The president of the largest pro-Republican Super PAC involved in House elections predicted that the GOP will win a relatively high number of seats in the upcoming midterms in a Friday interview with Politico.
Dan Conston, head of the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), a Super PAC aligned with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, has said that the party will win between 20 and 25 seats, adding to its current total of 212. Should the lower end of that estimate be attained, it would give the GOP a total of 232 seats, which is 14 seats above a simple majority assuming no vacancies.
“We are in a position to get to the high end of what the prognosticators say, which is 20, 22 seats, get us into the 230s,” Conston told Politico, adding that the map favored Republicans because “there are just no swing seats after redistricting.” Following the 2020 census, Republican-led states such as Texas, Florida and Montana gained additional seats in their House delegations, while Democratic-led states such as California, New York and Illinois all lost seats due to population shifts.
Moreover, Democratic-led states faced several legal challenges to their redistricting plans, which complicated purported efforts to gerrymander districts in order to give them the advantage. In New York State in April, the state’s Court of Appeals overruled the state Legislature‘s planned map, arguing that it was subject to “partisan gerrymandering,” and ordered a special master to draw new district lines.
“Getting into the 230s … represents picking off a lot of seats that Biden won by seven, eight, nine points,” Conston added. “I think that that actually is a red wave.”
House rating change: Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D) moves from Lean D to Toss Up at @CookPolitical as Dems admit the DCCC chair is now in serious danger in #NY17. Full analysis: https://t.co/89bvezbNuw pic.twitter.com/ncljBkSfZw
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 24, 2022
The seats to which Conston refers include Democratic bastions such as New York’s new 17th Congressional District, covering Westchester and Rockland counties, where the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney is running to remain in Congress. Polling shows Republican state lawmaker Mike Lawler ahead of Maloney by up to 6 percentage points, resulting in the CLF spending over $4 million to sustain the momentum for Lawler’s campaign.
Additionally, in Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District, Republican candidate Allan Fung is leading the state’s General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, a son of Clinton family confidant Ira Magaziner, by 8 points, per a Suffolk University survey published on Oct. 12. In that race, the CLF has spent $2 million to maintain Fung’s lead, a win that would flip the seat to Republicans after over 30 years. (RELATED: Kevin McCarthy Should Watch Out For ‘Blood-Sucking’ Republicans, Former RNC Chair Says)
The CLF itself has raised nearly $250 million over the course of the campaign and has spent around $110 million of that money, primarily on attack ads against Democrats. Its donors include high-valuation firms and their employees, some led by billionaire GOP donors, such as Citadel LLC (led by Ken Griffin), the Blackstone Group (run by Steve Schwartzman) and the Chevron Corporation, a major oil and gas company, according to OpenSecrets.org, a campaign finance watchdog.
Conston and the CLF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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