WashingtonWith Democrats taking one last seat in California, Republicans will have a slim majority in the House next year, giving GOP leaders even less leeway as they work to further President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.
After weeks of ballot counting, NBC News forecasts that Democrat Adam Gray defeated Republican Rep. John Duarte in a rematch in California’s 13th District in the Central Valley, giving Republicans 220 House seats to Democrats 215 in the 2024 elections. If all Democrats vote against the bill, the GOP will only lose two votes in the House in the upcoming Congress, leaving them with little leeway for vacancies, internal strife, and absences.
On Tuesday night, Duarte called Gray to make concessions, he told the Turlock Journal.
Gray’s win helped Democrats gain one seat in the House elections, but Republicans gained eight Democratic-held seats and nine Republican-held ones, mostly in blue areas.
Democrats George Whitesides and Derek Tran defeated Republican representatives in the 13th District, one of three Democratic gains in California alone. Mike Garcia and Michelle Steel. Additionally, Democrats gained one seat apiece in Alabama and Louisiana due to new congressional redistricting in those states, and they also flipped three seats in New York and one in Oregon.
In contrast, North Carolina’s new congressional map helped Republicans gain three seats in the state. Additionally, they flipped an open seat in Michigan and defeated Democratic lawmakers in Alaska and Colorado, as well as two Democrats from Pennsylvania, Reps. Susan Wild and Matt Cartwright.
According to the ad-tracking company AdImpact, campaigns and outside organizations spent hundreds of millions of dollars on House races, with over $1.1 billion spent on advertisements from September to Election Day alone.
In the fall, Democratic campaigns and organizations spent $662 million on advertisements in House contests, compared to $485 million for Republicans.
With officials from both parties admitting that the current redistricting process reduced the number of contested contests, the tiny GOP majority highlights the close struggle for the House this year. Data from the NBC News Decision Desk shows that little over 40 seats, or about 10% of the chamber, were determined by less than 5 percentage points.
Despite losing the White House, the Senate, and the House, Democrats discovered that their candidates further down the ballot outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris.
An initial examination of county data provided to NBC News by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee showed that vulnerable Democratic incumbents in House races performed an average of 2.7 points better than Harris. In counties with lower educational attainment and where people of color make up the majority of registered voters, the data also revealed that Harris was outperformed by Democratic candidates in tough seats.
Johnson s challenges
With control over all the levers of power in Washington, Republicans will have a unique chance in the coming year to enact important policy priorities through budget reconciliation, a complex process that enables the GOP to expedite legislation without receiving any votes from Democrats in the Senate and avoid filibusters.
However, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who is anticipated to be re-elected to the top position by his colleagues next month, and Republicans will encounter challenges in completing their reconciliation bill due to the precariousness of their House majority.
The reconciliation package is being considered by Trump and Republicans as a means of extending tax cuts that he signed into law in 2017 and that are scheduled to expire the following year. Additional clauses that could be added include removing the cap on state and local tax deductions and providing a tax exemption for money received from tips, or what Trump refers to as “no tax on tips.”
As Trump vows to begin the greatest deportation program in American history, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump friend and member of the Appropriations and Judiciary committees, has been pressing colleagues to utilize reconciliation to approve border security legislation.
The fact that Trump has appointed two current House Republicans to his Cabinet—Mike Waltz of Florida as national security advisor and Elise Stefanik of New York as U.S. ambassador to the UN—further complicates Johnson’s math dilemma.
Republicans are also anticipated to lose one more lawmaker at the beginning of the next Congress.
After Trump nominated Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be the next attorney general, Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration due to sexual misconduct charges, and he resigned from the House last month. Despite winning reelection, Gaetz has stated that he has no intention of attending the upcoming Congress.
Johnson might be operating with a one-seat majority (217 to 215) if Stefanik and Walz resign at the same time.
The special election calendar to replace Gaetz and Waltz has already been announced by the Florida State Department. The deep-red seats’ primaries are scheduled for January 28 and special elections are scheduled for April 1.
According to state law, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul has 10 days from the time Stefanik resigns from Congress to call a special election in New York, which must take place 70 to 80 days following the proclamation.
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