The default setting of the electorate is to punish the party in power when a gross misdeed is committed.
A couple examples:
- 2008: William Jefferson, who represented the majority black and strongly Democrat district in New Orleans was convicted of bribery and Joseph Cao, ethnic Vietnamese, was elected on the Repulican ticket. He served only one term.
- 2018: Tim Murphy, who represented a district (mine in SW Pennsylvania) so strongly GOP that he had run unopposed in the last two election cycles, was caught in a sex scandal. Since he was not a Democrat, this was not considered resume enhancement, and he resigned in disgrace. Conor Lamb, a pretty boy whose widely touted service in the U.S. Marine Corps consisted of several months in Okinawa as a military prosecutor, edged out a frumpy but competent Republican by 0.4%.
Seeing the writing on the wall, Lamb moved to a more competitive district for the next election.
In both cases, even though the disgraced incumbent was not running, the electorate punished the party of the former incumbent.