Democrats Target 31 GOP-Held House Seats in Early Push to Retake Majority

Democrats have put 31 Republican-held House districts on their 2024 target list, along with two open seats, a map that NBC News was first to report and one that signals the party intends to play offense from the start. The list comes from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats' campaign arm, and it is paired with a separate roster of "front-line" members in competitive districts whom the party must protect from Republican challengers.

The targets fall into three rough groups. Some are intensely competitive swing seats, in places like New York's Hudson Valley and Long Island, where the list includes the seat held by Rep. George Santos. Others are districts Joe Biden carried, such as the Omaha-centered seat of Rep. Don Bacon in Nebraska. A third group are conservative-leaning districts where Democrats believe the Republican incumbent is extreme enough to be vulnerable, with Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado as the example. Geographically, the list includes eight seats in California and six in New York.

Julie Merz, the DCCC's executive director, laid out the pitch in an interview. Democrats, she said, will cast Biden and his party as "team normal" against what she called "MAGA extremists" who have taken over the House Republican conference. They plan to set Biden's legislative record against the Republican majority's: the $35 monthly cap on insulin costs, lower Medicare drug prices, and investments in manufacturing and infrastructure. Merz described the majority as "all hat and no cattle" when it comes to results. She also argued that moderate Republicans no longer exist, saying they had a chance during the early speaker's vote to push back against the loudest MAGA voices and instead folded.

The Republican response came from Jack Pandol, communications director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He said Democrats lost the majority because they hammered families with crime, chaos and rising costs, and asked why voters would change their minds after Democrats spent their time in the minority coddling violent criminals and opposing relief.

The margins explain why both sides are mobilizing early. Democrats won a four-seat majority in 2020; two years later Republicans won an identical one. A suburban realignment and redistricting have left the battle for control extremely competitive, and the map has narrowed. The DCCC's 33 seats, counting the open ones, represent the outer limit of what the party can realistically hope to win. How heavily it will spend in each district is not yet clear, and Merz's committee will face hard choices once the campaign hits crunch time.

The two open seats belong to Rep. Katie Porter of California and Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, both running for the Senate. Republicans have targeted both as potential pickups. Merz said she is not worried, pointing to good Democratic benches in those districts and recruitment conversations already underway.

Several variables sit outside the committee's control. One is the Republican presidential nominee; the front-runner, former President Donald Trump, was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on Thursday. Merz said that if House Republicans want to spend time in battleground districts defending their nominee's criminal behavior, on top of what she called their failure to govern, that is up to them. Another is the economy in fall 2024: as the incumbent, Biden and his party could benefit from a boom or pay for a downturn or for wages failing to keep pace with inflation. Merz also argued that Democratic turnout problems in California and New York cost the party seats in 2022, and that presidential-year turnout and strong candidates could reverse that.

Chair Suzan DelBene of Washington must balance offense against defense of swing and red-leaning seats that Republicans see as ripe. In 2020, the committee went hard on offense and took for granted a series of districts it then narrowly lost, contributing to the thin majority. A second dilemma, long a source of friction with progressive advocates, is whether to intervene in primaries. Merz did not rule it out but said it is not the aim. She pointed to California's and Washington's top-two systems, where Democrats must ensure they are not locked out, but said primaries are generally healthy and that people on the ground should decide most of them.