https://washingtonsun.com/analysis Analysis en-US Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:45:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/dcdrivers Andrew Van Dam We looked at a decade of crash data to figure out which drivers truly rank as the District’s most dangerous. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:45:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/dcdrivers Jeff Dooley, a Virginia native and current D.C. resident who runs The Washington Sun’s local and sports coverage, asked if we could confirm the D.C. region’s most enduring stereotype: Are Maryland drivers really the worst?

At first glance, the data seemed to confirm our suspicions.

A quick analysis of crash and license-plate data from D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department reveals something genuinely impressive: From 2019 to 2021, Maryland drivers were at fault in more two-car crashes in D.C. than drivers from anywhere else, including D.C. Those are the most recent years for which we have good numbers. The picture gets fuzzy in 2021 as the D.C. government appears to have tapped the brakes on releasing detailed license-plate data.

But is that an unfair assessment? Could it be that there are just more Maryland drivers on District roads?

Of course there are. Of D.C. workers who commute by car, almost half (48%) drove in from Maryland between 2022 and 2024. Another 30% drove from Virginia, and only 21% were D.C. residents, according to our analysis of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

DCdrivers online notus-03.png (3034x945, AR: 3.21)
How do we account for that? We tried some surprisingly simple math. We compared the share of accidents involving a driver with Maryland plates who’s at fault — meaning they were ticketed for an offense that could have caused an accident, such as running a red light, making an illegal U-turn or going the wrong way on a one-way street — to the share of Maryland drivers who were the unoffending party in a two-car accident.

When we did that, Maryland drivers didn't look so bad. They’re only slightly more likely to be at fault in an accident as they are to be innocent victims, according to our analysis of about a decade of MPD data ending in 2021.

That still makes them worse than D.C. drivers, who are over 15% less likely to be at fault than to be the victim. But they both do far better than drivers from Virginia, who are over 20% more likely to be at fault. Drivers from outside the region fare even worse, but they’re rarer on the District’s roads and thus don’t feature as prominently in local stereotypes.

DCdrivers online notus_Graphic.png (3034x2195, AR: 1.38)But before declaring D.C. drivers excellent, Maryland drivers exonerated and Virginia drivers the actual villains, we checked in with our colleagues. Right away, legendary District-knower Martin Austermuhle kindly reminded us that D.C. and Maryland drivers have been known to cross the river for cheaper Virginia plates, since the state has low fees and no residency requirement.

The dodge became less lucrative once Virginia began requiring insurance in 2024, but it appears to remain popular among folks looking to save a few bucks and maybe avoid Maryland inspections or fines. But Maryland is cracking down — beginning in October, a new law will fine residents with out-of-state plates.

D.C. has its own rules limiting outside plates, but D.C. licensed drivers remain far more likely to have out-of-state plates than drivers in any state in the country, according to our quick analysis of a decade of data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

Of all D.C. licensed drivers involved in fatal accidents, almost half (46%) were on out-of-state plates, compared with just 12% for the highest states. Drivers in deadly crashes probably differ meaningfully from the population at large, but it’s safe to assume D.C. remains unique by any measure.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/pgG99/1/Unfortunately, we can’t directly correct for out-of-state drivers. The MPD data released by the District Department of Transportation only tells us the state of the license plate, not the state the at-fault driver is licensed in. They did, however, release both license-state and plate-state data for more than 27,000 drivers involved in crashes that resulted in moving violations between 2016 and 2020.

And that data has one clear message: Don’t trust Virginia plates! More than a third (35%) of drivers cited by police with Virginia plates actually had licenses from other states. That’s about double the comparable number for Maryland drivers (17%).

So, what would D.C. data look like if we only measured “real” Virginia drivers? We can’t know. MPD doesn’t release enough driver’s license data. But we can guess based on better data from the District’s northern and eastern suburbs, courtesy of the Maryland State Police. It comes from different years — 2024 to 2026 — so it’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s the best we have.

In Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, drivers with Virginia plates look like absolute menaces, about 25% and 35% more likely to be at fault, respectively. But if you only look at drivers with Virginia licenses, the discrepancy effectively vanishes — they’re only slightly more likely to be the at-fault driver.

Why might D.C.-region drivers with Virginia plates be so much more reckless on the road? We’re guessing it’s partly explained by the clearest trend in the data. Young drivers — those under age 25 — are much, much more likely to be at fault in an accident in D.C., as will already be obvious to anyone who’s tried to insure a college student and/or knew us in our 20s.
DCdrivers online notus-02.png (3034x1254, AR: 2.42)
In related news, those potemkin Virginians tend to be younger than drivers whose plates match their state. This makes sense, as cars with Virginia plates have long been cheaper to register and insure, and thus popular with the region’s impecunious youth. It also may explain their apparent recklessness.

In other words, the more we dug into the data, the more our gut impression shifted. We can’t say anything cohesive when faced with such balkanized numbers, but our feeling is that you might drive a bit more safely on your home roads, and maybe a bit more risk when you’re far from home, but those rules apply to everybody. Regardless of the state, drivers are roughly the same.

So it’s reasonable to drive defensively when you spot Virginia or out-of-state plates in D.C., but you can’t really blame actual Virginians. If you’re stereotyping anyone, it should probably be younger drivers, regardless of what state their plates come from.

Hi! You don't have to be an editor here to ask us questions. What are you curious about? Let us know!]]> https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/congress-house-bipartianship Paul Kane Bipartisan lawmakers appeal to party leaders to change basic House functions. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/congress-house-bipartianship Rank-and-file lawmakers have a surprising amount of bipartisan overlap when it comes to ideas about how to make Congress work even just a little bit better.

Take Reps. Chrissy Houlahan and Randy Fine, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Florida Republican who rarely agree on anything. On Wednesday, they were among the dozen lawmakers offering input at the House Rules Committee “member day” hearing. It’s a biennial event that resembles an open-mic night — anyone can offer up ideas they think will make the House function more efficiently.

Houlahan, an Air Force veteran serving on the House Intelligence Committee, proposed mandatory training for all lawmakers on how to handle classified information. She considers the current lack of training a glaring oversight given how many lawmakers come to Washington with no background in national security.

Next up, Fine interrupted his introduction to second Houlahan’s idea. A former casino, tech and health industry executive, Fine sheepishly admitted that he assumed security officials forgot to give him his training on sensitive material because of the unusual circumstances of his arrival.

“I thought I didn’t get any training on classified information because I came in in a special election,” said Fine, who was sworn in in April 2025.

This proposal gained a third vote of confidence later from Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, a former Navy helicopter pilot who represents thousands of military workers in Virginia’s shipyard-heavy Hampton Roads region.

Many constituents undergo more training and have mandatory updates for handling intelligence, Kiggans said. “We have none of that here in Congress!”

It was one of more than a couple dozen proposals that came from the lawmakers testifying before the panel tasked with crafting a package of rules at the start of each new Congress.

Member day doesn’t get much attention because it’s so much inside baseball about the machinations of Congress, but the ideas put forth demonstrate how much lawmakers recognize the broken nature of their end of the Capitol.

Even with these modest proposals, the lawmakers were sending a message that they want to shift more power away from the leadership suites in the Capitol and across the street to the House office buildings, where the rank-and-file toil away on their committee work.

Houlahan came into office with the majority-making class of 2018 Democrats, who really believed they could change Congress. Almost eight years later, she’s run up against resistance from both Democratic and Republican majorities. Seemingly easy fixes like changing the voting and committee hearing calendars for more debate and member participation have languished.

And that’s left the average lawmaker feeling as if they’re chasing their own tails every day.

“The reason why I think it hasn't been done before is it doesn't benefit leadership. It benefits the organization and not the leadership. It helps them to scramble us all the time, and it helps them to throw us chaotic curveballs,” Houlahan told NOTUS.

Even if her party wins the majority in November, Houlahan has set her expectations quite low.

“Regardless of who's in charge, I'm sad to think or believe that it probably won't be a heck of a lot better, which is why most people at this point are trying to just try to make it incrementally better,” she told NOTUS.

