WEST COVINA, California — Gil Cisneros’s good luck is back.
The California Democrat, previously a House member for a single, two-year term, is on track to return to Congress. Cisneros is among six former House members seeking, or having sought, a comeback in 2024. And so far, their record is 2-0.
It’s unclear how many other would-be return lawmakers make it back to Capitol Hill in the 2024 cycle. But their efforts are turning out well so far compared to prior election cycles, when many former lawmakers have lost, finding out the hard way voters meant it when they were sent packing.
Cisneros finished first in the March 5 all-party primary for the open eastern San Gabriel Valley 31st Congressional District seat. The district, east of downtown Los Angeles, includes a swath of medium-sized cities like Azusa, Covina, and West Covina, parts of which may look familiar to many from television shows, commercials, and movies, as the suburban locales and early- and mid-20th century homes are frequent filming locations.
In the primary, Cisneros crucially boxed out a series of Democratic challengers from the November ballot. He scored 23.6% of the first-round primary vote, with Republican Daniel Martinez, an attorney, in second, at 19.2%. That’s virtually a guaranteed November win for Cisneros, in a majority Latino House district (nearly 61%), where 2020 President Joe Biden would have beaten former President Donald Trump about 65%-33%.
Cisneros won an Orange County-based House seat in the 2018 Democratic wave year, on his first try for public office. Cisneros has served as a supply officer for 11 years, and manufacturing manager for Frito-Lay until he was laid off in 2010. That same year, he and his wife won a $266 million Mega Millions lottery jackpot and became philanthropists. Cisneros spent more than $9 million in the 2018 open seat race against Republican Young Kim, a former assemblywoman, and won 52% to 48%.
But his good fortune dipped in 2020, when he lost to Kim in a rematch, part of Republicans’ big gains that year cutting into the Democratic House majority. Cisneros became the Biden administration’s undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, holding that office for two years before rejoining the political fray and seeking the open House seat. It’s open because Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) is retiring after 26 years (at 87, she’s the oldest current House member).
This time Cisneros is running in a safely blue district, 20 miles or so north of his old terrain. His replacing Napolitano won’t change the House partisan composition, with Democrats trying to overturn Republicans’ current slender majority.
Here are the other ex-House members trying for 2024 comebacks.
Former Rep. Mayra Flores
A brief stint in Congress like the one Flores, a Texas Republican, had in 2022, can be like getting a couple of NBA 10-day contracts. Or, depending on your preferred sports analogy, getting called up to a Major League Baseball team from the minors for a quick spell. The kind career minor league player Crash Davis (played by Kevin Costner) recalled wistfully in the classic baseball film Bull Durham.
“I was in the show for 21 days once — the 21 greatest days of my life,” Davis recalls, using player colloquial for the major leagues. “You never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service.”
Flores’s time as a House member lasted six months — enough to know she wanted to return to Congress, a political version of “the show.”
Flores is running for the Eastern Rio Grande 34th Congressional District, challenging Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), to whom she lost in 2022 44% to 53%. Flores first won the old 34th Congressional District in a June 2022 special election, giving the GOP a shot of momentum as the party was looking to gain new ground in predominantly Hispanic South Texas. But redistricting made the seat more favorable for Democrats in the November election, and Flores came up short in the district, where in 2020 Biden would have beaten Trump 57.3% to 41.8%.
In her 2024 campaign, Flores is strongly critical of the Biden administration’s handling of border security. She’s cheered on the House impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, which the Democratic majority Senate is yet to act on.
Former Rep. Trent Franks
Surrogacy involves a woman carrying a pregnancy for the intended parents. Franks, an Arizona Republican, during his House career, allegedly had his own idea of what surrogacy should mean — as in the old-fashioned full-contact type, with women on his congressional staff. This alleged pressure on female employees to have sex with him contributed to his resignation in December 2017.
Now Franks is trying a congressional comeback. He’s running for the Republican nomination in the western suburbs of Phoenix 8th Congressional District, a red-leaning enclave in which the primary winner is practically assured of winning the general election. Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) is running for Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and vacating the district, which would have backed Trump over Biden 56.1% to 42.5%.
Franks previously left the House abruptly amid news reports that he had approached two female staffers about acting as a potential surrogate for him and his wife, who has struggled with fertility problems for years. Politico reported at the time that aides were concerned Franks was asking to have sexual relations with them. It was not clear to the women whether he was asking about impregnating the women through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported at the time that Franks offered to pay an aide $5 million to carry his child and pressured her relentlessly on the matter.
Franks faces a crowded primary field in the July 30 Republican primary, including against a Trump-endorsed rival — Abe Hamadeh, a lawyer who has vocally cast doubt on the veracity of 2020 election results. Hamadeh fell just short of winning Arizona’s race for attorney general in 2022.
Former Rep. John Hostettler
Hostettler, of Indiana, was one of only six House Republicans who, in 2002, voted against the Iraq War resolution pushed by then-President George W. Bush’s administration. And over Hostettler’s House career, from 1995-2007, he never was a go-along-get-along with the House Republican leadership, frequently dissenting from the Right.
