OP-ED: Once you’re in Congress, you stay
Congressman Guy Reschenthaler’s continued failure to visit parts of his district has one overriding explanation: In order to be elected time and again, he doesn’t have to.
The Republican Reschenthaler has occupied a seat in Congress since 2019. His district consists of Fayette, Greene, and Washington counties, most of Somerset, and a slice of Westmoreland.
Reschenthaler’s not so secret power is that he is a big fan of President Donald Trump. Look at his Instagram account. The initial photograph on the account shows him standing to the left of DJT; both men are smiling; both are giving the thumbs-up.
In the second photo, Reschenthaler is standing to the right of the president; both men are smiling; both are giving the thumbs-up.
The congressman’s postings give us some idea of the distances he travels while staying out of his district. There he is in Normandy, France, commemorating the World War II D-Day landings.
And then he is in Antartica, all bundled up against the cold.
To be fair, there is a lone image of the congressman meeting with constituents in Somerset County, and two out of character images of him in Canonsburg and Washington.
The remainder, however, were taken in and around Capital Hill. There he is with House Speaker Mike Johnson. There’s another with Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker. There’s one in his office with the office dogs.
But I digress. The point here is that Reschenthaler and most other congressman have no trouble staying put in Washington. What with gerrymandering, extreme political polarization, Republican disengagement from the cities, and Democrats’ disengagement from rural America, Congress is a secure home for most lawmakers.
Once a congressman, nearly always a congressman.
In 1999, 164 of 435 House seats were in what are called swing districts – districts decided by five or fewer percentage points in the previous election. In 2024, only 37 House districts fit this definition of things.
Sweating out general election results is a thing of the past for an overwhelming majority in Congress.
These days, members of Congress chose their voters. Voters picking their representatives from two or more viable alternatives seems a quaint relic of how politics used to work.
Elections are the beating heart of democracy. If the electoral process is broken, all is not well.
This year, things got worst, starting with Trump’s pressure on Texas Republicans to divvy up that state’s congressional seats based on the fact that he carried Texas in the 2024 presidential election.
Treating seats in Congress like a parliamentary cage match, Trump’s clawing authoritarianism further messed things up by his insistence on mid-decade redistricting. For better than a century, the parties adhered to the sensible and sane practice of redrawing congressional lines once a decade, based on the 10-year U.S. census, which accounts both for overall population and shifts of population among the states.
Challenged in Texas and elsewhere, Democrats retaliated in California and elsewhere. Soon, the Supreme Court weighed in, tossing out provisions of the ground-breaking 1965 Voting Rights Act, under the pretext that Southern racial politics were over.
Offering evidence of Jim Crow’s survival, Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves insisted that Black Democratic congressman Bennie G. Thompson’s time on Capitol Hill had come and gone. “It’s not a question of if,” the governor said. “It’s a question of when.”
There’s only one possible inference here: the Mississippi GOP is aiming for an all white congressional delegation, under the cloak of legitimate partisan wrangling. Some 40% of Mississippians are African American.
Expect the redistricting ground wars to continue at least through 2028, as the parties seek unwarranted, Trump-like advantages however and wherever they can.
Also expect Guy Reschenthaler’s continued absence from the district. Feeling secure and not needing to spend time here, he won’t. His failure to meet and greet and consult with constituents on their home turf mocks the very idea of representative government.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.