backed Biden over Trump in 2020, 50.3% to 48.2%.
The Democratic nominee is state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, a former Bay City commissioner. The political rivals have sparred over abortion, economic development, Social Security, the war in Gaza, and other issues.
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Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) hopes to sizzle in his reelection bid. Yet the congressman, first elected in 2016, in effect has two rivals — Democratic nominee Tony Vargas, a state senator in Nebraska, and the party’s presidential ticket of Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).
Nebraska splits its electoral votes partly by congressional district, and this greater Omaha area seat is becoming increasingly blue. Moreover, Walz is a Nebraska native who has campaigned in Omaha, along with second gentleman Doug Emhoff and prominent Democrats.
Bacon, who spent nearly 30 years in the Air Force and retired as a brigadier general, is an outspoken advocate of bipartisanship and has sought to strengthen GOP centrists as a counterbalance to the party’s more assertive MAGA majority. Bacon bucked the bulk of House Republicans in voting to certify Biden’s 2020 win.
But Vargas contends that it’s all an act, noting that Bacon supported Trump’s agenda most of the time during the former president’s 2017-21 White House tenure. Vargas lost narrowly to Bacon in 2022, but this time, he may benefit from having Harris at the top of the ticket. Her boss, retiring President Biden, already beat Trump for the single electoral vote in 2020.
New York’s 4th Congressional District
Freshman Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) faces one of the most difficult districts to defend in the country, trying to hold this southern Nassau County seat on Long Island. In 2020, Biden would have beaten Trump there, 56.8% to 42.2%. Laura Gillen, a Democrat and former Hempstead town supervisor who lost to D’Esposito in the 2022 midterm elections, hopes that presidential year turnout and a sizable financial advantage can help her flip it.
D’Esposito, a retired New York City Police Department detective, is like many Republican candidates, emphasizing rising crime, lingering inflation, and illegal immigration. But Gillen has put the congressman on the defensive over abortion rights, seizing on an old comment in which the Republican said he would “probably” vote for a 15-week abortion ban. He now says he would not.
D’Esposito also faces attacks following a September New York Times report that he had put the daughter of his longtime fiancée and his mistress on the congressional payroll at the same time. The payments may have violated House ethics rules. Though the congressman denies any wrongdoing, Democrats call his conduct part of a long tradition of corruption in Long Island Republican politics.
Oregon’s 5th Congressional District
In her reelection bid, first-term Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) has emphasized a relatively centrist voting record in Congress and an accomplished run as mayor of Happy Valley, outside of Portland, from 2011-19. She has good reason to keep her distance from national Republicans because the southern Portland suburbs and central Oregon district would have backed Biden over Trump 53.2% to 44.4% in 2020.
The Democratic nominee is state Rep. Janelle Bynum, and she’s beaten Chavez-DeRemer twice before — when her state House seat came open in 2016 and then to win reelection in 2018. That constituency, though, is bluer than the House seat Chavez-DeRemer holds, and both parties see it as important to nabbing the majority.
Bynum calls herself a pro-business Democrat and stresses centrist credentials. Chavez-DeRemer is trying to tie Bynum to chaos in Portland, with Oregon’s largest city now notorious for rampant drug use in plain view on its streets, rising crime, riots, and other societal ills.
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Washington’s 3rd Congressional District
The presidential race has taken a dark turn, with Harris calling Trump a “fascist” while the former president has labeled his Democratic rival a “retard” and lobbed profanity-laced insults at Harris. Still, the pair look like best friends compared to candidates in this southwestern Washington House district. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) and her repeat Republican rival, Joe Kent, seem to utterly loathe each other, barely able to stand nearby on debate stages or sit feet apart at candidate forums.
Gluesenkamp Perez won one of the biggest upset victories of the 2022 cycle in a district where Trump, two years before, would have beaten Biden 50.8% to 46.6%. The congresswoman emphasizes her independence from national Democrats and was among the first in her party to demand Biden quit his 2024 reelection bid after his debate performance against Trump.
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As for Kent, she regularly ties him to the neofascist Proud Boys, an extremist group that was central to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Gluesenkamp Perez has also called Kent a “stooge” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing February 2022 comments that territorial demands on Ukraine were “very reasonable.” Kent is a retired Army Special Forces officer with an isolationist worldview even more intense than Trump’s.
The candidates have additionally fought over immigration and a new Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River. They’ve more broadly sought to portray the other as out of step with residents of the 3rd Congressional District. In 2022, Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent 50.14% to 49.31%, or 2,629 votes out of nearly 320,000 cast.
