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A year after Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in the Presidential election, and nearly ten months after a Trump-led mob laid siege to the nations Capitol, a new round of elections yielded mixed results for the Democratic Party, which lost the Virginia governors race and came close to losing New Jerseys. An unrepentant and insurgent Republican Party has motivated its base with the so-called culture war over public-school curriculum, opposition to mask and vaccine mandates, and relentless attacks on the entirety of Bidens political program. Meanwhile, months after Democrats passed the most expensive domestic spending bill since the War on Poverty, they remain mired in internal conflict over the purpose and possibility of their congressional majority. Political observers have pointed to Republicans spirited turnout on November 2nd as evidence that their culture war tactics are working. But that doesnt explain the enthusiasm gap that threatens the political fortunes of the Democratic Party. Unfulfilled expectations, not the often invoked wokeness, are what clouds Democrats horizons.

The gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey offer only a snapshot of contemporary politics, but both contests have been portrayed as referenda on the Biden Administration. And in both states Biden and his surrogates, including former President Barack Obama, rallied voters in person, indicating the importance of the elections. Afterward, what set off alarm bells among Democrats was Republicans enormous voter participation. In Virginia, the former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe captured almost two hundred thousand more votes than the winning ticket in 2017. And yet he still lost to the former corporate executive Glenn Youngkin, who captured more than four hundred thousand more votes than the 2017 Republican challenger. Republican voters overperformed in every Republican county, indicating their excitement and motivation. Not only did Youngkin win, but his big turnout helped Republicans win down the entire ballot, allowing the G.O.P. to wrest control of the Virginia statehouse from the Democrats.

Although Phil Murphy became the first Democratic governor to win relection in New Jersey since 1977, historically high turnout among Republicans across the state made the race much closer than anyone imagined. His Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, a former state representative and a featured speaker at a November, 2020, Stop the Steal rally, trailed by double digits throughout most of the campaign, only to lose by three points. Ciattarelli, who did not concede until more than a week after the race was called, gained almost three hundred and seventy thousand more votes than the Republican who lost to Murphy in the 2017 governors race. Even more significant was the dramatic loss of the powerful Democratic president of the New Jersey state senate, Steve Sweeney, to a Republican truck driver, Edward Durr, who had no backing from the state G.O.P. and spent just over twenty-three hundred dollars on his campaign.

What is driving this surge of Republicans to the polls? The Party has found new political traction on invented issues like critical race theory in public-school curricula, while still being fuelled by the notion that Trump was robbed of the election last fall. In Virginia, Youngkin deployed an ad featuring a white woman who led a campaign against teaching Toni Morrisons Beloved in Virginia public schools. Youngkin vowed to ban critical race theory in his states public schools on Day One. But there are also real issues on which the G.O.P. offers positions distinct from those of the Democrats, including the economy, immigration, crime, and federal vaccine mandates. In some areas, Republicans tend to want heightened government action, supporting the police and a tightening of the U.S. border, but they are simultaneously expressing suspicion of the state, opposing Bidens spending proposals and bolstering claims of government overreach on vaccine mandates. These differing positions, including a fierce opposition to a perceived effort to defund the police, allow Republican officials to portray themselves as battling on behalf of an aggrieved voting constituency. Republicans feel as if they are in a struggle for the direction of the country, and they have been able to clearly identify the issues around which they are fighting.

The new momentum for Republican candidates provoked anxiety and finger-pointing among Democrats. Republican gains in presumed Democratic Party strongholds have unleashed dire predictions about the 2022 midterms and assessments that the Democratic Party has been captured by the left, alienating voters with big spending and a politically correct agenda. In some ways, this is a repeat of the intra-party rancor that ensued as the Party assessed its loss of thirteen House seats in the 2020 election. There has to be a reckoning within our ranks about this because a lot of Justice Democratsa progressive groupdont give a damn about the Democratic Party, one unnamed critic told the Washington Post last year. Theyre all about purity and orthodoxy, and it is damaging our opportunities. This time around, moderates have pointed to the size of Bidens Build Back Better bill as a culprit in the electoral losses. In dispensing electoral advice to the Democrats, the New York Times editorial board looked to last years election and concluded, Mr. Biden did not win the Democratic primary because he promised a progressive revolution. There were plenty of other candidates doing that. He captured the nominationand the presidencybecause he promised an exhausted nation a return to sanity, decency and competence. Representative Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat from Virginia, said, Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.

