Why Kansas Might Do the Unthinkable and Vote Blue

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Inside Washington

Why Kansas might do the unthinkable and vote blue

A perfect storm could be brewing in Kansas to elect a Democratic senator for the first time since 1932. Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton’s skills as a candidate, experts say, combined with uniquely bad conditions for the state’s farmers, could be the right ingredients for an upset. The problem is numbers: Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in the state almost two to one.

“If there was ever a chance to elect a Democratic senator, this is it,” said Dan Glickman, who served as agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton and represented Kansas’s 4th congressional district in the House for 18 years. A large part of that is because of Hamilton’s biography. As pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, he leads the largest Methodist congregation in the country, consisting of 24,000 members. Hamilton estimates that some 9,000 of those are Republicans, 9,000 are Democrats, and between 6,000 and 7,000 are independents.

“Being a pastor of a massive church, you have to be a pretty darn good politician to keep your job,” Glickman said. “There’s probably more attention on the pastor than there is on the governor or the senator.”

Recent polls have shown a shockingly close race. Some, like a YouGov poll conducted at the end of September, found Hamilton up three points against his competitor, incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall. An obstetrician-gynecologist, Marshall has held the seat since 2021. He recently came under fire when The New York Times reported that he had sued more than 700 patients who carried unpaid bills, and 81 of those patients were arrested. When the Times asked about the arrests, Marshall’s campaign said that judges issue warrants, not doctors.

Marshall, who is endorsed by Trump, is also struggling under the weight of the president’s expensive tariff policies and the war in Iran. Trump is deeply unpopular even in red Kansas, where he is 15 points underwater. Democrats are betting some conservative farmers, as a result, could stay home, and some might even vote blue, giving Hamilton an opening to unseat Marshall.

“A lot of times, farmers tend to keep their politics close to their chest,” said Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union. “But I am hearing a lot of rumblings all across not just the state of Kansas but across the country.” Levendofsky joined 250 farmers from all around the U.S. for the National Farmers Union legislative fly-in to Washington, D.C., in September. “You could feel the tension when we went to USDA, when we went into these meetings with members of Congress.”

With the fall harvest season underway, the increased costs of diesel and fertilizer caused by the Iran war are now hitting extra hard. Harvesting equipment requires diesel. And in the next few weeks, Kansas farmers who grow winter wheat will begin planting, requiring more diesel and fertilizer. “It’s a double whammy,” Levendofsky said. Diesel price hikes are likely to add an extra $20,000 to $30,000 to a grain farmer’s expenses this year, estimated Gregory Ibendahl, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University. Farmers, who are price takers, have no way to pass that expense on and will simply have to eat the extra cost.

That doesn’t necessarily mean farmers will turn on Marshall, Ibendahl cautioned. “The administration is very good about having extra ad hoc payments beyond the typical Farm Bill payments,” he explained, which can help farmers make ends meet. Marshall may very well benefit by association with President Donald Trump in the eyes of farmers receiving those funds. 

But meanwhile, Kansas ranchers are deeply frustrated by Trump’s policies on beef imports. In 2025, Trump announced a plan to bring Argentine beef into the country to lower grocery prices. In late August, Trump announced a plan to ease tariffs on beef imports through the election, drawing the ire of Kansas cattle ranchers. “The answer to increasing prices in grocery stores isn’t selling out American farmers and ranchers to buy votes in November,” Glenn Brunkow, president of the Kansas Farm Bureau, told the Kansas Reflector at the time. Both Marshall and Hamilton criticized Trump’s decision.

Now Hamilton is traveling across the state, including through its more red, agriculture-heavy counties, trying to connect with the kinds of voters who haven’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century. “We haven’t elected Democratic senators in a long time,” Glickman said, “but there’s no reason that can’t happen this time.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

The drip-drip-drip of leaks from Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton’s remarks at a private fundraiser continues. This time, The Texas Tribune reports that Paxton, when asked about the federal deficit, said legislators will need to make “some reasonable cuts to mandatory spending.” Mandatory spending, the Tribune’s Kayla Guo notes, is made up largely of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, while in the most recent fiscal year, “much of the rest covered aid to lower-income families, such as food benefits and unemployment insurance, and a mix of retirement and disability benefits for federal workers and veterans.” Paxton didn’t elaborate on which programs he’d axe, at least in the clip that was shared with the Tribune. 