Some proposals dealt with making the House more ethical and transparent to constituents, several of which have already received media attention:

• Several Republicans and Democrats called for a ban on lawmakers trading individual stocks, an issue that various House speakers have stumbled over in recent years.
• Several lawmakers called for formal bans against members and staff placing wagers on prediction markets like Kalshi, behavior that has led to insider-trading investigations. 
• Several lawmakers requested rules that would allow expectant and new parents to cast their votes by proxy to be a more family-friendly House, a proposal that House Speaker Mike Johnson has blocked.
• Republicans and Democrats requested a new provision that would allow bill introductions to have multiple lead sponsors, instead of the current practice of just one.
• Rep. Kevin Kiley, the only House independent, asked to change the rules to allow members who are elected as independents to receive committee assignments without caucusing with either party. 

These modest proposals often serve as attempts to more broadly shift the operations of the House, with younger Democrats highlighting how hard it is for a young woman to run for Congress if she wants to raise a family.

“Honestly, this place doesn’t really work for younger people,” said Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs, 37, who talked about freezing her eggs to try to time when she gets pregnant.

Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen, 44, explained how she repeatedly had to fly from Denver to Washington last year with her newborn, Samuel, during very close-margin votes on major legislation.

Before he turned 6 months old, Samuel had been on 24 flights.

“This place doesn’t have to work this way,” Pettersen said.

The congressional calendar drew the most ire from both sides of the aisle.

Rank-and-file lawmakers complain that they spend way too much time on airplanes darting back and forth from their districts to Washington, leaving little time to be in the Capitol debating and shaping actual legislation.

For more than 15 years, the model month in the House has been three weeks in session and one week at home. Each week in Washington usually starts Monday evening and ends Thursday morning. That’s just two full days a week in session and two days a week traveling through airports or train stations.

Fine told Reps. Virginia Foxx and Jim McGovern, the Republican and Democratic committee leaders who have more than 50 years of combined congressional experience, that he might have a magical formula.

Commit to a full week or two in a row in Washington, creating at least four full days a week in committees and voting, followed by a corresponding number of weeks in their districts, he suggested.

“I’ve done the math on this,” Fine, the newest member to testify, said. “If we actually did this — a week here and a week home — we would actually spend more time working in Washington, we would spend more time working in our districts, and we would spend less time sitting on airplanes.”

Foxx responded to the schedule and travel complaints by recalling what her mentor told her when she won her first House race in 2004: “The worst part of this job is the travel.”

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver served as the lead Democratic co-sponsor on a prominent housing bill that was signed into law earlier this year, with Republican Rep. Mike Flood officially labeled the lead sponsor. Cleaver, an 11-term member, thinks younger lawmakers would benefit if multiple bill sponsors could be listed, which could encourage more bipartisan efforts.

“So it will automatically create alliances that don't exist now,” Cleaver told NOTUS after his testimony.

Some lawmakers talked about truly transformational changes, such as implementing stricter controls on the revolving door that sends many members to lobbying firms upon retirement and banning gerrymandering to create politically safe districts.

But, for now, most lawmakers would settle for some basic changes like real training for dealing with classified information.

“I was shocked and have been shocked for four years now,” Kiggans told the committee.

Houlahan, who also serves on the Armed Services Committee and other informal groups dealing with national security, said she would settle for a balanced schedule that allowed her to attend and participate in these meetings.

“We're not stupid. We can figure this out. We just don't even try,” she told NOTUS.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/house-majority-could-hinge-on-governors-races-trending-toward-democrats Paul Kane Big wins at top of ticket could propel Democrats down-ballot to a majority. Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:31:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/house-majority-could-hinge-on-governors-races-trending-toward-democrats A pair of polls released early this week reaffirmed the conventional wisdom in two key races: Democratic governors in Arizona and Pennsylvania appear headed for victory.

And the margins in those polls suggested the potential for the type of coattails that could boost Democrats to down-ballot victories and a House majority.

In Arizona, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs held a lead of 15 percentage points over Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, according to an independent firm with roots in Arizona conservative politics. And in Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro had a 16-point lead over the Republican nominee, Stacy Garrity, according to a poll conducted by The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times and Sienna University.

“Gubernatorial races certainly aren’t the be-all, end-all for House contests in their state, but you’d rather be winning those statewide contests than losing them, and Democrats look like they’ll be on the winning side in far more places than Republicans,” Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, told NOTUS.

In Arizona and Pennsylvania, Republicans are defending five toss-up seats in the House,with one more in each state that are considered vulnerable.

Those seven seats include six Republican incumbents who have won in tough political environments before, having received crossover votes from people who supported Democrats higher up on the ballot.

But those types of margins for Hobbs and Shapiro, if they hold true in November, will make it an even tougher uphill climb for these Republicans.

In Pennsylvania, like most of the swing states he won two years ago, President Donald Trump is now deeply unpopular, with the new poll finding just 38 percent of voters approved of his job performance. 

Nationally, Democrats stand a chance to claim a majority of the 50 governor’s mansions for the first time since before the 2010 midterm elections.

Republicans currently hold 26, while Democrats hold 24. Of the 36 gubernatorial races this year, Democrats are clearly favored to win 13 and Republicans should easily win 10, according to The Cook Report with Amy Walter’s analysis.

Of the four pure toss-up races, three are currently held by Republicans. Winning a majority would mark a dramatic sea change for Democrats, who after the 2016 elections held just 16 governorships.

The national media spotlight usually shines much brighter on Senate races, but back in the states, gubernatorial battles can often be a bigger driving force in this era of increasing polarization, where fewer voters split their tickets.

And in states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, where there is no Senate race, the battle for top state executive will be the only major statewide race driving turnout this fall.

Republicans believe they gain some potential help from other governors’ races, particularly in Florida. Democrats are defending three competitive House seats and they haven’t won a gubernatorial race there in more than 30 years. Rep. Byron Donalds won the Republican nomination earlier this month, when almost 450,000 more people voted in the GOP primary than in the Democratic primary.

The Arizona poll also might be an outlier as most analysts still believe the race is competitive, with Hobbs having a small but important edge.

While few strategists give Republican Bruce Blakeman a chance to defeat New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, his background as a county executive on Long Island has some believing he can boost House Republican challengers there against Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen.

But the broader climate, at this moment, is lifting Democratic spirits, providing openings in some races that might now seem like a reach if the nominees to run the state win big.

In Iowa, state Auditor Rob Sand is now a narrow favorite to become the first Democrat to win a governor’s race in 20 years.

“Sand’s strong, well-funded candidacy is contributing to Republicans’ headaches in the state. And it could help deliver multiple House districts to Democrats in November,” Nathan Gonzales wrote last month.

Four years ago, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is retiring, won reelection by almost 19 points, helping Republicans sweep all four of the state’s House seats for the first time since 1994.

In 2024, even with Trump winning the state by more than 13 points, Iowa Republican Rep. Zach Nunn won by less than 4 percentage points and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks won by about 800 votes.

In 2018, when Reynolds narrowly won the governor’s race, Democrats took three of the delegation’s House seats. Republicans privately hope that since Iowa has an unusual ballot with the governor’s race at the bottom, independent voters will consider those House races separately before viewing the governor’s contest.

Colorado’s transformation from a swing state to reliably blue for Democrats has not — yet — reshaped its House delegation, which is evenly split 4-4 on party lines.

Given Gov. Jared Polis’ 20-point victory four years ago there, Democrats are hoping for another double-digit margin for state Attorney General Phil Weiser in the governor’s race. That would put Republican Rep. Gabe Evans in grave danger in a genuine toss-up race — and it has prompted two previously safe Republicans, Reps. Jeff Crank and Jeff Hurd, to run much harder this cycle than in their previous races.

The Republican nominees for both governor and senator in Colorado have shown little signs of political life, leaving down-ballot Republicans to essentially fend for themselves.

