Following in the footsteps of his little brother Mike by quitting long before the first votes are cast in a primary election, Indiana Congressman Greg Pence on Tuesday broke the noose that he won’t be roped into running again this November, announcing in a statement that “after three terms, I’ve made the decision to not file for reelection. For the remainder of my term this year, our team will continue to focus on delivering outstanding constituent services. To the voters in Indiana’s 6th District – it is a privilege and honor to represent you in our Nation’s capital.”

A very rough scorecard so far going into primary season: Including Greg Pence, now 17 Republicans have either already left or will do so soon, been expelled, fucked off to run for state office back home, or thrown their seat away running in an unwinnable senate primary while 14 Democrats have done the same – just change the “unwinnable Senate primary” to “unwinnable presidential primary” to count that Dean Phillips asshole. Another two Republicans and nine Dems are running for the Senate and there’s plenty of room to argue how “winnable” those are, especially with Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, and Barbara Lee running against each other in a three-way primary in California. All this is based on a subjective read of Ballotpedia’s tracker (which added Greg Pence but not the other MAGA Hoosier who dropped out Monday). For the early exits we only counted currently open seats.

The exodus overall is winding down as registration deadlines have passed in a lot of states. In the previous two cycles the vast bulk of the announcements came the December before the election year, though a few stragglers were still calling it quits well into the spring of 2022. While attrition is hitting Republicans slightly harder this cycle after hitting Dems fairly harder in 2022, it’s still nothing on the scale of the “fuck this, I’m out” from the House GOP in both 2018 and 2020.