James Talarico’s team quickly posted the news to X on Thursday, saying, “Ken Paxton plans to cut Social Security and Medicare. He’s telling seniors to ‘suck it up’ while he owns 15 homes and increases his net worth up to $27 million.” Paxton, meanwhile, has reacted to the news by affirming his support for Social Security and saying that “the fake news keeps spinning the same cherry-picked audio to mislead Texans and take my words out of context. I have never said I would take away entitlements from those who deserve or earned them.” (Note, however, the suggestive wording at the end of that sentence.)

Elsewhere:

• Millions are under hurricane warning as Isaias approaches the Gulf Coast on Friday. This has been an unusually mild hurricane season so far—which has been a very good thing, because both disaster preparedness and weather forecasting are in an unusually chaotic state following two years of budget cuts and unusual leadership decisions under the Trump administration. Republican Governors Kay Ivey of Alabama and Ron DeSantis of Florida have already declared a state of emergency in select counties, and Governor Brian Kemp has declared an emergency for the state of Georgia.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

At Policy Matters Ohio, George Boas argues against the recently implemented 90-day gas tax suspension, saying it’s “misguided in at least three critical ways: It will have only a small, temporary impact on gas prices; it drains the budget at a time when schools, childcare, and healthcare are already badly underfunded or facing massive federal cuts; and it fails to address the root of the problem.” Better proposals, he adds, would include “targeted property-tax relief for Ohioans who need it most,” “strong consumer protections and data-center regulations to keep Ohioans from bearing an unfair share of rising electricity costs,” affordable childcare, pro-worker legislation, and more. 

Data for Progress released a new survey that found 67 percent of voters “say they support the U.S. having a refugee program”—a number that jumps to 90 percent for people who personally know a refugee. The survey also found widespread opposition to recent immigration enforcement actions.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good Week: Road salt

Maine’s Senate race has given the nation no end of agita, but it finally delivered a moment worthy of the outsize attention when Susan Collins, bragging that she’d convinced Trump to stand down on his plans to put a tariff on road salt, was hit by this rejoinder from her Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson: “We can’t eat road salt.” Jackson is no paragon of charisma, so we hesitate to call it a zinger. But the humble de-icing material conjured the kind of relatable, of-the-moment idea that usually eludes the grasp of an inanimate object. Could it be a game-changer? Elections have hinged on dumber things, that’s for sure.

Bad Week: Kimberly Guilfoyle

From the moment a pair of wayward Canary Island mastiffs thrust her into the public consciousness, no one could have imagined the story arc of U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle—the onetime paramour of Gavin Newsom turned “Mar-a-Lago face” cautionary tale. Now we’re left to wonder: Does her story end here? This week, a trove of private leaks revealed that she’d been attempting to do some Trump administration favor-trading in return for a $100,000 donation straight to her Amex card to pay a bill. It raises a host of questions: What could she have blown that kind of money on? How much of that was spent on the latest pan-Hellenic couture from Zeus+Dione? And most importantly, who hates her enough to leak this stuff? If you’re that person, contact us on Signal.

—Jason Linkins

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

How many U.S. states allow death by firing squad? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

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Inside Washington

Virginia’s 5th congressional district is rural, evangelical, and red. But, in a testament to how difficult 2026 is for Republicans, Democrat Tom Perriello just might have a fighting chance.

“It is somewhat surprising that, at least based on the polls, the Democratic candidate is polling so well,” said Alex Keena, a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University. “And then on the other hand, it’s probably not surprising at all, given what’s going on in this cycle.”

Farming is a cornerstone of the local economy, and the district is also home to Liberty University. Since the district’s new lines were drawn in the 2020 redistricting process, Democrats haven’t considered it a particularly viable target. President Donald Trump won the district by 12 points in 2024, and Republican incumbent John McGuire defeated his Democratic opponent by 15 points. Even in 2025, which was considered a good year for Virginia Democrats, Governor Abigail Spanberger received just over 46 percent of the vote in the district.

But, as Keena suggested, things are different in 2026. McGuire was leading Perriello 51 percent to 45 percent among likely voters in a recent Washington Post–Schar School poll, with a 4.6 percent margin of error. Though that still puts the Republican in the lead, experts say it’s a slimmer margin than expected, and Perriello has a chance. Like voters in the rest of the country, residents of Virginia’s 5th district are feeling the knock-on effects of Trump’s war in Iran. The district is a mix of blue college towns and red farmland, and those farmers have been hit hard by the increasing costs of fertilizer, gas, and other goods.

Trump helped boost McGuire’s campaign in 2024 as a form of revenge against Representative Bob Good, the district’s then-representative. Good, a staunch conservative and former chair of the Freedom Caucus, supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Republican primary, drawing Trump’s ire. 

