The Democrat in charge of taking back the House said her party is in a “strong position to take back the majority” – and warned Republicans that they would face a strong blowback if they try to gerrymander their way to keeping power.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene, a congresswoman from Washington state, told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor Breakfast Wednesday that the party is well positioned to net the three seats they need to take power in the 2026 midterm elections.
Republicans are looking to shore up their majority by redrawing congressional district lines in Texas to create as many as five more GOP-leaning seats – and are eying doing the same in other states as well.
Why We Wrote This
Republican efforts to redraw districts could backfire, and Democrats are well positioned to net the three seats they need to take power in the 2026 midterm elections, says Rep. Suzan DelBene at a Christian Science Monitor Breakfast with reporters.
Rep. DelBene warned that could backfire, predicting that in liberal-leaning states where Democrats have unified control, they’d respond with their own gerrymanders.
“We’re not going to fight with one arm tied behind our back. Republicans should be careful what they ask for, because Republicans are going to lose seats if this is the path that they go down,” she said.
That’s easier said than done. Many liberal-leaning states where Democrats control the majority have laws on the books or in their state constitutions that limit or prohibit partisan gerrymandering.
In Texas, she predicted that Republicans could overreach with their Texas map, potentially creating opportunities for Democratic pickups by spreading themselves too thin and turning currently safe Republican seats into new competitive districts. “We have incredible opportunity when they start playing with the lines,” she said.
The congresswoman is in her second cycle as DCCC chair. In 2024, Democrats gained a net of two House seats even as they lost the White House, leaving them just three seats short of a majority. Midterm elections tend to cut against the party in power, and as she pointed out, Democrats have been consistently overperforming in special elections since Trump returned to the White House early this year.
But Democrats are also a victim of their own success from last cycle. They already hold 13 House seats that were carried by President Trump last election cycle, while Republicans only hold three districts that Democrats lost. That limits Republicans’ exposure.
But President Trump’s poll numbers are sagging, and Democrats have led Republicans in recent polls of which party voters prefer to win the House.
Rep. DelBene made clear that Democrats plan to run on economic issues. “Costs and the economy are absolutely number one,” she said. And she repeatedly brought up the rising cost of living, Trump’s tariff policy, and the GOP’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” – what she dubbed the “big, ugly bill.”
“Number one across the board is affordability, the cost of living. Folks are struggling with the cost of housing, food, child care, health care, energy costs. And that was the big promise Republicans made, that they were going to lower costs on Day 1. [They] absolutely are not focused on that at all.”
When asked about whether President Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein issue will be a key part of their midterm messaging, she said that Democrats would point to it as “another example of a broken promise,” before she quickly pivoted back to economic messaging.
“This goes into a string of broken promises,” she said, arguing that Republicans had promised to lower costs and stand up for working families but instead focused on protecting wealthy and well-connected people in their megabill.
“They’re breaking promises to protect the well-connected, and not focused on the needs of the American people. That’s why it resonates so broadly across the country,” she said.
