2025/26/27/28 Primaries & General Elections

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Democrats are dreaming of a midterm sweep

Voters line up in Pflugerville, Texas, on Monday to cast their ballots on the first day of early voting. (Jan Sonnenmair/Reuters)

Democrats are hungry for a blue wave in the November election, and recent polls have them thinking they could pull off victories in unexpected places.

The party held a nearly 10-point lead over Republicans in a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, while Democratic Senate candidates are competitive in traditionally red states like Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Texas. But only twice in 100 years have both the House and Senate flipped in one cycle, and much will depend on who turns out to vote.

The expectation, though, is that there will be some degree of a wave. Analysts also expect that, no matter how the midterms play out, President Donald Trump will likely claim voter fraud — with or without evidence — and try to frame the outcome as a win.

+ Read more: Do Democrats have inflated expectations for the midterms?

+ For subscribers: The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2026

+ The numbers: Record-breaking ad spending is pouring into states Trump won

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📺 "To Catch a Predator" midterm ad wars

Screenshot: People Over Politics Action Fund Republicans and Democrats are flooding the midterm airwaves with explosive TV ads accusing their opponents of protecting pedophiles and child sexual abusers, Axios' Alex Isenstadt writes. Why it matters: The advertising blitz underscores the lingering power of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, which has fueled distrust of powerful figures and pushed allegations of child sexual abuse to the forefront of national politics. The controversy over the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files — including allegations that officials sought to protect powerful figures by not releasing all of the files — has kept the issue in the headlines. The midterm ads that have followed have been bipartisan and are playing out in state and federal races. 🧮 By the numbers: Since Sept. 1, candidates and outside groups have aired at least $70 million in TV ads mentioning pedophilia, Epstein and allegations related to child sexual abuse, according to AdImpact. Of the 118 ads identified, 63 were sponsored by Democrats, 52 by Republicans and three by independents. Keep reading. Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at a campaign event in Greenville, Ohio, on Sunday. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign for Ohio governor is pouring $4 million into a bombshell ad in which his opponent's estranged mother attacks her daughter — doubling down on the message despite fierce bipartisan backlash. Amy Acton has said her mom sided with her stepfather after he sexually assaulted Acton when she was 12. After the ad began appearing yesterday on social media, many fellow Republicans urged Ramaswamy to distance his campaign from it. Go deeper.

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Trump brings a last-minute rally boost to Darline Graham in South Carolina's US Senate race

President Donald Trump will visit South Carolina on Wednesday to boost U.S. Sen. Darline Graham, whose stumbles in her first campaign since replacing her late brother have Democratic voters hopeful — but not necessarily optimistic — that their candidate can break Republicans' grip on the state. Read More.

Maine Sen. Collins enlists ex-Democratic colleague Manchin in effort to highlight her independence

Maine Republican Susan Collins has promoted her reputation as one of the most independent U.S. senators and she is using the waning days of the election season to sell that message to voters by campaigning with a former Democratic colleague who has endorsed her. Read More.

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Many states deciding control of the Senate are seeing a big boost in early voting, AP analysis shows

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voter turnout is soaring compared with the last midterm election in many of the states that are expected to decide control of the U.S. Senate, according to an Associated Press analysis of early voting two weeks before Election Day.

https://apnews.com/article/election-2026-midterms-voting-early-turnout-44df2c18b387d28022dbb480e99feaba?

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Buckeye Bushwa

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If you don’t live in Ohio, you’ve probably been blissfully free from thinking about Vivek Ramaswamy since the 2024 Republican presidential primary, which he left after arousing the visceral dislike of pretty much all of his rivals, as well as many voters.

Ramaswamy, who’s now running for Ohio governor, is back in the national spotlight this week, once again in extremely unflattering fashion, because of a campaign ad targeting the Democratic candidate Amy Acton. Acton, a first-time candidate, has leaned heavily on her inspiring biography: She has spoken about experiencing homelessness as well as being raped by her stepfather as a child; she later waited tables and delivered newspapers to put herself through medical school, eventually becoming the director of the Ohio Department of Health.

Most recent polls have shown Acton with a small advantage over Ramaswamy, which may be why his campaign resorted to the appalling commercial. The spot features Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, accusing her of being an inveterate liar. “She’s lied her entire life,” Arthur says. “My daughter needs help, and she can’t help you if she needs help herself.”

The ad immediately drew both outrage and debunkings. “It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at 12 years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point,” Acton’s brother said in a statement. National Review, the conservative magazine, pointed out that court documents provide extensive backup for Acton’s claims, as does contemporary press coverage. She was removed from her mother’s custody at the time; her mother’s husband, Cledith Arthur, whom she accused, left the state after being indicted for sexual assault. He pleaded not guilty and died in 2004.

For a campaign to cast doubt on a rival’s account of childhood sexual abuse is shocking; to do so despite such evidence is despicable. For years, influential MAGA figures insisted that a conspiracy of pedophiles was running the government and other influential institutions. Now some of them treat pedophilia as no big deal. The Trump administration has tried to downplay the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sexual predator who was at one time a close friend of the president’s and maintained ties to other administration officials as well. Ramaswamy is opting to dismiss allegations of pedophilia and use them to smear an opponent. At an event earlier this year, he said that Acton has no vision “other than to complain about what someone else did to her.”

