The Democrats’ victory this week in a New York special election marks the latest setback for House GOP leaders, who find themselves with a shrinking majority just as they’re scrambling to unite a turbulent conference and steer it through a series of legislative mazes heading into November’s elections.
The win by former Rep. Tom Suozzi on Long Island flipped a Republican seat to the Democrats and pruned the GOP majority to 219-213 — or from a three-vote to two-vote margin — just as Congress is entering a series of partisan battles in which every vote may be precious.
The Republicans’ hairline majority has already proven a liability on several occasions this year, most recently last week when GOP leaders staged a vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas only to see it fail in a tie vote on the floor.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) rallied on the second try, impeaching Mayorkas successfully this week with no votes to spare. But the embarrassing saga highlighted the pitfalls of governing with just a razor-thin advantage.
Suozzi’s arrival on Capitol Hill will only compound those headaches, shrinking Johnson’s numerical edge as he seeks to bridge divisions within his warring conference, keep his gavel while under threat of a potential coup, fund the government to prevent a shutdown and more generally demonstrate to voters that Republicans are capable legislators ahead of November’s elections.
Even Republicans acknowledged that things will get tougher from here.
“Anytime you shrink your already thin margins, you’ve further complicated your ability to move anything,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a senior appropriator. “But look, whether it’s one or two or four or five, on any given day there’s not a lot of difference in those numbers. Though we’re still in the majority. But on any given day, you know, that could change.”
Asked if the GOP’s narrowing edge in the House will make legislating more difficult for Republicans this Congress, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was more succinct: “Of course.”
“When something’s almost impossible, the next level of almost impossible is almost hard to discern,” he added.
Suozzi’s triumph represents just the latest erosion of the Republican majority in recent months. In December, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) resigned, followed in January by former Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio). In a rare bit of good news for the GOP, Democratic Rep. Brian Higgins (N.Y.) stepped out of Congress earlier this month, lending Republicans a bit more breathing room — at least in the near term.
From a practical legislative standpoint, the difference between a three- or two-seat margin will likely be inconsequential. Congress has only a handful of must-pass bills to tackle before November’s elections, and any proposal destined for Biden’s desk — including legislation to fund the government and prevent a shutdown — will necessarily require bipartisan buy-in. That means House Democrats will help move those bills through the lower chamber, making the Republicans’ thin margins immaterial.
“There’s a political price, but there’s not a lot we can do with a three-member majority that we can’t do with a two-member majority,” Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) told The Hill, later adding “It’s thin either way … we need so few defections or absentees to screw up our vote.”
“It’s a very small incremental difference in the vote totals,” echoed Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), “and it’s hard to identify what issues could come up where a difference of two leads to a different result from a difference of three.”
Yet Suozzi’s arrival could prove to be momentous in other ways, as Johnson and his leadership team seek to pass Republican messaging bills — proposals that have no chance of winning Democratic support and becoming law — as a campaign strategy for energizing GOP base voters heading into the elections. On those bills, the loss of the Santos seat could become crucial.
The effort to impeach Mayorkas, for instance, would have turned out differently if Suozzi had already been sworn in.
In the initial impeachment vote, three Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the punishment for Mayorkas, bringing the tally to 215-215.
On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) returned to Washington — he had been sidelined for cancer treatment — and voted in support of impeachment, passing the resolution by the sparest of margins: 214-213.
Republicans brought the articles of impeachment to the floor hours before polls closed in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. Had Suozzi already been on Capitol Hill, it would have failed again.
The challenge of legislating in the GOP’s slim majority has been a theme all Congress: It began during McCarthy’s 15-round quest for the gavel, continued throughout his historic ouster and the process to replace him, and is now dragging into the Johnson era, where the Louisiana Republican is being forced to contend with an even smaller edge.
Massie, a member of the House Rules Committee, is in part blaming the worsening conditions on the midsession removal of McCarthy.
The Kentucky Republican argued that the current internal GOP frictions, which he described as “unmanageable,” would have been simpler to command had the conference not booted McCarthy, who was able to forge relationships with individual members since the start of the Congress — a luxury Johnson hasn’t had.
“I think it would be easier if we, you know, we didn’t switch Speakers midstream,” Massie said. “And that’s no slight towards Mike Johnson. It’s just, people owe their positions on committees to a Speaker who’s no longer here. And some people who got elected with the help of the party feel obligated to people who are no longer here. And typically when you have a Speaker start at the beginning of the term, the carrots and the sticks are available, but none of that is available to Speaker Johnson right now, so it’s kind of hard to manage.”
“It could be done if that slim majority were obligated to the Speaker,” he added. “But they don’t feel obligated, so it makes it harder for him to get people in line.”