This Race Could Produce the Biggest Upset of the Year

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Inside Washington

Florida’s gubernatorial race is heating up. In a sign that Republicans are eager to turn out their base and boost voting numbers, President Donald Trump plans to hold a rally on Friday with Republican candidate Byron Donalds in Fort Myers. Earlier this week, the Democratic Governors Association, or DGA, announced that it would funnel $1 million into Democratic candidate David Jolly, whom polls put within striking distance of his Republican opponent. Florida hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in 28 years. Can Jolly overcome major fundraising and voter disadvantages to break that streak? And does it help that he himself used to be a Republican House member, before leaving the party in 2018?

When I asked Fernand Amandi, the managing partner of public opinion firm Bendixen & Amandi, about the key issues in the race, his reply was simple: “There’s only one issue, and it is that Florida over the last 10 years has become totally unaffordable for Floridians.” Rising grocery costs and high gas prices due to the war with Iran have added to a long-brewing home insurance affordability crisis in the state. “All of these factors combined have created a Category 5 economic hurricane in Florida,” Amandi said. That’s likely why Jolly could beat Donalds, despite the plain numbers game that gives Republicans an advantage—there are 1.5 million more registered Republicans than Democrats in the state. Jolly used to be one of those Republicans, but he left the party in 2018 due to his opposition to Trump and his influence over the GOP. After identifying as an independent, Jolly officially joined the Democratic Party in April 2025, months before launching his campaign.

Donalds holds a two-point lead over Jolly in a recent poll from the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, which surveyed 1,471 likely voters. That’s well within the poll’s 2.8-point margin of error. The same poll also asked about the Senate race and found that GOP Senator Ashley Moody has a four-point lead over state Representative Angie Nixon, the Democratic nominee. Other polls show Donalds with a larger lead, including a poll from last week that found Donalds up by nine points. Though the candidates are different, both the gubernatorial race and the Senate race show the Democratic candidate closer than one might expect. Like Nixon, Jolly will need the support of no-party affiliation voters to overcome the state’s Democratic registration disadvantage.

Donalds has enjoyed a major lead in fundraising, which could help him overcome the unfavorable national environment for Republicans. “This whole year is sort of an interesting sort of experiment on how important money can be in overcoming deficiencies in campaigns,” explained Kevin Wagner, a professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University.

More than $170 million has poured into the race as of Tuesday. Donalds has $33.3 million more in cash on hand, with much of the money coming from special interest groups. His top donors are private prison corporations, sports betting groups, and the AI industry, according to an analysis from OpenSecrets. His third-largest donor is the Seminole Tribe, which holds a monopoly on sports betting in the state and earlier this month filed a lawsuit against online sports betting platform DraftKings. Meanwhile, the Sports Betting Alliance, which includes companies like DraftKings, gave Donalds nearly $1.3 million. Donalds’s fourth-largest donor is private prison company GEO Group, which is headquartered in the state and runs several immigration detention facilities. He has also received funding from NextEra Energy, the parent company of energy providers planning to construct data centers in the state. Donalds told voters in August that “there ain’t no bans coming” on data centers.

“There’s a huge loophole because Florida allows candidates to open affiliated PACs,” said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida. These PACs can raise unlimited money, unlike campaigns, which can only receive $3,000 per donor. Billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, for example, gave $10 million to Donalds’s affiliated PAC in July. Though Jolly is behind in the cash game, he’s still been able to reach voters, especially with the help from the DGA. “He’s not competing on an even playing field in terms of money, but he’s gotten enough where he can at least get his message out,” Jewett said.

