Last Congress, more than 50 members of the House announced they would not seek reelection.
The mass exodus during the 118th Congress included some of Capitol Hill’s most seasoned lawmakers, many of whom said they were desperate to escape the partisan battles that had become inescapable.
The rise in Donald Trump’s loyalists had drowned out his few Republican critics in Congress, a trend that political scientists say has propelled the House to become more polarized and pushed some lawmakers interested in bipartisan compromise toward the exits. And the demands of life with a member pin — the bad flights, the bad cafeteria food, the bad schedule — had left some older members weary and craving the creature comforts of home.
Three months into the 119th Congress, the internecine warfare has only gotten worse. With Trump in the White House, House Republicans are battling over how best to execute his agenda. House Democrats are sparring over how best to resist that agenda. Meanwhile, fewer bills have made it to the Oval Office at this point in an administration than at any time in modern history.
So, if there was any concern that the members who left now have a case of FOMO, don’t worry.
“I don’t miss D.C.,” former Rep. Ken Buck told NOTUS.
After a decade on Capitol Hill representing his western Colorado district as a staunch conservative, Buck is eager to put the so-called swamp behind him.
“Former members would tell me, ‘Ken, people aren’t going to return your calls the way they did before,” Buck said. “I haven’t had a single call unreturned because I don’t call people.”
Away from the fights with Freedom Caucus leadership, Buck is now spending more time with his family. He’s focusing on his health. Outside of a three-week trip to Thailand, he isn’t frequenting airports or adjusting to time zones. He doesn’t worry about crime like he did in D.C. He isn’t concerned about accidently leaving his door unlocked. He doesn’t have to do 20 fundraising calls a day. And he doesn’t have to ask himself if someone is complimenting his tie because they want a favor.
“I can’t give anybody a vote or a telephone call to the administration,” Buck said. “And so it’s a much more genuine life than what I was living before.”
The 66-year-old Buck is currently “exploring” what the next stage of his life looks like. Of the other members that didn’t run for reelection in the House, 18 sought higher office in the Senate, their states or, in Rep. Dean Phillips’ case, the White House. Three run foundations, two are university presidents and one is the CEO of a performing arts center in Buffalo, New York.
Although the new realities for former lawmakers range from residing in a memory-care facility in Texas to running defense at Palantir a few blocks from Capitol Hill, there was a common theme that members who spoke to NOTUS shared: They are happy to put Congress in the rearview.
Democratic Rep. David Cicilline resigned a year early from Congress after serving just over a decade. He left to run the nonprofit Rhode Island Foundation and engage on similar issues he addressed in Congress — like education, climate and housing — but on the ground full time.
“The commute from my house to my office is five minutes,” Cicilline told NOTUS. “So that part has been wonderful.”
Cicilline wasn’t quite as bitter about his days in Congress as Buck, even speaking highly of a time the two men collaborated on a bipartisan antitrust investigation. But Cicilline said despite some deep friendships formed in the political trenches, the sense of camaraderie on Capitol Hill deteriorated as he spent more time there.
“It had been a pretty partisan and polarized place from the time I arrived,” he said. “I mean, I think it got progressively worse over the 12 years that I was there. And I think the last two years, as I’ve watched it, it feels like it’s gotten even worse, which is hard to believe.”
Cicilline is right that the tense work environment on Capitol Hill has reached new heights. Last Congress, Rep. Mike Rogers had to be physically restrained from attacking Rep. Matt Gaetz on the floor. Speaker Kevin McCarthy allegedly elbowed Rep. Tim Burchett in the kidneys in retaliation for Burchett stripping his gavel. Schoolyard taunts, like Republicans calling Rep. Jared Moskowitz a “smurf,” became not just common occurrences but encouraged jeers.
It’s moments like those that the lawmakers who left Congress have cited as reason to give up on the institution. But political scientists have observed that members disturbed by that pattern leaving Congress only compounds the polarization problem, as many of the lawmakers that take their places are more prone to partisan mudslinging.
Casey Burgat, director of the Legislative Affairs program at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, told NOTUS that these lawmakers are more likely to get in line with leadership’s agenda, particularly in the Republican Party, where the party has rallied behind Trump.
“One consequence of that turnover is a Congress far less willing to check the executive,” Burgat said. “Trump is governing aggressively by executive order, and Congress is mostly letting him.”
“The former members who were more inclined to push back, both publicly and behind the scenes, simply aren’t there anymore,” Burgat continued. “That vacuum is contributing to a system where more policymaking flows from the Oval Office, less from the Hill, and the courts are left to sort it all out.”
With his wife experiencing health issues, Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican, left Congress abruptly after a decade. He is now based in his home state, where he can be close to her while sitting on various boards and working for the government affairs firm Skyline Capitol.
Although his departure was unexpected, he has no regrets.
“People ask me all the time, ‘Did you miss Congress?’ And I say, ‘You know, I really don’t,’” Stewart told NOTUS. “I miss some of the people, but there’s not five seconds that I thought I wished I was back in Congress.”
Stewart recalled his work on developing the national suicide hotline, 988. Although it was a widely popular, bipartisan initiative, it took five years to pass the legislation.
“If you’re in a hurry, then you’re going to go crazy if you’re in Congress,” he said. “It’s just frustrating.”
Former Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee is also familiar with that frustration.
Like Cicilline, Kildee was excited at the prospect of doing nonprofit work closer to home. He now runs the Community Foundation of Greater Flint. While he always planned to leave Congress after about a decade representing Michigan, he said the Jan. 6 insurrection made it easier for him to leave. The halls just didn’t have the same “romantic sensibility” anymore.
“I did love being in Congress, no question about it. But I now know that there’s a more normal life out there that still allows me to do work on the same issues that I used to work on, but without the sort of frenetic pace,” Kildee told NOTUS. “And, honestly, also without sort of the anger, the venom, that comes with that job.”
“Until you get away from it,” he continued, “it’s hard to fully comprehend how pervasive that is.”
To sum up his feelings now, Kildee drew on a favorite Washington analogy that he referenced throughout his tenure.
For the regular dwellers of Capitol Hill, days can be filtered into three categories: the coldly political “House of Cards” days, the comically unhinged “Veep” days and the utterly romantic “West Wing” days that make lawmakers proud to wear their member pin.
“I don’t miss the “House of Cards” days,” Kildee said. “I don’t miss the “Veep” days.”
“But I do miss those “West Wing” days,” he said.
It’s just that, Kildee said, those days, “became fewer and farther between the longer I stayed.”
—
Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS. Katherine Swartz, who is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, contributed to this report.