Democratic Senate Candidates Haul in Campaign Money

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Hans Nichols at Axios:

If money is momentum, Democratic Senate candidates are poised for a monumental Election Day."Oh my god, holy crap," said Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) when informed of Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico's $64 million haul in the third quarter of the year. "I mean, that's a number that's mind-blowing."

Why it matters: Republicans are awash in super PAC cash, but Democrats' advantage in hard dollars reveals a yawning enthusiasm gap — the kind of energy money can't buy.

Texas      

            James Talarico (D): $64 million
            Ken Paxton (R): $18 million

Georgia

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D): $33.1 million
Mike Collins (R): $2.8 million

Michigan   

            Abdul El-Sayed (D): $30.7 million
            Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R): $9.7 million

Ohio

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D): $23 million
Sen. Jon Husted (R): $5 million

Maine

Troy Jackson (D): $20.4 million
Sen. Susan Collins (R): $5.2 million

Alaska

Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D): $17 million
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R): $2 million

Iowa

Josh Turek (D): $12 million
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R): $3 million

North Carolina

Roy Cooper (D): $20 million
Michael Whatley (R): $2 million

Kansas 

Adam Hamilton (D): $11 million
Sen. Roger Marshall (R): $800,000

Between the lines: The figures reflect FEC filings as well as totals reported by the campaigns, some of which include money raised through affiliated joint fundraising committees.

Even accounting for those differences, Democratic Senate candidates are dramatically outraising their Republican opponents in several of the country's most competitive races

Paxton's Complaint

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections

Andrew Solender and Stef W. Kight at Axios:

Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton privately lamented the impact of the Iran war and gas prices on his campaign in a meeting last month, telling a group of donors and lobbyists, "I don't make the decisions," according to audio obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: It's a candid admission from a close Trump ally about the challenging environment Republicans face this cycle.

Paxton, the Texas attorney general, was speaking to donors and lobbyists at a closed-door fundraiser in Washington, D.C. The audio was provided to Axios by a person, granted anonymity because it was a private event, who was in the meeting and is opposed to Paxton.

President Trump is set to rally with Paxton in San Antonio on Wednesday.

Driving the news: Asked by one attendee what issues are "dragging" on his campaign, Paxton responded, "It's not tariffs. ... It's the war, it's gas prices, it's diesel," according to an audio file obtained by Axios."When it's over $6 per gallon for diesel ... people are feeling the pinch," he continued, adding that the rising cost of fuel "drives up food prices and everything else."

The Republican candidate said affordability is "by far our biggest problem" and "why we're having a hard time with numbers."

Triage

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections

Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty and Lisa Kashinsky at POLITICO:

Republicans are flooding the electoral map with a deluge of advertising to defend their House and Senate majorities. But their once-towering financial advantage is starting to show its limits.

In recent days, Republican campaign groups began to make concessions to the punishing political environment, shifting money away from races they no longer believe to be winnable and falling back to reinforce another tier of seats in solidly red states that no longer look safe.

After abandoning a GOP-held Senate seat in North Carolina — a state President Donald Trump won three times — the outside groups began spending money to defend a seat in South Carolina. And they’re intensifying their advertising in Kansas, where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in nearly a century.

In the battle for control of the House, national Republicans gave up on defending a blue-leaning seat in Nebraska held for a decade by retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon.

Those dispiriting setbacks signal that the party’s defensive position is weakening with a month still left in the campaign.

One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.

“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”

The Hits Keep Coming

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  In 2024, the book explains, the Democrats' problems involved reality, not just messaging.  Two years later, Republicans own the reality problems, including the Iran quagmire and the resulting economic pain.

JILL COLVIN and LINLEY SANDERS at AP:

Americans are deeply frustrated with President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and rising prices, with most panning his performance and blaming his policies as higher costs threaten his party’s chances in November.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of the Republican president’s handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.

