House Republicans retiring: Could this help Democrats in upcoming elections?

AUSTIN, Texas - A handful of Republican House chairs are done with Congress. 

The list includes Texas Rep. Kay Granger. She serves as the chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

FOX 7 Austin's Mike Warren spoke with Matt Mackowiak, chair of the Travis County Republican Party, and Democratic analyst Ed Espinoza, to get their perspectives.

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MIKE WARREN: Ed Espinoza, anything concerning for Republicans about these retirements, you think?

ED ESPINOZA: Well, look, I don't envy anybody who has to wrangle a party with this many voices in it right now. But this what you're seeing with Republicans is something that has been happening for years, going back as far as 2018. And in 2020, you saw Jeff Flake from Arizona step down and start writing checks to Democrats that said country over party. In 2020, we saw what people were calling here in Texas, where you had a number of Republicans stepping down in almost double digits. This is a party that is increasingly going to the far right, and Trump has a choke hold on it. And I think people have had enough.

MIKE WARREN: Okay. Matt Mackowiak, do you see anything concerning about some of these retirements for Republicans?

MATT MACKOWIAK: Sometimes what happens when you're in the majority, is, you know, being in the majority has the burden of responsibility. And when the margin is very tight, as it was when the Democrats had a majority two years ago in Congress, and as Republicans have a majority now, it makes things very difficult. And so you had a large number of Democratic retirements two years ago, and you are starting to see some retirements on the Republican side, like being in Congress has never been worse than it is now. And that's not a party statement. That's about the pressures and the stress and the fundraising that's required, the time away, the unpredictability, the dysfunction of Washington, all of those things. I think, contributing to decisions for a long time, elected officials on both sides of the aisle to decide to go do something else. 

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MIKE WARREN: Ed Espinoza, you were talking about how the Republican Party is kind of fraying a little bit, going in different directions. Can the same not be said about Democrats? I mean, what, a few days ago, Rashida Tlaib, congresswoman from Michigan, talking about not voting for Joe Biden in the primary. Do the Democrats have some issues as well?

ED ESPINOZA: Well, in the words of Will Rogers, I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat, and I think that the same can be said for anybody who's in a congressional majority that has a razor-thin majority. As Matt was saying a minute ago, it's just four seats, and you have so many factions in Congress right now that it's really hard for a majority to manage that. And he's right. The Democrats had to go through this a couple of years ago, too. However, what you're particularly seeing on the Republican side right now is a decade, maybe more than a decade's worth of dysfunction that has been crystallized by redistricting and doesn't really have any end in sight. And that's why you're seeing a lot of the middle of the road and center-right voices just throw up their arms and walk away.

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MIKE WARREN: Talking about the Republicans. Matt Mackowiak, is there a way for these two sides, for example, all the Republicans who were not voting for aid to Ukraine unless there are things done for the border, and then you've got other Republicans who are happy to vote for aid to Ukraine. Can those two sides ever come together? How is that going to play out?

MATT MACKOWIAK: Yeah. This gets into the procedures and in the weeds of Congress. But, generally speaking, in the House, you have to have a majority, the majority, to bring something to the floor. Right now, there's not a majority to pass Ukraine funding. So the only other real path is to do it on suspension, which requires a two-thirds vote, or to do a discharge petition where 218 members of Congress signed something to put it on. On the floor you have something like 214 or 213 Democrats. And so you need 5 or 6 to join with the Democrats to do that. So those are the procedural options. But we'll see how that, you know, goes forward. I think they're on recess right now. You may see some movement in the next couple weeks. That's an issue. The Israel funding is an issue. But right now it really is about the border. There's a crisis down there that doesn't seem to be being addressed in any real way. And President Biden doesn't need new legislation. He needs to go back to what Trump had at the end with Remain in Mexico, ending catch and release and taking it seriously again.