Republicans are on the cusp of claiming control of the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress when it convenes next year. After notching victories late on Monday night in a handful of congressional races in Arizona, New York and California, the party is within one seat of taking the House.
After rosy predictions for a Republican wave, the party’s majority in the House will be much smaller than Republican leaders had anticipated. Congress will be divided next year after Democrats held control of the Senate. Attention will now be focused on a few districts in California and Colorado where the Republican candidate is leading in the vote count. A race call in any of these districts on Tuesday would almost certainly give Republicans the 218 seats needed to retake the House majority.
While midterm votes are still being counted, former President Donald J. Trump is expected to announce his 2024 presidential bid on Tuesday, his third campaign for the office. A growing number of Republicans, however, see him as a political liability given the party’s electoral showing in the midterm elections.
On Monday night, The Associated Press declared Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, the winner in Arizona’s bitterly contested and extremely close race for governor. Her Republican rival, Kari Lake, had not yet conceded.
Hobbs, as Arizona’s secretary of state, stood up to efforts by Trump allies to overturn the 2020 election.
Lake, a Right-wing former newscaster who was talked about as a future leader in a Trump-dominated Republican Party, has hinted that she plans to blame her loss on incompetence and malfeasance by election officials. But Republican election officials in Maricopa County have spent the past few days assuring voters that the vote-counting process has been fair and accurate.
Trump’s announcement, scheduled for 9pm Eastern Time (0200 GMT on Wednesday) at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, follows a disappointing showing in last week’s midterm congressional elections that many Republicans blame on him.
The unusually early launch may well be aimed at fending off potential challengers for the party’s nomination in 2024, including rising star Florida governor Ron DeSantis, 44, and Trump’s own former vice-president, Mike Pence, 63.
Sources close to Trump, 76, said he planned to push ahead despite mixed results from his endorsements this year, with losses by celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire contributing to Republicans’ failure to win a majority in the US Senate.
Another Trump-picked candidate, former football star Herschel Walker, was forced into a December 6 runoff in his Georgia race against Democratic US Senator Raphael Warnock. That has raised some concerns that Trump’s announcement could again hurt the party’s chances in a Georgia runoff.
Multiple Trump-aligned candidates who ran on platforms focused on his false claims of widespread election fraud were also defeated.
While Republicans were closing in on possible control of the House of Representatives, the “red wave” that Republicans expected to carry them to a wide majority did not materialise despite Democratic President Joe Biden’s low public approval ratings. Voter anger over a Supreme Court decision to end national abortion rights offset concerns over high inflation.