A majority, 65%, of U.S. adults now blame Trump’s policies for persistently high costs more than factors outside of his control, signaling growing weariness over his aggressive use of tariffs and continued unhappiness with the war with Iran.

Hans Nichols at Axios:

Between the lines: Republicans decided against breaking for an early recess last week.The biggest thing to show for it: A historic — and bipartisan — college sports package that doesn't do much for those defending their seats in November. It faces long odds in the House.

 Otherwise it was a week of pain:

• Failed votes: A vote addressing Americans' concerns about data centers driving up energy costs failed today, as did another to curb congressional stock trades and enforce voter IDs.
• A line of attack that backfired: A major hearing with Jack Smith was overshadowed by a failed attempt by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) to link the special counsel and Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis.
• The Trump issue: Republicans have been tiptoeing around whether Trump's unpopularity will hurt the party in November, only for Texas nominee Ken Paxton to be caught blaming Trump's midterm convention for hurting his polling.
• NRSC Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said Paxton's analysis was "just wrong" and called the convention "a boost in the right direction."

Isaac Arnsdorf at WP:

Now, as dissatisfaction grows with Trump’s economic performance, questions about how he and his family profit from the presidency have taken on more bite. Some of the loudest complaints are coming from young, male crypto enthusiasts who were initially energized by candidate Trump’s embrace of the industry — and now are better equipped than the average voter to understand the ventures that earned the president $1.4 billion last year.

 ...

“What they basically did was a money grab,” said David from South Carolina, a participant in a focus group of independent and moderate 18-to-24-year-olds conducted this year for the Bulwark’s Focus Group podcast. “Why does he need to keep doing it? He’s literally a billionaire. Like, how much more money does he need?” The Washington Post is identifying participants in the focus group only by their first names in accordance with the ground rules for the session.

Six out of nine of the young men on that panel said they had heard of Trump’s memecoin. In another focus group, all eight had. The participants referenced a meme of a “Trump” playing card that cuts your portfolio by half and a viral, unverified story about a young man who lost his inheritance by betting on the Trump coin.

...

Trump won 43 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds in 2024, according to exit polls. Last month, his approval rating with voters under 30 dropped to 19 percent in a Fox News poll, which found 63 percent saying they would vote for a Democrat for Congress.

...

“I always supported Trump, and he promised that he would be the crypto president,” Pinto said. “I was under the impression that would be for bitcoin — I never thought he would launch his own token.”

“The whole thing is a rug pull,” he added, using crypto slang for a scheme where someone creates a token, hypes it up and then cashes out.

In addition to his memecoins, Trump also owns a stake, the exact size of which is undisclosed, in World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture set up by his sons alongside the sons of Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. The company offers stablecoins, marketing itself as a way around conventional banking.

Some Hill Republicans Edge Way from Trump

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Along with war and inflation, Trump's corruption is bringing down the GOP.  Some lawmakers are starting to act.

Olivia Diaz st NYT:

A Republican senator on Tuesday called for the Senate to investigate whether Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, exploited his access to his father for personal gain, spurred by reports that a Russian oligarch funded a lavish wedding after-party for the younger Mr. Trump.

In a three-page letter, Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, urged the Judiciary Committee to subpoena Donald Trump Jr., after it was revealed that a Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the festivities on an island in the Bahamas this year.

Issuing such a subpoena would be exceedingly unlikely by the Republican-led panel, and top Republicans would not say on Tuesday whether they planned to take action. But the request by Mr. Curtis marked a rare instance of a G.O.P. lawmaker daring to challenge the president.

The president has said that his son would repay the Russian businessman, Umar Kremlev, for what he called a wedding gift. But Mr. Curtis rejected that characterization.

“A toaster is a wedding gift,” the senator said in a social media post. “A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else. Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships. We should not unplug it now.”

