House Republicans in swing districts appear less than happy to be forced into votes on hotly contested amendments in the National Defense Authorization Act and other pieces of legislation ahead of a pivotal election in 2024.
The amendments in the NDAA, which range from the Department of Defense’s abortion policy to DEI initiatives, have been offered up by several members of the House Freedom Caucus, leaving centrist Republicans in a precarious position.
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Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY), who represents a district that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, told Punchbowl News that members of Congress need to “be careful of the votes they make.”
“Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by close to 80,[000]-85,000, so we’re not getting sent to Washington, D.C., to represent the people because we’re only being supported by conservative Republicans. Anybody in elected office needs to be careful of the votes they make,” D’Esposito said.
Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA), who represents a district rated as Republican +3 per the Cook Political Report’s partisan voting index, slammed the House Freedom Caucus members offering these amendments as being more interested in their identity rather than working for their constituents.
“Those folks are more interested about their own personal identity than they are about doing work for their district,” Nunn said.
The NDAA narrowly passed on party lines in the House last week and faces an uphill battle to pass in the Senate with the current amendments.
Republicans in 2024 will be on defense in the House elections, hoping to maintain and expand their majority in the lower chamber of Congress. In 2022, the GOP was widely expected to take the House with a significant majority, but Republicans in nearly every state underperformed, and the GOP only won a narrow majority in the House.
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The Cook Political Report rated 14 races in which the incumbent is a Republican as a “toss-up,” along with 11 races in which a Democrat is the incumbent. It has also rated the race in New York’s 3rd Congressional District as “lean Democratic,” with Rep. George Santos (R-NY) as the incumbent in that seat.
The GOP currently has a narrow 222-212 majority in the House, meaning House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Republican leadership must balance the needs of centrists and more conservative members to get legislation passed.
