Max Miller and the House One-Term Wonder Phenomenon

Rep. Max Miller (R-OH)

This past week, two House Republicans involved in massive political scandals have (thus far) seen very different outcomes.  Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), a congressman who was elected in part because he was replacing Rep. Madison Cawthorn who had been involved in a sex tape scandal (and is currently running for the House in Florida), chose to not run for reelection after it was revealed that he had had inappropriate relationships with junior staffers, sending them intimate texts & poems, as well as expensive (and honestly, somewhat embarrassing) gifts.  Meanwhile, Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) has repeatedly chosen not to step down, despite allegations that he was physically abusive to both his wife and daughter (after allegations he was physically abusive to his ex-girlfriend were revealed in 2021).

These are good reminders of something that happens in waves: the concept of a one-term wonder.  If you look at recent wave midterms (specifically 2006, 2014, & 2018...I'm lifting 2010 out because it's too hard to track with redistricting add its own unique fun), you'll find that a recurring theme.  In 2020, even with Joe Biden winning nationally, 12 Democratic freshman members of the House lost.  In 2016, even as Donald Trump was winning nationally, 4 Republican freshman members were losing.  And in 2008, with Barack Obama taking a landslide victory, another 4 Democratic freshman were losing.

In virtually all of these cases, something had happened in the previous year's election that (even with a good cycle for them two years later), had caused them to win.  A combination of a toxically bad relationship with the incumbent president, a lower turnout that doesn't get out base voters, and a wave helping them makes something that our stats-honed political watchers can't really understand: you get someone who can defy the odds and get a victory in territory that would normally be unwinnable.  A lot of these incumbents were in seats that their party had won the previous cycle at a presidential level, and in most cases, the seat reverted back-to-form at a presidential level, causing the incumbent to lose at the bottom of the ticket.

Sometimes, this is just relatively innocuous-people lose elections, that's sometimes the point.  In other scenarios, complacent incumbents who haven't hard to worry about a general election in years suddenly get caught unawares and lose to a newcomer who can't sustain that kind of luck in the next election (Jim Ryun/Nancy Boyda is a good example of this).  But wave elections also have something similar to what Edwards nearly opened up, and Max Miller is definitely opening up: a bizarre set of circumstances, usually involving congressional scandal, that causes a one-term wonder to emerge.

Two examples of this happened in 2006/08.  The first, probably the premiere scandal of that cycle, was when Rep. Mark Foley was outed as having inappropriate, frequently sexual, communications with a House page, in this case an underage one.  Foley had to drop out, but he was unable to be replaced by another Republican on the ballot, and even though another person could be the "nominee" Republicans would have to convince voters to cast their ballot for a man accused of sexual misconduct to win the election.  Even though Bush had won 54% of the vote here in 2004, without another Republican on the ballot, it became likely that Tim Mahoney, a chairman at a Finance company who was essentially running as a sacrificial lamb, would win the seat, and while Mahoney barely won (he beat the replacement nominee, State Rep. Joe Negron, by less than 2-points), he did win, getting a House seat he couldn't possible hold in any other election...which of course he didn't.  Two years later, Mahoney lost the seat by over 20-points.

The other example is Nick Lampson.  Unlike Mahoney, Lampson was an experienced politician, one who had actually beaten a "one-term wonder" to get his seat in the first place.  He had actually been in the House for 4-terms before losing in 2004 after a controversial mid-decade redistricting led (in part) by Rep. Tom DeLay.  Lampson chose to run in the 22nd district (DeLay's district) at least, in part, it seemed, for revenge on DeLay (he had represented portions of it while in the House, but by-and-large wasn't from the district).  But DeLay was vulnerable-his 2004 election results had been underwhelming, and he had been mired in a series of ethical scandals, including money laundering charges that essentially caused him to successively resign as House Majority Leader, then stop his reelection, and then eventually to resign from the House all in the same Congress.

That last step ended up being the GOP's undoing.  DeLay's replacement on the ballot became Republican Houston City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs.  But Sekula-Gibbs had to run a write-in campaign, and more pertinently, was running for the remainder of DeLay's term in the lameduck session.  Lampson was smart, and decided to only run for the main term, meaning that both he and Sekula-Gibbs only appeared on the ballot once each, with Sekula-Gibbs needing voters to vote for her in the special but write in her name for the general...which caused confusion for voters.  Sekula-Gibbs got enough votes in the special to beat Lampson had they been head-to-head, but she got 15,000 less votes as a candidate in the general as a result of the confusion and needing the write-in.  Lampson won his term in the House, and despite a strong election cycle for the Democrats in 2008, still got trounced when he tried to run again under normal circumstances.

All of this is to say, waves create weird situations, and the weirder the situation, the more likely it is that we get a fluke congressman.  In Miller's case, Brian Poindexter, a Brook Park City Councilman and iron worker who gives off the aesthetic I've been told Graham Platner shone for months (but in this case feels legitimate) is in a good position.  He doesn't appear to have any scandals of his own (which oftentimes derail these circumstances), and will probably be able to get a Wikipedia page out of this scandal, provided Miller doesn't follow Edwards lead, making him one of I suspect several one-term wonders we're going to see in November.