“It’s helpful to have at least one statewide candidate who is adding onto the TV advertising, ground game, and enthusiasm. That’s especially true in a year where Republicans may struggle to turn out the Trump coalition without the president on the ballot,” Inside Elections’ Rubashkin said.

One wild card is California, where three House seats — two Republican, one Democratic — are hotly contested and the governor’s race is all but assured to go to Democrat Xavier Becerra, the former Cabinet secretary and state attorney general.

Republican Rep. David Valadao survived in 2022 despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 18-point win statewide, because the Republican gubernatorial nominee narrowly won his Central Valley district.

Valadao probably needs this year’s Republican nominee, political commentator Steve Hilton, to perform at least that well, or better, to win another term.

An early-August poll from the Los Angeles Times showed Becerra with 55 percent of the vote, compared with 37 percent for Hilton.

Pennsylvania might give Democrats their best bet for down-ballot help, as Shapiro first won in 2022 by 15 percentage points over a far-right legislator who had little money.

Heading into this year, Republicans found early hope when the state treasurer, Garrity, who received more votes in Pennsylvania in 2024 than anyone but Trump, entered the race against Shapiro, but Garrity’s campaign has struggled to launch.

The Cook report summarized the race by noting “a gargantuan cash-on-hand advantage and a decisive polling lead”for the incumbent Democrat.

There’s some hope for ticket-splitting voters, based on findings in the so-called crosstabs of the Inquirer poll showing Shapiro so far ahead. When voters in Northeast Pennsylvania were asked if they preferred a generic Republican or Democrat in Congress, the Republican held a 7-point edge.

That’s some solace for Republican Reps. Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, both of whom narrowly won two years ago on Trump’s coattails in that region of the state.

Take Trump off the ballot, and Democrats believe turnout will doom those Republicans. They believe that will also happen in the Harrisburg area, where a staunch conservative, Rep. Scott Perry, has never modified his stances as his increasingly suburban district has drifted toward the political center.

The most intriguing Pennsylvania race might be just north of Philadelphia, where Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and his late brother, Mike, have won nine of the last 11 races in that perennial battleground district.

In 2022, when Shapiro won Fitzpatrick’s district by 20 points, the incumbent faced a neophyte Democratic challenger who wasn’t from Bucks County. He won easily, as he did again in 2024 against the same Democrat.

Now, Trump is in the White House and suburban voters are just as angry. The Democratic nominee, Bob Harvie, was born and raised in the county, served as a teacher there, got involved in local politics and was elected to a countywide, three-person commission.

By late June, far earlier than in most races, Fitzpatrick’s campaign unloaded with deeply negative ads about Harvie, a sign of how serious the race had already become.

In late July, appearing with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Shapiro turned a campaign event into a pep rally for the four downballot candidates he hopes will ride into office with him.

“I believe those four races hold the key to who is in the majority in the Congress,” he said.
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/house-republicans-ethics-allegations-max-miller-cory-mills-midterms Paul Kane Facing ethics allegations, those lawmakers who refuse to end their campaigns could face the wrath of voters in November. Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:05:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/house-republicans-ethics-allegations-max-miller-cory-mills-midterms Chuck Edwards was supposed to be the safe choice.

“He is the embodiment of mountain values who will fight for them every single day in Congress with honor and integrity,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) said in May 2022, after Edwards ousted a controversial one-term incumbent.

Four years later the North Carolina Republican faced a bipartisan rebuke from the House Ethics Committee, which recommended a rare censure motion for inappropriate behavior with young female staff.

“It’s going to be problematic for his campaign,” Tillis told reporters Monday evening.

A little after 3 a.m. Wednesday, Edwards dropped out of his reelection bid, leaving state Republican officials scramblingto find a replacement candidate.

Edwards is one of several Republican men in the House who face allegations that have put what should be reasonably safe districts in political jeopardy.

Reps. Max Miller (R-Ohio) and Cory Mills (R-Florida) are also under investigation by the Ethics Committee for, among other allegations, assaulting a woman (Mills) and domestic violence (Miller). Tony Gonzales, a three-term Republican from South Texas, resigned earlier this year after admitting to an affair with a staffer who later committed suicide. He was headed to likely defeat in a primary runoff to Brandon Herrera, who is now facing questions about demeaning comments he has posted about women.

In each instance, the lawmakers denied the allegations and, at least initially, asserted they would remain in their reelection campaigns. Republicans, already on the defensive amid President Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity, must now devote resources to defending red seats that shouldn’t be on the radar as competitive.

In 2024, Trump won all four of these districts by wide margins, ranging from almost 10 percentage points to 15 points. In the last 2024 analysis by The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter, none of these seats appeared on the chart of the roughly 70 most competitive House races in the country.

Now, all four are ranked among the three dozen toughest races for Republicans to defend in November.

Walter, the Cook report’s editor-in-chief, compared the current environment to the 2006 midterms,when Republicans lost 30 seats and the majority as President George W. Bush was mired in the Iraq war with terrible approval ratings.

“This year feels like déjà vu. … In both years: Unpopular war, Members mired in sex scandals,” she wrote.

In past midterm elections, however, these ethics-infused defeats did not tip the balance of power in the House, as the waves were so high that the majority party was largely doomed. But through mid-decade redistricting and a huge financial edge, today’s House Republicans have the type of political flood insurance their predecessors lacked.

They might be able to use these advantages to hold the majority by the narrowest of margins — unless several of these scandal-plagued seats fall to Democrats.

In 2006, Democrats padded their new majority by claiming a handful of seats in which Republican incumbents faced unique allegations.

Don Sherwood (R-Pennsylvania), who had won his previous two races with more than 80 percent of the vote, lost his race amid allegations that he had assaulted a mistress. John Sweeney (R-New York), a onetime rising star who had won his previous three races with more than 65 percent, lost after a report about a 911 call from his wife alleging an assault.

Mark Foley (R-Florida), who had won his previous two races by more than 35 percentage points each, resigned just weeks before the 2006 election amid an ethics investigation into sexually explicit conversations with teenage House pages, handing the seat to Democrats.

A few safe Republicans faced their own corruption investigations, including Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the House majority leader, and Bob Ney (R-Ohio), chair of the House Administration Committee. Both resigned midterm, and Republicans couldn’t hold on to those seats.

In 2010, Democrats lost their majority in a historic 63-seat loss that mostly centered around high unemployment and a conservative revolt against big government spending. But Bob Etheridge (D-North Carolina), who had won four straight races with more than 65 percent of the vote, stumbled, almost literally, into political trouble. A few young Republican operatives caught him leaving an evening fundraiser and, on video, asked about his policy positions.

Etheridge lunged toward them, grabbing one of them and repeatedly asked, “Who are you, who are you?” A neophyte opponent latched onto the viral video and gained attention, narrowly defeating him by 1 percentage point that fall.

In 2018, the political wave that swept Democrats back into power was foretold by Tim Murphy (R-Pennsylvania), who was so popular as a conservative anti-abortion Republican that Democrats did not field an opponent in his last two re-elections. But Murphy resigned in late 2017 after admitting to an affair with a woman who accused him of pressuring her to get an abortion.

In early 2018, despite the district’s deep conservative lean, Conor Lamb, the Democratic candidate, won the special election to replace Murphy and established a playbook for other Democrats in tough districts for distancing themselves from the national party brand — ending with a more than 40-seat gain that November for Democrats.

In each of these cases, it’s a relatively safe bet that had the incumbent remained free of ethical challenges — or had they given their party more time to find an appropriate replacement — the party in power would have won those races.

That’s why Republicans this year pushed Gonzales to resign — and why some have tried to push Edwards and Miller to remove themselves from the November ballot.

And in Florida, Republican Reps. Mike Haridopolos and Anna Paulina Luna took the rare move to oppose an incumbent in their delegation, siding against Mills ahead of the primary later this month.

“We need leaders in Congress who serve with integrity, energy, and an unwavering commitment to the people who sent them there,” the two Republicans wrote.