Voter frustration is the vital element keeping Jolly in the game. “If Democrats were ever going to have a year where they could compete,” Wagner said, “it would be a year that looks like this.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

The Trump administration is “again refusing” to cooperate with Minnesota law enforcement’s ongoing investigations into the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the Minnesota Star-Tribune reported on Thursday. In July, the feds finally handed over “hard drives, body camera footage, and statements from immigration enforcement agents about the killings,” report Jeff Day and Sarah Nelson. But court filings last week, reviewed by the paper, indicate that state officials still don’t have “the cell phone of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who shot Good” or “the firearms used [by Customs and Border Patrol officers] to shoot Pretti and a recording of a statement by one of the officers who shot him.” Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen apparently told Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty last month that “challenges with D.C.” had halted all evidence sharing “indefinitely.”

Former Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow has penned an op-ed backing Callie Barr in the state’s 1st district. “For the first time in nearly two decades, a Democrat has a shot at winning the 1st District,” wrote Stabenow in the Detroit Free Press on Thursday. There hasn’t been any public polling on this race since the primaries, and the idea that Barr could win is pretty striking, given that the Cook Political Report rates the district as “solidly Republican” (GOP +11), and Jack Bergman has held the seat since 2017. Stabenow, however, highlights Republican lawmakers’ disavowal of Bergman earlier this year after he endorsed someone in a state race that he’d allegedly promised to stay out of. Also on Thursday, The Detroit News reported that Bergman has for years been renting a D.C. home from one of his campaign donors, before the donor sold the home to Bergman’s daughter “in a favorable seller-financed deal this year.” In her op-ed, Stabenow praised Barr’s “life of public service” as an advocate for veterans.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Thursday, more than 100 environmental and other advocacy groups signed a letter opposing a recent permitting bill introduced by Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich and Republican Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Mike Lee. While many climate advocates have expressed at least theoretical support for so-called permitting reform if it could help speed up renewable energy development, these groups say the current bill’s attempt to streamline the permitting process will instead “eviscerate public lands protections, prevent the public’s ability to protect themselves from harmful projects, cede management decisions to fossil fuel polluters, restrict Tribal consultation and cultural resource protections, limit judicial review, and further enable foreign-owned mining companies to seize public lands and contaminate our precious streams and rivers.” The Center for Biological Diversity issued a press release on Thursday with statements from three of the signatories. Said Olivia Juarez, the public land program director at GreenLatinos: “Here in Utah, where 73 percent of voters oppose fast-tracking oil, gas, and mining projects on public land, we say America’s worst ideas come from the desk of Sen. Mike Lee.” (If you want to read further about Whitehouse’s position in all this mess, try this or this.)

At the Roosevelt Institute, Charlie Eaton, Albina Gibadullina, Adam Goldstein, and Marie-Lou Laprise pen a report on the “four interconnected roles” that private equity now plays in the economy: “corporate raider, Main Street invader, monopoly builder, and shadow owner.” Write the authors: “Private equity is often misperceived as a check against corporate concentration. This may flow from lingering memories of hostile takeovers by corporate raiders in the 1980s.” In reality, they argue, “private equity has maintained a long-standing role in monopoly building through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) exit sales to other nonfinancial firms.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good Week: Hakeem Jeffries

This week brought lots of evidence that Democrats could win the House by an unexpectedly large margin. That would, of course, make Jeffries House speaker, but the details here are important. The gold-standard New York Times poll just found the Democratic generic ballot lead to be 11 percentage points. Forecasters just shifted numerous districts that Trump carried comfortably (NC-11, WI-03, IA-02, PA-10) from “toss up” to “leans Democratic.” And GOP super PACS are pulling money out of some of these Trumpy districts, suggesting surrender in them. The critical point here: The broadening battlefield suggests not just a Democratic takeover, but a potentially sizable Democratic majority, which would be easier for Jeffries to manage.

Bad Week: JD Vance

The vice president foolishly rushed to defend that loathsome ad from Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, which smeared Democrat Amy Acton by using comments from her estranged mother, who stayed together with the stepfather who sexually abused her as a child. Many Republicans have now run from the ad. Vance’s bizarre decision to double down may prove to be a more consequential blunder than he realizes. If this saga contributes to a Democratic victory in the Ohio gubernatorial and Senate races—in Vance’s home state—it will raise further questions about his political judgment and staying power heading into 2028.

