Republicans are working to stave off complacency within their ranks ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, fearing carelessness may be their biggest obstacle to recapturing control of Congress in November.
With the House and Senate majorities well within reach, Republicans have grown increasingly confident in their electoral prospects this year, seeing the midterms as less a question of whether they will win back control of Congress and more one of how many seats they will pick up.
But party leaders also acknowledge that confidence could work against the GOP and are pleading with lawmakers and voters not to get complacent — a warning party leaders drilled into House Republicans last week at their annual retreat in Florida.
During a closed-door session at a coastal resort near Jacksonville, Fla., Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), repeatedly reminded members they will have to stay on offense through Election Day if they hope to retake the House majority in November.
To hammer home that message, Emmer passed out T-shirts emblazoned with the NRCC’s logo and the phrase “No mercy” as a reminder that Republicans must focus relentlessly on campaigning against Democrats and avoid falling into intraparty drama and scandals ahead of November.
Meanwhile, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, had a blunt answer when asked in a press conference Thursday what the biggest mistake Republicans could make this year is.
“I think complacency,” Stefanik said. “We are going to work to earn this majority. Majorities are not given, they are earned, which is why as conference chair I have laser-focused our messaging on the issues that actually impact people day to day.”
Republicans need to net just five seats in the House and only one in the Senate this year to regain the majorities they lost under former President Trump. And given President Biden’s sagging approval numbers and the fact that the party in power tends to lose ground in Congress in a president’s first midterms, the GOP appears well-positioned to do just that.
Recent polling also bodes well for Republicans. During the retreat, GOP members were briefed on an internal survey from the NRCC showing Republicans with a 4-point lead over Democrats on the generic congressional ballot in 77 so-called battleground districts. A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released Monday showed Republicans with a 6-point lead on a generic ballot.
Still, there are things that can go wrong between now and November. Matt Gorman, a GOP strategist and former NRCC staffer, said Republicans haven’t given any signs of slowing down, pointing to an NBC News poll released last week that showed GOP voters with a staggering 17-point lead in enthusiasm over Democrats.
But he also recounted a cautionary tale in the 2016 presidential race, when then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton entered the fall with a commanding lead in the race, believing Trump did not pose a serious threat, only to be handed a devastating loss.
“Look, it’s extremely important to run through the tape,” Gorman said. “As we saw in 2016, things can change quickly. I think we’re extremely well-positioned, we have great recruits, we’re raising the money we need to, the issues are on our side, but we can’t let our foot off the gas.”
“Polls in March — as Hillary Clinton will tell you — mean a lot less than the polls on Election Day,” Gorman said. “It’s extremely important to not let up and keep pressing those issues that we’re winning on.”
The warnings against getting complacent are more proactive than reactive; even as House GOP leaders told members not to take their electoral prospects for granted, they couldn’t help but project confidence.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) predicted on Thursday that Republicans would win the majority in November and went as far as to say that it wouldn’t be by the bare minimum needed to recapture control of the House.
“We’re going to win the majority, and it’s not going to be a five-seat majority,” McCarthy told Punchbowl News in an interview on the sidelines of the House Republican retreat. But he couched expectations somewhat, saying that the midterms are “not going to be an election like in 2010, where we win 63 seats.”
One Republican strategist who works on Senate campaigns said that the GOP is still “waking up” from its losses in recent years.
The strategist pointed specifically to the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia in early 2021, when Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff defeated Republican incumbents in what had been a reliably red state after turning out Democratic voters en masse. Complacency among GOP voters played a major role in the Republican losses, the strategist said.
“Our people just weren’t motivated,” the strategist said. “I think Georgia was kind of a wake-up call for Republicans — that you always have to act like everything is on the line.”
Republicans say they are intent on not making that mistake again. Over the three-day retreat in Florida, House GOP leaders repeatedly avoided implying that voters would simply hand them control of Congress, saying instead that they must “earn” the majority, even if the odds are in their favor.
“They have every reason to feel good about where they are. If the midterms were today, I think it’d be a blowout, so I can’t blame them for being confident,” the strategist said. “But you also need to tell voters, tell your members that we still can’t take anything for granted.
“There’s still this thing called hubris.”