https://washingtonsun.com/2025-election 2025 Election en-US Thu, 27 Aug 2026 21:43:26 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/2025-election/wyoming-governor-doj-election-observers-primary Jenna Monnin Republican Gov. Mark Gordon called the observers’ conduct during last week’s primary ‘aggressive’ and ‘irregular.’ Thu, 27 Aug 2026 21:43:26 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/2025-election/wyoming-governor-doj-election-observers-primary Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said he asked the state attorney general to “start looking into” the conduct of Justice Department election observers deployed to the state for last week’s primary election.

“It sounded like the behavior of the observers was a bit aggressive,” Gordon told the state canvassing board on Wednesday, according to NBC News. “It just was irregular, and I have asked the attorney general to start looking into, you know, kind of the nature of the visits and all that sort of stuff.”

The Justice Department sent observers to Wyoming as part of a broad effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to override states’ authority to administer and monitor elections. The president has continued to allege that there has been widespread fraud in elections and has pushed to increase federal control over the voting process.

Two attorneys from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division monitored polls in Laramie County, according to a press release posted last week.

Gordon, a Republican, noted that while he did not oppose the election observers’ presence, he believes their “behavior seemed to exceed what the authority that Congress had given them was.”

Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee said the observers asked questions that were “outside the scope of federal voting rights laws,” and asked to interview voters before Lee blocked their requests.

The Republican election official also railed against the attorneys’ deployment in the county, calling it “a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections.”

The Wyoming attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment. It remains unclear whether state authorities will further investigate the issues.

The DOJ announced it was sending election monitors to Wyoming and Florida on the same day of their primaries. Gordon said state and local election officials like Lee were not aware of their arrival.

“Shortly after learning of their presence, I spoke with a DOJ official in Washington who informed me that the decision to deploy monitors to Wyoming was made on short notice, and an email had been sent to me, but it may have gone to the wrong address,” Lee said in a statement to NBC News.

Harmeet K. Dhillon, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division, has led the mobilization of federal election monitors to states across the country — sending 75 monitors across five states and over 200 polling locations this primary season.

“Election monitoring is an ongoing priority for this office,” Dhillon wrote in its announcement last week.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/2026-election/centrist-democrats-moderate-candidates-midterms-tennessee-special Alex Roarty Democrats privately say many of their potential 2026 nominees in red congressional districts have a more moderate profile than the liberal Aftyn Behn. Thu, 04 Dec 2025 10:03:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/2026-election/centrist-democrats-moderate-candidates-midterms-tennessee-special Centrist Democrats are using their party’s defeat in a special House election this week to argue the party needs to better identify and support moderate candidates, arguing that doing so is the only way Democrats can reliably win races in red districts.

Democrat Aftyn Behn’s history of controversial comments about the police — and insistence on campaigning with liberal luminaries such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — helped contribute to her 9-point defeat Tuesday in Tennessee’s deep-red 7th Congressional District, they say. It also underscores the dangers of running significantly left-of-center candidates like Behn in next year’s midterm elections.

“She’s not the model,” said Adam Jentleson, the president of Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank that promotes ideas and politics that it thinks can win in conservative areas. “She was not a good fit for the district. Left-wing candidates are good fits for left-wing districts. But it is just farcical that left-wing candidates are good fits for right-wing districts.”

Jentleson was one of many centrist party operatives to speak out publicly Wednesday, urging the party to tolerate conservative candidates in red districts even when they hold positions at odds with liberal ideology. Their argument was aimed less at Behn — whom they said ran a spirited campaign — and more toward liberal groups who touted her unabashed progressiveness and focus on economic affordability as a template for other Democrats, which they called folly.

Behn lost to Republican Matt Van Epps on Tuesday in a race that drew a surge of unexpected national attention in its final weeks, after the Democratic nominee appeared to be gaining support despite the district’s conservative lean (Donald Trump won it by 22 percentage points last year).

Behn’s single-digit margin of victory was widely understood as a warning sign for Republicans ahead of next year’s midterms, but some centrist Democrats nevertheless argued that her strongly liberal profile, coupled with prior support for specific measures such as defunding the police, ultimately cost her votes.

The concern over Behn’s candidacy is the latest twist in an ongoing debate within the Democratic Party about how it can rebuild itself after Trump’s presidential victory last year, which left the party in a state of despair and uncertainty. The debate was further energized last month, when Democrats sparred over the meaning of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race while two more moderate members of the party, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, won a pair of gubernatorial contests.
Zohran Mamdani (5491x3661, AR: 1.50)Republicans currently hold the majority in the House, with 219 seats compared to Democrats’ 213.

To win back a majority in 2026, moderate Democratic leaders have said the party must temper its policy agenda, especially on cultural issues, to regain a foothold in areas where Democrats had lost ground to Republicans during the past decade.

Liberals have countered that people pushed to financial strain because of rising prices are desperate for bolder solutions that defy the political status quo.

Some liberal leaders and Democratic strategists rallied to Behn’s defense Wednesday, saying she still overperformed the previous Democratic presidential ticket and correctly focused on animating progressive voters in a special election, which traditionally have low turnouts.

“Running 13 points ahead of Kamala Harris a year later in a district that no one thought we could win or compete in is still a tremendous outcome,” said Ravi Mangla, a spokesperson for the liberal Working Families Party.

An official with Behn’s campaign also pushed back on the criticism, saying that they were frustrated Democrats were busy infighting after what should be considered a successful result, given the district’s rightward lean.

“Some prefer to operate at a theoretical level, providing armchair critiques of fellow Democrats rather than focusing on beating the GOP in the real world with actual candidates who can win primaries,” said the official, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the campaign’s behalf.

A state representative, Behn heavily campaigned on cost-of-living issues, featuring them across TV ads and on the campaign trail.

But Republicans countered with a campaign that focused on Behn’s past support for defunding the police, saying it proved she was a radical and out of touch with the vast majority of voters in the 7th District, which stretches between Tennessee’s state lines with Kentucky and Alabama and includes some Nashville suburbs.

Centrist Democrats agree that focusing on affordability issues is politically wise, said Pat Dennis, the president of the Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. But they also think candidates must culturally align with their districts — in a way they said Behn didn’t, despite her populist economic message.

