The News
Democrats have a good shot at taking back the House next year — if they can solve their primary problem.
A growing crop of competitive House Democratic primaries is causing real heartburn in more purple districts across Maine, California and Colorado, where the party favorite often polls better against a Republican in a general election than the progressive challenger. But even if the favorites win, they could enter those general elections drained of money and energy in a cycle where redistricting and narrow margins make every race more crucial.
In short, Democrats’ ongoing ideological reinvention could lose them the House, again.
“There is an abundance of energy in the Democratic Party right now to reshape the party, to reshape our priorities, to make us relevant again in places in the country where we’ve lost support over the last decade-plus — and that’s a good thing,” Ian Russell, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee political director who now advises party candidates, told Semafor. “But that’s led to an oversubscription rate of candidates.”
The same dynamic is playing out in Senate races across the country this election cycle, though on a smaller scale. As President Donald Trump’s second term tips Democrats into an existential crisis over how best to rein in the GOP, they’ve seen an influx of interest in House midterms, where they’re better-placed to reclaim a majority than in the tough Senate map.
The latest example: Maine state auditor Matt Dunlap’s announcement last week that he will challenge moderate Rep. Jared Golden — whose district is the reddest in the country held by a Democrat — despite the party’s concerns that Dunlap’s doing so could lose them the seat. The likely GOP nominee for that seat, former Gov. Paul LePage, carried Golden’s district when he lost to current Gov. Janet Mills.
Dunlap is not a down-the-line progressive; he has a 100% rating from the Maine Right to Life Committee and served on a Trump voter fraud panel in 2017. But he told Semafor that he launched his candidacy because he thinks Golden has hewed too closely to the right.
“People started calling me unsolicited and saying, ‘You need to think about doing this because people are really unhappy with the current situation,’” said Dunlap, who cited Golden’s recent support for the GOP’s short-term spending bill as one example.
His issues aren’t just with Golden: “Overall, I wouldn’t give Democratic leadership very high marks for their entire body of work,” Dunlap said
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Dunlap’s announcement provoked ire in Washington. Golden told NOTUS in a statement that “watching Dunlap try to recreate himself as a progressive would be amusing if it were not so cynical.” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California told Semafor the party will “keep an eye on it and help to the extent we can.”
“We have our candidate; we have our Democrat, who time and time again voted for Hakeem Jeffries for speaker,” Aguilar said. “That’s good enough for me.”
A similar situation is playing out in California’s 22nd congressional district, where progressive Randy Villegas will take on establishment favorite Jasmeet Bains — recruited by the DCCC amid uncertainty that a candidate further to the left could win — for the chance to unseat GOP Rep. David Valadao.
Former Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg raised the stakes when he endorsed Villegas via his political group, Leaders We Deserve.
Another example: Colorado’s 8th congressional district, where progressive Manny Rutinel is running against moderate Shannon Bird to challenge GOP Rep. Gabe Evans after former Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo dropped out of the race. It’s shaping up to be one of the party’s most expensive primaries.
Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., told Semafor he’s tracking the race but can’t weigh in because “nothing but bad things happen if I noodle around in primaries.” He said that in general, he hopes “people keep their arguments positive.”
“That’s always a problem with a vicious primary, is that people create these negative, semi-true attacks then are taken by the other [party] after the primary is over,” Hickenlooper said. “The winner ends up giving ammunition to the enemy.”
Russell said tensions have been high everywhere since a progressive influencer, Kat Abughazaleh, said she would challenge Rep. Jan Schakowsky, “just to run against her.” (The Illinois Democrat, who has since said she will retire, is one of the caucus’ most progressive members.)
“Everyone is a little more on edge,” Russell said. “These are fights that are not about taking back the House.”
A spokesperson for the DCCC, Viet Shelton, said in a statement that “our Members and candidates reflect America.”
“Perhaps most importantly, they are people who put the country over any ideology,” Shelton added. “When we retake the House in 2026, it’ll be because voters trust them over radical Republicans who took away their health care and raised costs.”
While the DCCC plays nice, other outside groups are more willing to openly intervene on behalf of Golden and other centrist Democrats. CJ Warnke, a spokesperson for the House Majority PAC, said that it “looked forward to re-electing” Golden and was ready to elect “the strongest general election candidates across the map.”
“Jared’s got lots of allies out there prepared to defend him if it’s necessary, as would other Democrats like him with bipartisan, maverick records who find themselves in similar situations,” said Phil Gardner, the co-founder of the nonprofit Blue Dog Action Fund.
Room for Disagreement
Some Democrats in Washington reject the idea that crowded primaries, in purple or other districts, could make it harder for Democrats to flip the House.
“Primaries are healthy,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., told Semafor. “People have to trust the voters.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who previously chaired the DCCC, told Semafor he sees midterms paying off for the party no matter what happens along the campaign trail.
“You have a mix of two key ingredients: a motivated Democratic electorate, and Republicans with some serious buyers’ remorse and sense of betrayal by Trump’s policies,” Van Hollen said. “That’s a good combination going into the midterms.”
The View From Eleanor and David
Democrats are haunted by the specter of Kara Eastman.
In 2018, the progressive Nebraska nonprofit leader narrowly beat a moderate former Democratic congressman in the primary for Omaha’s seat. Just as narrowly, she lost the seat that November — and her party’s never been able to win it back.
There were fewer Eastmans than Republicans wanted, or expected, in Trump’s first midterm. Democratic voters in other competitive races were obsessed with electability, not ideology.
But the party’s base is now smaller, and unhappier with its leaders, than it was then.
And it’s not clear that party leaders can do much about the trend. We’ve seen in some Senate races that it’s not that helpful for candidates to get anointed by Chuck Schumer — a big change from seven years ago.
Schumer’s campaign to nudge Mills into her state’s Senate race scared off nobody: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., reacted to reports of Mills’s decision by reiterating his endorsement of “great working class candidate Graham Platner” and urging the party to avoid “an unnecessary and divisive primary.” Leaders We Deserve also announced that it was supporting Platner.
Notable
- The messiness is prompting some Democrats to call for the party to be more aggressive in influencing primaries, Politico reports.
- In Current Affairs, Karissa Halstrom denounced the “betrayals” of moderate Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, including votes on Israel and criminal justice reform: “With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?”