Abstract
In recent decades retirements/resignations have been a larger contributor to change in the composition of both chambers of Congress than have electoral defeats of incumbents. In this chapter, we consider the impact of retirements (and other forms of non-electoral exits) on the 2018 congressional midterms. Using multivariate models, we examine what factors correlate significantly with retirement decisions, test for a partisan differential in retirement rates (which previous work has found in the House but not the Senate), and compare the rates at which the parties are capable of replacing retirees with co-partisans. Our analysis allows the consideration on the on-going importance of members’ career decisions for the composition of and the partisan balance of power in the US Congress. These career decisions could have substantial implications for the future of the Trump administration and the president’s policy agenda.
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Notes
- 1.
We focus solely on the House of Representatives. In the Senate, there were six retirements/resignations (Corker, Flake, Franken, Hatch, Kyl, and Sessions) compared to five electoral defeats (Donnelly, Heitkamp, Heller, McCaskill, and Nelson). For more on retirements in the modern Senate see Masthay and Overby (2017).
- 2.
There was also one death in the House, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (NY-25). For more on deaths in office see Brant et al. (2018).
- 3.
Five House Republicans resigned to accept positions in the Trump administration: James Bridenstine to become administrator of NASA, Mick Mulvaney to direct the Office of Management and Budget (later acting White House chief of staff), Mike Pompeo to direct the CIA (later secretary of State), Tom Price to be secretary of Health and Human Services, and Ryan Zinke as secretary of the Interior. In terms of percentage of each partisan caucus, based on results of the 2016 elections, 10.3 percent of Democrats (20/194) and 19.9 percent of Republicans (48/241) chose to depart the 115th Congress or not stand for re-election to the 116th Congress.
- 4.
One retiring House Republican subcommittee chair, Rep. Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2nd) who chaired the Subcommittee on Aviation of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, also cited term limits as a rationale for his decision (see Schneider 2017).
- 5.
Georgia’s 6th district, vacated by Trump administration appointee Tom Price, also swung Democratic in 2018 (when Lucy McBath defeated Karen Handel, who had won a special election in June 2017).
- 6.
Schlesinger (1966) terms this progressive ambition: seeking “to attain an office more important than the one he now seeks or is holding.” All 20 members who left the House in 2018 sought a statewide office. Nineteen ran for senator or governor, while Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison (MN-5th) ran successfully for attorney general in Minnesota.
- 7.
We include as unsuccessful Martha McSally, who lost the November 2018 Senate general election in Arizona to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. In December 2018, Republican Governor Doug Ducey appointed McSally as Arizona’s junior senator, replacing Jon Kyl, who resigned after being appointed in September 2018 to serve in the seat vacated upon the death of John McCain.
- 8.
See https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-115hrpt1125/pdf/CRPT-115hrpt1125.pdf and http//oce.house.gov/reports/115th-Congress. Accessed 2 September 2019.
- 9.
These were Democratic Rep. Ray Ben Lugan (NM-3rd), who was cleared of wrong-doing and serves as the assistant speaker in the 116th Congress; GOP Rep. Chris Collins (NY-27th), who was arrested for insider trading and subsequently stripped of his committee assignments; GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter (CA-50th), who was indicted for conspiracy, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations and was stripped of his committee assignments; and GOP Rep. David Schweikert (AZ-6th), who has been accused of campaign finance violations. The re-elections of Reps. Collins, Hunter, and Schweikert provide evidence that even very credible charges of significant (and illegal) ethics violations are often not electorally fatal.
- 10.
Similarly, the percentage of members seeking re-election successfully trended upward over the course of the twentieth century. Not since the Great Depression have 25 percent or more of incumbent MCs been defeated; at times (1986, 1988, 1998, 2000, 2004, and 2016) those rates have been 97 percent or higher.
- 11.
It is worth repeating that far less empirical research has been undertaken on voluntary departures from the Senate. The chamber’s smaller size, staggered elections, limited history of popular elections, idiosyncratic rules, and outsized personalities conspire to limit the analytical leverage scholars can bring to bear on the institution. We are familiar with only three empirical studies on Senate retirements: Livingston and Friedman (1993), Bernstein and Wolak (2002), and Masthay and Overby (2017). Examining the “modern” Senate (1973–2014), Masthay and Overby found that as in the House, voluntary exits account for almost two-thirds of all departures, but that unlike in the House most voluntary departures from the Senate (86 percent) constitute retirements from public life, not efforts to win higher office. Unlike in the House, Masthay and Overby found no partisan disparity in retirements, though they did find a significant difference between the parties in the likelihood of senators dying in office (which is explored more systematically in Brant et al. 2018).
- 12.
Due to issues with collinearity in this polarized period, we do not run models including both party and ideology.
- 13.
They are John Conyers (D-MI), Ruben Kihuen (D-NV), Blake Farenthold (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Pat Meehan (R-PA), Jimmy Duncan (R-TN), Thomas Garrett (R-VA), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), Chris Collins (R-NY), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), David Schweikert (R-AZ), and Rod Blum (R-IA).
- 14.
To test our instincts that being a termed-out committee chair was a significant motivator to GOP MCs’ decisions to retire, we also estimated OLS models. As expected, being a termed-out committee chair was robustly significant in both the full model and that examining only Republicans.
- 15.
First difference effects are calculated by changing binary variables from 0 to 1 and increasing continuous variables by two standard deviations above the mean. All other variables are held at their mean (continuous) or mode (binary) values as appropriate.
- 16.
As seen in Table 3.5, which shows results by party, tenure in office is a robustly significant predictor of Republican retirements, but seems irrelevant to Democrats. This suggests that House service is a task Republicans are more likely to do “for a while,” but not necessarily for their entire careers. In converse, Democrats seem more likely to act as though House service is itself a career.
- 17.
We have not fully analyzed the fundraising repercussions of retirements. On average, the Democratic candidate running for a seat vacated by a Democratic MC spent $1,752,717 more in 2018 than his/her predecessor had spent in 2016; in contrast, for Republicans the number was $250,692 less. These figures do not, however, include what was spent in the (presumably) more competitive primary contests sparked by incumbent departures.
- 18.
For a list of women serving in the 116th Congress see: https://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/list-women-currently-serving-congress. Accessed 2 September 2019.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the constructive suggestions provided by the organizers of and participants in Saint Anselm College’s 2019 American Elections Symposium. During the research and writing of this chapter, Marvin Overby served as a visiting scholar at the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Center and acknowledges the support provided by the Center’s excellent staff, particularly the research assistance of Brooklyn Whitmire and Maria Mandanas.
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Brant, H.K., Overby, L.M. (2020). Checking Out: 2018 Congressional Retirements and Resignations in Historical Perspective. In: Sisco, T., Lucas, J., Galdieri, C. (eds) The Unforeseen Impacts of the 2018 US Midterms. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37940-7_3
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