“There’s a hope on the part of many in the more progressive wing that you can just bypass a lot of this with economic populism alone,” Dennis said. “And while I think economic populism can be quite helpful, it is just not enough to swamp all the cultural signifiers that matter in these races.”

The need for cultural alignment, especially on issues such as policing or gun rights, is essential in red districts and states, he added, because campaigns that focus heavily on progressive turnout will soon hit a ceiling with their performance. Successful candidates need to persuade voters, even some Republicans, to back them.

“The math isn’t there,” Dennis said. “You aren’t inventing new voters out of thin air.”

Some Democratic strategists quietly say that many of the party’s other potential nominees in red-district House races next year are more moderate than Behn. In the neighboring 5th District of Tennessee, for example, Democrats are lining up to support Chaz Molder, mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, who party strategists think has the moderate profile necessary to win the Republican-heavy area.

“If you look at the primaries in deeper red districts across the country, the candidates are very different from Aftyn,” said one Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “While their specific policies may fall throughout a range, they’re focused on lowering costs and not on defunding the police. They want to keep prices down and keep communities safe.”

Behn narrowly won a four-way Democratic primary in October to become the party’s nominee, lifted in part by endorsements from progressive groups such as Indivisible Tennessee. Progressives like Mangla, the spokesperson for the Working Families Party, say that if more moderate members of the party were unhappy with Behn as the nominee, they should have recruited and backed their own candidate.

Some centrist Democratic leaders said that criticism has merit.

“Centrists need to own this,” said Liam Kerr, a co-founder of WelcomePAC, a group that seeks to bolster moderate Democrats. “Just because Aftyn Behn and AOC are wrong about how to win red districts doesn’t mean that it is their fault. It is the centrists’ fault for not getting our act together in the primary.”

Kerr said his group avoided the 7th District primary but would closely consider involvement in the party’s primaries next year.

“We are looking more at primaries and will likely get involved in several where there is a big difference between candidates,” he said.

Jentleson said he didn’t think that a more centrist candidate would have won the 7th District race, given the eventual 9-point margin. But the party, he added, needs to field the most competitive candidates that it can in as many seats as it can.

“You should be putting pieces on the board that give you the best possible chance of winning the most seats you can,” Jentleson said. “It’s really that simple.”]]> https://washingtonsun.com/2026-election/red-state-democrats-dccc-nrcc-tennessee Oriana González The DCCC is already trying to go on the offense in districts they’ve previously ignored. Tue, 02 Dec 2025 10:08:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/2026-election/red-state-democrats-dccc-nrcc-tennessee Tuesday night’s special election in Tennessee’s red 7th Congressional District could give Democrats clues as to where the 2026 midterms are heading, but they’re not waiting for results to get their hopes up about races in competitive areas.

“Democrats have been over-performing the 2024 Trump numbers since the very beginning of his presidency, starting in late January in Iowa, where we flipped a district that Donald Trump had just won,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told NOTUS, referring to the Iowa state Senate seat that Democrats won earlier this year.

The Democrat in Tennessee, state Rep. Aftyn Behn, is expected to lose to Republican Matt Van Epps in the race to replace former Rep. Mark Green, who resigned from Congress in July. But, the race also appears to be closer than Republicans would like, given that Trump won the district by 22 percentage points. (Republicans notoriously don’t win by high margins in special elections.)

And in November, Democrats won two competitive governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey; maintained control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court; won two nonfederal statewide seats in Georgia for the first time in nearly 20 years; and broke Republicans’ supermajority in the Mississippi State Senate.

Those developments are giving Democrats some confidence that heading into 2026, they’ll be able to regain some power in Trump’s Washington.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats’ campaign arm, is making more offensive investments in districts they’ve ignored in recent cycles. Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, for example, once a Democratic stronghold within Tennessee, moved rightward during the state’s last redistricting process but now the DCCC sees an opening and is targeting incumbent Rep. Andy Ogles.

Ogles outperformed Trump in the district in 2024, winning by around 18 percentage points, compared to Trump's 11-point margin. But the congressman has been plagued with controversy, including an ongoing investigation into his campaign finances.

“Andy Ogles has been a do-nothing congressman,” said the mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, Chaz Molder, who is the leading Democratic candidate running to unseat Ogles.

Molder, a rare elected Democrat in a red area, outraised Ogles in the third quarter — $790,000 versus $61,000. At the end of that quarter, Molder had $764,000 in cash at hand, compared to Ogles’ $58,000, according to recent campaign finance data.

One GOP strategist who works on House races, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told NOTUS there is “very serious concern” among Republicans about how seriously Ogles is taking his reelection campaign.

“I mean, he’s raising like no money,” the strategist told NOTUS. “You can’t just lie around and do nothing. That’s how you lose any race — primary or general.” (Ogles also has a primary challenger, Charlie Hatcher, who announced his candidacy in mid-October).

Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, House Republicans’ campaign arm, told NOTUS he was unaware of Ogles’ low fundraising numbers. When asked what the minimum amount candidates should raise for an election was, Hudson said “it varies depending on their TV market and what kind of race they might have.”

“But obviously, the more money you have in your campaign account, the stronger you are, the more opportunity you have to communicate with the voters,” Hudson continued. “You might have raised a red flag for me.”

Molder said he was able to outraise Ogles because of “the fact that we are running on the issues that people are paying attention to, and we are running on issues … of affordability, of health care, supporting the farmers, building a coalition of support from donors who are traditional Democratic donors, but also donors who either have never contributed ever before.”

Ogles told NOTUS that he takes “every opponent seriously, that’s why I’ve outperformed the numbers both in my primaries and in my generals.”

When asked about Molder’s candidacy, Ogles said that The Daily Herald, a local newspaper in Columbia, had named him “best elected official” and “best mayor” over Molder in different years and that he will “beat him a third time.” (NOTUS could not confirm that Ogles received those titles, and The Daily Herald did not respond to requests for comment.)

Mike Marinella, an NRCC spokesperson, told NOTUS in a statement that “Democrats can daydream about ‘expanding’ the House map all they want, but reality keeps smacking them in the face.”

“Their party is splintered, their messy primaries are a socialist free-for-all, and voters are consistently reminded that the Democrat Party is on the wrong side of every single issue,” Marinella continued.