The script of the left mucking up the Partys chances with wokeness also still holds strong. The Democratic strategist James Carville left little doubt where blame lay for the Election Night losses. Dont just look at Virginia and New Jersey, he said. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Washington. I mean, this defund the police lunacy, this take Abraham Lincolns name off of schools. People see that, and it really has a suppressive effect all across the country. Carville was pointing, among other things, to the Buffalo mayors race, in which India Walton, an activist and democratic socialist, defeated Mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary, only to lose the general election to Brown, who launched a write-in campaign. Recently, Walton told a national online audience of progressive organizers that her opponent and his wing of the party actively colluded with the G.O.P. After his win, Brown told the Washington Post that mainstream Democrats need to stand up and fight back against the left, because its making it more difficult to get things done at the national level and its not good for the country.

These critiques share an assessment that the Party is dominated by its left wing and pursuing a political agenda at odds with the wishes of the broader American public. A review of the events of 2020 reveals a different state of affairs. For most of his long career as a Democrat, Biden was a small-government deficit hawk, but the onset of the pandemic and the eruption of powerful protests pushed him and his party to embrace an agenda of political change. The pandemic had exposed two realities: that the government, on every level, was ill prepared to handle a national disaster, and that the threadbare safety net exposed poor workers of color to the worst of a public-health crisis. In the middle of protests, the Democratic Party pledged a new social and economic contract, including an increase in the minimum wage, Section 8 housing vouchers for every eligible family, and affordable child care.

Nearly two months after he was inaugurated as President, Biden signed into law the nearly two-trillion-dollar American Rescue Plan Act, one of the largest domestic spending bills in American history. The gigantic bill included expanded unemployment benefits, rental assistance, direct stimulus payments, billions for public schools and beyond. Democrats also led successful efforts to expand the child tax credit and the earned-income-tax-credit programs to allow for more benefits and to broaden eligibility. The Biden Administration oversaw a twenty-five-per-cent increase in food-stamp benefitsthe largest in the history of the program. In the face of mounting food insecurity, Bidens U.S.D.A. also extended free school lunch programs into next year. By early April, just weeks after the bill was signed into law, Biden enjoyed the highest combined approval ratings of his Presidency, at fifty-five per cent.

The infrastructure bill that has been the source of angst within the Democratic Party pitted Biden against centrists within the Party looking to scale back spending and rein in the creation of new programs. The bill was finally signed into law by Biden, but vastly diminished in size and scope after stonewalling by Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, with a fraction of the money needed to fully address the infrastructure crises that abound in the country. For example, fifteen billion dollars is dedicated to removing lead pipes in water systems, but experts have estimated that sixty billion is necessary to do the job. A hundred billion dollars to fix the deplorable condition of American public schools was dropped entirely from the final bill.

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Wokeness Is Not the Democrats Problem - The New Yorker

Fox News contributor Ted Williams argued the "criminals are winning" as murder rates spike in Democrat-run cities across the nation. Williams joined "America's Newsroom" on Wednesday to discuss bail reform, and the need for law and order following the devastating Christmas parade tragedy in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

SEAN HANNITY: LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS RUINED WHEN LAW AND ORDER BREAKS DOWN

TED WILLIAMS: The criminals are winning. They are taking over our major metropolitan cities, and it's because we don't allow or permit police officers to do the job that we hired them to do. We're in this crazy defund the police movement at this immediate time. That is a tragedy. We are more concerned about the rights of the criminals than we are of the law-abiding citizens in these various communities. We need to wake up before it is too late, and I'm all very, very concerned about that... The criminals are winning. Please, I implore these city officials to wake up. Get this defunding the police crap off your plate, start helping and looking and feeling that you want to help the law-abiding citizens in these communities to remain safe. That's what we call for. We want law and order in our communities, and that is not what's happening... We have criminals who we are more concerned about than law-abiding citizens, and that's terribly unfortunate.

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Ted Williams on spike in murder rates in Democrat-run cities: 'The criminals are winning' - Fox News

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MCALLEN In the first days of his campaign for governor, Beto ORourke made a beeline to this southernmost corner of the state, saying it was no mistake he was choosing to start his run in a part of Texas where Democrats have their work cut out for them after the 2020 election.

His supporters know it, too.

We are being attacked at all ends, Amanda Elise Salas said as she introduced him here Wednesday night. This is a Democratic area, and there is no way we are gonna let Republicans come in here and take over.

Theyre knocking at our door, Mario Saenz, a Democratic precinct chair from Brownsville, said afterward. We cannot let them in.