Despite his previous willingness to mock Acton’s abuse, Ramaswamy’s campaign didn’t initially claim the ad. It first became public on Monday via the colorful Buckeye State political blogger D. J. Byrnes, known as the Rooster. The version he posted, received from a tipster, didn’t feature any explanation of who had paid for it. But Ramaswamy has since gone all-in. “It is an ad from our campaign,” Ramaswamy said at an event last night. “I would love for this race and this election to be about the substantive issues that impact Ohioans. And unfortunately, Amy Acton has been hiding from those issues.” Axios reports that Ramaswamy (who recently loaned his own campaign $5 million) will spend $4 million airing it. “This is a campaign-ending moment for Amy Acton,” his campaign manager, Jonathan Ewing, said. “The people who know her best keep warning Ohioans about her.”

This is bold, if not wise: The ad has generated widespread condemnation. Even some right-wing influencers who initially spread it, such as Jackie Chea, have had second thoughts: “I have no idea if Amy’s abuse allegations are true, but if they are, then her mother is the monster … I regret framing the post as if Amy was lying about her mother when I can’t be sure about that.” Another, Dan Bostic, wrote, “I’ve never in my life seen someone do something so stupid. It’s hard to even wrap my brain around how someone could possess such horrible political instinct.” (Laura Loomer continues to endorse it, which is telling in its own way. Vice President Vance, meanwhile, was “disgusted”—but by Republican doubters, not by the commercial. He suggested that anything is justified in the name of winning elections. “Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern,” he said in Cincinnati today, telling his “fellow elected Republicans” to “stop whining about an advertisement.”)

On the other side of the aisle, liberals see the ad as suicidal. “I am very confident that this ad will backfire and blow up in Ramaswamy’s face,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former aide to Barack Obama, wrote. Any predictions now are premature: Knowing how convincing the ad will be, compared with the backlash, is impossible.

But the ad is another example of how Ramaswamy’s obnoxious personality has turned a race that should have been a safe GOP win into a toss-up. The candidate’s favorability rating is deeply negative. His fellow Republicans continue to dislike him. The outgoing governor, Mike DeWine, whose occasional pangs of conscience make him a profile in near-courage, clearly dreaded endorsing his fellow Republican. And although the national environment is friendly to Democratic candidates this year, no Democrat has won a governor’s race in Ohio since 2006; Donald Trump won the state three times. Acton is a first-time candidate most famous for her association with COVID public-health measures, neither of which is an obvious asset. If Ramaswamy loses, there will be no question about who was responsible.

Related:

• The 2026 midterms must-watch list
• Vivek Ramaswamy’s truth (From 2023)

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🚨"The wall has broken"

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

The Senate map once looked impregnable for Republicans. Now they're worried about losing Mississippi. Senate Republicans are weighing a last-ditch cash infusion for Mississippi and even more money for South Carolina and Kansas, we scooped today. Why it matters: It's been 44 years since Mississippi elected a Democratic senator, 94 years for Kansas and 28 for South Carolina. But panic is spreading through the Republican Party. "The wall has broken. The enemy is inside the fort," one national Republican political operative told us. "We are now fighting hand to hand." Democratic challengers are polling within the margin of error in more than half a dozen deep-red states, according to internal GOP polls. This is a grim reversal for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who had plenty of reasons to feel good about keeping the majority even earlier this year. Zoom in: Two weeks ago, when Senate Leadership Fund decided to take out a $5 million "insurance policy" in South Carolina, operatives took a hard look at Idaho, South Dakota and Mississippi. At the time, they concluded they didn't need to spend any money in those states, according to a person familiar with the matter. But Senate Republicans are now reviewing the Mississippi race and may need to spend there to protect Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith from a surprisingly competitive bid by Democratic district attorney Scott Colom. President Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Corinth, Mississippi, on Monday. Senate Majority PAC, the main super PAC for Senate Democrats, announced a $1.2 million investment in the race yesterday. Zoom out: In early June, SLF started to reinforce a Midwestern red wall to protect the GOP majority, reserving $28 million in TV advertising in Ohio and $11 million in Iowa. Those investments have ballooned to $93 million in Ohio and $53 million in Iowa. After an initial $5 million buy in South Carolina, SLF's spending has increased to $8.5 million, according to AdImpact. And a super PAC linked to Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is spending another $500,000 in South Carolina. SLF, which is linked to Senate GOP leadership, has earmarked $14 million for Kansas and has spent nearly $12 million there so far. What we're hearing: "We're nervous about Alaska. We're nervous about Michigan. We're still going to hold the Senate at the end," said another operative. Republicans aren't overly concerned about Sens. Ashley Moody in Florida or Mike Rounds in South Dakota. The intrigue: The National Republican Senatorial Committee raised $31.4 million last month, but its coffers appear to be drained. — Hans Nichols, Marc Caputo and Stef Kight

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😏 Scoop: Dems quietly boost spoilers

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

House Democrats' campaign arm is instructing allied super PACs to promote minor candidates in several key House races, we have learned. Why it matters: This allows Democrats to steer outside groups toward siphoning votes from Republicans without violating laws against direct coordination. Zoom in: An Axios review of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's "redboxes" — publicly available webpages laying out what PACs should say in ads and which voters to target — found references to minor candidates in five races. The DCCC included language on four of those pages — for CO-5, VA-2, VA-5 and NV-2 — promoting a third-party or independent candidate by touting their conservative, pro-gun or anti-government bona fides. The intrigue: In several cases, the redboxes urge super PACs to steer Democratic and left-leaning voters away from minor candidates who could siphon votes from the DCCC's recruit. Between the lines: In the post-Citizens United era, redboxes have emerged as a way for campaigns to give messaging guidance to cash-rich outside groups that often have less localized knowledge of their turf. The practice is so named because the websites often put a red box around the instructions. The NRCC has its own publicly available redboxes, though it shies away from encouraging PACs to boost spoiler candidates. The big picture: There have been several other examples this year of both parties allegedly boosting spoiler candidates, including with redboxes. Democrats successfully sued last month to get a Green Party candidate who they alleged was a GOP plant booted off the ballot in Pennsylvania's 7th District. Republicans in Alaska tried and failed to do the same with unaffiliated candidate Dan J. Sullivan, who they allege is a spoiler for Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan in his race against Democrat Mary Peltola. It's even happened in party primaries: The campaign of Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) put language on its redbox promoting Republican Zachariah Wooden in the hopes of keeping progressive challenger Mai Vang out of the general election. — Andrew Solender