Democrats’ favorability remains very low at around 34% nationally, according to a RealClearPolling average. But Trump isn’t faring much better. A November Reuters/Ipsos poll found that Trump’s approval rating fell to 38%, the lowest since the start of his second term. In 2024, Trump ran on lowering prices, and the same poll found that just 26% of respondents believed he’s doing a good job handling the cost of living.

Trump’s vulnerability on the economy — and November’s elections — pushed Democrats to hyperfocus on affordability as the answer to their political woes.

In 2025, “What we saw is voters who are willing to vote for the people they think were most focused on helping them get through tomorrow and next week,” Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said at the first “Crooked Con” in Washington, a convention hosted by the popular podcast “Pod Save America.”

“When you look at that 2024 election, Donald Trump made those promises, and then he did the exact opposite. His tariffs are making everything more expensive, that new home, those groceries,” Beshear, who was nicknamed “the Democratic Party’s red state sweetheart” at Crooked Con, continued. “So when you look at that flip of Trump voters, it's both that our candidates were more focused on where people are right now — I'm trying to make their lives a little bit easier and a little bit better — and Donald Trump has betrayed them with the way he's governed this last year.”

Beshear said that in 2024, “the strategy near the end for Democrats was, ‘We've got to do 84% with this group and 76% with this group and 65% with that group,’” which he said was a mistake. In 2026, the governor continued, Democrats need to “fight for every single vote in every single area.”

Local elections emerged as some of Democrats’ favorite indicators of future races.

In upstate New York, the Dutchess County Legislature flipped from a Republican majority to a Democratic one for the first time in nearly two decades. A Rockland County legislator, Beth Davidson, one of multiple Democrats running against GOP Rep. Mike Lawler, told NOTUS the flip represents “a massive backlash to Mike Lawler. (Dutchess County has cities in both Lawler’s and Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan’s districts.)

“If I’m him looking at those results, I’m feeling anxious about next year,” Davidson continued. In response to questions about the Legislature flip and Davidson’s comments, Lawler said, “She might want to focus on her primary first … She can’t win,” and added that he would win the portion of Dutchess County within his district.

Some Democrats serving in red states warn that the party should not get too cocky about their 2025 wins.

“I do think, 2025, you have to take it for what it's worth, right? You got to look at the results of what happened there in those states and in those races, learn some lessons, but you can't draw broad conclusions that's going to be reflective of what's going to happen in 2026,” Rep. Shomari Figures, a Democrat from Alabama, told NOTUS.

“We still got to get out there. Still got to run the races. We still got to have that good messaging. We still got to have good candidates,” Figures continued. “More important than anything else, you got to listen to the people on the ground and speak to them.”
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/pennsylvania/democrats-board-elections Avani Kalra Democrats are arguing that little-noticed school board elections in Pennsylvania and other states could indicate that voters are ready to separate national politics from local races. Wed, 19 Nov 2025 18:31:19 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/pennsylvania/democrats-board-elections Central Bucks School District in Pennsylvania was once considered the epicenter of the classroom culture wars. In recent years, it banned books, prohibited pride flags in classrooms and implemented a gender identification process that required teachers to only use names and pronouns listed in official school databases, even if a student requested otherwise.

But in little-noticed school board elections earlier this month, voters rebuked those decisions by electing four Democrat-endorsed candidates and, in the process, cemented a 9-0 liberal majority on the board. While Democrats previously held the majority, the gains for full control of the board showed a vote of confidence from constituents.

Central Bucks, located in a county that elected Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and won by President Donald Trump in 2024, was part of a larger Democratic sweep of school board elections across the country this November. In states like Kansas, Idaho, Colorado and Texas where issues around transgender student athletes and banned books dominated the past few election cycles, some Democrats were able to pull off longshot bids. 

Democrats hope to hold onto those gains and reverse policies implemented by conservative-majority school boards over the past five years.

“You’ve never had the wholesale flip of a school board like this, in one of the most conservative areas in central Pennsylvania,” said Malcolm Kenyatta, vice chair at the Democratic National Committee and a Pennsylvania state representative.

“[The results] speak to Democrats’ commitments that our school boards should not be political battlefields,” Kenyatta said. “Winning campaigns are those that focus on answering that question of how we make people’s lives better.”

These results, Kenyatta and other Democrats argue, show voters want to move past ideological questions and focus on issues like affordability even further down the ballot.

Mekkai Williams, who won his bid for a Hempfield school board seat southwest of Central Bucks in Pennsylvania earlier this month, said voters in his district were concerned about the cost of living this election cycle. Williams ran on implementing full-day kindergarten in an area where parents are struggling to pay for childcare.

Williams was endorsed by the DNC and ran in Lancaster County, where Trump earned 57.5% of the vote in 2024.

“Childcare is extremely expensive now, and it shouldn’t be on the family to have to choose between sending their child to school or trying to figure out how to pay the bills,” Williams said.

Williams added that Hempfield was the first school district in Pennsylvania to require that students play on sports teams aligned with their sex at birth, an issue that Republican-endorsed candidates continued to run on. Voters in Hempsfield were looking for something new, he said.

“The entire Republican slate’s platform was that they were going to protect girls competing in girls sports,” Williams said. “They didn’t talk about supporting students. They didn't talk about supporting teachers. They didn’t run on a vision like we did.”

Ameshia Cross, the communications director at education advocacy organization EdTrust, said Democrats should continue to capitalize on the attention that culture war issues brought to school board elections to mobilize voters in future races.

“What we have seen over the past few years is a hyper focused communications and narrative strategy around the importance of school board elections,” Cross said. “We have seen advancements in people locally showing up to these elections who normally would not.”

Still, Republicans from the state said that this year’s school board elections were nothing to worry about. Fitzpatrick, whose district includes Central Bucks, said he was not expecting to see Republican wins.

“This is the cyclical nature of politics,” Fitzpatrick said. “Anytime there’s an overreach, the pendulum swings back in the other direction. That has and always will be the case.”

Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Bresnahan said low turnout in an off-cycle election year affected school board election results across the state. But he added that Republicans need to get on the same page when it comes to future elections.

“Affordability, and economic impacts and the kitchen table issues is something that we have been fighting for,” Bresnahan said. “But there needs to be a unified front here with real conversations about affordability.”

The Republican Party of Pennsylvania did not respond to an interview request from NOTUS on school board elections.

