Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada announced Friday that he will not seek reelection, bringing the total number of House Republicans stepping away from Congress this year to 30. Twenty-one Democrats have also opted not to run again, pushing the chamber toward what could be historically significant turnover heading into the midterms.
Amodei, a member of the House Appropriations Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee, has served in the House since 2011. He framed his departure as a matter of timing, not frustration.
"After 15 years of service, I believe it is the right time for Nevada and myself to pass the torch."
The announcement lands at a moment when more than 10% of House incumbents plan to leave — the highest percentage at this point in the calendar since at least the Obama administration, according to an Associated Press analysis of retirements going back to 2013.
Amodei's language was classically valedictory, Mediaite reported. He spoke of listening to Nevadans, fighting for values, and passing the torch. Nothing in his statement suggests internal conflict or disillusionment.
"Serving the people of Nevada has been the honor of my lifetime. Nobody is prouder of our Nevada Congressional District than me. Thank you for the honor. Every achievement worth doing began with listening to Nevadans and fighting for our values."
President Trump endorsed Amodei for reelection back in November on Truth Social:
"Mark Amodei has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!"
Amodei thanked him publicly on X. Whatever prompted his change of heart came after that exchange — and Amodei isn't saying what it was.
The number 30 is large enough to demand attention but too blunt an instrument to tell you much on its own. Retirements happen for dozens of reasons — age, redistricting risk, the pull of private life, frustration with governing in a razor-thin majority where every vote is a hostage negotiation. Lumping them all under one narrative is lazy.
Some departures this cycle have been more conspicuous than others. Marjorie Taylor Greene left her seat this year amid reported tensions with the party. That's a different story than a 15-year veteran from Nevada deciding the work is done.
What the number does reveal is this: the GOP's House majority, already slim, faces a serious structural challenge in the midterms. Every open seat is a seat without the incumbency advantage. Every retirement creates a primary, and every primary creates a window for Democrats to compete in districts they otherwise couldn't touch. Republicans don't have the margin to treat 30 open seats as routine housekeeping.
It's who replaces them.
Open-seat primaries are where the direction of the party actually gets decided — not in cable news debates about the soul of conservatism, but in district-level races where voters pick the person who'll cast votes on spending, immigration, and oversight for the next two years. If the GOP recruits strong candidates who can hold these seats and govern effectively, the retirements are a natural generational shift. If they don't, the retirements become a gift to Democrats who need to flip only a handful of seats to reclaim the gavel.
The conservative project in the House — DOGE-aligned spending reform, border enforcement, accountability for federal agencies — doesn't survive a Democratic majority. Every one of these 30 seats is a line that has to hold.
Twenty-one Democratic retirements deserve more attention than they're getting. The media's fixation on Republican departures treats them as evidence of a crisis while Democratic retirements barely register as news. The imbalance in coverage is revealing — not because 30 isn't a larger number than 21, but because the framing is always "Republican party in chaos" and never "Democrats fleeing a weak brand."
Both parties are bleeding incumbents. Only one party's bleeding gets treated as a symptom of dysfunction.
Amodei says he'll finish his term. Nevada's second congressional district will have an open primary. The state's political landscape — competitive but right-leaning at the congressional level — means this seat is holdable for Republicans, but not automatically.
The broader midterm picture is the one that matters. Thirty retirements don't doom a majority, but they demand a seriousness about candidate recruitment and resource allocation that leaves no room for complacency. The majority was built seat by seat. It can disappear the same way.