The decision to replace Good in 2024 is part of why Perriello has a chance now, Keena said. “Members of Congress are most vulnerable in that first reelection cycle,” he explained. Good could have stayed in office, building a reputation for himself among constituents. Instead, McGuire is a newcomer and comparatively unfamiliar to voters in the district. “This is kind of like the chickens coming home to roost for a president who likes to make erratic decisions and likes to use his endorsements to air grievances and punish people,” he said.

Perriello, on the other hand, has a reputation within the district. He represented the 5th district from 2009 to 2011. The district was a bit different then, before the most recent round of redistricting, but experts say he’s still a known entity in the area. He’s been campaigning hard: On Monday, he campaigned for more than 24 hours straight in what he dubs, “24 Hours of Tom.”

“The original idea was, I knew that people were working a double shift to support their own families. I wanted them to believe I’d work a double shift for them in Congress, and that became this idea of the 24 hours of campaigning,” Perriello told The New Republic on Wednesday. In the 26 hours that he campaigned, he hit every county in the district. “We want to make it clear that I am running to represent every part of this district, not just the blue areas.” During the early morning hours, Perriello said, he rode along with Charlottesville police, met with emergency responders, and joined farmers who were getting to work at 4 a.m. He also met with truckers refueling at gas stations; one explained that it cost $3,000 to fill up his tank. The cost of living crisis, Perriello said, makes voters “particularly angry because these were man-made problems, and those men are Donald Trump and John McGuire.”

Data centers have, unsurprisingly, become a key issue in the race. Virginia has the country’s highest concentration of data centers, and it is also the proposed home of the Valley Link Transmission Line, a high-voltage electric line that would traverse 115 miles across the state. Perriello has made data centers, AI concerns, and utility costs a centerpiece of his campaign and hopes it will pay off with voters who see data centers as a physical manifestation of their fears around AI and affordability. “The voters are way ahead of the political parties on AI,” he said. “You have issues like the Valley Link Transmission Line and data centers that are uniting people across very different kinds of politics.”

Perriello said that communities should be the ones to decide whether companies can build them in their backyards. “Where communities don’t want data centers, we should help them fight the data centers. And where communities want them, we should fight to get them the best possible deal,” he said. “But it is really hard to find communities that want them.” McGuire, meanwhile, has said that communities should decide whether a data center is built, but that the U.S. must beat China in the fight for AI dominance.

Experts who spoke to The New Republic emphasized that, despite the favorable political circumstances, the odds are still in Republicans’ favor in Virginia’s 5th district. But there’s a larger story at play. “Democrats can win the House without Virginia five,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. But “the fact that Virginia five is increasingly seen as competitive speaks to what a challenging environment Republicans are facing this fall.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

The Minnesota Star Tribune’s Allison Kite and Briana Bierschbach pen a fascinating report on the shifting politics of northeastern Minnesota, which used to offer strong support to the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party but “has become harder for Democrats to hold” and could be key to Republicans gaining the upper hand in the state’s tightly balanced legislature. Republican candidates are playing up issues like immigration and fraud, while Democrats such as state senator Grant Hauschild—looking to defend himself from a second-time challenge from Republican Andrea Zupancich—are “betting that health care and childcare will matter to voters, too.” Democrat Aaron Schweiger, currently running against sitting state Representative Natalie Zeleznikar, similarly “said Trump has effectively pulled rural voters away from Democrats based largely on ‘cultural issues,’” and material ones could push them back into the blue. Meanwhile, everyone’s trying to claim the high ground on data centers.

New York’s 1st congressional district candidate Chris Gallant gives The New York Times an interview for the ages: “‘I mean, all my friends know I’m kinky’ as hell, he said, using a saltier word. ‘I make Christian Grey look like amateur hour.’” Times reporter Jacob Bernstein was accompanying the Democrat to the shooting range and had asked him about the photos that the New York Post publicized last month, from when Gallant posed for a “San Francisco fetish brand” in 2010. Gallant initially called it a “coordinated political hit” but has opted to own the vibe.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Thursday at 1 p.m., the Center for American Progress will hold an online discussion with Eric Zwick and Owen Zidar, authors of the recent book The Everywhere Millionaire, about how business ownership became the “main path to wealth in America, and what that means for the future of tax policy and the American Dream.” New York University professor Lily Batchelder and Amy Hanauer of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy will also join the discussion, which will be moderated by Corey Husak, with introductory remarks from Emily Gee.

A new poll from Data for Progress finds 56 percent of likely voters think “the government should invest more” in public housing, with strong majorities backing extreme weather resilience, energy efficiency, and clean water and air as factors to be considered in constructing such housing. The organization concludes that voters generally support the components of the so-called “Green New Deal” for public housing—just not necessarily by that name.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Here’s Why That’s B.S.