—Greg Sargent

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

If both Amy Acton and Sherrod Brown win, it will be the first time that Ohio has simultaneously elected a Democratic governor and senator since what year? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

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Inside Washington

In the past two days, near-universal condemnation of an attack ad featuring Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton and her estranged mother has brought the governor’s race to national attention. But even before that, this race was full of personal attacks. Why voter issues seem to have taken a back seat in this race is a mystery, especially in a year when people seem extra eager for politicians to speak to their substantive policy concerns.

“This has definitely been a race that has been more about the character of the candidates than it has been about policy issues themselves,” said Dominic Wells, a professor of political science at Bowling Green State University. The candidates will not meet on the debate stage (Acton declined a debate invitation, while Republican Vivek Ramaswamy accepted). So much of the race has played out through campaign ads where the candidates portray each other as unfit for office. “Anti-Ramaswamy campaign ads have linked him to profiting off of [and] backing ineffective prescription drugs,” Wells said. “So they’re painting him as corrupt and dishonest.”

Ramaswamy’s campaign has tried to use Acton’s time as director of Ohio’s Department of Health to tap into conservative frustration over Covid-19 shutdowns and vaccination policies. “This isn’t a message that seems to be sticking with Ohioans as much. Ohioans generally don’t want to hear about Covid anymore,” Wells said. David Jackson, also a professor of political science at Bowling Green State University, agrees: “The people who are still mad about masks and still mad about vaccines were probably never going to vote for a Democrat anyway,” he said.

The ad circulated on Tuesday, which featured Acton’s estranged mother, however, represented a major escalation. In the ad, Acton’s mother calls her daughter “a liar” and tells voters: “Don’t let her become your governor. If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself.” Acton has been estranged from her mother since she was 12 years old, after her mother stayed in a relationship with Acton’s stepfather, who sexually abused Acton between the ages of 9 and 12 (and then, when facing criminal charges for it, skipped town). Despite immediate blowback against the ad, the Ramaswamy campaign is planning to spend $4 million to air it on television.

Several Republicans have since denounced the ad. Republican Senator Jon Husted, who is running a tough race for Senate in Ohio, seems to be engaged in a difficult, and maybe physically impossible, balancing act on the topic. “Jon Husted is trying to present himself as a normal, mainline Republican, trying to get some independents to vote for him,” Jackson explained. In Ohio, where the governor’s race and Senate race have been somewhat linked in voters’ minds, the ad puts Husted in a challenging position.

“I would not have run that ad,” Husted said on Wednesday to The Associated Press. But also on Wednesday, he appeared at a rally with Vice President JD Vance and Ramaswamy. At the rally, Vance said he was “disgusted”—not by the ad itself, but by Republicans who criticized it.

When asked about the ad and the substantive debates that seem to be falling by the wayside in this race, Acton spokesperson Addie Bullock said: “Dr. Acton is going to every corner of Ohio to listen deeply to voters and share her plans to lower costs, fully fund public schools, end the corruption in our Statehouse, and ensure that every Ohioan has the opportunity to succeed. Her vision for Ohio stands in stark contrast with her opponent, billionaire scam artist Vivek Ramaswamy, who has spent his campaign spewing repulsive lies from the seat of the private jet he insists on taking everywhere.”

Contrary to the impression given by headlines from this race, there are plenty of policy issues that Ohioans care about this year. As in Ohio’s Senate race, data centers have become a standout issue forcing Republicans to play defense. Acton has called for a “conditional moratorium” under which data centers must use union labor, cover their own utility costs, and follow environmental standards. Ramaswamy, who used to speak positively about data centers, has backtracked somewhat and now says that they should only be built on abandoned industrial sites, must comply with environmental rules, and should provide free electricity for the closest 100,000 residential homes.

