With Monday’s announcement from Indiana Republican Congressman Larry Buchson that he’s had enough of this shit and won’t be running again in November, the scorecard of retirements from the House in the 118th Congress currently stands at 11 Republicans to 10 Democrats, per the running count on Ballotpedia that hasn’t been updated to add Buchson yet. This also doesn’t include the “retirement” of George Santos, the fuck-off of Kevin McCarthy, or the still-pending resignations of Republican Ohio Congressman Bill Johnson later this month or New York Dem Brian Higgins.
Like we wrote last month, there’s no lopsided edge for one party of another like Dems had with waves of Republican retirements ahead of the 2018 and 2020 elections though there may be some more coming as obviously not all primary registration deadlines have passed yet. But overall the situation seems closer to 2022 when exits were relatively few and more or less even between the parties. We still owe readers a little bit of a deeper dive into how many members are leaving for reasonably winnable races in the Senate (like Adam Schiff) versus how many have no chance and are just fucking off (like West Virginian Alex Mooney in a dead-end Senate GOP primary run).