In addition to “other allegations,” the Ethics Committee is also reviewing the circumstances involving a second woman who got a restraining order against Mills last fall. But Trump has endorsed Mills, whose opposition could split among several Republican challengers.

Democrats believe Bale Dalton, a Navy veteran and former NASA official, provides the right contrast in November if Mills wins the nomination later this month.

Democrats are particularly bullish on defeating Miller, whose ex-father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), said that Miller posed such a danger that he moved his wife, daughter and granddaughter out of state to protect them.

“The allegations here are horrible, and it’s really disqualifying behavior,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Washington), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Scott MacFarlane Reports, an independent news organization covering Congress.

Miller, who won his last election by 15 points, has defended himself in a series of media appearances that only further raised alarms. Ohio law could allow Republicans to replace Miller by Monday, but that only can occur if Miller willingly steps aside, a scenario he is publicly rejecting.

“No one has told me to get off the ballot, and that’s because they know I can win,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday.

Sometimes the replacement candidates come with their own political baggage, as is the case in Texas. Herrera’s recent career as an edgy YouTuber, filled with comments some consider misogyny, does not create the type of distance from Gonzales’ actions that most Republicans would prefer.

On Thursday, the DCCC added the district to its “Red to Blue” list as a designated battleground, a move that Republicans believe ignores the strong conservative lean of the district.

“All they will buy is another expensive humiliation in November,” Christian Martinez, an official with the National Republican Congressional Committee, told The Texas Tribune.

Past speakers tried to deal swiftly with transgressions to limit the exposure other caucus members faced in having to defend rogue colleagues. Foley and Murphy were pushed out in a matter of weeks. Speaker Mike Johnson, however, has been more reluctant to use his moral megaphone to push members aside, in part because his single-digit majority needs every possible vote to succeed.

In Edwards case, four years ago he was the replacement candidate himself.

Madison Cawthorn (R-North Carolina) had a high-profile single term in the House, fueled by uncorroborated stories about his escape from a car crash and his bid to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. Cawthorn alleged that many members of Congress attended parties with drugs and prostitutes, a story that lit up online and forced lawmakers to defend themselves against back home.

Led by Tillis, senior North Carolina Republicans rallied around Edwards, who made millions as a McDonald’s franchisee before serving six years in the state Senate. He was sold as the pure candidate, no controversy, narrowly defeating the young far-right ideologue in the May 2022 primary.

In its report released Monday, the Ethics Committee found that over several years Edwards showered two younger female aides with gifts, hand-written letters and other mementos that were sexual in nature.

“We seem to have a fondness for many of the same things,” he wrote to one aide. “Even where we do not, I’ll enjoy the adventure alongside you!"

His adventure ended Wednesday with his withdrawal from the election, and now North Carolina’s Republican leaders are searching for a new candidate. But Edwards will complete his current term, a sign of how much Johnson still needs his vote.
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/lindsey-graham-mark-sanford-friendship-republicans Paul Kane Once close friends, the South Carolinians’ paths chart the Republican Party’s evolution. Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:04:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/lindsey-graham-mark-sanford-friendship-republicans No relationship better tells the story of the modern Republican Party than that of Mark Sanford and Lindsey Graham.

The former governor of South Carolina and the late senator were once as close as two politicians could be. But like so many political alignments — and friendships — over the last decade, disagreements over President Donald Trump were too great to overcome.

Eight years ago, Graham said turning against Trump was the reason Sanford had been cast aside in the 2018 primary for his Charleston-area House district, despite nearly a quarter-century of ideologically consistent conservatism.

“What happened here? I think for the first time, Mark misread the tea leaves, and being in for a while became a liability. So he's on the wrong side of new versus old,” Graham told me at the time.

Two days after his defeat, Sanford called it “a Faustian bargain that's going on right now.”

“I'll pander to you if you pander to me,” he said of Trump.

Sanford declined to say whether he included his friend Graham in that bargain.

The two entered the House together in 1995 as part of the Newt Gingrich-led Republican revolution, giving the GOP a majority for the first time in 40 years. They were rabble-rousers back then, and in the years to come, Sanford seemed made in a conservative laboratory for a presidential ticket. Graham evolved into a type of bipartisan wheeler-dealer that’s now a dying breed in the Republican Party.

In a twist of fate that stretches from the Appalachian Trail to Argentina, it was Graham who received the equivalent of a state funeral this week, first with a service inside the Capitol Rotunda and then with Trump as the main eulogist at the National Cathedral.

And it was Sanford who, a few days earlier, stood alone in his backyard, filming a video to launch a long-shot bid to get back to Congress. He’s one of many Republicans trying to win the nomination to replace Graham.

“Lindsey’s death is a reminder to all of us how short and precious life is,” Sanford said in his less-than-two-minute video.
Lindsey Graham (4054x2703, AR: 1.50)He cited his father’s death from Lou Gerhig’s disease, his status as a grandfather and his wish to finally tackle the national debt and shrink the size of federal government — the issues that launched the duo onto the national scene in 1994 — among his reasons for running.

He never mentioned that he and Graham were once so close the late senator was godfather to Sanford’s youngest child.

And he never mentioned that Trump, who supported Sanford’s primary opponent in 2018, has endorsed Graham’s sister, Darline, who is now serving as interim senator.

Sanford attended Wednesday's service for Graham in South Carolina, but he was not among the more than dozen politicians, TV personalities and conservative activists asked to speak at memorial events over two days.

While he declined NOTUS’ interview requests this week, Sanford has tried to paint his rise, fall, rise and fall in politics as a selling point to South Carolina Republicans in this snap primary to be settled in just a couple weeks.
Mark Sanford (4131x2754, AR: 1.50)“All of the ups and downs and what not that I’ve had in life — that all of us have had in life — give us a little bit more humility, give us a little bit more empathy, give us a little bit better perspective, I think, in later chapters in life,” he told a local TV news interviewer on Monday.

The two were more aligned than not in those earlier chapters. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) let out a solid 10 seconds of laughter when asked Wednesday about his early memories of Graham and Sanford.

“Two of the most colorful members of our class,” said Wicker, who served as master of ceremonies two years ago for the class of 1994 reunion in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

In 1997, Graham played a leading role in an attempt to throw Gingrich out as speaker, with support from Sanford and other Republican rebels.

During the 2000 campaign, while their state’s senior Republican leadership lined up behind Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Graham and Sanford signed on with Sen. John McCain’s team.

They traveled their state in McCain’s Straight Talk Express bus and warmed up the crowds for the Arizona senator, who sometimes called them his “running mates,” already knowing their ambitions.

Two years later, Sanford won the governor’s race and Graham won his Senate seat, launching them higher into national politics.
GRAHAM MCCAIN (2956x1970, AR: 1.50)When McCain clinched the 2008 nomination, punctuated by a big win in South Carolina, Graham stood at his side. Sanford remained neutral in that presidential primary, perhaps a sign that his conservative politics diverged from that of Graham and McCain.

Then suddenly, it seemed Sanford’s political career was over. His affair with an Argentinian woman became public in June 2009 after he had gone missing for days and aides gave false assertions he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was actually in Buenos Aires.

Many Republicans called for his resignation, and state legislators began impeachment proceedings. But one friend gave him as much support as could be expected.

“I know Mark wants to reconcile with his family. I hope and pray that is possible,” Graham said in a statement that avoided a call for resignation. “Second chances in life are not guaranteed or required. But if they are afforded they can be a real blessing.”

While Jenny Sanford did leave her husband, Graham remained loyal to his friend. In 2013, he rallied support for Sanford during a special election for the House and helped him win back that seat.

It wasn’t Sanford’s messy personal life that ended his relationship with Graham. In the end, the Republican Party they both were a part of had shifted. It was less about conservative ideology and more about being in good company with Trump.

Graham saw the reality and moved with it.
Trump (4274x2849, AR: 1.50)
“Along comes Trump: ‘I'm gonna burn the whole place down.’ I actually can relate to that because that's where I used to be,” Graham told me in that June 2018 interview.