...
The Utah Republican’s call for an inquiry came as a growing group of Republicans has become more emboldened about breaking with the president ahead of November’s elections. Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa, a Republican running for the Senate, called on Mr. Trump on Monday to end the war with Iran. That came just days after two other G.O.P. lawmakers from Iowa who are battling for re-election, Representatives Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, crossed party lines to help push through a Democratic measure directing Mr. Trump to halt the conflict.

Late conversion does not always work, however.

Mariana Alfaro at WP

In South Florida, Rep. María Elvira Salazar’s latest campaign ad seems to be all voters can talk about.

The Republican’s video, released last week, was shot in front of the White House, not in the sun-blazed streets of Miami-Dade County. Though aimed at frustrated voters, it was framed as a direct appeal to President Donald Trump.

“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar says while looking directly at the camera. She goes on to tell Trump that his advisers are giving him bad advice, and that his immigration policies are weakening Republicans’ standing with the Latino voters who helped power GOP gains in 2024.

But many Latino voters in Salazar’s district said she has misread their sentiment and that their support for Trump has not wavered. Their support for their congresswoman, however, has waned, they said — and the ad did nothing to restore their confidence.

“She’s out of line,” said Hector Rubio, a resident of Miami’s wealthy enclave of Key Biscayne. Rubio, a longtime Republican voter who supported Salazar in the past three races, said in Spanish that Trump “is doing what he can, and he could do even more.” As he watched his wife shop in the neighborhood’s busy farmers market on Saturday morning, Rubio advised Salazar to stick close to Trump.

Even those who agreed with Salazar’s message seemed to find fault in it, with many saying the lawmaker should have made her appeal to Trump earlier.

“Her blind support of Trump has me very disturbed. She’s not thinking for herself,” said Charles Parsons, 83, another Key Biscayne resident who voted for Salazar in the past but said Saturday that he will not support her this year, even though he plans to vote for other Florida Republicans on the ballot. “All she’s thinking about is her political survival, and this ad … does nothing more than exacerbate the wound for me.”

Losing Ground

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  In 2024, the book explains, the Democrats' problems involved reality, not just messaging.  Two years later, Republicans own the reality problems, including the Iran quagmire and the resulting economic pain.  Those problems will affect the midterm far more than the GOP midterm "convention."

Deena Zaidi at CNBC:

Consumer prices rose 3.4% in August from a year earlier, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Average hourly earnings, meanwhile, increased just 3.1% over the same period, according to a separate BLS report released Friday. Real average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, fell 0.1% from July and were down 0.3% from a year earlier in August.

The gap between inflation and wage growth is a stark reminder that workers are losing purchasing power.

Roger Marshall gets shouted down when he attempts to gaslight Kansans about gas prices under Trump:

"The average cost of gasoline is less under President Trump than it was under Joe Biden."#KSSen #KSLeg pic.twitter.com/4q82UozvKd

— Kelsie Taggart (@kelsientaggart) September 12, 2026

Is Trump a Secret Asset of the DSCC?

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Jonathan Martin at POLITICO:

As the traditional start of the campaign season draws near, though, Republicans are increasingly worried they may be consumed by a worsening prairie fire.

“He’s in serious trouble in farm country,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told me. “He being Trump — and Trump is us. I’m not very optimistic.”

The triple-whammy of tariffs, expensive diesel and fertilizer and now imported beef has created a crisis for agriculture-state Republicans.

...

The culprits are obvious: the exorbitant cost of living, Trump’s deep unpopularity with the political center and the massive enthusiasm gap Democrats enjoy over Republicans.

The fear, GOP officials tell me, is that these sentiments are increasingly becoming locked in with voters; that the grim political environment — caused by spiking gas prices after the ceasefire with Iran collapsed last month — is close to irreversible. Or to borrow from Haley Barbour, that sage of Mississippi: In politics, good gets better and bad gets worse.

For months, the shorthand conversation among political professionals has not been if this will be a difficult election for Republicans but whether it will be 2018 or 2006.

