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To the ACEC Community,
Amid all the rancor and wrangling on Capitol Hill, it is sometimes easy to forget that we are also knocking on the door of another presidential election year. Today is the first Tuesday in November – this time next year, Americans will head to the polls to choose not only our next president, but also to determine the balance of power in the House and Senate.
It’s an overused cliché to say that the stakes have never been higher, but today’s political climate sends me grasping for a better way to express what’s on the line in the coming year. We’re just coming off a bruising search for a new Speaker of the House (after the incumbent was removed by members of his own party), and for the foreseeable future we are looking at a perpetual rollercoaster of government shutdown threats narrowly averted by stopgap spending measures that may keep the lights on, but don’t move the country forward.
Years of redistricting have created a Congress in which very few truly competitive districts remain. In the 2022 midterms, only 10 percent of House seats were considered tossups. Much of that can be attributed to Republicans and Democrats living in very different parts of their states, which makes most elections decided before a single ballot is cast. But these razor-slim margins also reflect a larger truth: that we are a deeply polarized country, and that wave elections favoring one party (think 2010, when Republicans won 63 House seats and four in the Senate) or landslide presidential victories like Reagan ’84 (525 electoral votes, 49 states, and nearly 59 percent of the popular vote) are likely things of the past. It is difficult to imagine nearly 60 percent of Americans agreeing on anything, much less on the next occupant of the White House.
But, like clockwork, in one year we get to choose. Tomorrow is the third GOP presidential debate. Six candidates have met the threshold to participate, but current frontrunner Donald Trump is not attending. That leaves Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, Tim Scott, and Nikki Haley (who has been surging in polls of late). With the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries approaching, the field will likely soon be thinned to Trump and one or two others.
Several senior Members of Congress have announced they will be retiring at the end of their terms, and three current House members are running for the Senate. Right now, the race for control of the House is leaning Democratic, while the Senate landscape favors Republicans. Democrats have to defend 23 Senate seats versus 11 for the GOP. Of those, the three that are listed as tossups are all Democratic incumbents. One Senate race to watch is Arizona, where Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) will be seeking the Democratic nomination to face a Republican nominee and incumbent Krysten Sinema, running as an Independent.
What does this all mean? For ACEC, it means continuing to build the kind of relationships – and the kind of credibility – that transcends who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or which party controls Congress. While we could certainly draw up a dream scenario of an ideal balance of power, elections don’t work that way. Democracy is messy and imperfect. Our role is to fight the battles that gain ground for our industry, and to make your voices heard – irrespective of who is listening. So, one year out from Election Day, I will close with my reminder to vote. Because elections are not decided by the majority. They are decided by the majority that shows up.
Have a great week,
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