Trump won’t attack critics who he thinks want to “add value” to his success, traditional conservatism be damned, Graham said. “The head of our party is the least ideological person in the history of the Republican Party.”

Graham’s longtime bond with Sanford couldn’t protect the anti-Trump Republican from Trump’s fury during his losing 2018 primary. Graham said he learned from McCain that bygones should be bygones in politics, having gone from being prisoner of war in Vietnam to dealing with that government as a senator, and working with President Barack Obama despite his loss to him in 2008. And instead of fighting against Trump’s takeover of the party, Graham jumped on board.

“So one thing I've learned from John is, when it's over, it's over,” Graham said then.

Graham still held out hope for Sanford’s fourth act in politics if he figured out how to repair things with Trump. But with Sanford, it was never over.
AP331347709959 copy.jpg (4797x3198, AR: 1.50)Sanford launched a brief run in the 2020 Republican presidential primary. This spring, he considered running for the House seat that Republican Rep. Nancy Mace is vacating after her failed bid for governor. Then, he announced he would start a foundation dedicated to taming the national debt. And now, he’s running for Graham’s seat.

Sanford remains an anti-Trump Republican, preaching to a smaller and smaller choir but still hopeful that his decades of experience can win enough support.

He thinks that South Carolina’s voters want a truly competitive primary and will want to know more about Sen. Darline Graham’s views on policy, particularly the debt.

“I don’t think they like this idea of a coronation,” he said in a local TV interview this week.

But even after his last act in politics appeared closed back in June 2018, Sanford was not shutting the door on another comeback.

“Believe me, if there's anybody who ever learned you never say never, it's me,” he told me then.
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/neal-dunn-repair-act-legislation Paul Kane As he battles terminal heart disease, Neal Dunn is taking on Big Auto and hoping his Trump connection helps. Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:00:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/neal-dunn-repair-act-legislation Rep. Neal Dunn shows up for votes these days in a scooter that helps get him to the House floor. A sign is taped to the front of it, allowing him to serve as a one-man mobile lobbying shop:

“Get the REPAIR ACT Dunn!!!”

The Florida Republican, who is retiring at the end of this term, has made the bill — which would defend the rights of independent auto repair shops — his legislative swan song.

Dunn, 73, almost resigned earlier this year after a terminal heart disease diagnosis. But after working with doctors at Walter Reed Medical Center, he has committed to serving out the remainder of his term.

“I do what I do because it's a mission, really, a mission,” Dunn told NOTUS in an interview Tuesday. “You run for office, and it's kind of like joining the Army. You do a mission, and you can't leave the mission.”

Dunn’s proposal was slated to be part of the federal highway bill, but support for it fell apart just before the House Energy and Commerce Committee took up the provision amid pushback from powerful auto lobbying forces.

Dunn’s new strategy has now largely focused on trying to win over an audience of one: President Donald Trump.

He talks more frequently with the president than most rank-and-file lawmakers, in part because of Trump’s role in giving Dunn a little more of a lease on life.

In the late winter, as his diagnosis grew bleak, Dunn drew up a plan with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to “sneak out the back door” into retirement. He would announce his resignation set to some point in July, and the Republican governor could call a special election for then.

Dunn intended to serve right up until that time, if his health allowed, so that his replacement in the heavily Republican district could be selected and House Speaker Mike Johnson would not lose a reliable GOP vote for any length of time.

Then Trump called Dunn from the golf course with DeSantis and told him not to retire.

"I've got the best doctors in the world. They're big. They're beautiful. They're on their way. Don't go anywhere,” Trump said, as Dunn recalled.

That stint at Walter Reed bought Dunn more time, but it didn’t heal him.

“No question, my prognosis is better than it was,” he said. “You know, I'm still on a glide path.”

At a March news conference, Trump blurted out that Dunn would have been “dead by June” if not for his intervention, something the lawmaker was trying to keep private.

“Obviously Trump kind of outed me there,” he told NOTUS, smiling.

Ever since, he’s pledged to be on hand for Johnson and Trump anytime an important, close vote is scheduled. He flew up from Florida for crucial votes on Tuesday and Wednesday on national defense policy, but he did not attend Thursday’s less consequential votes on other matters.
Rep_Dunn_Edits/_C0A4778 copy.jpg (8192x5464, AR: 1.50)Rank-and-file Republicans applaud Dunn’s perseverance as other perfectly healthy members skip key votes to campaign for higher office.

In a different congressional era, lawmakers facing their own mortality were granted a last favor. Just before he died in 2001, Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Massachusetts), who had chaired the House Rules Committee for years, asked Democratic leaders for a final wish: install his former aide, Rep. Jim McGovern, to the rules panel.

McGovern got the nod and now serves as the committee’s top Democrat.

So far, Dunn has received no such reward for his loyalty, but the president did voice support for independent repair shops at an Oval Office event last month, a day after he met with top car manufacturer CEOs.

“They don’t want people to fix their car. I said, ‘That’s strange, I’d never heard of that.’ They have a thing — nobody’s allowed to fix their car,” Trump told reporters.

“We’ll get it all straightened away,” he added.

Dunn, an Army-trained surgeon, served his residency at Walter Reed and eventually ran a large urology practice in Florida. Given his background, his passion for the Right to Equitable and Professional Auto Industry Repair Act is perhaps a surprising coda to his congressional career. But Dunn fought (and won) a similar battle with medical devices, and dove in when he found out the same debate was happening in the auto industry.

But Dunn is up against a very powerful duo of lobbying forces: large auto manufacturers and car dealers.

“The basic moral question is: If I buy a car, truck, a motorcycle, whatever, from you, is it mine or is it yours? It's mine,” he said. “I buy it, and you know who owns it, and then I should be able to control it. If I want to put a torch to the thing, I can do that — but I can't repair it? That's crazy.”

Dunn says the bigger corporations are trying to force car owners into pricier repairs, freezing out the usually cheaper independent operators. This comes as new cars have soared in cost and Americans are holding on to their old cars longer than ever, making the auto repair market more lucrative than ever.

“Ford, GM, Toyota — they all dug in, and they made it really, really, really difficult to allow the secondary market to continue,” he said.

The lead opponent to the REPAIR Act is the National Automobile Dealers Association, which has accused the car insurance industry of trying to gain access to sensitive “vehicle data.”

“Insurers are pursuing controversial provisions to lower their costs and limit consumer choice by expanding the use of cheaper, non-original and recycled parts for vehicle repairs,” Kerry Feehery, a senior lobbyist for NADA, wrote in a memo last month after the a compromise deal on the bill collapsed.

The Dunn-related compromise would have greatly expanded the amount of auto technology shared with independent repair shops beyond the deal they reached in 2014. Cars have advanced so much technologically over the past decade that repair shops need more information from auto makers and dealers to fix cars.

Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Kentucky), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, acknowledged Thursday that the deal fell apart because the car dealers are very powerful and turned members against the proposal.

“They're in everybody's district. I mean, that's people listening to their constituents, and so that's what you hear,” he told NOTUS, pledging to try to find more support for Dunn’s original ideas. “We're still working.”

Dunn came in with the class of 2016, along with a low-profile Louisiana Republican who would go on to become House speaker. But his friendship with Johnson has thus far been unable to overcome the more powerful lobbying forces.
Mike Johnson (8640x5760, AR: 1.50)“The speaker has a lot of pressures from different directions, and I don't know all those pressures. I'm sure that GM and Ford are two of them,” he said.

So far in 2026, GM has spent more on federal lobbying ($11.4 million) than any individual company in America. Only a few major associations like the Chamber of Commerce have a bigger budget.

Time is running short both for the House — it’s scheduled for just 16 days in session over the next three-and-a-half months — and for Dunn’s tenure on Capitol Hill.

Private polling shows overwhelming support for the independent repair shops. So Dunn said he’s hopeful Trump could throw his full support behind the REPAIR Act and get it attached to one of several must-pass bills at the end of the year.

“There's just not that many issues that are 85 percent. So, you know, I feel good about it,” he said.