Destroying Los Angeles is a “small price to pay”?

Watch TNR’s Edith Olmsted unpack the speech in which Trump seemed to suggest it would be okay for Iran to nuke southern California.

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

Who was the United States of America’s first ambassador to France? He’s a pretty famous guy.

(Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

You’re reading The TNR Blue Book. Get daily scoops, strategy, and developments inside the liberal ideas factory delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for free.

Inside Washington

Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has made quite the reputation for herself in Congress. She wanders the halls in outfits noticeably more stylish than those of her colleagues and crusades for issues like removing Red Delicious apples from school lunches, allowing pictures to be used in legislation, and culling sea lions. She’s also drawn the ire of Democratic leaders for siding with Republicans on key votes.

Now, Gluesenkamp Perez is facing a tight race in one of the most important districts for Democrats to hold this year, Washington’s 3rd congressional district. She was just one point behind her Republican opponent, state Senator John Braun, in a recent poll of 500 likely voters—well within the poll’s margin of error. Five percent of those surveyed remain undecided. The swing district voted for President Donald Trump in all three of his elections, while also voting for Gluesenkamp Perez in two of those elections. A plurality of voters surveyed, 35 percent, consider themselves more independent than aligned with either party. 

In the state’s open primary in late August, Braun received 39.7 percent of the vote to Gluesenkamp Perez’s 36.4 percent. Gluesenkamp Perez’s progressive challenger, Brent Hennrich, garnered 16.7 percent of the vote. Experts say that Hennrich voters are likely to vote for Gluesenkamp Perez, though some could stay home if they strongly oppose some of her more controversial votes—like her support for Israel or her “yes” vote on the Trump-backed SAVE Act.

“In some ways, I would call her a throwback,” said Mark Stephan, an associate professor of political science at Washington State University, about Gluesenkamp Perez. “It used to be that representatives around the country, going back 30, 40, 50 years, were Democrat, Republican, but they were also really tuned into their district.” 

Braun, he said, reflects this same district-focused governance. “In some respects, he is the slightly conservative reflection of MGP,” Stephan said. If elected, “I think he would do basically what she’s done but be slightly more conservative about it.” 

Before facing Braun, Gluesenkamp Perez twice beat Republican Joe Kent, who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 2025 to 2026. But, said John Horvick, a senior vice president at DHM Research, “John Braun is not Joe Kent.” Stephan echoed that. Kent, he explained, “tried to run what I would call a national Republican campaign, meaning that he just tried to appeal to Republicans as Trump voters, as Republicans writ large, and didn’t focus as much on the local stuff.” Braun’s focus on local issues makes him a more competitive opponent for Gluesenkamp Perez.

The local issues that Braun and Gluesenkamp Perez focus on are as varied as the district itself. The district covers the southwest corner of the state, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. Its biggest city is Vancouver, which is surrounded by the Clark County suburbs. But the district also includes rural apple orchards and industrial communities. One such community, Longview, suffered a major industrial disaster in May, when a chemical tank at a paper mill imploded during a shift change. Eleven workers died. In the aftermath of the disaster, Gluesenkamp Perez was present in the community at press conferences and conversations with local leaders. She also spearheaded a bill to restore funding for the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which is the agency in charge of identifying the cause of the deadly implosion. It’s unclear how the disaster and its aftermath will affect the race, Stephan said; it depends on whether Longview residents think Gluesenkamp Perez did enough to support their community. 

Another example of Gluesenkamp Perez’s focus on local issues is her crusade against sea lions. Killing these animals, she says, is necessary to protect endangered salmon and steelhead runs in the area. She has pushed for the district’s Native American residents to kill sea lions directly, rather than relying on expensive federal removal programs. She’s also focused on supporting right to repair policies and played up her work in an auto shop.

Experts stressed that the district could swing either way, particularly with a strong Republican candidate like Braun. But Gluesenkamp Perez’s ability to buck the party when necessary could be a major boon to her reelection. “She is willing to throw some mud and poke her finger in the eyes of the Democratic Party,” Horvick said. So far, that’s been a winning strategy in southwest Washington.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

A KFF poll released on Tuesday finds voter trust of Democrats over Republicans when it comes to managing health care costs has grown since its last survey in April. Back then, 37 percent said they trusted Democrats and 26 percent said they trusted Republicans. Now those numbers are 42 percent and 22 percent. It’s reasonable to assume that the effects of the Obamacare subsidies that Republican lawmakers opted to let expire, as well as projected premium increases next year, are affecting those numbers. Also interesting is that 66 percent of respondents said they support Medicare for All, although that number can change depending on whether they’re presented with arguments for or against this type of policy. 