But its chair acknowledged in a broader statement immediately after the elections that they were “tough” and “not what we wanted.”

“We will examine what we did right, what we did wrong, and where we can do better. Today is the first day of the 2026 election and we have work to do,” Chair Greg Rothman said in a statement on Nov. 5.

Some observers said that the results may indicate a crack in how nationalized local races have become in recent years.

Chris Bonneau, a treasurer at Together for PR, which ran a slate of four Democrat-endorsed candidates in the Pine Richland area, located in Blue Allegheny County, said Republicans’ assessment should include a reconsideration of culture war issues and their salience with voters.

While Bonneau said school boards have been hot-button issues for voters since 2020, candidates in his area ran successful campaigns on fiscal responsibility. He expects to see ideological debates in schools settle down over the next few years.

“Maybe things will get back to boring, back to school board meetings being an hour long,” Bonneau said. “Some of this culture war stuff, it’ll settle down a bit and we can get back to these elections that really shouldn’t be partisan.”

—
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that President Donald Trump won Bucks County in 2024.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/2025-election/tennessee-special-election-aftyn-behn-matt-van-epps Torrence Banks, Alex Roarty Democrats are expected to lose. But by how much? Fri, 14 Nov 2025 10:32:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/2025-election/tennessee-special-election-aftyn-behn-matt-van-epps Just about everyone agrees Republicans will win a special House election in a deep-red Tennessee district next month. Both parties are watching the race closely anyway.

Less than a month after Democrats swept to big victories in November’s races, a special election in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District will offer another chance to gauge the national political climate, testing whether Democrats can continue their political momentum in a federal contest dominated by conservative voters.

The race — triggered in June by former Republican Rep. Mark Green’s sudden decision to leave office — pits Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn against Republican Matt Van Epps in the sprawling 7th District, which includes a slice of Nashville and a large swath of rural Tennessee.

President Donald Trump won the district by 22 percentage points last year, but there are some indications Democrats could fare better. Cook Political Report changed its rating of the district from “solid” to “likely Republican” on Thursday. How close Democrats get in the special election could say a lot about the momentum they have ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

“We saw what happened last week in America: All across the United States, Democratic energy is up. People are tired of what's going on right now in Washington,” Rachel Campbell, the chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, told NOTUS. “Aftyn Behn gives us an opportunity to send a fresh face, a fresh voice and a fighter to Congress, and that's what we're excited about and what we're looking forward to.”

Other Democrats are more skeptical of Behn’s chances, questioning whether a lawmaker with an activist background — Behn touts her unabashedly liberal views — fits the conservative area she’s now trying to represent.

In an interview, Behn said her candidacy could serve as a template for other House candidates running in conservative areas.

“If we are able to get close or flip it, I think it is a testament to how the Democratic playbook will be rewritten in the South, which is one of running on affordability issues and not responding to the cultural issues that the right is weaponizing,” Behn said.

Nashville, once a Democratic stronghold within Tennessee, was split during the state’s last redistricting process in 2022 so that the city would go from being in one safe Democratic seat to three heavily Republican districts.

Republicans are confident that their candidate can avoid a long-shot upset. Van Epps served in the Tennessee National Guard for eight years and has a decade of active-duty service. He emerged as the clear winner from a crowded Republican primary and has the backing of President Donald Trump, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan and Green, whom he would be replacing.

Trump joined Van Epps for a tele-rally Thursday evening. On the call, Trump encouraged his supporters to “get out and vote,” adding that “bad things can happen if you don't.” Van Epps conveyed the “stakes” of the election: “If we lose this seat, we could very well lose our country to radicals like my opponent.”

Van Epps’ campaign said they expect him to prevail.

"While Democrat Aftyn Behn supports a higher tax and anti-law enforcement agenda, Matt Van Epps is focused on listening to voters and tackling what matters: lowering costs, keeping families safe, and supporting President Trump,” a spokesman for the campaign said in a statement. “Tennesseans want a fighter, and that’s exactly why they’ll send Matt to Congress in December.”

Still, Republicans emphasize that Van Epps is running a competitive campaign — one cognizant that special elections are traditionally low-turnout races, a dynamic that in recent years has benefitted Democrats. Next month’s election might have especially low voter participation: It will take place the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, which could hinder early-voting efforts and distract voters who might’ve otherwise turned out for the race.

Democrats say Behn has run a campaign designed to boost Democratic turnout, enlisting the aid of liberal favorites like Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas and emphasizing issues like releasing all Justice Department files related to the infamous sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, campaigned with Behn last weekend.

“Democrats are competing, overperforming, and winning everywhere this year, and the DNC is all-in to support Behn’s campaign from now until election day,” Martin said in a statement.

Behn has been a member of the Tennessee House since 2023, and narrowly edged out Nashville businessman Darden Copeland in this year’s Democratic U.S. House primary. She’s a noted community organizer, who served as the campaign director for the progressive advocacy group Rural Organizing. Behn also served as a statewide organizer for Indivisible. She also caught local attention after being forcibly removed from the state House for advocating for the ouster of a lawmaker accused of sexual assault.

Former Rep. Jim Cooper, who represented Nashville for 20 years but retired from Congress after the district was redrawn, told NOTUS that last week's results in Virginia and New Jersey were hopeful. But he predicted Behn would have a challenge with rural voters.

“The gerrymandering of Nashville put the political center of the 7th Congressional District outside of Nashville,” he said. “So you have to be good at representing that political center. I'm well aware of the rural–urban tensions, which should not exist, but they do exist. And how do you bridge those tensions?”

Hendrell Remus, the former chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, told NOTUS that he sees Behn as the “underdog,” but Democratic turnout could be high.

Remus said that “optics-wise,” the race might appear to be a signal ahead of the 2026 midterms, though he cautioned against using the election as a predictor of the future if Behn wins.

“I think it will just be one of those moments where Republicans were not able to galvanize the folks in the district that was 100% shaped for them,” he said. “I mean, it's a district that was cut perfectly for them to be able to come to victory. And I don't think it'll send any major message about midterms.”

This article has been updated to correct that Martin appeared with Behn last weekend.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/democrats/young-democratic-socialists-america-trump-mamdani Avani Kalra, Adora Brown Its leaders argue they provide a solution to the Democratic Party's need for "new voices." Wed, 12 Nov 2025 10:13:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/democrats/young-democratic-socialists-america-trump-mamdani The Young Democratic Socialists of America, or YDSA — a campus organization of activists who support progressive candidates across the U.S. — has exploded in membership in recent months, according to students who run some of its chapters.

