Let’s stipulate that all decent people, whatever their political views, wish good health and longevity to Reps. Dwight Evans (D-PA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and David Scott (D-GA). More practically, Democrats need those three lawmakers and others who recently missed strings of votes due to health-related matters to be present and voting whenever the House is in session.
That’s due to the extraordinarily tight House majority Republicans hold. House Republicans, for the next three months or so, can afford virtually no defections. That’s a tall political order for a party divided on issues including immigration, slashing federal spending, and how to construct legislation extending President Donald Trump’s signature domestic issue during his first, nonconsecutive term, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
However, House Democrats’ chances of denying legislative wins to Republicans only work if all Democrats show up to vote against GOP bills. This highlights the House Democratic trio, who missed significant votes in 2024 due to various physical ailments and illnesses.
Republicans are about to hold a short-term 217-215 majority in the 435-member House. The 119th Congress opened with one absence, in Florida’s Pensacola-area 1st Congressional District, where former Rep. Matt Gaetz quit the House on Nov. 13, 2024, in a futile attempt to win Senate confirmation as the Trump administration’s attorney general. The deep-red seat will be filled after an April 1 special election.
There are now current or looming vacancies because Trump plucked two other GOP House members for administration posts — former Rep. Mike Waltz, of Florida’s 6th Congressional District, covering Daytona Beach to Palm Coast and inland areas; and former House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, in New York’s 21st Congressional District, encompassing the North Country and parts of the Albany area. Both seats should easily stay Republican when filled by special elections in a few months.
Until then, though, with such a small GOP majority in place, House whips of both parties will come to resemble high school hall monitors as much as elected officials. Whips, tasked by party leaders with in-advance vote-counting, must ensure all of their party members show up. Or that they don’t show up, in the rare case a House member votes against his party’s bill and legislative maneuvers, effectively helping the opposition.
A political gerontocracy
So far in the 119th Congress, much media attention has focused on House Republicans’ obligation to keep their members showing up to vote. That’s understandable because they run the show in the House, and internal GOP divisions frequently flare up, with the House Freedom Caucus proving a constant irritant and even threat to Republican leadership’s legislative plans, from the right.
Yet serial House Democratic absences also are worth keeping an eye on because, by definition, they have, at times, shrunk House Democratic ranks when their party couldn’t afford it.
Evans was the second-most absent member of Congress in 2024. Evans, 70, missed nearly 63% of votes after suffering a stroke in May. He won reelection after running unopposed in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, which covers West, Northwest, and Center City Philadelphia.
Frequent absences also recently played a role in Democrats bucking their vaunted seniority system for House committee assignments. Relatively younger members have leapfrogged their elders to claim top spots for minority-party lawmakers on House committees, known as ranking members.
Grijalva, 76, in December 2024 announced his intention to step down as ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee and was replaced by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), 60. Grijalva stepped away from his duties last spring to undergo treatment for an unspecified form of cancer. In 2024, he missed 455 votes, roughly 88% of those taken in the House that year. Grijalva, representing Arizona’s 7th Congressional District in the southwestern part of the state and western Tucson area, has said this current term will be his last.
Scott, too, reluctantly gave up a ranking member spot on the House Agriculture Committee. Scott, 79, lost an internal House Democratic fight for the position to Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), 52.
Scott’s missed House votes only spanned a couple of weeks but came at an inopportune time. That is, right after the Nov. 5 elections, when he did not immediately return to Washington while receiving treatment for his ailing back in an Atlanta-area rehabilitation facility. That was just the time of maximum internal policing among House Democrats, in the wake of the summer 2024 departure from the White House race by then-President Joe Biden, 82, due to age-related concerns. That was followed by Trump’s defeat of the replacement Democratic presidential nominee, then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
None of this is meant to single out House Democrats for opprobrium on missed votes. The most egregious case of an absentee House member emerged late in the last session of Congress, with retiring Rep. Kay Granger, a Texas Republican. The now 82-year-old was found to be living in a Fort Worth-area retirement facility while dealing with dementia-related problems.
The Dallas Express reported that the Texas congresswoman had been found at a memory care unit and assisted living home, based on a tip from a constituent. Granger’s son, Brandon Granger, told the New York Post that his mother made her own decision to move into the retirement community, though she has since shown signs of dementia over the past three months.
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News of Granger’s condition capped a year of public discontent over older political leaders clinging to power even in the face of glaring health concerns that people on both sides of the aisle believe signal a need for change.
With Trump now ensconced back in the Oval Office, House Republicans will need to make sure all their members show up to help push his legislative agenda into law. House Democrats will want to make sure all their members are there to oppose the big-ticket items. Health checks will be the norm for both sides, with party leaders stressing to rank-and-file lawmakers that perhaps for the first time since high school, their attendance is mandatory.