Speaking of health care, sort of: A New York City aesthetician recently pleaded guilty to a series of federal charges related to her importing “bootleg Botox” and administering it to clients, one of whom was subsequently hospitalized. It’s illegal for aestheticians to administer Botox in New York, but this is not the first aesthetician to be accused of shooting people up with a counterfeit. Incidentally, in 2025, a Republican-sponsored bill to prevent aestheticians from administering Botox without medical supervision passed the Texas House by an over three-to-one margin with bipartisan support and unanimously passed the Texas Senate, only for Republican Governor Greg Abbott to veto it, calling it “unnecessary and overly burdensome” for businesses. The most recent poll of the Texas gubernatorial race shows Abbott and Democrat Gina Hinojosa neck and neck: Hinojosa’s three-point lead was within the margin of error.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will hold a virtual event discussing the implications of Israel’s upcoming elections. From the event summary: “What will the Israeli election reveal about the country’s changing political landscape? Might a new government represent a change in Israel’s approach to Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and the broader region, or largely continue the trajectory of recent years? And what might the outcome mean for Israel’s relations with the Palestinians, its neighbors, and the United States?” Speakers will include Maha Yahya, Aaron David Miller, Nathan J. Brown, Amjad Iraqi, and Tahani Mustafa.

On Thursday at 8 a.m., Center for Strategic and International Studies writer Jasmine Sun will join Wadhwani AI Center director Aalok Mehta for a webcast discussion about the backlash to data centers, in which the two “unpack what’s driving the opposition movement, where Washington and Silicon Valley diverge from the rest of the country, and how the AI infrastructure buildout might influence voters in November.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Book of the Week: Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State

By Michael Lewis

THE GIST: A spiritual sequel to The Fifth Risk, which explored the disruptions to the federal bureaucracy that accompanied Trump’s first term, Blockers is Michael Lewis’s look at the second Trump presidency, focusing particularly on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

PRAISE: “Blockers,” writes Tim Wu, a Columbia professor and author of The Attention Merchants and The Curse of Bigness in The New York Times, “is a warning that our politicization of everything is a tremendous curse and a reminder that, especially in a country of the size and complexity and power of the United States, there is much that government does, or should do, that ought to be quietly nonpartisan.”

CRUISING THE INDEX: “God knows the efficiency of that particular effort,” Lewis writes about DOGE’s gutting of a program that assisted refugees. “No one inside DOGE seems ever to have bothered to ask.” This is a common refrain as Lewis reports the gutting of USAID, the destruction of much of the U.S. government’s science and environmental funding (including much of its wildfire prevention capacity), and more. Everywhere you look in Blockers, there is destruction. More often than not, it is being done by people with no knowledge or curiosity about what government does, on the orders of people (specifically Musk, Trump, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick) with even less knowledge or curiosity about what government does.

TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: This is perhaps Lewis’s angriest book—no small accomplishment given his long history of detailing the arrogance and stupidity of the U.S. financial system—and also maybe his most tragic. It’s a story about horrific damage to the U.S. government. That story is not over.

—Alex Shephard

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

A rare multiple choice question! Journalist Jacob Weisberg has just published Profiles in Cowardice, which looks at eight prominent Americans who’ve failed to stand up to Donald Trump. The book is a twist on John F. Kennedy’s 1956 Profiles in Courage, which profiled eight senators for courageous moves across history. Which of these senators is not included in JFK’s book? 

A. John Quincy Adams

B. Daniel Webster

C. Nelson Aldrich

D. Robert Taft

(Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

You’re reading The TNR Blue Book. Get daily scoops, strategy, and developments inside the liberal ideas factory delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for free.

Inside Washington

Maine’s 2nd congressional district, covering 92 percent of the state, is the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi River. And right now, the largely rural, white population is getting ready to choose between two candidates: Democrat Matt Dunlap, who is a progressive and an avid hunter, or Republican and former two-term Governor Paul LePage, who once said “tell them to kiss my butt” when asked about criticism from the NAACP. 

In the race to replace Democratic Representative Jared Golden, who isn’t seeking reelection, polling is mixed. Dunlap, a member of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s, or DCCC, Red to Blue program supporting candidates in close races, was up six points in a University of New Hampshire poll from late September. Other surveys, however, show a dead heat or LePage slightly ahead.