They attribute the growth to the reelection of President Donald Trump and the success of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist.

Interest in the Democratic Socialists of America, YDSA’s parent organization, has climbed steadily since Trump was elected for the first time and since Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was DSA-endorsed during his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, ran for president. The YDSA organization has grown from a dozen or so chapters in 2016 to more than 130 college chapters today.

Now its members argue that interest in their organization, which registers young voters and canvasses and campaigns for socialist candidates, means Democrats should be looking to tap into YDSA’s energy, as the party looks to the future and reckons with its leadership vacuum.

“The Democratic Party has been at best underwhelming nationwide,” said Malik Steward, the treasurer of Georgia State University’s YDSA. “That has resulted in people realizing there has to be some form of change. Especially for the Democratic Party, there has to be new voices.”

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Young people are a crucial voting bloc for Democrats. CNN exit polls from last week’s elections found that 70% of voters ages 18 to 29 went for Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, while 69% went for Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey; 75% percent of New York City’s young electorate voted for Mamdani.

YDSA leaders are making the case that they’re part of a demographic that can fundamentally change election results. Look no further than Mamdani’s race, they say, at how he successfully changed not only voter turnout but the election’s voter base.

The day Mamdani, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, won the New York City mayoral election, the Democratic Socialists of America gained 5,000 members, according to a YDSA co-chair, Sara Almosawi.

“We’ve seen that young people change politics in such monumental ways in history,” Almosawi told NOTUS. Mamdani “aligned with the politics of a generation that has grown up throughout the financial crisis in 2008, the Iraq War, Trump and a genocide where we had students — our friends — being deported throughout all of this.”

But it isn’t just Mamdani who Almosawi thinks is responsible for the new interest in socialism. Almosawi attributes YDSA’s membership increases to the organization’s national “sanctuary campus” campaign, which pushes university administrators to increase protections for undocumented students. And, Almosawi says, students joined as a response to the violent treatment of college students who participated in pro-Palestinian campus encampments.

Those are issues that are especially salient under the second Trump administration, which cracked down on universities that had pro-Palestinian campus encampments, deported some protesters who were on student visas and conducted immigration arrests on college campuses.

“When Trump got elected, the club membership grew,” said Vito Abromaitis, the chair of the YDSA at Harper College in Illinois. “Indirectly, Trump has been causing liberals here to go further left.”

The Harper College chapter was founded three years ago, and once served primarily as a social space for its three consistent members. Abromaitis said that changed when Trump took office in January, when many students became interested in pushing back on his conservative policies. Now the chapter has more than 20 regular members.

Evan Caldwell, a national YDSA organizer, says membership at chapters across the country has increased by 47% since November 2024. The net increase comes to 833 new members, though another 754 more joined who have since graduated. These numbers only represent the members who pay dues, but Caldwell told NOTUS in an email that there are even more participants who volunteer.

In addition to pushing back on Trump, the groups also frequently lament about the state of the Democratic Party. Abromaitis said that of the students who joined Harper College’s YDSA in the past year, almost all of them were disappointed with Democrats and their decision to run former President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024.

The Democratic National Committee did not comment on the role of the youth vote on the 2025 elections.

YDSA is not the only growing movement for Democrats disenamored with the party. Tobin Stone, the deputy director of the Center for New Liberalism — a center-left effort that promotes moderate policies — said his group is also seeing an influx of new members.

The Center for New Liberalism started to see an uptick in young people joining last November, Stone said. Students founded chapters at schools in red and purple areas, including at the University of Alabama and the University of Arizona this year.

“There’s a lot of young people who are tired of the far left on campus, but want to find something outside of the typical Democratic establishment,” Stone said. “We know from plenty of polling that the average person in the country does not agree with [democratic socialist] ideas.”

Students at Florida State University founded a chapter of YDSA last year, but did not receive an official charter until the fall. Mamdani’s election has been a rallying point for the organization. Nieve Conroy, a co-chair of Florida State University’s YDSA chapter, said it’s “amazing” to have a well-known reference for the club’s philosophy.

“We’re all in this together, and this will only grow,” Conroy said. “The membership we have right now is so much more than I ever expected. And with the New York election, I genuinely think that our groups could make a national change.”
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/2025-election/anti-transgender-attacks-republicans-virginia-new-jersey Oriana González Republicans had a host of different reasons why the ads didn’t work this time, but there are no plans to stop using the issue next cycle. Democrats say they’re ready. Fri, 07 Nov 2025 10:15:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/2025-election/anti-transgender-attacks-republicans-virginia-new-jersey Republicans went all in on anti-trans messaging for the 2025 election, inspired by President Donald Trump’s effective “Kamala is for they/them” ad.

It didn’t work — and now Republicans are trying to figure out why, and who is to blame.

In Virginia and in New Jersey, both Winsome Earle-Sears and Jack Ciattarelli made trans issues a key part of their campaigns, only to be defeated by their Democratic opponents, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill.

For some, the problem was not the issue itself but the candidates that were delivering the message. Sean Spicer, former chief strategist for the Republican National Committee and White House press secretary, told NOTUS over text that anti-trans messaging is “probably 80/20” — meaning he believes most people support the Republican position. But ”that was not the issue” in the races, Spicer said.

“Candidates matter, campaigns matter,” he added. “The Republicans need to be reminded.”

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James Blair, a White House deputy chief of staff and former political director of Trump’s 2024 campaign, however, told Politico that it was both gubernatorial candidates, particularly Earles-Sears, misreading voters’ priorities.

“Over half of Winsome Sears’ ads talked about transgender. And it’s not even the top five issues, according to voters,” Blair said.

Terry Schilling, president of the conservative American Principles Project, which spent $2.5 million in New Jersey and Virginia “to expose radical Democrats’ support for gender insanity,” told NOTUS that the issue was the states in play:

“Let’s be clear — Virginia, New Jersey and New York are solid blue territories. There were no surprises Tuesday night.”

APP is still compiling data on the impact of the ads they put out in each race, but Schilling said that plans to run ads against Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia and Roy Cooper in North Carolina are still on.

