National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) chairman Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) told Breitbart News exclusively that Republicans believe they can retake the House majority in November’s elections.
In an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel on Saturday, Emmer laid out exactly how Republicans intend to retake the House. To do so, the GOP needs to flip a net 17 seats from Democrat control back into GOP hands, something Emmer believes is possible given that he said Republicans are targeting 54 separate Democrat-held districts. Given that there are 30 districts nationwide that Democrats currently represent that President Donald Trump won in 2016—13 of which he won by significant margins—Republicans believe with the president at the top of the ticket again that they can flip that necessary 17 seats back into GOP hands to retake the majority.
“So we have targeted 54 seats,” Emmer said. “The top 30 Donald Trump won in 2016. The top 13 of those, Trump won by six points or more. These are Republican seats.”
A recent special election in California, where now Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA) defeated a Democrat to flip a California seat back into GOP hands for the first time in decades, gives Emmer hope that the GOP can replicate that strategy in many other districts nationwide. He said that in 43 of the 54 districts Republicans are targeting to flip from Democrat to GOP control there are better conditions for Republicans than in that Southern California district.
“We have 43 Democrats currently sitting in seats that are better for Republican candidates than that seat in the California suburbs and we only need 17 to win, so you pick those top 30 and then you’ve got the next 24, of which the vast majority are seats that Hillary Clinton won by the slimmest of margins back in 2016,” Emmer told Breitbart News. “Keep in mind, in 2018, in the fall, two things. One, we got outspent heavily. We got outspent 2 to 1. The average winning Democrat spent $4 million. The average winning Republican spent $2 million and yet we only lost our majority, with 115 million turning out, only lost our majority by 106,000 votes, Matt. To put it in perspective, there were 8.5 million Trump voters that showed up in 2016 that did not show up in 2018 and I can tell you they’re showing up this fall. I think you’re gonna get all the 8.5 plus more. It’s gonna make a huge difference. I can feel it.”
Emmer added, too, that one of the things working in Republicans’ favor heading into November is strong candidate recruitment. From veterans like Alek Skarlatos—the hero who stopped a terror attack on a train in Europe in 2015 who’s running in Oregon’s Fourth District—to Army Ranger Sean Parnell in Pennsylvania’s 17th among others, to record numbers of women like Yvette Herrell in New Mexico’s Second District or Nancy Mace in South Carolina’s First, the GOP feels strongly about its candidate recruitment.
“You’ve gotta win with great candidates,” Emmer said. “We have a record number of women, after the primary in New York on Tuesday, I think we will have the record number of Republican women on the general ballot in all-time history. We have a record number of minority candidates.”
LISTEN TO NRCC CHAIRMAN TOM EMMER ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY:
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