Which is to say: Will 2026 bring a backlash against the party in power, but one largely confined to House losses because of polarization, limiting Democratic strength in Senate races? Or will there be a greater wave that grows high enough to sweep out Republicans thought to be safe, flipping both chambers of Congress in the process?

Once Iran hostilities restarted and it became clear that there would be no Supreme Court vacancy, as there crucially was in 2018, the answer became clear. Republicans would not be able to get off defense and lacked the court fight that would hand them their best opportunity to go on offense.

 WSJ editorial: 

The November midterm elections will be in part a referendum on President Trump’s border taxes, and most polls show them losing. A new poll by Overton Insights and the Texas Public Policy Foundation finds that tariffs are unpopular in the Lone Star State, especially among Hispanics. Houston, Republicans have a tariff problem.

The survey, which was shared with us exclusively and will be released next Wednesday, shows that Texans overall disapprove of his tariffs, 54% to 46%. Texans who didn’t vote in a party primary—generally independents and folks who are less partisan—disapproved of them, 68% to 32%. Hispanics gave them the thumbs down, 69% to 31%.


The latter is especially notable because Mr. Trump won 55% of the state’s Hispanic vote in 2024, no doubt in part owing to frustration with Democrats’ handling of inflation. But Hispanics also strongly oppose the President’s blunderbuss border taxes targeting trade partners like Mexico and Canada, which raise costs for consumers and businesses.

The Texas economy is heavily exposed to tariffs because of its cross-border trade and integrated supply chains with Mexico. Texas traded $303 billion in goods with Mexico and overall exported $299 billion of manufactured products in 2025. The latter include electronics and computers ($71 billion), chemicals ($55 billion) and transportation equipment ($29 billion).

Because Texas is the largest state exporter of goods, it suffers a bigger brunt from retaliatory tariffs, such as those that Canada plans to levy on the U.S. in response to Mr. Trump’s tariff escalation. In case he hasn’t noticed, the tariffs have become an albatross for Republicans in close races across the country, including Texas.

Independent Senate Candidates

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Anna Griffin at NYT:

During his brief time in the Idaho House of Representatives, Todd Achilles often stopped to admire a photograph from the state’s 1899 legislative session, and not just because some of the turn-of-the-century hairstyles and beards were “wild,” he said.

In the photo were lawmakers from four distinct parties, along with a handful of unaffiliated candidates.

“That was a period just like now,” Mr. Achilles said. “People were fed up with the party system and looking for something different.”

Today, he’s part of an effort to bring that same kind of something different to Idaho and other parts of the West. Mr. Achilles, an unaffiliated candidate for U.S. Senate, is among a wave of independent challengers to entrenched Republican incumbents or heirs apparent in red states.

In Idaho, where unaffiliated voters outnumber Democrats 2 to 1, Mr. Achilles is the more prominent and moneyed of two independents challenging the incumbent, Jim Risch. Independents also are running for Idaho governor, both of the state’s U.S. House seats and 12 state legislative seats.

Next door in Montana, another independent, Seth Bodnar, is running for the Senate as an independent, as is Dan Osborn in Nebraska and Brian Bengs in South Dakota. Another, Bill Hill, is running for Alaska’s lone House seat. All those candidacies say a lot about the state of the Democratic Party west of the Mississippi, excluding what’s known, affectionately or not, as “the left coast” — California, Oregon and Washington.

Trump's Errors Threaten GOP Senate Seats

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

The beef issue is a classic concentrated-losers/diffuse-gainers situation.  The GOP was in a similar bind in 1986 with oil prices.

Coming soon to a Democratic attack ad near you:

TRUMP: “We'll by Argentinian beef.”

Reporters:' What about the US farmers who are suffering?'

Trump: “Argentina is fighting for its life. Do you understand me? They’re dying.”

He says this as 77 American cattle producers are going out of business in the US per day.…

— ThePatrioticBlonde™🇺🇸 (@ImBreckWorsham) August 23, 2026

Trump has restarted a trade war with Canada.  Bad economics, bad politics.

