Growing number of retirements threatens Republican House majority

The Republican Party’s tenuous grip on the House majority slipped Wednesday after Rep. Darrell Issa became the second California Republican this week to opt for retirement over fighting an uncertain battle for re-election.

Issa, from northern San Diego County, joined retiring Rep. Ed Royce, from historically Republican Orange County, putting two seats targeted by the Democrats further in play as they seek to erase the GOP’s 24-seat House majority.

Their departures raise the number of Republican retirements to 31, a figure not approached since 28 Democrats rushed for the exits in 1994, the year the GOP won control of Congress for the first time in four decades.

The development, coming on the heels of the passage of a major overhaul of the federal tax code, reveals a Republican majority far more nervous about its 2018 prospects than suggested by members’ rosy midterm prognostications.

“We’re actually going to have to be good on our game,” Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, the House Rules Committee chairman, said. Sessions knows an electoral wave; he led the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House campaign arm, in 2010, when the GOP flipped 63 Democratic seats in President Barack Obama’s first midterm.