A lot of Democratic hopes are riding on ORourke this election cycle, but few may be more consequential to the partys future in Texas than his ability to stave off a strong GOP offensive in South Texas. Emboldened by President Joe Bidens underwhelming performance throughout the predominantly Hispanic region last year, Republicans have been pushing hard to make new inroads there, and ORourke faces an incumbent in Gov. Greg Abbott who has been working for years to win Hispanic voters.

But it is not just about halting the GOPs post-2020 march in South Texas. ORourke, who is facing an uphill battle in the governors race, has ground to make up after his own less-than-stellar performance with voters there in 2018 when he ran for U.S. Senate and turning out more Latino voters has long been key to Democratic hopes statewide.

ORourke has been candid about the problem. Days after the 2020 election, which cemented Republican dominance across Texas, he told supporters that the fact that the border region has been ignored for years by the national party, and even many statewide Democratic candidates, hurt us badly. Last week, he began his campaign for governor with a swing through the region, calling the early itinerary very intentional and vowing to return frequently.

If the great sin committed by Republicans historically has been to disenfranchise voters, including those in the Rio Grande Valley, then that committed by Democrats has been to take those same voters for granted in the past, ORourke told reporters in San Antonio, before heading south to Laredo and the Valley.

ORourke got a wake-up call in South Texas during the 2018 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, losing many counties in the region to a little-known and little-funded opponent, Sema Hernandez. While it was not the first time a candidate with a Hispanic surname beat expectations in a statewide Democratic primary, ORourke acknowledged afterward that he needed to do more outreach.

Months later, in the general election, ORourke failed to make significant gains in South Texas compared to his partys 2016 presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, which would have been key to defeating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. In the largest South Texas county outside San Antonio Hidalgo ORourke barely improved on Clintons vote share there, getting 68.8% after she got 68.5%.

Then came 2020, when Biden carried South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley in particular by a much narrower margin than Clinton did. He outright lost Zapata County, a longtime Democratic stronghold just north of the Valley.

Republicans charged into this election cycle determined to make further gains, and they have already had success. They flipped a state House seat on the South Side of San Antonio earlier this month, and on the same day that ORourke announced his campaign for governor, state Rep. Ryan Guillen, who has represented Rio Grande City as a Democrat since 2003, announced he was joining the GOP.

Abbotts top political adviser, Dave Carney, said the governors campaign has a lot of plans for South Texas this election cycle and that Abbott is gonna be there a lot. Carney said he was not worried about new Latino voters turning out next year.

I want every Hispanic voter to turn out, Carney said. That helps us.

Democrats say ORourke needs to keep his word and return often to South Texas, giving it the kind of attention that the Biden campaign did not last year. And while border communities are about so much more than immigration as ORourke said at multiple stops last week he will have to grapple with how to talk about an issue that is No. 1 for Abbott and a political liability for Democrats in Texas right now.

Republicans scoff at the idea that ORourke can rescue his party in South Texas. Monica De La Cruz, a GOP candidate to flip a congressional seat anchored in the Valley, said ORourke is not the answer, and his positions on law enforcement, gun rights and border security are out of step with South Texas voters.

I dont think it changes the landscape, De La Cruz said. I think that South Texans have conservative values of faith, family and freedom, and I dont think Beto ORourke changes that at all.

Taking on South Texas means ORourke will not be able to avoid tough questions about border security and immigration issues with which Democrats have struggled in the past year to find a unified position under Biden.

Texas Republicans are largely narrowing in on border security as a winning issue for the party. And Abbott has taken sweeping and at times unprecedented action to fortify the border since Biden took office, charging migrants as criminal trespassers in state court and announcing the construction of a state-funded border wall.

While there is not necessarily broad support for everything Abbott has done on the border, Texas voters agree they do not like Bidens approach. The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune survey found that only 22% of voters approved of how Biden has handled immigration and border security, compared with 63% who disapprove.

In one of his first interviews as a gubernatorial candidate, ORourke criticized Bidens handling of the border, saying it is clear Biden could be doing a better job at the border and that it is not enough of a priority for his administration. In that interview and other comments to reporters last week, ORourke called for predictability, order and rule of law on the border. He also spoke frankly about the need for asylum-seekers to come to the country through ports of entry, not in between them, present their asylum claim and, if it is denied, face deportation.

It is the kind of rhetoric that would have been surprising to hear in ORourkes past campaigns. While it may appeal to voters looking for a harder line on the border, it could turn off Democrats hoping for a bold contrast with the GOP.