Dunn paused to consider the forces he is up against.

“I'm not — I'm not betting my soul on it.”
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/maine-midterms-susan-collins Paul Kane The party needs to know how hard it is to defeat incumbents as it chooses Graham Platner’s replacement. Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:01:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/maine-midterms-susan-collins Before running for Senate in 2020, Sara Gideon’s toughest race came in the 2012 Democratic primary for a seat in the state House.

She won by 6 percentage points and eventually became speaker of the state House.

Eight years later, her challenge to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) went down in political flames, despite Gideon raising $75 million and the tailwinds from Joe Biden’s victory in Maine by 9 points.

In Maine, as history has shown repeatedly, it is very difficult to knock incumbents out of top offices. Rep. Jared Golden (D), who first won in 2018, is Maine’s only challenger to knock off an incumbent member of the U.S. House this century.

The last time an incumbent Maine senator lost reelection was in 1978, when Republican Bill Cohen won the first of three terms. And it’s been 60 years since a Maine governor sought re-election and lost.

“Maine thinks they’ve chosen well to begin with,” Kevin Raye, a former state senator who lost three bids for the state’s northern 2nd Congressional District in 2002, 2012 and 2014, told NOTUS.

It’s a central dilemma for Maine Democrats now as they choose a replacement for Democratic Senate nominee, Graham Platner, who dropped out amid sexual assault allegations. Whoever is picked will face Collins, who’s won five Senate races in the previous three decades, and is the longest-serving senator in Maine history.

Based on the state’s electorate, Democrats would seem favored to defeat Collins in November. Democratic presidential nominees have won Maine in nine straight elections. Four of the last six governor’s races went to Democrats, and for 26 of the last 30 years Democrats have held both of Maine’s seats in the U.S. House.

Add in that recent polling shows President Donald Trump is approved by fewer than 4 in 10 Mainers, and it’s a politically toxic mess for Collins. And it comes in one of the nation’s most competitive races, one that will draw plenty of spending, as it could decide control of the Senate.

But that favorable Democratic environment is running up against the state’s political inclination to support incumbents, regardless of party.

“Maybe it’s because Maine people elect good people to start with, they don’t think they have to change them,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told NOTUS, half-joking.

King narrowly won the 1994 gubernatorial election as an independent, when Collins was the Republican nominee, but in his 1998 reelection bid his closest competitor trailed by 40 points.

He came out of retirement in 2012 to run in an open Senate race, almost campaigning as a familiar incumbent. He won comfortably by about 20 points, similar to his margins of victory in 2018 and 2024.

Since Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, Maine has had just five senators — the same number as other small-population states Alaska and Hawaii, which are notorious for sending their senators to Washington for very long stretches in order to bring home federal bacon.

Ticket-splitting is a long tradition in Maine, even as it has disappeared from other states. From 1997 into 2013, Maine voted repeatedly to send Republicans Collins and Olympia Snowe to the Senate while also voting every two years to send two Democrats to the House.

Despite Trump’s poor showing in Maine in 2020, Gideon received fewer votes in her bid against Collins than he did in the presidential race.

King, who is not endorsing in this year’s Senate race, pointed to a unique factor in Maine’s state government.

Elected statewide offices are limited to governor and two senators. There’s no lieutenant governor. The Legislature votes for the state’s attorney general, secretary of state and auditor – positions that go to those who play the inside game in the state capital, Augusta, not through statewide elections.

“So there's not much of a pathway for people to achieve some statewide name-recognition or experience,” King said.

Moreover, the Legislature is massive for such a small-population state: more than 150 seats in the state House, leaving representatives with a constituency of about 9,000, and 35 in the state Senate, with about 40,000 constituents.

“State senators are not well known outside of their districts,” said Raye, the former state senator.

Raye said Gideon, who served a couple terms as state House speaker, was an unknown entity across Maine. In that critical 2012 primary, Gideon won with only 534 votes, about what it takes to win student council president at an average-size high school.

Raye, a Republican who was chief of staff to Snowe in the 1990s, served four terms in Augusta, rising to state Senate president. Maine’s strict term limits forced him out in 2012, when he decided to challenge the incumbent House Democrat.

He lost by about 16 points, and two years later he lost the Republican nomination to Bruce Poliquin, who went on to win the state’s 2nd Congressional District, which had been left open when the incumbent ran for governor.

Troy Jackson served as state Senate president for three terms, but even in a few competitive races for his northern district he never won more than 12,000 votes.

When he ran in the Democratic gubernatorial primary this year, he finished in third place. He’s now considered among the top tier of potential nominees to replace Platner.

The new standard-bearer will have to win over a collection of roughly 600 Maine Democrats who will hold a convention on July 25, with a deadline two days later to announce the new pick.

Golden, who is retiring in early January after four terms in Congress, will not endorse in any races this year. He said challengers need to offer a positive vision or Mainers will revert back to their comfortable previous choice.

“Do I want to keep this person in the job? The answer is maybe not,” Golden told NOTUS. “Their second question is: But do I want to give the job to this other person? And if they don’t know, then they’ll default to the incumbent.”

Golden had an opening in 2018 to defeat Poliquin because in 2016 the Republican had made statements suggesting he would not vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and then did just that in 2017.

Golden’s ads hit on Poliquin’s votes, then pivoted to his own biography: serving in the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, working in the Senate for Collins and serving two terms in the state House. One ad ended with him saying he’s a “straight shooter” and firing a weapon.

Democrats thought Collins’ vote for Trump’s nominees in his first term, particularly her decisive vote for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, made her vulnerable in 2020. But after the campaign, many Maine Democrats felt the race focused too much on a Supreme Court vote that didn’t resonate with many middle-of-the road Mainers.

“You have to offer them a rationale for why you should have a job,” Golden said. “But so many people these days just campaign on why the other person shouldn’t have the job.”

Also, Mainers expect their members of Congress to be statesmen with something of national profile. Ed Muskie (D), a Maine senator from 1959 to 1980, was a serious presidential candidate in 1972 and served as secretary of state at the end of the Carter administration. George Mitchell, who succeeded Muskie, was Senate majority leader for six years before retiring in 1995.

Cohen, the former Republican senator, was confirmed as Bill Clinton’s final secretary of defense soon after retiring from the Senate in January 1997.

Collins, King and Snowe all have waded into tense bipartisan negotiations on a range of policy issues over the past several decades.

King said there’s something existential about how Maine voters feel like they know their leaders in ways that are impossible in large states. They like to say they live in a big small town.

“When I'm on the street in Maine, most people call me Angus, not senator,” he said. “They feel there's a connection.”

Golden said voters will get past some ideological sins if the lawmaker publicly explains their position, something he did after his 2023 reversal to support a ban on assault weapons. He had a powerful case to make after a mass shooting had just left 18 people dead in his hometown, Lewiston, even in a pro-gun, rural district.

He went on to a narrow victory in 2024 as Trump won his district by 9 points.

“I didn’t shy away from having a daily, transparent conversation with my constituents, where I laid out, ‘Here's what I was thinking when I opposed the assault weapons ban,’” Golden said.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/lindsey-grahams-career-of-contradictions Paul Kane Over 30 years in Congress, Graham maneuvered across the political spectrum in search of relevance and influence. Sun, 12 Jul 2026 20:24:58 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/lindsey-grahams-career-of-contradictions Lindsey Graham had reached the end of his rope on the night of Jan. 6, 2021, declaring his alliance with Donald Trump over.

“Trump and I, we’ve had a helluva journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my god, I hate it,” the South Carolina Republican senator said during a floor speech after the Capitol riot had been subdued.

“All I can say is, count me out, enough is enough,” Graham concluded.

Except no journey with Lindsey Graham was ever really over. In more than three decades in Congress, Graham constantly maneuvered across the political spectrum in search of relevance and influence.