On Monday, Dunlap held a health care–focused press conference, amid a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by the Trump administration’s war on Iran and tariff policies. These issues are a particularly powerful weapon against LePage, who vetoed Medicaid expansion six times as governor and called last year’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act “the greatest thing that can happen to the Maine people” (LePage was referring to the bill’s “no tax on tips” provision, but the legislation also cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion).

Dunlap said that the cost of health care is one of the main issues he’s heard about from Mainers. In a conversation with The New Republic, he described a conversation with a resident who was considering selling their home to afford health care costs and another person whose insurance costs went from $560 to $2,700 per month when Affordable Care Act subsidies expired in December.

Mainers are also worried about the cost of gas and heating oil, which could hurt LePage like it hurts every other Republican candidate in 2026. Maine is more reliant on heating oil than any other state in the country, and prices have skyrocketed this year. “The first frost warning for much of the state is tomorrow night, maybe tonight,” said Mark Brewer, the chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Maine, which is located in the second district. “It’s cold here. Winters are long here.”

LePage has tried to distance himself somewhat from President Trump’s agenda. He came out against Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods and has emphasized his focus on affordability as governor. The district is historically conservative, and voted for Trump all three times he was on the ballot. But, said Amy Fried, a retired professor of political science at the University of Maine, “This district is one where people are OK with splitting their tickets.” She explained that, in election years past, it wasn’t unusual to see houses with signs for Trump, GOP Senator Susan Collins, and Democratic Representative Jared Golden together in one yard. “Or pretty much any combination you could think of,” she added.

Republicans in past elections have typically portrayed their opponents as out-of-touch leftists. So far, LePage has struggled to apply that playbook to Dunlap. “He doesn’t look like a wild-eyed radical in any way,” said Fried of Dunlap. “His personality is extremely even-keeled, and a friend of mine said the other day that he looks like an insurance salesman.” 

Asked about LePage recently telling Fox News Digital that the race is about “common sense versus crazy,” Dunlap seemed unfazed: “That’s what they say when they don’t have anything else to throw at you,” he told The New Republic. “MAGA Republicans,” Dunlap said, “are very good at demonizing and bringing up the wedge [issues] about the woke agenda and the Democratic Socialists of America.” But, he added, “I’m less susceptible to that because I hadn’t heard of the Democratic Socialists of America until we heard about the Mamdani campaign.”

Dunlap has also played up his experience as a fisherman and hunter. He’s a founding board member of the Maine Youth Fish and Game Association, and the former executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. One ad shows him fishing, boating, hunting, and shooting a rifle. At the end of the video, he puts down the gun and turns to the camera, saying: “I’ve always defended our Second Amendment rights, and in Congress, I’ll do the same.”

“You can’t question his bona fides on outdoors kind of stuff, or guns,” said Brewer. “He can go toe-to-toe with any Republican on those issues.” Golden, who won this district four times, is a Marine Corps veteran who has similar credibility on guns, an important issue in the district.

Both Brewer and Fried echoed what polls have suggested: This is a tight race that could go either way. Brewer said that much could hinge on the support that Dunlap gets from national Democrats in the next month. He pointed to the DCCC’s apparent hesitancy to add him to the Red to Blue program—Dunlap beat out the DCCC’s preferred candidate in June, but wasn’t added to the program until late August—as a potential issue. “The support still, to me, doesn’t seem like what it would be, or what it could be, or maybe should be in this tight of a race,” he said. “I think he could use some more money.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Early voting is now in progress across multiple states, having started on Monday in Maine, California, Nebraska, and Montana (although there it’s technically called a “late registration” period for absentee voting). New Mexico, Indiana, Wyoming, and Ohio begin on Tuesday, and Arizona starts on Wednesday. Early voting and early absentee voting (differentiated by whether a ballot is cast directly into a ballot counter) has been underway in Illinois and Minnesota for weeks. Several other states join next week. Pennsylvania technically doesn’t have early in-person voting, but it actually sort of does, since you can show up, get a mail-in ballot, and then hand it back. Voting rights advocates have typically urged people to vote early if possible, in part for convenience and to avoid lines, and in part so that there’s time to sort things out if there’s a problem. On Saturday, President Trump urged Republicans to vote early or by mail—measures he has previously opposed and tried to restrict.