“Both Spanberger and Sherrill spent most of their campaign dodging the issue entirely. I truly hope Democrats refuse to learn the lesson about transgender extremism because it will lead to Republicans expanding our majorities in 2026,” Schilling continued.

A post-election memo obtained by NOTUS from the Democratic public affairs firm Global Strategy Group found that “anti-trans ads, like most attack ads, can have an impact in the absence of a response, depressing Democratic support by 3–4 points.” The memo added that Republicans anti-trans messaging can “compound existing frustrations voters have about the Democratic Party and exacerbate anxieties that have to do with much more than issues surrounding transgender rights.”

“However, when candidates inoculate early and respond directly, they recover those points and sometimes gain additional margin by demonstrating their values and strength,” the memo continued.

In response to Earle-Sears’ ads claiming Spanberger “voted to allow men in girls’ sports, bathrooms and locker rooms” and that she is “for they/them not for us,” Spanberger released an ad titled “Mom.” Spanberger started the ad by saying she was a “mom to three girls in public school.”

“As a law enforcement officer, I went after child predators, so it really angers me to hear these lies about who I am,” the former House lawmaker said in the ad. “I believe we need to get politics out of our schools, and trust parents and local communities. As a mom and as your governor, I will be focused on making our schools the best in the nation.”

Similarly, Sherrill’s allies released ads saying Ciattarelli “protected predators and sex offenders — not your kids.”

The GSG memo found that voters in focus groups saw Spanberger as “tough but fair” and “focused on real issues,” and Sherrill as “a parent who gets it,” crediting her for talking about kids’ well-being instead of “niche topics.”

A CNN exit poll found that 50% of voters in Virginia found that “support for trans rights in society” had “gone too far,” but 23% of those ended up voting for Spanberger. In New Jersey, 45% said they thought “support for trans rights in society” had “gone too far,” with 17% of those respondents voting for Sherrill.

Democrats had broadly avoided trans issues after the 2024 election, claiming they were caught flat-footed by Republicans’ focus on the issues during last year’s presidential race. But Tuesday’s wins, Democrats say, gave them a blueprint on how to handle these attacks as they prepare for next year’s midterm elections.

Rep. Sarah McBride, who has been leading Democrats on how to respond to anti-trans efforts both publicly and privately, told reporters in a press call with the Human Rights Campaign that “one of the mistakes we too often saw in 2024 was that candidates didn't respond in, really, any way to these attacks.”

“What we saw, especially in Virginia, is that Gov.-elect Spanberger, she was ready. She put money behind a response ad that demonstrated her bonafides and her commitment to safety for all children in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that ad helped to neutralize the barrage of ads from Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears,” McBride continued.

“That is a lesson for all of us moving forward: We cannot stick our heads in the sand and try to ignore these attacks,” she added.

Though as effective as it was for Spanberger and Sherrill, their approach may be hard to duplicate. Adrienne Kimmell, a messaging strategist familiar with GSG’s research, told NOTUS that the two gubernatorial candidates “by complete coincidence, are in some ways a similar profile: mom, law enforcement background, woman.”

Will the message “be effective with a male candidate? We haven't been able to really experiment with that,” Kimmell continued.

The clear conclusion, Kimmell said, was that Democrats "have to respond” and “people need to see and hear that response. It can't just be someone whispering to someone else. It has to be heard by the voters who are also being exposed to these attacks.”

Imara Jones, a prominent trans activist and CEO of TransLash Media, a media organization focused on covering trans people, told NOTUS that the way Republicans deployed anti-trans messaging seemed like they were just “trying to throw something at the wall.”

The purpose of Trump’s “they/them” ad, for example, was to isolate former Vice President Kamala Harris, Jones said. It highlighted her support for gender-affirming care for trans inmates to suggest she was not focused on issues that mattered more to voters. (A 2024 exit survey from the Democratic pollster Blueprint found that the top three reasons voters opposed Harris were high inflation, undocumented migrants crossing the border and “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.”)

“What happened in 2024 is the trans messaging was actually part of a strategy that they had to reach a certain group of voters that they were trying to motivate to vote,” Jones said. “If their (Republicans’) lesson from 2024 is that this is just something that you can use to deploy and it'll pull you out of tight races, I don't really think that that's the right lesson.”

But even as the anti-trans ads failed to deliver the wins that Republicans expected Tuesday, Jones said she sees the strategy returning in 2026: “They're going to lean into it next year, it's among the more popular policies that they’ve pushed. That's a sign of the way in which everything else is so terribly unpopular,” she said.

But Democrats, at least for now, are rejoicing that they seemingly found a way to get through the attacks.

“Here's what Republicans did,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters when asked by NOTUS how House Democratic leadership was advising candidates on how to handle that issue, “they spent 10s of millions of dollars trying to weaponize the transgender issue. It failed.”

That playbook, Jeffries continued, “spectacularly failed because Democrats are staying focused on the issues.”
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/2025-election/republicans-non-white-trump-voters Christa Dutton, Shifra Dayak Strategists say that Republicans haven’t lost voters of color for good but must deliver on economic policies in 2026. Thu, 06 Nov 2025 22:23:16 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/2025-election/republicans-non-white-trump-voters Republicans failed this week to maintain the inroads with Black and Hispanic voters that helped deliver Donald Trump the presidency and hand Republicans a majority in the House and Senate.

Democrats’ wins in New Jersey and Virginia should be a “wake up call for the administration” on how they’re reaching Hispanic voters, said Abraham Enriquez, board chair of Bienvenido, a conservative Hispanic advocacy group.

In New Jersey, governor-elect Mikie Sherrill won 77% of non-white voters, and Virginia’s governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won 83%, according to CNN’s initial exit polls. Exit polls are subject to change, although both Sherrill and Spanberger performed well in counties with higher populations of non-white voters.

Among Latino voters, Sherrill won 68% of Latino voters compared to her Trump-endorsed competitor Jack Ciattarelli’s 31%, according to CNN’s exit poll. The state’s three most Latino counties also went for Sherrill. She flipped Passaic and Cumberland counties blue, and won Hudson County by 22 more percentage points than Kamala Harris did in 2024. This is a remarkable reversal of Trump’s popularity among Hispanic voters. Of New Jersey’s 29 townships with a majority Hispanic population, all of them went for Trump in 2024 by an average of 25 percentage points, the New York Times reported.