Hes taking up these right-wing talking points instead of pushing for a more humane approach to immigration, which is what he was doing back in 2017, said Denisce Palacios, a Democratic organizer from the Valley who volunteered for ORourkes 2018 campaign. It looks like hes kind of moved more to the center in terms of messaging. Thats kind of frustrating.

At the same time, ORourke said Biden needs to end Title 42, a policy that allows the administration to quickly turn away undocumented immigrants at the border, citing a public health crisis the coronavirus pandemic. ORourke said that is fueling disorder at the border because those who are rejected are simply returning again and again.

It remains to be seen how much ORourke actively campaigns on border issues.

His announcement video did not mention the border. He prioritized other issues in interviews around the announcement. And he did not mention the border during his first public campaign event Tuesday morning in San Antonio. But hours later in Laredo, he was back in familiar form, extolling immigrants value to the country and praising Laredoans for having stood up to city leaders to stop a border wall, a major rallying cry in his 2018 campaign.

Chants of No more wall! almost instantly broke out. Minutes earlier, the chair of the Webb County Democratic Party, Sylvia Bruni, had said while introducing ORourke that she was so, so thrilled, I want to cry.

Dani Marrero Hi, a spokesperson for LUPE Votes, said now is not the time for ORourke to downplay immigration as an issue in South Texas. She pointed out that Abbott talks about immigration all the time, and while she strongly disagrees with his policies and rhetoric, he is at least talking about it.

When theres a space and Democrats dont talk about it with an alternative vision, it leaves room for Abbott and Trump to come in and write the whole narrative about what the border is, she said.

Beyond any issue, though, South Texas Democrats say ORourke needs to show up, especially after a presidential election that left them wanting. Biden never visited Texas, let alone anywhere in South Texas, during the general election, and his running mate, Kamala Harris, visited McAllen only in the final days of the race.

To that end, South Texas Democrats are not particularly concerned about ORourke, who is known for his relentless campaigning. He toured all 254 counties during his 2018 race, which included a bus tour specifically focused on the border.

Were the poorest region of Texas, maybe one of the poorest regions in the nation, and you know, it was a huge letdown that Kamala and Biden didnt make a prolonged appearance here in the Valley, but Beto, you know, hes been recurringly focusing his presence here, especially in his past campaigns, said Sebastian Bonilla, a 25-year-old from the Valley who came to see ORourke speak in McAllen.

Abbott has put an emphasis on South Texas since his first gubernatorial campaign in 2014, and he has been increasingly traveling there in recent months, both in his official capacity and for political appearances. Carney said it will become crystal clear after the holidays that Abbott will be traveling to South Texas frequently.

Carney said Abbotts campaign has already modeled a million Democrat voters who do not support Beto, the vast majority south of San Antonio. The voters say they support a Democrat in a generic gubernatorial ballot an unnamed Democrat versus an unnamed Republican but when asked about ORourke versus Abbott, they are undecided or pick Abbott.

Thats just such a hole to come out of, Carney said.

Bruni said she is optimistic that ORourke will not meet the same fate as Biden in South Texas because he will spend meaningful time there and Democrats will campaign in person, unlike in 2020, when they largely went virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic.

She said that allowed Republicans to campaign in person unchecked and they scared the Dickens out of voters in places like Zapata County with claims that Biden would eliminate their oil-and-gas jobs and take away their guns.

The only way we can resolve that [next year] is by being out there and telling the right story, Bruni said. Thats the only way. We did not do that in 2020.

To the extent that anxieties about oil-and-gas jobs and gun rights fueled GOP gains in South Texas last year, ORourke entered the gubernatorial race prepared. He has been talking about a Texas AFL-CIO plan to generate 1 million energy jobs that would supplement not replace, he emphasizes existing jobs in the oil-and-gas industry. And while he has not backed away from his 2020 campaign pledge to take peoples assault weapons, he has sought to reframe it in the context of Texas having a long, proud tradition of responsible gun ownership.

ORourke touched on several other issues during his inaugural trip to the Valley as a gubernatorial candidate. He discussed COVID-19 with school board members in McAllen and with Hidalgo County Health Authority Ivan Melendez in Mission. The two spoke at length about how the region has been uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic, with its poverty and uninsured population, and they exchanged ideas on how to convince vaccine skeptics to get immunized.

