Congressional retirement announcements have been piling up quickly in recent months, but the latest member to make his departure known stood out for reasons that might not be immediately obvious. Roll Call reported:
Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington, who has beaten challengers backed by Donald Trump in the past two election cycles, is the latest House Republican to announce his retirement.
Newhouse said in a statement Wednesday that he had ‘no reservations or remorse’ as he ends his tenure representing central Washington’s deep-red 4th District, which includes Yakima.
While Newhouse may not have an especially high national profile, his retirement announcement is notable in large part because of his membership in a very small GOP club.
When Trump was impeached for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, it resulted in the most bipartisan impeachment vote in American history. At a time when much of the party seemed eager to move on from their failed, defeated president, 10 GOP House members voted with the Democratic majority in favor of the impeachment resolution, and they had every reason to believe they’d be vindicated by history.
Republican officials and voters had other ideas.
As Trump regained control over the party, members of the Impeachment 10 came to realize that much of their radicalized political party wouldn’t tolerate their heresy, which would overshadow other parts of their careers in public service.
Ahead of Election Day 2022, four members of the contingent — Ohio’s Anthony Gonzalez, New York’s John Katko, Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger and Michigan’s Fred Upton — announced their retirements before the 2022 primary season even began in earnest. Four more thought they could maintain the trust of the voters who’d elected them in the first place, though they quickly learned otherwise:
- In South Carolina, then-Rep. Tom Rice was crushed in a primary, losing by more than 26 points to a Republican primary rival who insisted that the 2020 election was “rigged.” (It was not rigged.)
- In Michigan, then-Rep. Peter Meijer suffered a relatively narrow loss in a GOP primary to John Gibbs, perhaps best known for his “inflammatory, conspiratorial tweets.”
- In the state of Washington, then-Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler lost her primary race to Joe Kent, who, according to an Associated Press report, has “connections to right-wing extremists, including a campaign consultant who was a member of the Proud Boys.”
- In Wyoming, then-Rep. Liz Cheney suffered a lopsided defeat to a Trump-backed lawyer who embraced Trump’s election conspiracy theories.
(It’s worth emphasizing for context that two of the four primary victors — Gibbs and Kent — ended up losing in the 2022 general elections, allowing Democrats to flip the seats from “red” to “blue.”)
That left just two members of the Impeachment 10: California’s David Valadao, who has won some close races, and Washington’s Newhouse, who has also held on despite Trump’s efforts to defeat him. But with Newhouse retiring, this means the Impeachment 10 will soon dwindle to one, and very likely, none: California’s redistricting plan is adding Democratic voters to Valadao’s congressional district, suggesting his reelection prospects are in serious doubt. Reality was on the GOP faction’s side, but in contemporary Republican politics, the fact that they were right proved irrelevant. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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