Republicans are still holding on to the hope Trump’s electoral coalition will return to the polls in full force by 2026. After Tuesday, the party largely said Democrats’ wins in New Jersey and Virginia were not representative of trends nationally.

“I believe a large number of those new voters in these demographics that have not traditionally been with the Republican Party are with us,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Thursday. “I know that the Hispanic and Latino populations across this country understand which party is delivering for them.”

But some in the party are warning that the GOP needs to focus more on the economic hardships many in the country are still facing if the party intends to maintain Trump’s gains among Black and Hispanic voters.

“I don't think that the Democratic Party specifically has a movement that is ushering Hispanic voters in,” Enriquez said. “I think that these candidates capitalized on the fact that this economy still is very, very tough for Hispanic voters across these states.”

Mike Madrid, a Latino GOP political consultant and staunch Trump critic, said the results were a “clear refutation and rebuke of Donald Trump and the Republicans.” Tariffs hurt Latino households more than any other demographic, he said.

“The chaotic economic situation we find ourselves in is going to hurt lower income workers more, working class voters more, and Latinos are that working class base of the country,” Madrid said.

Messaging aggressive immigration policies has also struck fear among voters, Enriquez added.

The administration has implemented its massive immigration enforcement agenda across the country with force; for months, images of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection raids have dominated the news — and the administration’s social media. Documented immigrants have repeatedly been caught up in the administration's sweeps.

“When the message went from ‘We're deporting violent illegal criminals’ to ‘We're deporting everyone that is illegal,’ those ‘everyone’ might be the elderly lady who sells tortillas sitting across from you on a Sunday morning at church,” Enriquez said.

The economy ranked as the most important issue facing New Jersey and Virginia for Black and Latino voters, per CNN’s exit polling.

Sherrill also claimed Middlesex County, which is about 61% non-white, by 25 percentage points. She won 94% of Black voters in the state, according to those exit polls.

In Virginia, where every county shifted left, Spanberger also overwhelmingly won over Black and Latino voters. CNN’s exit polls show she won 93% of the Black vote and 67% of the Latino vote. She more than doubled Harris’ 2024 margin in Manassas Park, Virginia — a city with a 46% Hispanic population. Spanberger took the city by 42 percentage points, compared to Harris’ 19 points.

Democrats overwhelmingly touted those numbers as a win for the party in connecting with non-white voters.

“The best way to talk to the Latino community is about the economy and jobs,” New Jersey Democratic strategist Dan Bryan told NOTUS. “Mikie Sherrill is a great example. She talked about affordability and cost of living for a year straight.”

Bryan added that Democrats shouldn’t be surprised that Republican gubernatorial candidates lost support in communities of color, because though many non-white voters shifted toward Trump, most did not shift toward Republicans overall. The president is “uniquely popular” among voters of color, but “there has never been any evidence that the inroads he makes translate to anyone else,” Bryan said.

But Henry de Koninck, a New Jersey Democratic strategist, cautioned that the party should not automatically attribute the leftward shift to Latino voters, Arab-American voters and others changing their party allegiance between last year and this year. The 2025 race was unique and drove high Democratic participation, he said, which means Sherrill’s winning margins could have been the result of more than just a red-to-blue flip.

“Those margins that Mikie Sherrill put up in Hudson County — and this is true in other parts of the state — could be attributed simply to increased Democratic turnout, and not necessarily reflective of anything from a persuasion perspective in terms of voters who went for Trump flipping back to Mikie Sherrill,” de Koninck said.

Democrats could easily fall for the same pitfalls around the economy that lost them the presidency again, Madrid cautioned.

“Neither of these parties are listening, and neither of these parties are learning the obvious message, which is you need to primarily, and maybe exclusively, focus on the economic pain amongst working class voters in this country,” Madrid said. “If you don't, you will lose.”]]> https://washingtonsun.com/economy/labor-unions-election-virginia-new-jersey Jade Lozada Labor organizers in Virginia and New Jersey said they saw a surge in participation from their members. Thu, 06 Nov 2025 21:24:45 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/economy/labor-unions-election-virginia-new-jersey Federal furloughs, layoffs and rising health care costs galvanized union members to vote and volunteer in numbers labor organizers say they haven’t seen in more than a decade.

“What I saw last week was Obama-era numbers,” Herb Smith, a political organizer for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents the federal workforce, said. AFGE endorsed Spangberger in September.

Former Reps. Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to landslide victories in the governors’ races for Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. Spanberger’s turnout numbers were particularly pronounced in Northern Virginia, where many federal workers live.

“It was, ‘Hey, this is an emergency, this is all hands on deck. Hey, it may not affect you now but it’s definitely going to affect you later.’ And honestly, when we put it like that, it really wasn’t hard,” said Smith, whose organizing district includes Virginia.

Voter enthusiasm typically ramps up as Election Day nears, but this year’s calendar coincided with the increasingly dire fallout of the government shutdown: missed paychecks, reductions in force by President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and uncertainty surrounding funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which will provide reduced benefits for 42 million Americans.

That message appealed to affected workers across the political spectrum, resulting in hundreds of volunteers showing up to Northern Virginia campaign offices in the last week and a half before elections, Smith said. He compared that to just 30 to 40 AFGE volunteers during the last gubernatorial campaign in 2021.

“The role of the federal shutdown and the recent firings of federal workers by the Trump administration drove turnout in Virginia and was wind at the back of the unions that were involved in pulling out voters,” said Joseph McCartin, a professor and executive director of Georgetown University’s labor initiative.

Labor organizers said that some downstream effects of the shutdown — and the budget law Trump signed in July — went a long way to bring out volunteers in New Jersey, too.

Cristino Vilorio, the president of the New Jersey State Council for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which endorsed Sherrill, brought up health care cuts and SNAP as what proved most important to his union’s members.

“It is clear that the shutdown was affecting working people and continues to affect working people, so we used that to our advantage,” Vilorio said.

He estimated that there were 150 IAM volunteers each week in his region of Hudson County, at least a 50% jump from the last governor’s race in 2021, when Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was seeking reelection.