True to form, he returned to Trump’s side later in 2021 and was an early endorser of his 2024 presidential campaign, at a time when Trump seemed beatable. That ingratiation led Graham to an influential role as an informal adviser on national security. On Saturday he spoke by phone with the president to discuss the senator’s trip to Ukraine and his long effort to pass tough new sanctions against Russia.

The call took place, according to Trump, not long before paramedics were called to Graham’s Capitol Hill home. His aides announced Graham’s death in an early Sunday morning social media post.

“If I had a problem, a real problem, I wouldn’t often ask. But if I had a problem with a Democrat, he could work it out,” Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “He was a great, he was a great politician, actually.”

It’s debatable how much Graham could work out with Democrats in his last few years in the Senate. His ideological maneuvering left him increasingly isolated when it came to the sort of dealmaking he’d learned as a sidekick to John McCain (R-Arizona) in his first 15 years in the Senate.

The former Air Force prosecutor could drive his colleagues to a frenzy during negotiations. Graham spent months in late 2023 and early 2024 working with Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) on a bill to tighten up border security and send $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, only to abandon the deal once Trump, running to return to office, decided he didn’t want the Biden administration to get wins on the issue.

Sinema developed her own private moniker for Graham: “Chaos monster.”

He responded to Trump’s decision by opposing the deal he helped negotiate, denouncing European leaders critical of Republican isolation, and abandoning his annual leadership of a Senate delegation to the Munich Security Conference, nicknamed in McCain’s honor. He eventually supported the final version of Ukraine funding and remained Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s loyal Trump whisperer, meeting him in Kyiv just last Friday following discussions the two presidents held last week at the NATO summit in Turkey.

It was Graham’s 10th visit to Ukraine since Russia invaded in 2022. “Lindsey was a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer,” Zelenskyy wrote in a social media post a few hours after his death.

In Graham’s final months, he had a security detail provided by the U.S. Capitol Police and South Carolina officers, while back home, as threats against him rose, especially after his forceful support for the war in Iran.

“At least they used a good photo of me,” he wrote Monday on social media after seeing pictures of Iranian posters of him with a bullet target across his forehead. “Judge me by my enemies.”

In the Senate, Graham believed in never having permanent enemies. Everyone was a potential ally on some issue, from immigration to trade to judicial nominations.

No matter how many times Graham might have disappointed some Democrats, they never turned against him.

“We talked at all hours of the day or night, and traveled through all kinds of weather, meeting dictators and democracy defenders,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), the co-author of the Russian sanctions bill Graham had been trying to pass, said in a statement.

And they all loved his humor. Blumenthal recalled a Munich appearance that Graham “filled with expletives” that brought “uproarious laughter” at the security conference.

Graham arrived in Washington as a rabble rouser willing to overthrow the establishment. He won a House seat as part of the Republican wave in 1994, the first non-Democrat to represent that northwestern corner of South Carolina since the end of Reconstruction in 1877. He linked arms with other conservative rebels and launched a failed coup against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia.) in 1997, then helped push Gingrich out in late 1998.

He won bipartisan acclaim for his presentation as an impeachment manager in the 1999 trial of President Bill Clinton.

Graham broke with party leaders when he endorsed McCain’s 2000 bid for the Republican nomination over the Texas governor, George W. Bush.

He moved to the Senate when he replaced Strom Thurmond, the longest-serving Republican senator, in January 2003 and fully joined McCain’s orbit in the first of a few Batman-and-Robin bonds Graham formed.

When McCain helped lead a 2005 compromise to settle a dispute over confirming Bush’s judicial nominees, Graham was at his side. When McCain helped lead bipartisan immigration negotiations, Graham was there again in several failed attempts in 2006, 2007 and 2013.

“I do fear our failure to act will only allow the problem of illegal immigration to grow worse and the anger felt by some Americans will grow more intense,” Graham said after the 2007 effort collapsed.

He jumped aboard McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign against then-Sen. Barack Obama, and, during some dark days in late 2007, Graham and then-Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) served as campaign roadies helping cheer up McCain.

They dubbed themselves the “Three Amigos,” and while McCain lost the general election, Graham cruised to a 15-point margin in his reelection bid in 2008, his largest-ever victory.

He voted to confirm both of Obama’s nominees to the Supreme Court and worked on a 2013 immigration deal, drawing the ire of some from his state’s far-right flank who would go on to help propel Trump to the White House.

This year he spent nearly $20 million to win the Republican nomination against a neophyte candidate, despite having Trump’s forceful backing. He won with less than 57 percent of the vote, barely avoiding what could have been a troublesome runoff.

“Lindsey Graham didn’t back down. He stood firm. He fought and he delivered,” a narrator said in one of Graham’s campaign ads, citing his September 2018 effort to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

That moment might have been what clinched his bond with Trump, who was troubled by how soft Republicans had been in questioning Christine Blasey Ford, a witness who testified that in high school Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. Graham delivered a fiery speech railing on Democrats that shifted the momentum in those hearings.

Just two years earlier, Graham had refused to support Trump. In February 2016, after his own brief presidential campaign, he delivered a stand-up roast at a Washington dinner party saying Republicans had gone “batshit crazy” because Trump had taken the lead in the early Republican primaries.

By 2018, however, McCain — a staunch Trump opponent — had returned home to Arizona in his battle with brain cancer, dying that August. Graham started playing golf with Trump during his first term, and the metaphor played out: Robin had found a new Batman.

The alliance grew strong enough that the president gave Graham a strong endorsement in his 2020 reelection campaign — something Trump took credit for often.

Graham’s final official role during Trump’s second term was chair of the Senate Budget Committee, which helped cobble together the massive domestic policy bill last summer. But Graham was much more focused on national security and regularly worked, along with a former Senate colleague, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to nudge Trump toward their hawkish views on Iran and Russia.

He applauded Trump’s full-scale war against Iran this year. He grew fearful that Vice President JD Vance had negotiated a poor initial deal to end the fighting last month, demanding he present his case to Congress.

At a news conference in Kyiv on Friday to announce Trump’s support for the Graham-Blumenthal Russia sanctions bill, the senator appeared more confident than ever this was the right time.

Upon greeting Graham, Zelenskyy asked the senator how he was doing, a day before he would die.

“Good,” Graham replied. “Older, older, but no wiser.”
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/graham-platner-senate-replacement-maine Paul Kane As Maine Democrats consider how to replace Graham Platner, they might find lessons in some previous mid-campaign switches. Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:30:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/graham-platner-senate-replacement-maine The campaign team for Claire McCaskill went from euphoria to dread within a few hours.

In August 2012, the Missouri Democrat’s challenger had uttered a politically fatal line that boosted McCaskill’s chances of winning reelection to the Senate. Then her aides realized state law gave then-Rep. Todd Akin until late September to withdraw from the race, possibly handing Republican insiders a chance to handpick his replacement.

“That was the longest six weeks of that campaign,” Caitlin Legacki, a top McCaskill adviser, told NOTUS.

That contest turned into one of the more wild Senate races of the past 50 years, and ended with McCaskill winning a second term. But it’s not the only one in which one of the parties had such a flawed nominee that leaders intervened and tried to find a replacement candidate.

The results are often a mixed bag and offer some clues — and warnings — for how Maine Democrats should proceed as they sort out who will replace the disgraced Graham Platner on the ballot to go up against five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November.

Most prominently, Democrats had to replace Joe Biden two years ago after the president — at 81, already facing voter skepticism about his age — had a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. Biden endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, and the party quickly coalesced around her. Harris narrowly lost every swing state and Trump won a second term.

In the Maine contest, Platner had survived earlier scandals, but an ex-girlfriend accused him in a story published this week of sexually assaulting her in 2021. While he denied the allegations, he announced Wednesday that he would withdraw by the Monday deadline to formally remove his name from the November ballot.

State party officials are setting up a fairly wide open process to find a replacement. Potential candidates are already announcing bids, and Democrats have asked county organizations to send several hundred delegates to a convention so they can choose a replacement by July 27.

The plan might win plaudits from party activists who had recoiled at the efforts by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Washington operatives to line up support for Gov. Janet Mills in the primary. She ended up leaving the race as Platner surged.

