On the menu today: First, thank you to the phenomenal number of readers who donated to the ongoing webathon; we are off to a flying start thanks to your generosity. Once again, you guys have made me look good in front of “the suits.” Meanwhile, the narrow GOP House majority has effectively forced the hand of the Trump administration and required Elise Stefanik to withdraw as the administration’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Earlier in the week, this newsletter looked at recent special elections and warned about an ominous rattle in the engine for the GOP. This move is further confirmation that Mike Johnson needs every Republican he can get voting in that chamber, at least for the next few months.
Mike Johnson Needs Every Vote
President Trump nominated Elise Stefanik to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations back on January 20. As our Jeff Blehar noted, she would probably do quite well in that role — “She has proven herself an effective cross-examiner and advocate while in Congress.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Stefanik’s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations way back on January 30. But there were reports that New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, apparently intended to delay the special election to replace Stefanik in her GOP-leaning district as long as possible. (Remember, Democrats are the defenders of democracy who want to keep constituents without a representative in Congress as long as possible. Democracy dies in darkness, except when the governor of New York strangles it to death in broad daylight with everyone watching. Or some other governor, as we’ll see in a moment.)
The U.S. House of Representatives currently has 218 Republicans, 213 Democrats, and four vacancies. Two of those vacancies are in the state of Florida; Matt Gaetz did not take his seat and resigned Congress in November 2024; Mike Waltz resigned to become President Trump’s national security adviser on January 20. The special elections for those seats, both deep-red districts will be held this coming Tuesday, April 1.
On paper, Republicans could win both seats, grow to a 220 to 213 majority — a huge margin, compared to the past few weeks! — and Stefanik could resign her seat, and Republicans could still feel pretty good with a 219 to 213 majority, even if Hochul delayed the special election as long as possible.
The other two House vacancies are in districts that are heavily Democratic. One is in Texas, where Sylvester Turner died March 5 and Texas Governor Greg Abbott still hasn’t declared a vacancy; the governor’s office has not given any explanation for the delay:
The next scheduled election date in Texas is May 3. According to state election law and precedent, Abbott would have had to order the special election by March 18 for it to take place in May. The practical deadline to call a May 3 election may have also already passed, due to how much time the state needs to program voting machines and prepare and mail ballots.
The Texas Secretary of State’s office did not respond to a question about how much time the state generally requires to carry out an election.
Turner’s funeral was two weeks ago. Remember everything I just said about Hochul? It applies to Abbott, too. Every American deserves a representative in Congress, and no one should be playing partisan games about delaying the election of a replacement when there’s a vacancy.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, Democratic Representative Raúl Grijalva passed away March 13, and the primary is scheduled for July 15 and the general election on September 23. Grijalva’s district scores a D+15 in the Cook Partisan Voting index, meaning whoever wins the Democratic special primary is extremely likely to be the next member of Congress. Democrats will have someone in that seat, but not until late September.
Earlier this week, I noted that while Republicans will probably win both Florida special House elections Tuesday night, neither race in those deep-red districts looks anywhere near as safe as you would expect, considering the partisan lean during normal elections.
A decent number of folks argued this was doomsaying and excessive pessimism. Well, this morning, Politico reports:
An internal GOP poll from late March showed Democrat Josh Weil up 3 points over [Republican Randy] Fine, 44 to 41 percent, with 10 percent undecided, according to a person familiar with the poll and granted anonymity to discuss it. Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s pollster, conducted the survey. That result spooked Republicans and spurred them to redouble efforts to ensure a comfortable win in the district, according to two people familiar with internal conversations.
Remember, in 2024, Waltz won this district with two-thirds of the vote, and in 2022, he had no Democratic Party opponent!
The outlook in Florida’s first congressional district is at least a little better for the GOP, but as of March 12, nominee Jimmy Patronis was being outraised about six to one.
Yes, President Trump’s approval rating is higher than in his first term, and the right-track/wrong direction numbers are better than they’ve been in years. But none of that matters in a special election if Republicans don’t feel motivated to show up and if grassroots Democrats are mad as hell and are willing to walk barefoot across broken glass to register their disapproval of the administration and the GOP.
Republicans still need to pass a reconciliation bill that’s going to include a huge chunk of the president’s domestic agenda — extend the tax cuts, make the small business deduction permanent, gut the Inflation Reduction Act. House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to pass the bill before Easter recess. We’ve already seen legislation pass the House by razor-thin margins this year.
And as Jeff notes with his long memory, Stefanik’s 21st congressional district in New York has been Trumpy and red lately, but it had a Democratic representative not that long ago:
When Trump writes “I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat” there is likely more here than generic language. Stefanik’s NY-21 district, encompassing the vast, supermajority-rural “North Country” of the state, has a surprisingly long history of being torn between Republican Party factions, as befits the unique political temperament of one of America’s borderlands. It codes as “red” on a presidential level but betrays a fickle populist sentiment that can self-defeatingly divide against itself, as it famously did in 2009, when Barack Obama cleverly plucked its popular long-serving representative John McHugh as a “bipartisan” pick for secretary of the Army. . . .
Democratic Congressman Bill Owens, who not only won the special election in that 2009 race (Scozzafava endorsed Owens, proving that the district’s voters were right about her all along), but continued to hold this nominally “red” seat for two more terms, until retiring to let Stefanik take the seat. This is why people are jumpy about her seat — for another split between the state party and the grassroots is brewing.
The New York State Republican Party itself has been unable to officially agree on a designated candidate. (Why? Because they remember 2009, that’s why.) Meanwhile, New York’s Conservative Party has endorsed state Senator Dan Stec. (I don’t want to get into a tedious explanation of New York’s election laws here; let’s just say that their various ballot lines are a great way to split an otherwise united voting bloc, and we at National Review do not regret it even the slightest bit.) Then there’s Anthony Constantino, by far the most demonstratively “MAGA” candidate in the entire race, who is now threatening a third-party run à la Hoffman because Stec is too moderate. The potential for disaster brews, and with Republicans already jumpy about Randy Fine winning the race to replace National Security Adviser Mike Waltz in Florida’s 6th District next Tuesday, it actually makes decent sense for Trump to recall Stefanik to keep the seat safe.
Stefanik already held a “farewell tour” of her district, and faced no significant opposition to her nomination in the U.S. Senate. But she’s got to go back, because the GOP House majority is still thin and tenuous and fragile.
I remind you that GOP Representative Hal Rogers of Kentucky is 87 years old. His colleague from Texas, John Carter, is 83 years old. North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx is 81. Indiana’s Jim Baird turns 80 in June. (Gotta admit, these folks look great for octogenarians.)
Sure, Republicans enjoyed a phenomenal Election Day 2024. But that was almost five months ago; the political environment is changing as we speak, er, write and read. And the proof is the fact that sending Stefanik to the United Nations, as planned, is now too risky to attempt.
ADDENDUM: I hope you’re a subscriber to the print magazine; the most recent issue features the full story of my reporting trip to Syria — why we went, where we went, what we saw and heard, including my interview with “just about the nicest guy you’ll ever meet who’s on a terror watch list.” (And for those who have wondered who I travel with, and made all kinds of false accusations that I gallivant globally on some government’s dime, I out my traveling buddies in this article. We had a fourth amigo on this trip, national security and defense expert Kyle Orton — not the former Chicago Bears quarterback, but author of the blog, It Can Always Get Worse. Kyle’s a walking encyclopedia of the history of both Ukraine and Syria — and a lot of other topics — and he’s written about his experiences on our Syria trip in Fathom Journal and Engelsberg Ideas. Check them both out.)