ANALYSIS — Talking about death is hard, and talking about politics isn’t much easier. Tackling the two together can feel nearly impossible, but that’s a necessary conversation happening now and for the foreseeable future.
From the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg back in September 2020 to stories surrounding former President Joe Biden’s health and the deaths of three House members already this year, there’s been a disproportionate amount of attention on aging Democrats.
In fact, the eight most recent members of Congress (House and Senate) to die in office have all been Democrats, going back nearly three years. The last incumbent Republican to die was Indiana Rep. Jackie Walorski, who was killed in a car crash in August 2022. It’s been more than three years since a Republican lawmaker died of natural causes. (Alaska Rep. Don Young died in March 2022 at 88 years old.)
This year, 70-year-old Rep. Sylvester Turner of Texas died from unspecified health complications on March 5, hours after attending President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress. Arizona Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, 77, died due to complications from his lung cancer treatment on March 13. And just last week, Virginia Rep. Gerald E. Connolly died on May 21, just weeks after announcing that his esophageal cancer had returned.
It’s been an unprecedented survival streak for congressional Republicans considering “nothing is certain except death and taxes,” as Benjamin Franklin famously wrote in 1789. And yet both of those things are relevant and intertwined today.
Trump, while on Capitol Hill last week to whip up support for his “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, acknowledged that Republicans’ narrow House majority depended on GOP members staying alive.
“This man has done an incredible job as speaker,” Trump said of Louisiana’s Mike Johnson while taking questions from reporters. “We had a majority of one. We were one heart attack away from losing the House.”
The president was referring to the period from earlier this year when two Florida seats were vacant and the GOP was down to a functional majority of just one seat. Those seats were filled by special elections on April 1.
The risk of a lawmaker dying is not just that the seat could fall into the hands of the opposite party in a special election. It would also mean a missing vote in Congress until that seat is filled.
Trump and the GOP have — to put it crudely — benefited from the deaths of the three Democratic House members this year. House Republicans passed their budget reconciliation bill on May 22, the day after Connolly’s death, by a single vote, 215-214. The bill included a provision for Trump’s “no taxes on tips” campaign tagline.
Without the three Democratic vacancies, House Republicans might still be haggling over the bill. Or Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland (who voted “present”) or one of Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky or Warren Davidson of Ohio (who voted “no”) would have had to cast a vote in support, assuming Reps. Andrew Garbarino of New York and David Schwiekert of Arizona voted for the bill as well. (They both missed the vote.)
Consequences of an aging caucus
There’s a valid conversation to be had about elderly politicians staying on well past their prime. I even wrote about the potential for introducing age limits for members of Congress in a previous column.
Advanced age is a bipartisan issue, though the House Democratic Caucus skews older. A dozen voting Democratic members are 80 or older compared with just four Republicans, including Indiana Rep. Jim Baird, who will join that group next week.
In this 1789 letter that included the line about death and taxes, Franklin wrote about his own mortality: “My health continues much as it has been for some time, except that I grow thinner and weaker so that I cannot expect to hold out much longer.” He died a few months later in 1790 at the age of 84.
But it’s not just about which party has the most elderly members, because many people die before age 80. Turner passed away at 70, and there are 76 voting House members (47 Democrats and 29 Republicans) currently serving who are older than he was.
House Democrats will likely have all three of their vacancies filled by January, leaving Republicans with a narrower majority and vulnerable to it narrowing further if any of their members die or leave the chamber. After all, Republicans are likely to face a sad regression toward the mean when it comes to member deaths.
The Trump factor
Unfortunately, death is going to be a part of our political conversation beyond Capitol Hill and well into the future whenever — at some point and like everyone else — Trump dies. He is, of course, the oldest person we’ve elected president (older than Biden was in 2020) and about to turn 79 years old.
Yet an aura of immortality surrounds Trump. Whether it’s surviving a dramatic assassination attempt on the rally stage in Butler, Pa., or staying out of range of a potential shooter on his Florida golf course or beating back a serious bout with COVID-19 or even being seemingly inoculated against the negative effects of eating fast food, there’s a sense that he’ll live forever. And some believe his longevity is divinely sanctioned.
At the Republican National Convention last summer, Rev. Franklin Graham thanked God for saving Trump’s life just a few days prior, praying, “It was you and you alone who saved him.” Trump, in his second inaugural address six months later, said, “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
But no matter God’s calling or purpose for Trump’s life, he won’t live forever. And should he die in office, the news could be at a level we haven’t seen since the death of Diana, princess of Wales, nearly 30 years ago.
Depending on the circumstances, some of his supporters could turn to conspiracy theories surrounding his death and some may never believe that he’s gone, akin to the QAnon belief that John F. Kennedy Jr. (who died in a plane crash more than 25 years ago) is still alive and was attending Trump rallies.
Not only that, but the transition for Republicans to a post-Trump party is going to be complicated whenever Trump isn’t around.
It won’t be as simple as someone just taking the royal mantle and leading the party. It might feel that way if Trump dies while in office and Vice President JD Vance ascends to the presidency. But that would be a technical transfer of power, not a coronation of Vance as the next MAGA leader.
Unlike last summer when Biden dropped out of the race and campaign funds were shifted to Vice President Kamala Harris because Democrats determined that candidate account funds were already jointly hers as part of the Biden-Harris ticket, the financial situation for the GOP would be murkier.
Trump continues to help raise money for a friendly super PAC, MAGA Inc., and other aligned entities. But super PACs are “not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committees” and can’t legally coordinate with candidates, let alone be put under another candidate’s name. And it’s entirely unclear what Trump World would do when it has $750 million or more banked and Trump doesn’t seek reelection, particularly if he hasn’t anointed a successor.
Fundamentally, candidates struggle to follow the Trump blueprint because no one compares to the original. No one has arrived on the political stage with a similarly high level of name ID, credibility as a businessman and celebrity with a preestablished brand as a political outsider. And anyone who tries to emulate his style and speech patterns only looks sillier or meaner or both.
There will be a core group of Trump-first Republicans who would find themselves politically homeless without their main man. And getting on with the next chapter of the Republican Party will be difficult, whenever that time comes.
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