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The top 10 Senate seats most likely to flip

Above are Democratic US Senate candidates Roy Cooper, Sherrod Brown, Mary Peltola, Troy Jackson, and James Talarico. Below are Republican US Senate candidates Michael Whatley, Jon Husted, Dan Sullivan, Susan Collins and Ken Paxton. (AP/Getty/Reuters)

Democrats are feeling optimistic about their chances of retaking the Senate this November after a set of encouraging polls, but the path to netting four seats will still be an uphill climb. Republicans are defending several seats in states President Donald Trump won comfortably in 2024, and both parties are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into ads during the final stretch.

In North Carolina, former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper leads Republican Michael Whatley in polling, while Democrat Sherrod Brown holds a narrow advantage over Republican Sen. Jon Husted in battleground Ohio. And elsewhere on the map, Democrats are seeing more signs of momentum.

Michigan, though, is emerging as one of the most contentious races, and polling shows no clear leader between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers. El-Sayed, who would become the nation’s first Muslim senator if elected, recently denounced the Muslim Brotherhood while pushing back against Republican accusations questioning his loyalties.

+ For subscribers: The top 10 Senate seats most likely to flip

+ Debate recap: Abdul El-Sayed, Mike Rogers clash in bitterly personal debate Wednesday

+ Plus: What Republicans mean when they ask Abdul El-Sayed to ‘disavow’ the Muslim Brotherhood

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What’s So Radical About Angie Nixon?

The Florida Democrat says she’s no extremist. She’s just running ‘toward the people and what it is that they need.’

Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon has a simple rebuttal to charges from her general election opponent, Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, that she’s an extremist and a radical, and therefore unfit to be the next U.S. Senator from the state of Florida. 

At a town hall in Lauderhill, a predominantly Black city in inland Broward County, west of the coastline and its better-known political and cultural centers, she told a story about a woman with breast cancer — a mother who had relied on Medicaid for her treatment and SNAP benefits to feed her children while she was too sick to work. Both programs had been cut after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last July. The woman’s cancer, Nixon said, has since advanced to stage IV. 

“This is what’s at stake right now in our country,” said Nixon, dressed in a black campaign shirt modeled after a vintage rap tee, with “ANGIE” splashed across a collage of her own image. “It is shameful that in one of the richest countries in the world, we have people who are dying because they don’t have access to quality healthcare.” Nothing about making sure people can see a doctor or paying workers a living wage, she continued, was “radical or extreme.”

Among the people listening with just weeks to go before the Nov. 3 election was Michelle Waterford, a former teacher who had moved to South Florida from Boston. Waterford had been an independent before changing her registration so she could participate in Florida’s closed Democratic primary. She and her 21-year-old son, Nate, initially supported Nixon’s primary opponent, retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. In June, they attended a candidate forum at a church in nearby Pompano Beach, where they expected to meet Vindman. He never showed up — but Nixon did.

“She was everywhere,” Waterford told me. “He was nowhere.”

By the end of the event, Waterford and several friends who had arrived supporting Vindman had switched to Nixon. Her reasons were not especially ideological. She liked Nixon’s positions on teachers’ wages and healthcare. The Waterfords also seemed to relish Nixon’s pugnacity. They parroted a quip they’d heard Nixon deliver at the Pompano Beach event when asked about her alleged support for abolishing the police. Nixon replied, “Why would I want to abolish the police? I want to put Ashley Moody in jail.” But more than anything, Michelle responded to the sense that Nixon was present and speaking to the problems she recognized in her own life.

 

In Florida, it had been eight years since Democrats nominated a progressive for governor or U.S. Senate. The last time, in 2018, Andrew Gillum lost the governorship to Republican Ron DeSantis by less than half a percentage point. And until Nixon’s insurgent primary win on August 18, Florida Democrats have largely responded to the state’s rightward lurch by running a series of centrist candidates, including former Republican Charlie Crist against DeSantis in 2022. DeSantis cruised to victory with a near 20-point win. Two years later, in 2024, Donald Trump and Republican Sen. Rick Scott notched double-digit wins in Florida, cementing its shift from a purple battleground into a Republican stronghold. 

Nixon’s campaign, by contrast, marks a clear departure from that centrist approach, focusing on the affordability crisis, Medicare for All, and the need to get money out of politics. She had joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) two months before the primary, and her win was hailed as the first time a DSA member had captured a major-party nomination for statewide office. 

The circumstances of that membership remain murky: the organization neither endorsed nor anticipated her victory. When pressed, Nixon balked at the socialist label, describing herself as more of a “social democrat” and distancing herself from several of the group’s positions. But the willingness to confront corporate power remained. As Morgan Harper reported in a column for The Lever, Nixon rebuked Walmart at a Congressional Black Caucus event the company co-sponsored, criticizing it for taking government subsidies and tax breaks while its workers rely on government assistance.

