Dems eye House majority: Jamie Raskin poised for Judiciary gavel as Maryland races wrap up

Back to a special election edition of the LiveZone Primetime here with our chief political correspondent, Tom Fitzgerald, who was just breaking down some of the questions that have passed on the ballot, not only in Maryland, but Virginia as well. All three questions in Virginia, abortion, felon rights, and what was the third, Tom? It was benefits for all. Thank you very much. All three of those have passed. In addition to question three in Maryland, we want to take a look at some of the other House races in Maryland that you have had an eye on and then what impact that will have on the balance of power in Congress as well. All right. Well, you know, we had talked about the ballot redistricting question, right? That's successful. But, you know, the interesting thing here is that Maryland had tried to get this through just on their own. There was a big fight in the spring over this between the governor, Westmore, and his Democratic state Senate president, Bill Ferguson. Governor Moore wanted this gone through. Ferguson said, no, I think it will backfire on us. And they really, it wasn't for show. They were really going at it over this. Ultimately, they ended last year's General Assembly session without any movement on redistricting. Commer heads kind of came together. They met on this and they kind of up to agreement they would have a special session over the summer. And that's when that ballot question came to fruition and it passed very quickly in both the House of Delegates and the State Senate. But here's the thing, so you're gonna redistrict if you're the Democrats in Maryland because you wanna get rid of Andy Harris. Well, look at what happened in these races tonight. All of these Democrats were winning their seats anyway and Andy Harris, Has won his seat anyway. So even though they had this big win tonight on the redistricting question, this is not really going to take effect until the next congressional election, which is going to be in two years. And by the way, that's going to be a presidential year. So there's going to be even more. If you think this was wild. Hold on to your hats, because two years from now, this is going to be even more intense. So looking at a couple of the races tonight, just of note, April McLean Delaney, comfortably ahead of Robin Ficker tonight, the Republican in that race. Robin Ficker perennially runs for many, many races throughout Montgomery County and the greater state of Maryland. Darlene Delaney in the 6th Congressional District. Remember, she had a brutal Race for the Democratic primary against the former congressman who used to hold the seat, David Trone. McLean Delaney beat David Trone. And tonight, it looks like she's on her way to be reelected once again in Maryland's sixth congressional district. I'm going to go to the fifth. Congressional district. Now, this one's key because we're seeing, you know, really the end of an era here in the fifth congressional district in Maryland. Steny Hoyer, who was one of the lions of the Democrats in Congress, former House majority leader for the Democrats, he's announced his retirement this year. So that created a vacancy. There was a field of candidates that came out in In that primary, Adrian Biafoe, one of them, state legislator, quickly got up. Hoyer's support and endorsement, the former staffer for Hoyer. He's well on his way to a victory tonight over Chris Chaffee. And in the 8th Congressional District, this one's no real surprise. Jamie Raskin is going to win tonight over Cheryl Riley. But here's what's important about Raskin. The Democrats are on track tonight to take overwhelming control of the House of Representatives. But the way the machinery works in the House of Representatives is who holds these gavels. Who are the chair people, the chairman and the chairwomen of these congressional committees? Jamie Raskin right now is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. He is in line right now to become the next chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. That would clear the way for him to have a whole swath of influence in decision making over what the Democrats do now when they talk about accountability. And when they talk about investigations into the Trump administration, they talk about all these other things that they've been looking at. And impeachment is one of those questions that is already bubbling up. Now, you know, in the first term of Trump, they tried that before. It didn't go that well. But do they go that route again two years prior to a presidential election when it didn't go well from last time? So Jimmy Raskin is going to be a very. critical piece of that decision moving forward. All right, we'll keep an eye on that as well. In the meantime, Tom, let's move on to the balance of power in Congress. Obviously, every seat in the House up for grabs, the Senate as well. So we're looking, let's start with the House, Jim, if we can. Right now, you see Democrats 94 seats to Republicans 51 so far. Democrats didn't have to climb a big mountain tonight. What they had to do is hold on to the And win three seats. That's how close the margin has been. And that's one of the reasons how Speaker Mike Johnson has had so much difficulty corralling these Republicans, because he just did not have a lot of wiggle room. You know, especially when you had some of the Republican members openly challenging him and his leadership. So it's not been an easy speakership for Mike Johnson. And the reason is, one of the reasons is, is because the slim margin of majority that he had. The Democrats tonight are well positioned to not only win the majority of seats, but win a sizable majority. The next speaker of the House is likely not going to be dealing with a majority of three seats. So that's going to give them larger ability to push through their agenda. However, remember, you get something through the House, you get through the Senate. It's got to go up the road up to Pennsylvania Avenue to get to the White House. Tom Fitzgerald, thank you so much for lending us your expertise as always.