The Service Employees International Union, which in April endorsed Spanberger, noted that DOGE cuts and furloughs were important to its work in Northern Virginia, but what resonated more widely with members — who include Veterans Affairs hospital employees — was the impact of cuts to Medicaid and the health care workforce, and rising Affordable Care Act premiums, per SEIU’s political director.

Those issues get to a bigger affordability problem that SEIU members are still concerned about after President Donald Trump won back the White House campaigning on the high cost of living, the director added. Union organizers also heard concerns from voters about the future of SNAP benefits.

Although SEIU saw typical turnout from its members in this year’s races, participation from other unions surpassed organizers’ expectations. Increased participation from union members in New Jersey followed Republican gains in the state last year. Although Kamala Harris won New Jersey, Trump narrowed the state’s partisan split by 10 percentage points from 2020 to 2024.

Vilorio thinks Sherrill’s win is a better tell of what’s to come.

“I still strongly believe that New Jersey, it is a blue state. What we saw in 2024 is not indicative of what New Jersey is as a whole,” he said.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/democrats/progressives-moderates-affordability-election Riley Rogerson, Daniella Diaz, Oriana González After an election where candidates across the Democratic spectrum won their races, they say affordability is the winning issue against Republicans and Donald Trump. Thu, 06 Nov 2025 10:33:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/democrats/progressives-moderates-affordability-election Animated by their first glimmer of electoral hope in a year, Democrats across the political spectrum are roundly championing “affordability” as the answer to their political troubles.

“I think the story of this moment is affordability,” Sen. Raphael Warnock said.

“Affordability is definitively the decisive issue,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters.

“The Democrats who won all made affordability a central part of their campaign,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren told NOTUS.

Democrats went into major elections in New Jersey, Virginia and New York City looking for signs about what types of candidates and messages might lead them out of their current political wilderness. After a politically diverse bench of candidates — from democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to former moderate Blue Dog Coalition member Abigail Spanberger — won by considerable margins, Democrats weren’t convinced that they had identified a singular winning ideology before 2026.

But they have landed on singular word.

“Certainly the message about affordability and the fact that Trump's doing nothing to help people lower costs, that's the kind of direct connection to the people that I think was really strong yesterday,” Sen. Andy Kim told NOTUS.

Democrats are projecting confidence that the elections are a harbinger of future success if they continue campaigning on affordability as they hold out against negotiating with Republicans on the government shutdown and feel they are on the right side of the top political issue ahead of a high-stakes 2026 midterm fight.

Ironically, the Republicans’ 2024 playbook centered Biden-era inflation and helped buoy GOP campaigns around the country. As costs have continued to rise under President Donald Trump, “affordability” gives Democrats a rare opportunity to attack much of the Republican trifecta’s record — tariffs, layoffs, foreign bailouts, and a reconciliation bill that slashed Medicaid — in a single buzzword.

And in a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, many Republicans made a similar argument Wednesday for why their party struggled at the polls.

“Even if we have a downward trend on inflation next year,” Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters, “we've still got to do the apples to apples comparison of how much you paid for a product this year and how much you're paying next year. And that's the thing that we really need to work on.”

Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who is closely aligned with Trumpworld, identified the same top reason, as he put it, that Republicans “got our asses handed to us.”

“Number one: Our side needs to focus on affordability,” he said on Instagram. “Make the American dream affordable. Bring down costs.”

Speaker Mike Johnson downplayed Republican concerns Wednesday morning, telling reporters “What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night’s election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what’s to come. That’s what history teaches us.”

Despite nearly all of Washington crediting Democrats with winning the affordability argument, the party was less aligned on the type of candidates that should make that case. If anything, the election wins proved to be a Rorschach test in which each Democrat perceived precisely the results that they hoped to perceive.

For moderates in swing states, like Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, Spanberger’s win in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill’s victory in New Jersey lend proof to a theory that the party should seek to elevate centrists.

“So they have a new mayor,” he said of Mamdani’s win in New York. “That's not a surprise. It doesn't change my life,” Fetterman said. “And it's certainly not going to be the party.”

The future, according to Fetterman, clad in his daily uniform of sweatshirt and shorts, is “real, regular Democrats. That’s going to continue.”

“More so than anything,” Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego said, “you look at Spanberger and you look at Sherrill, they overperformed.”

“Our success in most of the areas where we need to win are going to be more like Spanberger and Sherrill,” he added.

Rep. Gil Cisneros, a member of the center-left New Democrat Coalition, told NOTUS over text that “the fact that we had two candidates who won two statewide governor elections that were both New Dems and moderates says a lot. People want elected officials that are going to focus on the issues and work to get things done.”

Though, ultimately, he acknowledged that lowering costs is key: “No matter if you are a progressive or a moderate the issue they all focused on was affordability.”

But the leader of the progressive movement, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, told reporters he thought Tuesday’s results showed that Democrats should be focused on promoting left candidates — especially if they center the cost-of-living issue.

“I think that any candidate who stands for the working class of this country, with 60% of people living paycheck to paycheck, and is prepared to take on the oligarchs with the richest people doing phenomenally well, the candidates who run on that message would be quite successful,” he said Wednesday. “We should be focused on that objective.”

Of course, Democrats are not on a glide path to retaking Congress in 2026 with only a single word. The party is still reckoning with how it reaches voters on social media, how seriously it should pursue generational change and how to recruit quality candidates.

“Some pundits and operatives will tell you ‘look at New York, let’s run more socialists!!’ and others will say ‘look at VA and NJ, let’s run more moderates!!!,’” Amanda Litman, president and co-founder of Run for Something, a group dedicated to helping young progressives run for office, wrote on Substack.

“We’re saying yes, and. We need to run the right candidate for the right district (because remember, people vote for people!) and empower them to run strong modern campaigns,” Litman continued.

The considerations for how to run those campaigns are not just ideological; they are also rhetorical as Democrats wade through questions of how to balance prosecuting a negative case against Trump’s record with presenting an affirmative argument that excites voters.

Sen. Chris Murphy, one of Trump’s top Democratic critics in the Senate, claimed that pushing back on White House should still be a centerpiece of the party’s campaign strategy.

“Last night was obviously a referendum on the president's corruption, but it also was not coincidental to a moment when Democrats are fighting for what we believe in,” Murphy said.

“I think we look powerful and unified right now,” he continued, “and I do think that part of the good response yesterday was due to the fact that we're finally standing up for what we believe in.”
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