According to Nixon’s primary results, her message appeals to voters who have abandoned the Democratic Party in recent years. Nixon’s primary coalition extended into Republican-won territory, including Jacksonville, with particular strength in lower-income, less-college-educated communities. She also “won the rural vote by 20 points and carried 19 of the state’s 22 rural counties.” Overall, she trounced her establishment-backed primary opponent by double digits, despite being outspent more than 16-to-one.

Before she took the stage at the Lauderhill town hall, I asked Nixon what she thought voters had been endorsing when they chose her. 

“They were endorsing someone who wants to put people first,” she said. Voters, she added, were tired of Washington’s “chaos and corruption” and wanted someone focused on putting more money in their pockets and lowering the cost of gas and groceries.

She didn’t spare Democrats any blame for what she saw as an economic order shaped during the Obama years and carried forward under both Trump and Biden. 

“I think there’s some blame to go all around,” she said. “We need to start electing people who come from local communities, have community organizing experience, and have taken on big businesses.”

However, Nixon was careful not to frame her primary victory as an ideological triumph. She didn’t invoke socialism or progressivism or suggest voters had endorsed a decisive move to the left. In fact, she rejected the political spectrum altogether. “It’s not about right or left or centrist or progressive. It’s about the [candidate] who’s going to run toward the people and what it is that they need.”

Florida Dems Divided

For progressive Florida Democrats, Nixon’s primary win is an indictment of a state Democratic Party that responded to Florida’s rightward turn by chasing moderate and suburban voters while neglecting much of its working-class base. 

Elijah Manley, a progressive organizer who lost this year’s congressional primary for Florida's 20th Congressional District to establishment Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, contrasted Andrew Gillum’s narrow gubernatorial loss in 2018 with the party’s much worse statewide performances in subsequent cycles. 

“The Florida Democratic Party believes when they lose that going further to the right is the strategy to win,” he told me. “That has proved election cycle after election cycle not to be a winning strategy.”

For Manley, Nixon’s victory demonstrated something more specific than a statewide conversion to left politics. 

“It goes a little bit further than ideology,” he said. “It’s also coalition building.” Nixon traveled constantly, including to places conventional wisdom and strategists might have written off. “She threw out the consultant playbook.”

 

Oliver Larkin — another progressive also-ran, who lost this year’s congressional primary for Florida's 25th Congressional District to establishment Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz — located the failure in what he called the “Chuck Schumer strategy,” referring to Schumer declaring that Democrats could accept losses among working-class voters on the assumption that they could make them up with more affluent suburban moderates. Larkin believes strategists have spent too much energy chasing swing voters while neglecting Black, Latino, and rural communities. Nixon, he said, demonstrated that “you can outorganize organized money” when a candidate’s message matches the economic conditions voters are experiencing.

“When the Democratic Party is winning, it’s exciting young people,” Larkin said. “It’s exciting irregular voters.” He argued those voters are not looking for more bipartisanship but believe the institutions of both parties have failed them. He said Florida Democrats needed more voter registration, year-round community organizing, and less fixation on persuading Republican voters. When you start catering to Republicans, he said, it turns into a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” 

Grand theories built around a single primary hold little appeal for Steve Schale, a longtime Florida Democratic strategist who helped run both of Barack Obama’s campaigns in the state.

“I think everyone overreads every election way too much,” he told me.

Schale didn’t dispute that Nixon assembled an unusual coalition, but he offers a more mundane explanation for much of it. Vindman, Nixon’s primary opponent, was new to Florida, had few deep relationships in the state and, in Schale’s view, ran as though the general election mattered more than the Democratic primary.

“She frankly outworked the dude,” he said.

Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, diagnoses the party’s recent struggles as a structural issue. When Republicans consolidated power after 2018, she told me, changes to voter-registration rules, voting-rights restoration, and vote-by-mail enrollment made basic organizing more expensive. At the same time, outside investment in Florida Democrats has cratered. Fried pointed to the collapse in presidential spending. In 2020, the Biden presidential campaign spent about $112 million on advertisements in Florida, compared with the Harris campaign spending $539,000 on the state by October of 2024.

One oversight she placed closer to home was communication. Before she became chair in 2023, Fried said, the party had little coherent strategy for amplifying elected officials or maintaining a consistent message. It didn’t help that there was no Democratic governor, senator, or meaningful legislative power to speak of that could have commanded sustained news coverage.

Fried resisted the idea of a leftward lurch among state Democrats in the wake of Nixon’s victory. 

“People are looking for fighters,” she said, adding that Nixon’s strength came from years of organizing and an ability to speak directly to the affordability crisis, not from a sudden statewide shift to the left.

Reports of tension between Fried and Nixon surfaced almost immediately after Nixon won the primary, particularly around Nixon’s association with DSA. According to Axios, Nixon told Fried in a heated phone call, “You never gave a care about me from the beginning, and now you’re telling me how to run my campaign?” 

Fried sidestepped the suggestion that ideological concerns had resulted in limited party support, saying that Nixon was folded into the operation after the primary and that the party was fully behind Nixon. 

“She’s our nominee,” Fried said.

Nixon’s progressive allies are circumspect about that support. Manley said national Democrats “have not been putting the resources into the race, and I don’t know how they expect to win Florida without investing in it.” 