Veterans of past tumultuous Senate campaigns are urging Maine Democrats to use the next few weeks to focus on only one thing.

“The North Star needs to be: How do we beat Susan Collins? And then work backwards from there,” Legacki said.

Almost every other recent Senate replacement candidate was chosen in a back-room deal, an idea that is very out of favor with voters in both parties right now.

Perhaps the most cataclysmic mid-campaign change came in 2004. Illinois Democrats nominated an ambitious young state senator, Barack Obama, as their nominee. Republicans settled on Jack Ryan, a business executive with a deep background in charity. The public release of family custody records during divorce proceedings forced Ryan to bow out of the race.

Illinois Republicans spent six weeks flailing in their bid to find a prominent politician to take the nomination, leading to a failed courtship with the famed Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka.

Eventually they gave the nomination to Alan Keyes, a former Reagan administration official who became a prominent Black Republican commentator — even though he lived in Maryland. Obama won the election by more than 40 percentage points, and would be elected president four years later.

The most successful last-minute, back-room deal might have come in 1990, when the Minnesota Republican gubernatorial nominee withdrew with only about a week left in the race after multiple stories of sexual misdeeds emerged.

The state auditor, Arne Carlson, who was the runner-up in the primary, became the backup pick.

“I was a surfer who caught a beautiful wave,” Carlson, now 91, told Gabe Fleischer of Wake Up to Politics, which recounted the story in its Wednesday newsletter.

He won by a few points in 1990, then won reelection by a nearly 2-1 margin and retired as one of the most popular Minnesota governors ever.

John Warner ended up having a 30-year tenure in the Senate even though he finished second in the 1978 Virginia Republican primary. The winner died in a plane crash and a team of 78 state operatives chose the replacement, settling on the former Navy secretary who was a political celebrity after marrying actress Elizabeth Taylor.

“John Warner is a man of principle,” he said in accepting the nomination. He won that November by less than 5,000 votes.

In 2002, New Jersey Democrats pulled off another successful insider deal for a candidate swap. Wounded by years of Justice Department investigations, Sen. Bob Torricelli’s support cratered.

At the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters, senior staff repeatedly sent word to New Jersey for their candidate, business executive Doug Forrester, to not call for the senator’s resignation. They thought they’d have a better chance facing off against the tainted incumbent, known as The Torch.

In late September, Torricelli withdrew, setting off a legal dispute about whether he could be replaced that late in the cycle.

"You can put somebody else on the ballot when somebody else has died, but political death does not qualify. He still has a pulse,” Mitch Bainwol, the executive director of the NRSC at the time, told reporters.

Local courts decided otherwise and former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who had previously served three terms, won by almost 10 percentage points in a year that was otherwise good for Republicans.

A decade later, a similar scenario faced the McCaskill team when they started to absorb the fallout from Akin’s controversy.

McCaskill’s campaign had spent $2 million on an ad campaign that waded into the Republican primary with messages like “Todd Akin is too conservative” — boosting his popularity with the die-hard conservatives who show up to early-August primary elections.

Akin won the GOP nomination with just 36 percent of the vote, ahead of two much better-financed candidates.

But Akin himself would soon make a major mistake, in his response to a question about the right to an abortion in the case of rape or incest.

“From what I understand from doctors, it's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” Akin told an interviewer.

Legacki can still recall the note she sent to the campaign team: “Even for Todd Akin, this is crazy.”

The McCaskill campaign worried Akin would drop out and Republicans would pick someone better able to target McCaskill’s strengths, especially with moderate women in the voter-rich suburbs of St. Louis. Their biggest fear was Jo Ann Emerson, a 16-year veteran of the House with a voting record much more moderate than Akin’s.

Legacki said the McCaskill campaign found ways to feed polling data to allies of Akin that showed the race was still close. They also tried to stiffen opposition to Emerson or other potential moderate replacements by sending anonymous research packets to local conservative operatives about their moderate records.

It may have helped. Akin held a news conference on Sept. 25, the deadline to withdraw, defiantly staying in the race. 

On election night, McCaskill coasted to victory by 15 points, even as Missouri voters gave Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney a 10-point victory.

Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in Missouri since.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/maps-americas-largest-cities-over-250-years Andrew Van Dam We compiled data on every city that has been among America’s largest, from Marblehead, Massachusetts, to Metairie, Louisiana. Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:41:59 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/analysis/maps-americas-largest-cities-over-250-years The United States is 250 years old. But you’ll struggle to find data going back that far — regrettably, not one of the Declaration of Independence’s 27 grievances regarded the lack of quality census data.

So we took matters into our own hands, digging through modern census data, beautifully archived older census data and decades-old books to assemble a complete set of America’s 100 largest cities from the Revolution to today.

It was a journey!

When the then-cutting-edge Constitution prompted America’s first census in 1790, the Massachusetts metropolis of Marblehead ranked as the 10th largest town in America. Riding high on fishing and shipping, it boasted 5,661 residents and a proud recent history of privateering on the high seas.

But these days, the town that probably gave us the U.S. Navy doesn’t even rate as the 10th largest city in Essex County, Massachusetts.

It’s not the only town in that original top 10 to fall from grace. The Philadelphia suburbs of Northern Liberties and Southwark don’t even exist as independent entities any more. (This is a good time to note that, hamstrung by historical data, we’ll focus on cities instead of metro areas, so suburbs will be counted separately. This leads to a different list of top cities than you may be used to.)

From those original rankings, only New York City and Philadelphia remain in the top spots. In the most recent top 10, cities in what was once Mexico now outnumber cities from the original 13 colonies by more than three to one, thanks to the rise of California, Texas and Arizona.

But if this is America’s 250th, shouldn’t we be going back to the populations of 1776? That’s tricky, given the aforementioned lack of a Colonial Census Bureau. But we did find estimates in 1932’s blockbuster “American Population Before The Federal Census of 1790,” later refined by urban-history heavyweight Carl Bridenbaugh.

Bridenbaugh focused on five of the most important early American cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, South Carolina, and Newport, Rhode Island.

CITIES250 (3035x3547, AR: 0.86)For much of the colonial period, Boston reigned, only to be passed by fast-growing Philly in the years leading up to the Revolution, when wartime chaos, occupations and fleeing loyalists scrambled the population of most major cities.
CITIES250 (3034x2225, AR: 1.36)After the war, New York clawed its way to the top spot. It still hasn’t let go.

We know this because once we put all our sources together, we could suddenly chart the entire sweep of U.S. population history.

CITIES250 (3034x3761, AR: 0.81)In the early years, new major cities generally appeared within the friendly confines of the 13 original colonies. But soon New Englanders, in particular, hit the limits of their rocky soil and sought friendlier soils in the Ohio River Valley. From there, colonists invaded Native American lands throughout the Midwest and Appalachia — a pattern which would repeat for at least another century.

CITIES250 (3034x4231, AR: 0.72)In the years around the Civil War, new cities popped up across the Louisiana Purchase as the railroad opened the country’s interior to newcomers from the East Coast and Europe.

CITIES250 (3034x2304, AR: 1.32)
The industrial revolution redrew our America’s city power rankings again, pulling immigrants (and then Black Southerners) to the factory towns of the Northeast and Midwest while slashing travel times into the wide-open American West with steam locomotives and, later, cars and trucks.

CITIES250 (3034x3774, AR: 0.80)Why did Americans swarm the Sun Belt after the World Wars? The mass production of air conditioners in the 1950s helped. But we also saw increased Cold War defense spending, massive dams in the arid West, and the rise of manufacturing in Southern states where unions were scarce and workers cheaper. The rise of destination retirement communities also drew older Americans southward.

In the following years, the top 100 cities calcified into the country as we know it today.
CITIES250 (3034x6207, AR: 0.49)Hi there! Here at the new NOTUS data column, we're still figuring out what to cover. What are you curious about? International trade in diamonds? North American populations before colonization? Most common fonts, by government agency? Just ask!]]>