Democrat Rep. Ron Kind will RETIRE from Wisconsin district Trump won twice and is a top target for the GOP in 2022
Democratic Rep. Ron Kind, who represents a Wisconsin district Donald Trump won twice, announced on Tuesday he won't seek his 14th term in office.
His decision gives Republicans a top pickup opportunity as they look to win control of the House in next year's midterm election.
'This will be my last term in office. I will not seek re-election,' Kind said in his announcement. 'The truth is I've run out of gas.'
His decision will make it harder for Democrats to hold the House and keep Nancy Pelosi as speaker. Republicans only need to flip five seats to win the House majority in 2022.
'Kind´s retirement is the clearest sign yet that Democrats' House majority is toast,' said Mike Berg, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Kind, 58, has spent nearly 25 years in the House of Representatives but, last year, he only won re-election by less than three points - after winning by nearly 20 points the previous cycle.
Republican Derrick Van Orden, who nearly defeated Kind last year, has said he intends to run again next year.
Van Orden has come under scrutiny for his presence on the U.S. Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6 insurrection. He has confirmed he was there but said he left the area 'when it became clear that a protest had become a mob' and didn't enter the Capitol building.
Democratic Rep. Ron Kind announced he won't seek his 14th term in office - a decision that will make it harder for Democrats to maintain control of the House
Donald Trump won Rep. Ron Kind's district, which spans southwestern Wisconsin and includes La Crosse, in both 2016 and 2020
Kind was expected to run again. Now he becomes the latest swing-district Democrat not to seek reelection, joining Arizona Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos and Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb, who announced last week he's running for Senate.
Trump won Kind's district, which spans southwestern Wisconsin and includes La Crosse, in both 2016 and 2020. Barack Obama won in it 2012. The district is not expected to change much in the upcoming once-in-a-decade redistricting process.
Kind is a senior member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee - which writes tax law - and is a longtime leader among moderate New Democrats.
He was only one of seven House Democrats in the country who won districts that were carried by Trump.
Last week, Pelosi expressed confidence Democrats would keep control of the House in the 2022 election.
'I'm very confident that we will win the House,' she said during her weekly Capitol news conference.
Her comments came after a report that Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the House Democrats' campaign arm, warned if the midterm elections were held now, the Democrats would lose the majority.
He partnered his bleak forecast with new polling that showed Democrats falling behind Republicans by a half-dozen points on a generic ballot in battleground districts, Politico reported.
Pelosi dismissed the warning.
'There are several scenarios here,' she said. 'That was one of them.'
She said Democrats would use the odds to run even harder.
'I always run from behind,' she said.
'We always want to be cautious,' Pelosi said. Maloney's message to lawmakers last week, she noted, was 'always run scared.'
Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed confidence Democrats would keep control of the House in the 2022 election
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has taken to calling Pelosi a 'lame duck's speaker
Pelosi holds a slim majority in the House: 220 Democrats to 212 Republicans and three vacant seats.
Historically, the president's party tends to do badly in the first midterms after they talk office. Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump saw their respective parties lose control of the House of Representatives in their first midterms - 2010 and 2018.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who would be the presumptive speaker if Republicans win the House next year, has expressed confidence of his own he'll take the top job.
McCarthy has called Pelosi a 'lame duck speaker' - an insult to her power and his way of declaring he will occupy the office next. Pelosi would be a lame duck only if Republicans win control of the House in the November 2022 election.