Speaking with reporters after his McAllen rally, ORourke ticked through the unique issues that had come up in his conversations with South Texas leaders recently. ORourke said he spoke with Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez about expanding broadband internet, he spoke with Jim Hogg County Judge Juan Carlos Guerra about improving water quality and he talked with Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez about combating food insecurity, especially among children.

After the McAllen event, Ivan Duran Puente, a 22-year-old graduate school student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, said he was taking the GOP threat in South Texas seriously but was hopeful Democrats have increased their numbers since 2018. At the same time, he acknowledged Republicans have a major voice here, especially with our older conservative demographic.

I dont want to give it power, but its always something you have to be cautious about, he said. We just need to put more faith in the campaign of Beto than give power to the voice of conservatives because thats how they are gonna win at the end of the day.

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Beto O'Rourke targets South Texas in bid to win back Democratic voters he'll need to beat Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022 - The Texas Tribune

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When vote totals started to arrive last year, it quickly became obvious that the contest between Democrat Wendy Davis and Republican Rep. Steve Eliason would be a nail-biter.

Election night results seemed to put Davis on course to victory. Then, in the days that followed, her lead slowly shrank as ballots continued to trickle in. Eliason eventually overtook her and reclaimed his seat by just 77 votes.

But as of last week, the possibility of a rematch between the two has pretty much evaporated, with voting boundary changes that booted Davis out of Eliasons district by a couple of blocks. If she were to run in her new Utah House district, shed have to face off against a fellow Democrat, Rep. Andrew Stoddard.

She doesnt think that redistricting move was an accident on the part of the Legislature.

I believe that it was a strategic move and that I was definitely cut out of that district because ... I almost took down a 10-year incumbent that is very well-liked, she said. I dont see any other way to interpret that.

Utah Rep. Paul Ray, who co-chaired the states legislative redistricting committee, said he has no clue where Davis lives.

I did not allow anyone to intentionally be drawn in, or out, of a district, the Clearfield Republican said.

Davis doesnt buy it, noting that she also now falls outside the district represented by Sen. Kirk Cullimore, a Republican people had urged her to go up against. With the updated lines, a Senate run would again pit her against another Democrat Sen. Kathleen Riebe.

So its extremely difficult to think that it wasnt intentional, right? the Sandy resident said. I really think its an attempt to neutralize a viable threat.

In response to questions about the new boundaries, Eliasons only remark was that he wasnt a member of the redistricting committee. He referred to the House spokeswoman for further comment.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Wendy Davis, a Democrat who narrowly lost a state House seat last year, at her home in Sandy on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021. Davis said she's been cut out of her former opponent's district, Republican Rep. Steve Eliason. She's holding a map that shows what she calls a nearly 50-50 split between Republican and Democrat voters in her district during the 2020 election.

State lawmakers did pay attention to incumbent addresses when designing the maps, acknowledged Sen. Scott Sandall, who served with Ray at the helm of the redistricting committee. But he added it wasnt because they intended to squelch competition.

The Tremonton Republican says his goal was, wherever possible, to keep voters in the districts of legislators theyd recently elected rather than changing their state-level representation in the middle of a term.

But they had to change the boundaries to some degree to reflect population changes, including the explosive growth in southwestern Salt Lake County that caused ripple effects to surrounding districts such as Eliasons.

Katie Matheson, deputy director at Alliance for a Better Utah, said she was disappointed by the legislative redistricting commissions focus on incumbent officials. In one public hearing, she notes, the panel even took a proposed school board map and overlaid it with incumbent addresses to make sure sitting officials would retain their districts.

The states mapping tool also included an overlay of incumbent addresses for legislators and congressional representatives.

But the point of redistricting should not be continuity, Matheson said, or about politicians at all. And its disappointing, she continued, that the final maps protect the seats of incumbents at the expense of people having robust representation.

The resulting districts are generally less competitive, she said, as red districts got redder and blue districts got bluer.

An analysis by the nonpartisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project determined that 61 of the 75 seats in the House clearly favor Republicans, while just nine favor Democrats. Only five can be considered competitive, and even if Democrats captured all of those seats, theyd have fewer representatives in the House than they currently do.

If you believe in a competition of ideas and the marketplace of ideas, theyre reducing that competition, she said. Theyre making it easier for themselves to push through the ideological agenda of the supermajority.

Davis said she and Democrats Lynette Wendel and Fatima Dirie each came close to taking down three white Republican males in last years state House races, but redistricting has created additional hurdles for all of them.

And competition is beneficial no matter the outcome, she argues. After Davis lost to Eliason last year, the two rivals sat down for a friendly conversation, where she emphasized how many of his district residents had voted for her and not him.

