GOP Taking 2022 Midterm Fight Deep Into Democrat Territory

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, on July 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Buoyed by the steadily growing public disapproval of President Joe Biden and the direction he and the Democratic majorities in Congress are taking the country, House Republican strategists are now focused on winning congressional districts in the 2022 midterm elections that Biden comfortably carried just two years ago.

“Expanding the map of offensive opportunities, Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the super PAC endorsed by [House Minority] Leader Kevin McCarthy and all of House GOP Leadership, announced seven new endorsements from its Trailblazers Fund. The next round of endorsements goes beyond traditional swing seats to districts President Biden won by an average of eight points and as much as 16 points,” the CLF announced on April 12.

“Each of these impressive candidates have the strength to expand the map into deep blue, traditionally Democrat-held territory. Biden’s failures have turned stretch seats into real opportunities we can win with the right candidates,” CLF President Dan Conston said in the statement.

Topping the list of CLF’s “stretch” targets is Texas’s 34th Congressional District, which Biden carried by 16 points in 2020. Getting the CLF Trailblazer endorsement is respiratory care practitioner Mayra Flores. The 16-point Biden advantage represents what the result would have been in 2020, using the configuration that resulted from the 2021 redistricting.

The reconfigured Texas district stretches from east of San Antonio all the way to the Mexican border and is suffering numerous negative effects of Biden’s open border policies. The seat is vacant, as Rep. Filemon Vela, a Democrat, resigned in March. There will be a special election to complete Vela’s term in July, and then the regular November contest.

Flores is described by CLF as having “immigrated from Mexico with her parents when she was 6 years old. Mayra worked hard to get through school and become a respiratory care practitioner. Her husband is a U.S. Border Patrol agent and she’s running on her experience to fight for strong border security.”

In Arizona’s 4th Congressional District, CLF’s Trailblazer is Tanya Wheeless, “a former executive for the [NBA] Phoenix Suns, former head of the Arizona Bankers Association, and previously served as Martha McSally’s in-district chief.” Biden would have carried the reconfigured district by 10 points, using 2020 returns.

Republicans need to gain only six additional seats over their current 212 to regain the majority in the lower chamber, but CLF’s unusual announcement seven months before the election that it’s funding candidates in the safest of Democratic districts shows that GOP strategists are convinced they’re heading to a historic win, possibly matching or exceeding the 2010 Tea Party revolution’s 63-seat landslide.

History is against Biden and his party because a victorious president typically sustains losses in the first congressional election after winning the White House. But that fact is only the first reason Republicans are in a buoyant mood.

Biden’s approval rating hit a new low of 42 percent earlier this week in the latest CBS News survey, showing the president deeply underwater with every major voting group, including minorities and younger voters.

The president fares even worse in the latest CNBC All-America Survey, with only 38 percent approving of Biden’s job performance.

“The angst was previously more about what was going to happen in the economy, and we’ve now shifted into a new place where we’re much more pessimistic about what’s currently happening. There’s no overriding the pessimism in this survey. It is on every page, and it is inescapable,” said Micah Roberts, a GOP partner at Public Opinion Strategies (POS), which conducted the survey for CNBC.

Meanwhile, in the latest Quinnipiac Poll, only 33 percent of the respondents approve of how Biden is doing his job.

With the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reporting the annual inflation rate at 8.5 percent, the highest rate in 40 years, with gasoline and diesel prices showing no sign of going anywhere but higher, food costs at record levels, millions of undocumented immigrants crossing the nation’s southern border, and violent crime soaring in big cities and their suburbs, Biden’s low ratings are no surprise.

Veteran congressional Republican strategist Brian Darling told The Epoch Times on April 13 that he thinks GOP optimism is on solid ground.

“Everything is pointing towards a wave election for Republicans this fall,” he said. “History suggests there is a snapback election against the party in power in a president’s first midterm, and if you add in President Biden’s abysmal poll numbers, Americans should expect massive gains for House Republicans. It is reasonable to believe that Republican confidence in targeting traditional Democratic territory is well-founded.”

But a lot can happen between now and November, warns Jim Manley, former communications director for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

“Given how much money they have to play with, I guess that I am not surprised that they are going to expand their target list,” he told The Epoch Times. “Whether it’s successful or not remains to be seen.

“The polling is pretty bad now, but the elections are still a ways off and things can change.”