As key Senate and House races in Texas, Maine, Iowa, Michigan, Alaska, Ohio, and more continue to dominate headlines, fewer people are watching California. But over the weekend, Bernie Sanders stopped by California’s conservative Central Valley to give Democrat Randy Villegas a boost in his attempt to unseat David Valadao in the race for California’s 22nd district. Ever since Villegas’s victory over moderate, DCCC-backed Jasmeet Bains in the primary, part of the narrative in this race has focused on whether Villegas is too far left for this “historically conservative, low-turnout area,” as CalMatters puts it. But as Sanders’s visit shows, Villegas isn’t running away from his progressivism. Dems have been fixated on beating Valadao for years, so if a progressive is finally the one to do it, it’ll be quite the story. While public polling in the 22nd has been almost nonexistent this cycle, a Democratic PAC poll in June showed Villegas up four points.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

The Natural Resources Defense Council issued a statement on Suncor v. Boulder, the big climate case the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for on Monday. Suncor Energy is asking SCOTUS to throw out the suit from the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, over the devastating damages of climate change, including from the Marshall fire in 2021. “Coal, oil, and gas companies have made trillions of dollars in profits from the sale of fuels that are driving the climate crisis. They have knowingly misled the public for decades” and lobbied to delay climate policies, said NRDC senior vice president for environmental health Matthew Tejada. “Now a staggering bill is coming due.… The fossil fuel industry has a responsibility to help pay for the damage its products have caused.”

On Wednesday at 4 p.m., the Center for Strategic and International Studies will host a webcast looking back at the anthrax postal attacks 25 years ago. Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Friedrichs will moderate a discussion between Wendi Kuhnert of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former GOP Senator Richard Burr.

On Thursday, the Institute for Policy Studies will hold its 50th annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards, honoring Unidos MN and La Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana for their work mobilizing “communities” to “defend their rights.” Unidos MN gained widespread recognition training people to document ICE abuses in Minnesota, and in recent months has shifted to getting out the vote for the midterm elections. La Liga, also known as the Mexican Workers’ League, is a relatively recent independent union—as opposed to the dominant so-called “protection unions” in Mexico that tend to favor employers’ interests.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Four Questions For: Aaron Eisenberg, political director for United Auto Workers Region 9A

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?
A: Region 9A represents 50,000 active and retired members across New York, New England, and Puerto Rico. After notching some amazing victories in New York this year, right now, our priorities are electing our former member Troy Jackson to the U.S. Senate in Maine, training our members to run campaigns and run for office, passing local and state legislation to strengthen worker power, winning unemployment for striking workers, and making it easier to unionize.

Q: The UAW backed insurgent—and ultimately victorious—candidates like Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York primaries this year, while many established unions supported their opponents. What did the UAW understand about this political moment that others missed?

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

With Trump having visited Nebraska: A Nebraska Republican senator once defended a Nixon Supreme Court nominee criticized as mediocre by saying: “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?” Who was he? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

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Inside Washington

How worried should Dems be about the GOP’s huge cash advantage?

Late Wednesday night, the Senate adjourned until after the midterms, officially kicking off the final sprint of the campaign season. Republican candidates are heading home to constituents who are concerned about President Trump’s war in Iran and the high price of essentials. Democratic candidates are meanwhile heading into November with a massive cash disadvantage. The question remains: Will floods of money be enough to overcome the anger American voters are feeling?

The Democratic National Committee had $16 million in cash on hand at the end of July, compared to the Republican National Committee’s $130 million on hand. That staggering cash gap is only compounded when you factor in the DNC’s nearly $18 million in debts owed, putting them firmly in the red.

What’s more, a Supreme Court decision in June means the Republican Party cash advantage goes further than ever before; the justices lifted the cap on coordinated donations between political parties and candidates. 

Republicans’ money advantage is particularly stark in the frontline Senate races like Texas, where party money, outside PAC spending, and individual donations are fueling unprecedentedly expensive contests. By the end of September, the race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton had seen almost $259 million in total ad spending for the general election, which was already higher than the $202 million spent in 2024, when Democrat Colin Allred faced off against Senator Ted Cruz. In September alone, GOP spending groups pumped $122 million into the state to counter Talarico’s increasingly high polling numbers.

In the first three weeks of September, Republicans outspent Democrats by more than $100 million in the seven Senate races rated as a “toss-up” by the Cook Political Report. In total, AdImpact estimates that a staggering $11.6 billion will be spent during the 2026 cycle, which is more than both the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential cycle.

But it’s less clear what that spending will actually buy. “Money is important, but it’s not everything,” said Bruce Freed, the president of the Center for Political Accountability. “Public angst, deep public concern, can offset the type of money advantage—or at least mitigate some of the money advantage—that you’re seeing today.”

Some Democratic candidates are using the GOP’s cash advantage to ring alarm bells among supporters, hoping to pull in cash from small-dollar donors. “The GOP outspending us 3-to-1 is working, and now this race is within their reach,” a fundraising email from Chris Pappas’s campaign on Thursday read. Pappas is running for Senate in New Hampshire against Republican John Sununu. The race is surprisingly tight, experts told The New Republic in early September, and new forecasting confirms it: The Cook Political Report shifted the race toward Republicans—from “lean D” to “toss-up”—on September 15.