Hostettler’s House career didn’t end happily, in 2006, when he lost to a Democratic rival by a crushing 39% to 61% margin, as Republicans relinquished their majority for the first time in 12 years. Now he’s trying for a comeback in the southwestern Indiana 8th Congressional District, a red redoubt that would have backed Trump over Biden about 66% to 33%.
The seat is currently held by Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN), who is not running for reelection.
In Hostettler’s Feb. 13 campaign announcement, he highlighted concerns about the U.S. budget deficit and involvement with the war between Russia and Ukraine.
“We must get federal spending under control before our terrible foreign policy and our massive deficits give us no alternative,” he said.
Hostettler’s announcement also mentioned tighter southern border security.
“Congress will need to provide a plan to aggressively find and deport not only the millions of illegal aliens who Border Patrol have encountered illegally entering the U.S. over the past three years, but the hundreds of thousands of got-aways,” Hostettler said.
Republican primary rivals for the crucial May 7 contest include investment banker Jim Case, state Sen. Mark Messmer, and former Sullivan County Commissioner Luke Misner.
Former Rep. Mondaire Jones
This is the New York Democrat’s second congressional comeback attempt. Jones, a lawyer and first-time candidate, in 2020 was an upset Democratic primary victory in the old Westchester County 17th Congressional District. But the redistricting process after the 2020 census went awry for New York Democrats, who lost a court challenge to their extreme gerrymander plan that aimed to give the party a 22-4 dominant House delegation edge. The 2022 elections, based on a much more politically competitive, court-imposed map, ended with Democrats holding 15 seats to 11 for Republicans.
In 2022, Jones, rather than face Democratic House colleagues primaries around his home political turf, moved south from his political base to run in the lower Manhattan and northwestern Brooklyn-based 10th District. But he came in third in the crucial Democratic primary to now-Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). Jones has since returned to the area north of New York City and is challenging freshman Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in the Lower Hudson Valley 17th Congressional District.
On paper, the district leans Democratic. But Lawler has proven himself a media-savvy lawmaker and has connected with residents in the district. And Lawler has serious political bragging rights — in 2022 he beat the head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, then-Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY). It all sets up one of the most competitive House seat races in New York state and perhaps the nation.
Former Rep. Denny Rehberg
Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) is retiring from the Eastern Montana 2nd Congressional District after teasing a Senate run for more than a year against Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT). Rosendale lost to Tester in 2018, when he was state treasurer, following defeat at the Democratic senator’s hands six years earlier by another Republican, then-Rep. Denny Rehberg.
Rehberg, a rancher by background, is aiming for a political comeback nearly 12 years after losing his bid for statewide office. The real contest here is in the Republican primary, since in 2020 Trump would have crushed Biden there 62% to 35%. Other Republicans seeking the seat in the June 4 primary include former state Sen. Elsie Arntzen, state Senate President Ken Bogner, ex-state Sen. Ric Holden, former state Rep. Joel Krautter, and ex-state Sen. Ed Walker.
Rehberg represented the entire state in the years before Montana regained a second House seat following the 2020 census, a shift that led to the state getting divided in two. He previously was lieutenant governor from 1991-97 and a state representative before that. He also lost a Senate bid in 1996.
Rehberg’s rivals for the 2nd Congressional District Republican nomination already have some opposition research at their fingertips. In the 2012 Senate campaign, Rehberg attracted unwanted attention from a 2009 boat crash in which he was one of four passengers injured in a vessel piloted by former state Sen. Greg Barkus, whose blood alcohol level was double the state limit. Rehberg was never accused of wrongdoing, but Tester’s team argued that the then-congressman showed poor judgment.
And back in 2004, news reports emerged that Rehberg, during a 2004 congressional delegation to Kazakhstan, fell off a horse after downing six shots of vodka.
Plus, Rehberg, according to an April 2011 town hall meeting video released at the time by the Montana Democratic Party, told an audience member that he was “land-rich and cash-poor” and “struggling like everyone else.” Yet he was one of the wealthier members of the House, with a net worth of between $6.5 million and $54 million, according to his House financial disclosure form.
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY)
Suozzi became a Democratic political folk hero of sorts when he won a Feb. 13 special election in the northern Nassau County 3rd Congressional District. Suozzi replaced expelled Rep. George Santos, a Republican who captured the seat in 2022 under dubious circumstances, effectively creating an entire false professional and personal backstory. Santos has since been hit with a 23-count federal corruption indictment.
Suozzi held the Long Island and Queens-based seat from 2017-23. Democrats hailed his comeback win not only because it sliced into House Republicans’ already slim majority, but since he talked up immigration issues in a politically effective way. Suozzi criticized some Biden administration policies in securing the U.S.-Mexico border and said he wanted bipartisan solutions.
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“Tom Suozzi ran a positive campaign. Tom Suozzi talked about fixing problems like the challenges we have at the border. Tom Suozzi talked about common sense solutions and finding bipartisan common ground. Tom Suozzi won,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said after Democrats notched the victory.
The district Suozzi won in the special election would have favored Biden over Trump in 2020 by about 8 points. A recent new redistricting plan in New York aimed to shore it up further for Suozzi as he seeks reelection in the coming years.
