Republicans lost 40 House seats in the last midterm elections. Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) was supposed to make sure it never happened again.
But on Friday, the National Republican Congressional Committee's recruitment chair shocked Capitol Hill — and especially her own party — by announcing she wouldn't run for reelection. And when asked how she thought her party's leaders would deal with it, well, Brooks told the Indianapolis Star she has "no idea what they're going to do."
When Democrats swept the House last fall, they did it with the most diverse freshman class to date. Yet barely any of that diversity has extended to the GOP, where just 15 of its 198 members are women and all but nine are white. Brooks told her party that was a big problem at an April meeting, calling on Republican leaders to "do a better job of looking like America," Roll Call reported. At that point, Brooks said she'd recruited five women candidates to run in 2020, four of whom are people of color.
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Yet when all of those recruits' names appear on 2020 ballots, Brooks' will not. She'll step down after five terms in Congress to spend more time with her friends and family, she told the Indianapolis Star, calling it a "bit of a selfish decision." But "while it may not be time for the party, it's time for me personally," Brooks continued.
Making matters worse for Republicans, Democrats had already put Brooks on their "retirement watch list" for 2020 because they think her Indianapolis suburban district could be flipped blue next year. Read more at the Indianapolis Star.