Senate hopefuls aren’t the only ones facing high levels of spending. A handful of House races have racked up massive price tags too. All in all, the GOP has spent or booked $454 million on House races to Democrats’ $381 million. In swing districts, that spending disparity is heightened. In New York’s 17th congressional district, GOP Representative Mike Lawler has benefited from $20 million in spending since the start of August, compared to a meager $3.8 million for Cait Conley, his Democratic opponent.

The real impact of Republicans’ cash advantage will only be clear when polls close on November 3. But until then, we have one clear indicator that money might not be everything in 2026: the generic ballot. And signs point to a potential tsunami for Democrats. In August, Democrats had an eight-point lead on Emerson College Polling’s generic congressional ballot, which measures which party voters might vote for, regardless of the specific candidates. Come September, that lead widened to a whopping 11 points.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

A new poll shows Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in a dead heat with her Republican challenger, John Braun, in Washington’s swingy 3rd congressional district. Interestingly, 11 percent of likely voters still appeared to be undecided in the survey, commissioned by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Gluesenkamp Perez has broken with Democrats on more than one occasion recently to advance a GOP agenda that would have otherwise failed—a move that embarrassed and angered other Dems but was widely seen as reflecting her challenging reelection position. A lot of her home-district Democratic voters, however, are also frustrated with Gluesenkamp Perez: 16.7 percent of them voted for progressive challenger Brent Hennrich in the August primary.  

On the other hand, The Washington Post reviews the prospects of Scott Colom, running for Senate in Mississippi against Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. It’s a “long shot” in a state Trump won by 23 points, write Dan Merica and Gregory S. Schneider, but “top Democratic officials and donors [are] increasingly hopeful that he could pull off the inconceivable,” given “this year’s poor political environment for Republicans.”

The DataOne data center in Vineland, New Jersey, that will reportedly be supplying Microsoft with computing power may have emitted 140 tons of nitrogen oxides over the course of “nearly a year before state regulators stepped in,” Floodlight’s Evan Simon reports at The Guardian. This is a follow-up to a piece from last week in which Simon and Brad Racino revealed that the data center had been running “at least 45 gas generators” without a permit. Nitrogen oxides have been linked to respiratory problems and heart attacks in humans, and Rutgers University’s Xiaomeng Jin calculates that the data center ranks as one of “the state’s top five NOx polluters of 2025.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

In case you missed it: Data for Progress released a new survey on American social activity this week, and the results are a mix of sobering and fascinating. From 1995 to 2026, the percentage of people who say they’ve entertained at home in the past year dropped from 88 percent to 67 percent, while the percentage of people who say they’ve finished reading a book in the same time period dropped from 80 percent to 62 percent. But staying late at work has dropped too, while going to a concert or an exercise class has gone up. Going out to breakfast, giving or attending a dinner party, picnics, communal worship, clubs, and a class are all way down, while internet use, unsurprisingly, has skyrocketed.  

“Can a clean economy be built at the speed and scale that this moment demands?” At the Center for American Progress, Jessica Keller reviews the “lessons” from New York City’s Climate Week in late September. No real surprises here: Keller highlights the importance of “forward-looking policies that invest in emerging technology and industrial emissions reductions,” union jobs, and “clean, abundant power” that doesn’t increase households’ utility bills. But all of this, Keller writes, requires “bold, progressive leadership.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good Week: James Talarico

Democrats have been disappointed before in Texas, but reports keep rolling in suggesting that Talarico is defying all expectations. He’s outraised Republican opponent Ken Paxton in rich Republican neighborhoods, Newsweek reported on Wednesday. New data seems to show that he has erased Trump’s 2024 gains with Latino voters, TNR’s Greg Sargent observes. And crucially, an Axios analysis of 2026 versus the 2018 Beto O’Rourke flameout shows 2026 looking much more favorable for Democrats in Texas on several key metrics, especially based on primary turnout.

Bad Week: Eric Schmitt

No need to belabor this one: You really don’t want the first reports that you might be on the 2028 presidential ticket to hit the internet at the same time as viral videos of you screwing up sports team names and getting owned by Amy Klobuchar in a congressional hearing.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

The Oval Office didn’t exist when the White House was built in the 1790s. Under what president was the first Oval Office built? Hint: It coincided with the construction of the West Wing—in other words, at a time when the size of the president’s staff began to grow. (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky