WASHINGTON – With their own re-election all but assured thanks to the favorable district lines drawn in January by the Louisiana Legislature, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise have hit the road to campaign for Republican congressional candidates.
If Republicans on Nov. 5 lose three of their currently held seats, Democrats could take the majority, wrest the gavel from Johnson along with his power to name committee chairs and set the legislative agenda come January.
Political handicappers say the House races are so tight – Democrats hold a fraction of a percentage over Republicans, according FiveThirtyEight.com – that either party could win the majority.
Johnson and Scalise predict a Republican sweep of the White House, Senate and House. Just in case, both plan to spend most of August and as much of September as they can stumping for GOP candidates, particularly in districts they think can flip to or stay GOP.
Johnson, R-Benton, went to the West Coast after releasing the House a week early despite having a long list of must-pass legislation still on the agenda. Congress returns Sept. 9 for 13 days, then will be out of Washington until after the election.
“I’m trying to be everywhere, because that’s a speaker’s role at a time like this,” Johnson August 6 told The Hill — a Washington-based political trade publication — during the New York leg of his 20-state tour. He counted, so far, campaign events in 147 cities and 32 states.
“We’re spending a lot of time in swing districts and blue states, and what we find there is that we have a, almost a demographic shift. I think that’s happening in the electorate, where we have a record number of Hispanic and Latino voters and Black and African American voters, and the Jewish community is very energized right now,” Johnson said in his interview from the 79th floor of a New York City skyscraper.
After New York, Johnson headed to Maine. This week he’ll be working his way down the East Coast and stump a Virginia seat.
Scalise, R-Jefferson, last week visited Colorado to boost the campaigns of four Republican candidates.
"Who controls the House majority will be determined by what we do in the next 95 days – this is our chance to grow our majority," Scalise said Thursday. "When we put President Donald Trump back in the White House, we're going to do it with a bigger house majority and deliver on our promise to put America first."
Lobbyists and lawyers who spend a lot of time on Capitol Hill expect Republicans to win control of both chambers as well as the White House, according to a survey by The Canvass on behalf of Punchbowl, a Washington-based online political news service. An overwhelming majority of respondents predicted Republicans would win control Senate (93%) and the White House (73%), but only about 51% thought the GOP would retain control of the House.
About 90% of the House seats are considered safe in November, partially because redistricting has protected incumbents by lumping supporters in their districts and dispersing people likely to vote against them. That is the case in Louisiana and Alabama, where courts ordered legislatures to switch one White majority seat to a Black majority. In Louisiana the district that changed was represented by Rep. Garret Graves, a White Republican from Baton Rouge who opted not to run for reelection because his new constituency likely wouldn’t re-elect him.
The three main campaign handicapping services — The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, Nathan L. Gonzales’ Inside Elections and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics — disagree on which seats are most in play. But they say seven to 12 House seats are competitive.
Johnson is wary of predicting numbers. In 2022, Republicans predicted upwards of a 60-seat margin. Disappointment reigned when Republicans retook the majority in January 2023 after winning only a handful of additional seats the previous November. The numbers were so close that hard right Republicans were able to stall legislation.
Johnson said a 30- or 40-seat majority is “not possible anymore, because the number of swing districts has been reduced dramatically due to gerrymandering and redistricting. But I think we can have an exponential increase in our majority.”
A Republican sweep in November would allow Johnson to push through a raft of conservative legislation.
“As I’ve told my colleagues and I’ve said to President Trump multiple times, we could have the most consequential presidency and Congress of the modern era if we win all this,” Johnson said.