California Democrats with lots of seniority are expected to dominate the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives if their party flips 23 Republican House seats on Tuesday.
Despite the shocking news that the Rasmussen Reports Generic Congressional Ballot on Monday rated Republicans leading with “likely midterm voters” for the first time by 46 percent to the Democrats’ 45 percent, California’s Democrat House delegation is busy jockeying to gain powerful leadership positions if the Democrats flip House control.
The average of the top ten polls still shows Democrats with a +7.3 point lead in the last 24 hours before the polls close. Polls show Democrats favored in 202 House seats and Republican favored in 194 seats. House control of 218 seats is expected to be resolved by the outcome in 33 Republican and 6 Democrat seats that are rated a “toss-up.”
California Democrats hold 39 of their Party’s 193 House seats, or over 20 percent. The polls favor the California Democrat delegation expanding by flipping one to five GOP seats.
The San Francisco Chronicle predicts the state’s leadership in a Democrat House to include:
- Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), as a 16-term member and experienced holder of her party’s top positions, would regain the Speaker of the House title she held two terms from 2007 to 2011;
- Maxine Waters (D-Inglewood), as a 14-term member, would chair the powerful House Financial Services Committee, which controls Wall Street and the banks;
- Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), as a nine-term member, would chair the House Intelligence Committee and ramp up the investigation of “Russian collusion”;
- Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), as a seven-term member, would chair the House Administration Committee, which controls House operations; and the Subcommittee on Immigration;
- Mark Takano (D-Riverside), as a three-term member, would chair the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee to oversee $199 billion for military health and retiree benefits;
- Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), as a 13-term member, would chair the subcommittee on Energy and Commerce that sets U.S. technology policy;
- Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), as a ten-term member, would chair the Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on healthcare;
- Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), as a three-term member, would chair the Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans; and
- Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), as an 11-term member; and Linda Sánchez (D-Whittier), as a an eight-term member, will battle it out for chair of the caucus.
The other powerful position that California Democrats will lobby their Party to fill is Chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, which is being vacated by retiring 13-term Republican member Ed Royce (R-Fullerton).
The wild card in the 2018 U.S. House midterm elections is the spillover from President Trump’s wildly successful 40-day barnstorming tour to pick up U.S. Senate Seats. Despite the conventional wisdom that the President should have campaigned on strong jobs and wage growth, Trump has successfully pounded away at Democrats’ support of sanctuary cities and the Central American caravans moving toward the U.S border as a wedge issue to speak to the concerns of suburban women in seven tight U.S. Senate races.
Polls show Republicans favored to gain one to three U.S. Senate seats. Control of the U.S. House will depend on the effectiveness of the spillover from the President’s message to suburban women voters in districts where he did not campaign.
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