Pelosi’s Majority Crumbles: Longtime Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush Will Not Seek Reelection

Longtime Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush (IL) will reportedly not seek reelection, further putting doubt on the House Democrats’ ability to keep the slimming majority after the midterm in less than a year.

Multiple sources confirmed to NBC Chicago on Monday that Rush will not seek reelection, ultimately retiring from Congress at the end of his current term. The 75-year-old will reportedly make a formal announcement on Tuesday.

Rush’s retirement makes him the twenty-fourth Democrat to announce an exit from the House at the end of this year, potentially putting more strain on the House Democrats, along with their committee, the Democrat National Campaign Committee (DCCC), to keep the majority in the House after the midterms as droves of Democrats move on from the House.

The 75-year-old has reportedly made phone calls to friends and elected officials to share his retirement decision. Before becoming a member of Congress, Rush was a longtime civil rights activist and was the co-founder of the Black Panther Party in Illinois. However, in his time in Congress, he has been closely aligned with the left.

In the current Congress, Rush has been a close confidant to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. and has helped them pass partisan agenda items. He has voted with Pelosi 100 percent of the time, according to ProPublica.

Some of those partisan votes include the $1.2 trillion, 2,702-page so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill earlier this year — which Biden already signed into law — and the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act (BBB) — also known as the Democrats’ reconciliation infrastructure bill. However, while the Democrats are still trying to pass in the Senate, the BBB would have ultimately increased taxes on the middle class, expanded and prolonged the effects of inflation, and added hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. deficit.

Breitbart News has extensively reported on Pelosi’s majority crumbling in the past and the Democrats’ struggles to keep members in the House and find new candidates to run for office.

While Rush becomes the twenty-fourth Democrat to announce they will not seek reelection in the House, he is only the sixteenth Democrat to announce actual retirement from the public eye — including three committee chairs — while eight more Democrats announced they would run for a different office, either in a local or state election.

There have also been rumors of more Democrats abandoning ship in the coming weeks and months leading up to the midterms, as more redistricting maps are accepted and deadlines to file for reelection are getting closer.

Mike Berg, a spokesperson from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), said, “If Democrats thought their retirement crisis would get better over the holidays, they were wrong. Democrats are abandoning ship as fast as possible because they know their majority is doomed.”

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.