I think that challenges him to be an even better lawmaker, quite frankly, she said. When you have that knowledge that half of your voter chose a different candidate.

Utah Republicans have asserted they want all four congressional districts to have a healthy mix of rural and urban communities, saying the representatives must have a deep understanding of the land and water resources that nourish the rest of the state.

Theyve cited that goal in explaining why they divided up Salt Lake County and split its left-leaning voters between all of the districts. Creating a district dominated by urban voters, they say, would upset this balance between the interests of the Wasatch Front and the vast communities outside it.

But to Tyrell Aagard, president of the Young Democrats of Utah, these arguments ring hollow when you plot out the addresses of the sitting congressional representatives.

All four of them are clustered together, living within roughly an hour of each other along Interstate 15, Aagard pointed out in a recent tweet.

Im so glad we care so deeply about rural representation that we create a map to elect four members of Congress from the Wasatch Front! he wrote. Im sure the rural areas of the state feel loved.

Aagard said he grew up in Levan, in sparsely populated Juab County, and that communities in these parts of the state are well aware that power is concentrated in Utahs population centers.

Utahs Republican leaders, he contends, use rural GOP voters to muffle the voices of Salt Lake County Democrats and in doing so, dilute the power of these communities.

You end up with districts where no one person can do a good job at representing both sides because they are different, he said. And so in their actual goal of making sure that their party is the only one who can control our seats in congress, they under-serve both urban and rural Utahns.

Sandall, who helped lead the lawmakers redistricting effort, says the location of a representatives home isnt necessarily related to the election lines, since members of Congress arent required to live inside their district. In fact, sitting Rep. Blake Moore resides outside the district he represents.

Still, Sandall said, these representatives have to pay attention to rural Utah. They have to make campaign stops and hold town halls in these rural communities and build relationships with local leaders in these areas.

The goal is to make sure the entire congressional delegation understands water, land and mineral issues that are integral to the entire state, he said.

I maintain and believe that we are better served as one Utah, he said.

Ray noted that federally managed public lands account for nearly two-thirds of Utahs acreage and said the congressional delegation needs to work as a team when it comes to these spaces.

Thats a major fight back in D.C., he said. You want to make sure that all four of your congressional leaders have a stake in that fight.

However, to Matheson of Alliance for a Better Utah, redistricting is supposed to be about community representation, not about building a congressional delegation united around a particular policy goal.

Thats manipulating the process to get what you want out of it instead of reflecting the people accurately, Matheson said.

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This Sandy Democrat came within 100 votes of beating a GOP rep last year. Here's why that won't happen again - Salt Lake Tribune

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Texas Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson says she will retire before the 2022 midterms ending a career in Congress that lasted almost 30 years.

Johnson, who was elected to represent the Dallas, Texas area in Congress in 1993, announced during an event on Saturday that her current term would be her last.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., acknowledges applause as his wife Marcelle Pomerleau looks on at the conclusion of a news conference at the Vermont State House to announce he will not seek re-election, Monday, Nov. 15, 2021, in Montpelier, V.T. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm) (AP)

HARRIS: RITTENHOUSE VERDICT SHOWS THERE IS 'A LOT MORE WORK TO DO' ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE EQUITY

The 85-year-old Texas Democrat did not endorse a replacement but said she hopes that she will be replaced by a woman.

TOP DEM TWEETS RITTENHOUSE STATEMENT CONTAINING MISINFORMATION; ADVISER TWEETS 'NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE'

"I will recommend to you who is the best to follow me," Johnson said. "My goal is to look for a female that is qualified. Anyone who has already been rejected in this district will not be getting my endorsement."

DECEMBER 05: Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, speaks during a news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center to call on the Senate to pass mental health reform legislation, December 05, 2016. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) (Tom Williams / Contributor)

A spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee reacted to the news by suggesting it is a sign the Democratic Party is in trouble heading into the midterms.

"Committee chairs rarely retire unless their party is about to lose the majority. Smart Democrats know their majority is doomed because their policies have led to rising costs, skyrocketing crime, and a massive surge at the border," NRCC Spokesman Mike Berg said.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., presides over House passage of President Joe Biden's expansive social and environment bill, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Nov. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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Johnson's retirement is unlikely to affect the balance in power in Congress as she represents a solid blue district that handed her a 60-point win over her Republican challenger in 2020. President Biden carried Dallas County by 30 points over former President Donald Trump.

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