Has Speaker Johnson Given Up On The House?

Leigh Ann Caldwell (0:03)

It must be really bad out there if Mike Johnson is conceding the possibility that he might not be Speaker of the House after November or in January.

Peter Hamby (0:17)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Pucks podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby.

It's Friday, October 9th. Today, I'm joined by Leigh Ann Caldwell for a bonanza of midterm analysis as Democrats salivate over an election day tsunami. Even Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is sounding fatalistic about losing the House. But is there really a chance that Democrats can take the Senate and win in red states like Kansas? Well, it's still very much a jump ball. And the same is true for several governor's races in which Democrats are begging for more money to drag them across the finish line. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Friday everybody and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my colleague Leigh Ann Caldwell of the best and the brightest. The break down, the latest in the midterm elections, heading into the weekend. Things are not looking good for Republicans. That might not be a surprise. We have Republicans sending money into new states that we didn't think they'd be playing ball in. $5 million to South Carolina. They pulled money out of North Carolina, sent it to Kansas. That's one of many chessboard moves as Republicans try to defend seats. It's not all bad news. The Maine Senate race is actually tighter than it should be probably for Democrats like Troy Jackson. The Iowa Senate race, Democrats, sure, they think they can win.

But polls show that one is very close and could go either way. But Leigh Ann, let's start with the House. Mike Johnson gave an interview to Fox News Digital earlier this week. Here's what he said. Heaven forbid if we lose this majority or whatever, I don't know what my next chapter in life is. If God moves on our hearts and said we should, you know, go back to my hometown of Shreveport and start a lawn business, I'll do that with equal fervor. Now, Mike Johnson has raised a shitload of money for the Republican House candidates. He's been traveling a lot. He's been working his ass off. However, anyone that covers politics or spends time around politicians knows that's a wink, wink. I am cutting the cord after this in part because I think every model has, you know, an 80 percent chance or higher of Democrats taking back the House. I mean, it seems like the House is lost. I don't think Mike Johnson is going to start a lawn business.

That's just my hunch. But it does seem likely that he will be going on to greener pastures or pastures that contain dead Arbidilloes down in Shreveport.

Leigh Ann Caldwell (3:01)

Yeah. But the amazing thing about this is that Mike Johnson actually admitted this. Like, this is not Mike Johnson's MO. He has been eternally optimistic about this, refusing to acknowledge that there's even the most remote possibility that Democrats would gain control of the House of Representatives and that Republicans would be in the majority. When our colleague Mariana talked to him in Dallas at that convention in early September, he cracked the door open so slightly. She literally asked him, because it's funny, he said, if God says that I should open a lawn business, then so be it, because she literally asked him, well, what if God says that Democrats are going to be in the majority?

And he said, I just don't like to think about those things. And he really brought it back to Republicans winning. So that's why this clip of Mike Johnson is so important, because it must be really bad out there if Mike Johnson is conceding the possibility that he might not be Speaker of the House after November or in January.

Peter Hamby (4:09)

Yeah, the environment is deteriorating, it seems like, for Republicans. We'll definitely pump the brakes a little bit, give some words of caution here. There are a lot of Democrats who are worried that the polls are understating certain voters, that these leads in some Senate and Gov races might not be as big as they actually are. But House Democrats, the DCCC, they have started to add more targets to their red to blue list. Some of these are really, really red districts. We've got Kansas too, North Carolina 13, New Jersey too. They added Virginia 6 I want to focus on that one because I think it illustrates the question I'm getting at. So Virginia 6 is Appalachia, Shenandoah, like the western most slice of Virginia. Spanberger, even when she won the governor's race last year in Virginia, by double digits, she lost that seat, that House seat by 16 points.