David Frum at The Atlantic:

More than 30 percent of Ohio’s exports go to Canada, and almost 40 percent of Michigan’s. Both states will this year elect a U.S. senator and fill open governor’s seats. Not only is Trump putting at risk his party’s position in purple Michigan, but suddenly the races in beet-red Ohio look in jeopardy too. These states may turn control of the Senate—and Trump’s chances of facing meaningful accountability next year for his law-breaking and corruption.

Trump’s theory of his trade war, like his theory of his Iran war, is that the bigger bully always wins. Size counts for a lot, but not for everything.

As Trump has declared over and over again, his ultimate goal in this trade war is to add Canada as a 51st state. Why? To make the United States look bigger on the map. For that goal, which excites ultra-MAGA crackpots, Trump is hazarding not only America’s most important trading relationships but very possibly every other political equity he holds, including avoiding investigations and accountability by a Democratic House and Senate after January 2027

Socialists and Primaries

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The 2026 environment is very favorable for the Democrats, but a hard leftward shift could spoil their chances.

 Aaron Blake and Eric Bradner at CNN:

The progressive effort to remake the Democratic Party triumphed in battleground Michigan on Tuesday, as former public health official Abdul El-Sayed defeated the more moderate Rep. Haley Stevens — and the party’s establishment, which had rallied behind her.

...

It’s difficult to completely isolate the Israel and AIPAC factor. And AIPAC did get a win Tuesday, having spent more than $2 million to help Missouri Rep. Wesley Bell easily fend off democratic socialist former Rep. Cori Bush.

...

A pair of democratic socialists also won key House primaries in Michigan.

Perhaps the biggest one was climate activist William Lawrence’s win in the 7th district. Lawrence prevailed after two more establishment-oriented candidates — former US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink and Navy SEAL veteran Matt Maasdam — split the rest of the vote.

 And this is a battleground general election race. That means the Sanders wing of the party now confronts major proving grounds in both the Senate race and a very important House race.

Lawrence’s campaign was heavily criticized by the Congressional Black Caucus and even House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, after the Huffington Post published Lawrence’s 2024 remarks saying that Black political leaders “defang the White left.”

CNN is also now projecting that democratic socialist state Rep. Donavan McKinney ousted Rep. Shri Thanedar in the Detroit-based 13th district.

The result might have been less about policies than racial representation — the majority-Black city had recently been without a Black representative for the first time since the 1950s — but it’s still a win for DSA.

 

Family Succession

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The sudden death of Lindsey Graham was a shock to the system.

A total of 48 women have been elected or appointed to fill congressional vacancies created by the deaths of their husbands, 8 to the U.S. Senate and 40 to the U. S. House of Representatives.

Less often, other family members have succeeded deceased lawmakers:  According to Claude:

Vetted father-son and father-daughter congressional successions, excluding edge cases

Here's a rundown, organized by relationship, of family members other than widows who directly succeeded a deceased House member or senator (via special election or gubernatorial appointment):

Sister succeeding brother: Darline Graham Nordone was appointed just this week (July 13, 2026) by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to fill the Senate seat of her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died suddenly on July 12. Graham never married or had children; McMaster's pick to serve out the remainder of his term, which runs through January 2027, is his adopted-and-raised younger sister. She's set to be the first woman to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate. CBS News 

• Sons succeeding fathers: John Dingell Jr. won a 1955 special election to succeed his father, John Dingell Sr., in Michigan's 15th District — beginning a Dingell family run in that seat that lasted decades. Wikipedia: John Dingell
• Donald Payne Jr. won a 2012 special election to succeed his father, Donald Payne Sr., in New Jersey's 10th District. Payne won the general election 56-44 percent and never faced a competitive race again. Wikipedia: Donald Payne Jr. Insideelections

Daughters succeeding fathers:

• Adelita Grijalva was elected in 2025 to succeed her father, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), after his death — though her swearing-in was delayed several weeks by Speaker Mike Johnson during a government shutdown. House.gov coverage / AP via WSB-TV WSB-TV
• Marcye Scott is currently running (special election set for July 28, 2026) to succeed her father, the late Rep. David Scott (D-GA), who died in April 2026 — not yet resolved, but worth flagging since it's live right now. WSB-TV

Daughter succeeding mother: Erica Lee Carter won a November 2024 special election to succeed her mother, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), after Jackson Lee's death from pancreatic cancer — the first (and so far only) daughter to succeed her mother in Congress. House.gov: Family Firsts U.S. House of Representatives

Platner Plotzes

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

The Guardian:

Graham Platner, the embattled Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine, has been accused of trying to influence the process of picking his replacement amid a chorus of calls for him to withdraw from the race.

Platner has publicly said he is “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward” after an allegation of sexual assault, which he denied, was published on Monday.

A wave of prominent Democrats, from the progressive senator Bernie Sanders to the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, urged him to stand aside.

The Maine election is seen as a key component of the party’s effort to regain control of the US Senate in November’s midterm elections. Platner remains in the race, for now.

A senior state Democrat declared on Tuesday evening that Platner’s campaign would have “no role” in selecting his replacement, claiming that his team had tried to sway the process.

Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic party, said: “Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the US Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.

Hans Nichols and Holly Otterbein at Axios:

Republicans are preparing to welcome a potential Graham Platner replacement in Maine's Senate race with $8 million in negative ads, aiming to introduce a new Democratic nominee to voters on their own terms before Democrats can.

Why it matters: Republicans are doing something Democrats wish they could: Move on from Platner.

The progressive candidate, who said Monday he is taking time to "reflect" on his next steps, remains officially in the race and is looking to leverage his status as the Democratic nominee to influence who could replace him.

Republicans, meanwhile, see an opening: three weeks to prepare a campaign against a Democratic nominee who will have little time to introduce themselves to voters.

Driving the news: Pine Tree Results, the super PAC backing Republican Sen. Susan Collins, raised $10.5 million during the first half of the year — matching what it raised during the same period in 2025, according to a person familiar with the matter.The group pulled its anti-Platner ads Tuesday and has $8 million in cash on hand to define a likely fresh Democratic nominee for voters during a compressed campaign.

Among the donors to the pro-Collins super PAC is Blackstone president Jon Gray, a longtime Democratic donor. He contributed $250,000 well before Politico and CNN reported sexual assault allegations against Platner.

Anti-Incumbency 2026

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Alexander Bolton at The Hill:

A sour, anti-incumbent mood is sweeping across the nation on its 250th anniversary in what political analysts say is an especially troubling sign for Republican control of the House and Senate, given President Trump’s slumping approval rating.

Rising voter anger with the status quo has hit both parties, with eight House incumbents — five Democrats and three Republicans — losing primary races this year in addition to two GOP Senate incumbents, Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.) and John Cornyn (Texas).

Republicans on Capitol Hill fear the antiestablishment mood could cost them control of the House and perhaps the Senate as well.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott (S.C.) has warned Senate GOP colleagues privately “about how bad polling is, currently, for Republicans and how bad the president is losing ground among all groups,” said a senior Republican aide.

Senate Republican Conference Chair Tom Cotton (Ark.) also shared polling with Senate Republicans at a recent lunch meeting that showed independents moving in large numbers away from the GOP and toward Democrats, according to a GOP senator who attended the presentation.

Trump v. Republicans in Congress

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional,  state, and local elections.