All evidence suggests that voters care even more about affordability. Acton’s campaign has put out a detailed affordability plan that includes proposals for working-class family tax cuts and lowering energy bills, among other things. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has called for cutting property taxes and phasing out state income tax—moves that some experts say could decimate municipal services like police, firefighters, and libraries.

Education is another critical issue in the state. In 1997, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that Ohio’s method for funding public education was unconstitutional. Since then, politicians have tried and failed to reform the education system. The state spent more than $1 billion on voucher programs in the 2026 fiscal year. Acton opposes the voucher programs, and Ramaswamy would like to see them expanded.

The new attack ad against Acton, and the fallout from it, may not change the race, which has already been marked by negativity and personal attacks. Early voting has already started, and voters have been inundated with ads for months. But there’s always a chance that it could make a last-minute difference. “The common thought in Ohio politics is that the state tends to break towards Republicans in the final weeks of the campaign,” Jackson said. “Ramaswamy may have given up that built-in advantage in the last couple weeks here with this backlash.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Protesters, community leaders, family members, and local news reporters in Senatobia, Mississippi, have been trying for months to get answers and keep the spotlight on the horrifying case of one-year-old Kohen Wiley, who was killed by police in June. Now, the story may finally be gaining national traction. On Monday, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced her department’s finding that “use of force was justified” when police shot the one-year-old in his mother’s arms during a confrontation in a Walmart parking lot over a report of diaper shoplifting.

Outrage over the finding is growing now that body cam and surveillance footage published by Darkhorse Press, and subsequently verified by The New York Times, has shown police officers running and pulling their guns en masse at a car that, at the time, was traveling in reverse, away from them. You can read the Times’s analysis of the video, which then shows the sedan moving forward and at least one officer firing into it, here. In July, Mississippi Today reported that the officer involved had previously been accused of “exaggerating the risks that a vehicle posed to officers during another parking lot confrontation that escalated into violence in 2019.” (He has also been named in one other misconduct complaint and has been accused of racist speech toward a co-worker.)

Fitch, a Republican, is running for governor in 2027. The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus (MLBC) on Tuesday, prior to the new video emerging, condemned Fitch’s finding and called for the release of evidence and an independent review. “Kohen Wiley was a baby. He posed no threat,” MLBC Chairman and Mississippi Representative Kabir Karriem, a Democrat, said. On Tuesday, Mississippi’s Democratic Party leadership also issued a statement calling for a release of evidence, an independent review, “direct, respectful communication with Kohen’s family” (who reportedly first heard about Fitch’s finding via Facebook), and “strong safeguards governing the use of gunfire against moving vehicles.” The Intercept noted this week that Senatobia police in the past two years have “[jailed] a 10-year-old boy for public urination,” forcefully arrested two teenage sisters while the then-police chief told them to “get your Black ass out of the road,” and “on Mother’s Day 2025 — in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen Wiley would be shot dead … forced a woman out of her car in front of her young children for sitting in a handicapped parking space.”

Elsewhere:

• The Bush family increasingly seems to be backing James Talarico against Ken Paxton in Texas’s Senate race. Hot on the heels of last week’s news that Barbara Bush donated to Talarico’s super PAC, George W. Bush’s brother Neil Bush announced on Tuesday that he voted for Talarico, praising the candidate’s character. “I have been deeply troubled by Paxton’s conduct as Texas Attorney General,” he wrote, adding “I believe Donald Trump and those who have enabled him have done enormous damage to the Republican Party.” Last week, Trump called Texas GOP pillars John Cornyn and Karl Rove “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks” for refusing to back Paxton, so… start your clocks.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

As the lawsuit against Cornell University and seven fraternity members over a gang rape continues to make headlines, Data for Progress releases a new survey that found that a majority of voters don’t trust “college administrations, elected officials, or fraternities and sororities to appropriately respond to sexual assault claims,” and they think fraternities and sororities are bad for campus life.

