Republicans win majority of seats in U.S. House Transcript

KPIX Anne Makovec is live in the newsroom with the details. Anne?

Yeah, President Biden just sent out a statement congratulating the Republican House leader on capturing the majority. He said he is ready to work with them to deliver results. And this was the seat that did it, Republican Mike Garcia held off Democratic challenger Christy Smith in the 27th District, that includes parts of LA and San Bernardino counties. And that gave the Republicans the magic number, 218 seats to win a narrow majority with only a handful of contests left to call. And of course that means also a loss of power for San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi. She made history back in 2007 as the first woman ever elected House Speaker, a position she later regained in 2019. Republicans now have tapped her California colleague McCarthy to take over as speaker.

Look, we have our work cut out for us. We’ve got to have a small majority, we’ve got to listen to everybody in our conference.

Well Democrats clinched the Senate by an equally slim margin with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie breaking vote. They will retain control of the chamber regardless of how things end up shaken out in the Georgia runoff next month.

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And Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell also fended off Florida’s Rick Scott to retain his Republican leadership role in the Senate. It is the first time McConnell has been challenged for that powerful post in the nearly 16 years he’s held it.

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So back to the House, CBS News projecting up to 223 seats will go red once the final races are called. Six of the nine contests are still up in the air here in California, but one of them is between two Democrats. Ryan.