Federal records lend weight to that appraisal. Through August 31, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) had given $62,000 in direct contributions to six other nominees but none to Nixon, while transferring only $29,000 to the Florida Democratic Party, compared with millions to several other state parties. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) recently called it “shameful” that the DSCC was not making an “equitable investment” in candidates like Nixon.

Last month, Nixon herself told MS Now that when she asked the DSCC to contribute money to her campaign, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, “We will see.”

When commentators on the program asked why she thought the DSCC didn’t donate to her campaign, Nixon noted, “I am very vocal about putting working-class families first. I am very vocal about progressive values. I think that may be the main issue.”

Nixon added: “Also, folks are a little gun-shy because, unfortunately, Vice President Harris lost as a Black woman. And so people are being very hesitant in terms of funding Black women. Especially in the South.”

When asked about the lack of material support from the DSCC, Nixon told The Lever, “We’re thrilled with the support from Leader Schumer and Senator Gillibrand to host fundraisers and lean in with us.” (And separate from the DSCC, Schumer has contributed to Nixon through his PAC.)  

Larkin’s criticism was more local. He said state party leadership hadn’t done enough to make the national case for investing in Florida. 

“There’s a kind of condescension that people feel [that] if you’re not bringing your own massive donor network or national media profile to the table, then we don’t have time for you,” he said. 

Larkin wants the state party to make a much more aggressive push not just for Nixon, but for congressional, legislative and future presidential races, noting that he harbored some resentment that Nixon had been forced to seek that assistance herself. 

Economic Populism Is Nothing New In The South

Scarcity has never been much of a deterrent for Nixon. She has spent most of her career building a movement without institutional help. She was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, a sprawling consolidated city-county of roughly 1.02 million people and 747 square miles — one of the biggest cities by land area in the continental United States. It is a place large enough to encompass dense urban neighborhoods, postwar suburbs, industrial warrens, wetlands, and semi-rural stretches within the same municipal boundary. The contrasts extend far beyond geography. Tony beach and riverfront enclaves are conveniently insulated from northwest neighborhoods like Moncrief, where Nixon grew up. In Moncrief’s ZIP code, 39 percent of residents live below the poverty line, more than triple the national average.

Economic insecurity looms large over Nixon’s campaign. She has described watching her mother work two jobs to support the family, being bused out of her underserved school district, and later losing a cousin to gun violence. After graduating from the University of Florida, she moved into community labor organizing before becoming executive director of Florida for All, a statewide organizing coalition, and winning a Florida House seat in 2020.

Afifa Khaliq, president of SEIU Florida Public Services Union, first met Nixon as an organizer in Jacksonville. Nixon later worked with SEIU’s state council on the campaign to raise Florida’s minimum wage and then organized adjunct faculty as the union’s higher-education director, hearing firsthand from workers struggling with healthcare, childcare, and stagnant wages. 

“When you hear her talking, those sound bites are coming from the workers directly,” Khaliq told me. “She does not need briefings about these experiences. She is a working-class family herself.”

Khaliq suggests that Nixon’s politics developed out of an organizer’s habit: find out what people are angry about, ask them to talk about it, and build a movement around the common denominator.

The Working Families Party, a labor-backed progressive third party, wants to see more candidates like Nixon — a thousand of them, according to Britney Whaley, its Southeast regional director. This summer, the party launched Southern Made, an ambitious effort to recruit and train 1,000 working-class candidates across 10 southern states by 2030. Announced alongside its endorsement of Nixon, the program seeks to cultivate candidates with her combination of working-class roots, community ties, and a platform centered on healthcare, housing, and wages.

Whaley resisted describing the project as an exercise in ideological conversion. 

“A lot of folks don’t care whether you call yourself progressive or MAGA,” she told me. “What they care about is not being able to afford to live right now.”

She argued that imposing the locutions of progressive politics on the South was less effective than addressing the specific conditions people faced. In New York, a transportation campaign may mean lowering subway fares. In the South, where public transit infrastructure is thinner, it may mean helping people get to a job at all. Much of the region has not expanded Medicaid, union density is weak, and Republican legislative supermajorities mean that organizers often count stopping legislation as a significant victory.

“It’s not that you’re importing a different politic,” Whaley said. “It has been here in the South.”

Among those making the case for a more working-class socialist politics is Eric Blanc, an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. Blanc sees Nixon’s candidacy as an example of why conflating economic populism and ideological identity can be misleading. 

“You can’t really be a socialist without being an economic populist,” he told me, “but you can be an economic populist without being a socialist.”

In Blanc’s telling, Nixon is not necessarily convincing working-class voters to adopt unfamiliar ideas. She is addressing material demands that have gone unmet for decades and connecting them to corporate power. Healthcare that people can afford and wages that keep pace with the cost of living do not require much ideological instruction. 

“The starting point is almost always people’s day-to-day struggles to get by,” Blanc said.

What distinguishes Nixon’s populist rhetoric from populism on the right is that she repeatedly identifies corporations and billionaires as responsible for those conditions. Blanc said political content can matter more than whether the candidate foregrounds the word socialism for voters who do not spend much time thinking about ideological labels.

Economic populism is nothing new in the South, Blanc said, calling it “a myth that there’s something inherent about the region that makes people averse to socialism.” In the early 20th century, Oklahoma became one of the strongest Socialist Party states in the country, powered heavily by tenant farmers and small agricultural producers. In 1914, Oklahoma’s Socialist gubernatorial candidate won more than 20 percent of the statewide vote, while more than 175 Socialist candidates won local and county offices. Farmers described themselves as workers and translated socialist arguments into the language of Jeffersonian republicanism and evangelical Christianity — political ideas made legible through institutions and traditions already familiar to rural voters.