Trump is acting without regard for the political needs of Republicans in Congress.  An unpopular war is just part of it. Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Axios:

• The big picture: Trump has spent his second term steamrolling his own party, confident the lawmakers he humiliates will keep voting his way. You see it everywhere:He canceled the signing of a landmark bipartisan housing bill just hours before the ceremony — trying to strong-arm the Senate into passing the SAVE America Act, a sweeping voter ID bill with no realistic path to 60 (or even 50) votes.
• He dismissed the housing bill — which his own White House had called "one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history" — as "of minor importance."
• He berated the "Four Republican Losers" in the Senate who voted this week to rein in his Iran war powers, calling the rebuke "poorly timed and meaningless." (Hours after his barrage, Republicans passed a symbolic reversal.)
• He blew up a bipartisan scramble aimed at renewing the government's FISA surveillance powers, demanding the SAVE Act on voting rules be bolted on. He let the authority lapse rather than back down.
• He yanked his own intelligence nominee, Jay Clayton, from a confirmation hearing hours before it began, leaving the nation's spy agencies under an acting director both parties distrust.
• He refused to brief Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other senators on his Iran deal until after the text was finally released, leaving them to defend terms they hadn't seen.
• He blindsided senators by proposing a $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund just as they moved a $70 billion immigration package, defending Jan. 6 rioters who attacked the building where the senators work.

Midterm: Congressional and Presidential Perspectives

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Megan Messerly, Alex Gangitano and Myah Ward at POLITICO:

President Donald Trump believes he handed Republicans a winning playbook for the midterms — if only they’d follow it.

Gerrymander everywhere possible, get rid of the filibuster, fire the Senate parliamentarian and pass the SAVE America Act.


None of it is likely to happen, and the gap between what is likely and what is possible explains Trump’s frustrations with many in Congress and the anger the White House channels at operatives and pundits who say the president isn’t doing enough to help retain control of Congress.

“If everyone just follows his lead, follows the blueprints he’s laid out, and runs on the record that he has, then I think we’ll fare well,” said a senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The divide reflects irreconcilable views of political power: Trump’s ends-justify-the-means approach is colliding with the protect-the-norms posture of Republicans on the Hill and in statehouses. Unlike Trump, rank-and-file Republicans are staring down years of electoral consequences and hedging their bets on institutions they will have to operate within long after he’s gone.

And, with five months until the midterms, the president and many in his party have been left talking past one another.

...

A person familiar with Senate dynamics, granted anonymity to speak candidly, shot back that Thune’s eye is on the ball and that Trump’s focus on election integrity does more harm than good.

“Poll after poll shows that voters — the ones who decide general elections — are increasingly driven by the economy, not the SAVE America Act or arcane Senate rules, which is why John Thune has been practically begging his colleagues and the president to focus on wins like the president’s signature achievement: The One Big Beautiful Bill,” the person said. “It’s hard to turn on CSPAN2 these days without seeing Thune on the floor talking about the litany of pro-growth policies that are positively affecting American families – lower tax rates, no tax on tips and overtime, a bigger child tax credit. It’s no accident that he’s clearly trying to reset the narrative amid the litany of daily distractions.”

Schumer Redux

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Jordain Carney at POLITICO:

Chuck Schumer has served as a punching bag for angry Democrats for more than a year — taking flak on everything from his 2026 recruiting to his handling of government funding talks.

But with about five months until the midterm elections, the Senate minority leader is gently starting to punch back — pointing out how some of his bets are paying off as his party
moves within striking distance of taking back the majority in November.

“There’s no victory lap to take in June,” he said in an interview in his Capitol office suite.


But he ticked through moves he oversaw in the past year — from leading opposition to GOP safety-net cuts to picking shutdown fights over health care and immigration enforcement funding and orchestrating national intervention in several Senate primaries — that he argued have strengthened Democrats’ hand for the midterms and beyond.

“We made a lot of strategic decisions that got us to this place — it didn’t happen by accident,” Schumer said. “I knew from the beginning that if we recruited strong candidates, found paths to victory, focused on the issues the American people cared about, and forced … the Republicans, to carry Trump’s water, we’d be in much better shape, and that has happened.”

The Wounded Bear Caucus

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  For the rest of the 119th Congress, Trump's victories in Senate primaries will lead to defeats in Senate roll call votes.