Two decades later, Black and white sharecroppers organized together in the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, founded in Arkansas with Socialist Party roots. At its peak, the organization claimed tens of thousands of members across parts of the South and Southwest. And today its organizing principles echo in the Working Families Party and Nixon campaigns.

She Knows Who She’s Talking To

The voters I met in Lauderhill hadn’t previously thought of themselves as socialists, or even as notably progressive. 

One of them, Elizabeth Rodriguez, surveyed the room in a bright, patterned sundress and pale pink lipstick. An artist and single mother who grew up in Cuba and spent a decade in Canada, Rodriguez had never participated in politics before, much less volunteered for a campaign. That morning, she signed up. Affordable housing and childcare were among the issues that had drawn her to Nixon. 

“The reason I connect with her is because she talks about being a mother and a person that struggles every day,” Rodriguez said.

As for Nixon’s identity as a socialist, Rodriguez’s experience in Cuba had made her wary of political systems that promised everything to everyone, and she spoke at length about the danger of concentrating power. But she also allowed that you can make a distinction between social programs and authoritarianism. 

At any rate, she seemed more concerned about whether Democrats could communicate to people who don’t spend their lives thinking about political terminology. Republicans, she offered, had learned how to communicate in brutally simple language. Democrats often sounded “aristocratic,” which put a wedge between the political class and what she called normal people.

“They do need to communicate in simple words, like Angie,” Rodriguez said. “She knows who she’s talking to.”

The national political climate is a tailwind in Nixon’s campaign, with the war in Iran driving up energy prices, the cost of everyday goods and services climbing, and Trump’s approval rating bottoming out. And yet defeating Moody remains a formidable undertaking. Republicans enjoy a prodigious registration advantage in Florida, and aside from Nikki Fried’s narrow 2018 victory for agricultural commissioner, Democrats have not won a statewide race there since 2012, when they captured a Senate seat, and Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by less than one percentage point. The state hasn’t elected a Democrat for governor since 1994. 

Toward the end of her town hall remarks, Nixon asked the audience for money. She said that organized people could beat big money, but they still needed coffers of their own. Then she told the story of one of the smallest contributions her campaign had received, which was also her favorite.

“Thirty-three cents,” she said. “That is all that person had to give to me. That person realizes this is not my campaign — this is our campaign.”

The audience responded with murmurs of recognition and assent. In her characteristically disarming mode, Nixon had spoken over the course of the afternoon about growing up around domestic violence, the struggles of single parenthood, and families working harder but still falling behind. But as the speech wore on, her tone shifted. Appeals to hardship gave way to attacks on her opponents.

The Democratic response to Trumpism is often described as a restoration of law, norms, and competence; democratic institutions in lieu of spectacle and grievance. In Lauderhill, a more tangled outcome was on display. Nixon’s campaign was presenting itself as a rebellion against the political age Trump created while at times speaking in the same idiom that Trump helped normalize: 

“Governor Ron DeSantis needs to be in prison!” Nixon said from the stump. “Donald Trump needs to be in prison!”

The crowd grew louder as Nixon worked through the litany. A “lock them up” chant broke out. In the far corner of the room, I spotted Michelle and Nate Waterford on their feet clapping and pumping their fists. Then Nixon began setting up the joke about defunding the police and locking up Ashley Moody. They already knew the punchline, but were eager to hear it again.

https://www.levernews.com/whats-so-radical-about-angie-nixon/?

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🗳️ Religious left's play for red-state conservatives

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

Democrats in a pair of deep-red states are testing the religious right's dominance by putting their Christian faith at the center of their campaigns — potentially creating a template for the party to compete in similar terrain, Axios' Avery Lotz and Russell Contreras write. Why it matters: Upsets by Texas' James Talarico and Kansas' Adam Hamilton would all but ensure that Democrats take the Senate. 📊 A Pew poll released last week shows both an opening and an obstacle: White evangelicals still strongly favor Republicans, while many other Christian groups lean Democratic or are more narrowly split. The big picture: Talarico, a Presbyterian seminary student, and Hamilton, a United Methodist pastor, are challenging conservatives' claim to speak for faith. Their bids come after Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), senior pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, was elected in 2021. President Trump won both Texas and Kansas by double digits in 2024. Neither state has sent a Democrat to the Senate in the 21st century — the last time Kansas did was in 1932. Both races this year are considered toss-ups. ⛪ Talarico's "religiosity is a way to soften his liberalism" and potentially win over Christians turned off by his scandal-plagued opponent, says Brandon Rottinghaus, who co-hosts Houston Public Media's "Party Politics." Hamilton has presented himself as a bridge-builder, drawing on his experience leading the largest United Methodist church in the nation, says Alexandra Middlewood, the political science department chair at Wichita State University. His well-known religious background could appeal to less engaged, moderate Christians and center-right voters, she says. The other side: Ralph Reed, chair of the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition, tells Axios he's doubtful the Democrats' effort to lean into religion will attract voters of faith. "Voters will not vote for a candidate who professes to hold to their faith, but doesn't share their values," he says. Read on.

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🔥 Red-state fire drill

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Senate Republicans are betting that the one-two punch of a presidential visit and a $1 million cash infusion can save Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith from an embarrassing upset in an unpredictable year. Why it matters: A midterm cycle that began with warnings to GOP incumbents not to expect bailouts is now being defined by rescue missions in the reddest of red states. Driving the news: Trump will land Air Force One in northern Mississippi for a Monday night rally for Hyde-Smith. The next day, he's scheduled to head to Texas, where state Attorney General Ken Paxton trails narrowly in most polls despite an unprecedented flood of campaign spending. Vice President JD Vance plans to visit Belgrade, Montana, where Republicans are fighting to hold the state's 1st Congressional District. He'll then fly to Topeka, Kansas, where Republicans have made some high-level staff changes to help Sen. Roger Marshall in the fight of his political life. The other side: Former Vice President Kamala Harris stumped yesterday for Scott Colom, a three-term Mississippi district attorney who is trying to unseat Hyde-Smith. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) campaigned for Colom last week. "Mississippi matters," Harris said. The intrigue: Hyde-Smith is seizing on Harris' visit to tie Colom to the national Democratic Party and its policies. "He is completely beholden to the far left and the failed policies of the Biden-Harris administration," she wrote on X. — Hans Nichols

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Insufficient Funds (Megan Varner / Getty)

View in browser American politics is saturated with cash, and each election cycle seems to set new spending records—and yet, with the midterms in the home stretch, neither party thinks it has enough money. The irony is nearly as rich as the biggest donors. Filings released this week show that $1 billion was spent on the campaign in the first two weeks of October alone. This year’s elections are expected to be the most expensive midterms in U.S. history, beating 2022—which beat 2018, which beat 2014, and so on. This will not surprise anyone who lives in a state or district with a competitive race this fall. (I’m sure I can still recite the Senate Leadership Fund’s ad attacking the North Carolina Democrat Roy Cooper, weeks after it stopped running.) Democratic and Republican voters don’t agree on a ton these days, but they’re united on one position: There’s too much money in politics. Ask officials and candidates in both parties, though, and you’ll hear that they don’t have nearly enough. Democrats are feeling fairly confident about capturing the House and are getting more hopeful about their chances at winning the Senate, yet officials worry they don’t have enough cash. The party got a big boost on Monday, when Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor and presidential candidate, announced that he would pour $80 million into helping Democrats before Election Day. Republicans came into this election with a huge money advantage, and they continue to have millions available to spend. Even so, major GOP organizations are finding themselves having to make unpleasant choices to stop spending in races that seem to be slipping away from them. Senate Leadership Fund, which is the top Republican PAC supporting Senate races, didn’t spend any money on TV ads last week to support the Georgia candidate Mike Collins, who is expected to lose to Senator Jon Ossoff. SLF had already pulled back from helping the Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley in North Carolina. (To make matters worse, President Trump hosted a rally with Whatley on Tuesday in Greenville, where he said that Cooper is “going to become your senator, and it’s crazy.”) One reason both parties are scrambling for money is that the map has shifted. As Trump’s political position deteriorates and he drags GOP candidates along with him, races that once seemed like foregone conclusions are now real battles. Democrats worry that they don’t have enough funding to match their potential. Republicans, by contrast, are having to play defense in what they thought were safe seats. SLF has moved money from North Carolina to Kansas, a state where a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate race since 1932 but where Adam Hamilton is posing a real threat to Senator Roger Marshall. Republicans are also finding that their decision to squeeze new gerrymanders out of some states before this election has been costly: Districts that they expected to be easy Republican pickups are now close combat. Punchbowl News recently reported that although the GOP has a lock on five of 14 new districts, “Republican candidates and super PACs have spent nearly $100 million on ads trying to flip the other nine districts” since September 1. Another reason is that not all money is created equal. Some Democratic candidates are very well funded. The Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, for example, raised $64 million in the third quarter of the year alone—the highest total for any candidate in that period ever. (Because Texas has so many voters and so many media markets, it’s an expensive place to campaign.) But Democratic committees, including top PACs, are much more strapped. This is partly because the sitting president’s party always has a leg up in fundraising, but it’s also because many donors have grown disillusioned with the Democratic Party, upset with strategic decisions in the 2024 presidential loss, chaotic management of the Democratic National Committee since, and uninspiring leadership by elected officials. Republican candidates (such as Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton) have relatively little money on hand, but committees and PACs are still flush. Much of that money comes from independent-expenditure groups, such as super PACs. An analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice finds that these groups spent $2 billion through the end of September, leaning heavily toward Republicans. The single largest donor is Elon Musk, who has spent $366 million this cycle alone. But one disadvantage of independent-expenditure groups is that they have to pay higher rates for advertisements than candidates. That’s perhaps the dominant theme of the late campaign: Republicans have lots of money, but they’re not necessarily getting much bang for their buck. At this stage in the campaign, the time to build serious infrastructure, such as canvassing operations, is past. Money can buy a lot of advertising, but TV time is either booked up or more expensive. Besides, Republicans have already spent lavishly to fill airwaves, websites, and mailboxes with ads. So far, they don’t seem to be seeing much impact: Races either remain close or appear to be shifting even further toward Democrats. Understanding why the GOP candidates are stalled is not difficult. Voters are upset about high prices, especially for fuel, and they are turned off by a president who is dismissive of their affordability concerns, distracted by vanity projects, and bogged down in an unpopular and inflationary war in Iran. Trump’s super PAC has $164 million left to spend, but as any orthodox Lennonist knows, money can’t buy you love. Related: Small-dollar campaign donors are hurting the political system. A Supreme Court decision that might improve politics ps:What a waste of money being spent on politics!!!!!