Siobhan Hughes, Annie Linskey, and Natalie Andrews at WSJ:

The group of senators willing to break with Trump in his second term started with moderates Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as well as former party leader Mitch McConnell and libertarian Rand Paul, both of Kentucky. It has expanded to what some senators call the “wounded bear caucus” of colleagues forced into retirement by the president: Cornyn and Cassidy, plus Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who decided to step aside after Trump made clear he wouldn’t support him.

Cornyn is the newest member. Trump endorsed Cornyn’s primary runoff opponent, scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton, stunning colleagues and helping fuel a rout in the contest on Tuesday—the incumbent lost by more than 25 percentage points. Cornyn said he would back the nominee, and party leaders fell in line, saying they would support Paxton to preserve the party’s 53-47 majority in the Senate. But the ill will isn’t going away.

In a post on social media Friday, Cornyn related the tale of the frog and the scorpion, calling it an “old, but apt fable” and presumably a jab at Trump. (Cornyn’s office declined to comment.) The scorpion asks the frog to carry it across the river, then stings the frog and they both drown—despite the scorpion knowing that would happen. “I am sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my character,” Cornyn recounts the scorpion saying.

Cassidy, in the interview, had his own thoughts on the Texas race. Paxton, he said, “is someone who Trump probably relates to in terms of all those ethical challenges—Cornyn is not.”

Texas Day

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Trump endorsed Ken Paxton for the Senate.

Andrew Howard at Politico:

Paxton officially ousted Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP runoff by a hefty margin, after top Republicans in Washington lit $100 million on fire burning the man they now have to embrace for the incumbent they thought would be the better bet in the general election.

That rescue mission for Cornyn officially failed on Tuesday, but Trump had already sealed his fate when he endorsed Paxton last week. Now, those same Republicans who have spent months attacking the scandal-plagued Paxton are coming around. Grudgingly.

The NRSC, which backed Cornyn, scrubbed its social media and website of anti-Paxton posts.

In a statement on Tuesday, the committee led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said the state “isn’t going to elect James Talarico,” the Democratic nominee, while attacking his record. Missing from the statement, notably, was any mention of Paxton by name, as well as any formal commitment to spending on his behalf. The Sen. John Thune-aligned super PAC Senate Leadership Fund, whose affiliated nonprofit poured millions into ads for Cornyn and attacking Paxton, had made no public comments as of 12:30 a.m. Eastern, hours after the race was called.

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who has had an occasionally rocky relationship with the attorney general, congratulated Paxton on X, but his public statement on Instagram focused on the broader GOP ticket, calling for Republicans to “crush socialist Democrats’ dream of turning Texas blue” and promising that a “united Republican Party will drive victory.”

Other GOP-aligned groups are jumping right in for their nominee. The powerful Club for Growth Action immediately lent its endorsement, and one of its aligned-PACs quickly dropped an ad that repeatedly mocks Talarico as a “woke weirdo.”

And the Akin ploy is alive and well.

Ben Kamisar at NBC:

Democrat Johnny Garcia has won his party’s primary in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, NBC News projects, defeating a rival whom party leaders had condemned for antisemitic comments as Democrats look to compete in a district Republicans redrew to their benefit.

The district stretches from Austin to San Antonio, the result of Republican efforts to combine two Democratic seats into one and create a new district leaning their way. Donald Trump carried the district by about 10.5 points in 2024.

Despite that result, there are signs the district could be competitive in the general election, including $1 million in spending from an opaque outside group aimed at boosting Garcia’s opponent, sex therapist Maureen Galindo, despite the controversies dogging her. Punchbowl News reported that the super PAC, Lead Left PAC, had links to a GOP fundraising platform.

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2. Popular Information found that Lead Left is linked to Caleb Crosby, a Republican operative. Crosby is the treasurer of the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the primary super PAC of the House GOP.https://t.co/cwW6n9yUBV

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) May 27, 2026