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Democrat James Talarico targets Elon Musk at rally: ‘Texas is not for sale’

The Senate candidate denounced opponent Ken Paxton, calling out corruption allegations and support from Musk

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/23/democrat-james-talarico-targets-elon-musk-at-rally-texas-is-not-for-sale?

Republican billionaire Rick Jackson is walking a Trump tightrope in his quest to lead Georgia

He's hardly the first billionaire to promise working-class voters he'll fight for them in public office. Rick Jackson, the Republican candidate for Georgia governor, has even compared himself to the real estate mogul who reached the Oval Office. Read More.

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🗳️ Map du jour: '26 election stickers

Images collected by Ballotpedia and Jim Sergent/Axios No city or state requires an "I Voted" sticker, but they've become an Election Day staple across America, Ballotpedia notes. Some have classic red, white and blue designs, some feature state landmarks and some are even sketched by the voters or their kids for local contests. More about the stickers.

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She voted for Trump every time. Then came cancer and the bills Cindy Banda faces mounting medical bills after battling breast cancer. Despite the single mother's positive outlook, the financial strain combined with the high cost of living is overwhelming. And it's made the Texan who's a three-time supporter of President Donald Trump rethink her politics. Rising healthcare costs are a major concern for many in the United States heading into the Nov. 3 election. Polling shows that registered voters tend to trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle healthcare. Banda knows how that feels. And for the first time in her life she's voted Democratic, casting an early ballot for James Talarico, in the U.S. Senate race. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Medi-Cal cuts could push seniors and people with disabilities off of coverage Trump at South Florida rally revives the idea of military intervention in Cuba after Iran  Trump, seeking to help Maine Sen. Collins, exempts some Canadian imports from 50% tariffs  Obama, in Midwest, assails ‘cruelty’ and indecency from Trump and his allies AOC can draw a crowd. The midterms will test whether her politics can win before 2028  Massachusetts and Idaho put guns on the ballot. One restricts them, the other honors them

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✳️ The Shapiro asterisk

Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Mark Makela/Getty Images

💪 Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is an electoral juggernaut in America's biggest swing state — and he's widely seen as a likely contender for president in 2028. But strategists in both parties are questioning how tested he really is. Shapiro's success — he's cruised to victory in multiple statewide races — has come with an asterisk: He hasn't faced a well-financed opponent in recent contests, leading some political insiders to see him as more of a wildcard than his resume suggests. 🤔 Why it matters: Shapiro's unfamiliarity with intense, bruising campaigns could become a liability in the 2028 Democratic primary, where if he was a top candidate, he'd be confronted with a barrage of attack ads, opposition research and rivals with deep pockets. A plugged-in Democratic operative in Pennsylvania suggested that because of Shapiro's lack of being tested, "it is totally possible that he has an incredible glass jaw — and that he is the Scott Walker of 2028." Walker was the swing-state Wisconsin governor who looked good on paper as a potential presidential candidate but flopped after entering the 2016 GOP primary. Zoom in: In next week's election, Shapiro is running for a second four-year term as the Keystone State's governor. He's on pace to defeat Republican challenger Stacy Garrity by double digits, according to the latest polls. The money gap is gargantuan: Shapiro has dropped $42 million on campaign ads, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. Garrity, the state's treasurer, has spent just $3 million on ads — a drop in the ocean in a state as large as Pennsylvania, with its expensive advertising markets. It's not that Garrity prefers, say, door-knocking to TV ads. She's just outmatched: Campaign finance reports show she's only raised about $11 million this cycle, compared with Shapiro's $64 million. Making matters worse for Garrity, the Republican Governors Association (RGA) has not come to her rescue on the airwaves. ⛸️ Christopher Nicholas, a longtime GOP strategist in Pennsylvania, said the dynamic has "allowed Shapiro to skate with essentially having a one-sided campaign." "A lot of people think he has a glass chin because he's never really had a million dollars of negative TV shoved down his throat in a week," Nicholas said. Zoom out: Shapiro caught a break when he first ran for governor in 2022 against Republican Doug Mastriano, a far-right state senator widely viewed as a historically weak candidate disliked even by the GOP establishment. Mastriano, who was strapped for cash, spent just $2 million on ads that year. Shapiro and his allies spent $55 million. A conservative outside group invested $8 million on advertising in the election but abandoned the race that September after Shapiro embraced school vouchers, a priority for many on the right. The RGA stayed out of the race. In both of his gubernatorial contests, Shapiro has run unopposed in the Democratic primaries, leaving him with little experience of intra-party electoral battles. It was a similar story when Shapiro twice was elected as Pennsylvania's attorney general. He vastly outspent his Republican opponents. 🗣️ What they're saying: Shapiro's allies argue that he's had token opposition precisely because he's a formidable candidate — that more talented Republicans don't want to waste their time and money running against such a hard-to-beat opponent with big fundraising chops. The governor has also sometimes cut off his GOP rivals' money spigots by courting Republican donors. "Sun Tzu was always about picking the battle you want to fight," said Doc Sweitzer, a Pennsylvania Democratic ad maker. "Josh has an incredible skill of picking the opponents." Asked for comment, Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder said: "Winning elections in Pennsylvania and putting a check on Donald Trump is the only thing we're focused on — and believe it or not, it's harder than sitting at home giving unnamed quotes to Axios." Shapiro is far from the only potential Democratic presidential candidate who hasn't squared off against a top-notch statewide Republican candidate. Possible White House hopefuls from deep-blue territory — such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — or with little experience defeating Republicans statewide, like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, have either never run in or never won remotely competitive general elections. Read more. — Holly Otterbein