On Thursday at 4 p.m., University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute, in conjunction with Third Act and the Better Futures Project, will host an online conversation between Bill McKibben, Michael Ash, James K. Boyce, and Joel Tickner on “Environmental Policies that Work for Working Americans.” It’s part of “an eight-week series this fall, highlighting policy proposals developed by more than 40 experts on the [university’s] Game Changers: Economic Policies for a Working America, team.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Here’s Why That’s B.S.

The Trump administration is escalating its “investigation” into Representative Ilhan Omar over whether the age that her now-deceased father put on her immigration application more than 25 years ago was accurate. Watch TNR’s Edie Olmsted make the case that this is really about the midterms.

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

With Rob Sand apparently poised to win Iowa’s gubernatorial race: When did the Hawkeye State last elect a Democratic governor?

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

—Michael Tomasky

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Inside Washington

Democrats seriously dislike Jeff Van Drew: The Republican representative of New Jersey’s 2nd congressional district used to be a Democrat until 2019, when he switched his party affiliation after voting against the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Now, Democratic Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock thinks he could finally unseat Van Drew. Earlier this year, that seemed impossible. But amid near-nonexistent public polling in the district, Mullock claims that internal numbers give him a chance. In a sign of the times, Sabato’s Crystal Ball on Tuesday shifted the race in Democrats’ favor, from “safe R” to “likely R.”

Van Drew has been untouchable for years. In 2024, he won reelection by 17 points. But experts say that three national trends this year might undermine his support: affordability struggles, disillusioned Hispanic voters, and data center blowback. “Our internal polling shows that we’re within one, which is huge,” Mullock told supporters in Vineland on October 17. The most recent public poll was conducted in May 2025 and showed Van Drew up by 10 points against a generic Democrat.

Van Drew’s campaign dismissed Mullock’s claim. “Every cycle the Democrats get together, commission a fake poll saying this seat is in play to use as a fundraising ploy, and every year Congressman Van Drew proves them wrong—this is nothing new,” Ron Filan, Van Drew’s campaign manager and director of political affairs, wrote in a statement. But in early October, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) added the race to its list of districts in play, a sign that internal polling might actually be stronger than Van Drew’s team suggests. “Either one point or 10 points is a shift from two years ago, when Van Drew carried the district by 17 points,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, who managed a handful of Van Drew’s state legislator campaigns between 1994 and 2001.

Mullock’s appeal hinges on his moderate messaging and past successes in the conservative Cape May area. On his website, he describes himself as “an independent voice for working families,” and it’s hard to find a mention of party affiliation. That’s important in the 2nd congressional district, explained Matthew Hale, a professor of political science at Seton Hall University. In New Jersey, he said, there isn’t “an enormous number of far-left or far-right folks compared to the rest of the country.” But they do have some far-right voters, he said, “and most of them live in the 2nd district.”

Hale thinks those voters will likely sink Mullock. “There’s a wall there for the Republican incumbent,” agreed Benjamin Dworkin, the founding director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship at Rowan University. “Whether the Democratic wave is big enough to go over it is unclear.” But Mullock may be able to gain some appeal among the district’s Hispanic voters, who are concentrated in Atlantic City, Vineland, and Millville. Nationally, Hispanic voters have trended away from Trump and Republicans. They were a critical part of Trump’s 2024 coalition, but now about six in 10 disapprove of his handling of the presidency.

Mullock could also benefit from Van Drew’s past support for a data center project in Vineland, which has been the focal point of grassroots organizing. Vineland residents are deeply concerned about the data center’s noise pollution, local water quality, and their electric bills, The New Republic’s own Kate Aronoff wrote in September. Like many politicians, Van Drew was originally supportive of data center development, but he changed his tune once the political winds shifted. One developer involved with the project called Van Drew’s support for it “critical”—a detail that Mullock has highlighted in social media posts. Neither candidate immediately responded to The New Republic’s inquiries about data centers.

As in other parts of the country, New Jersey residents are tying data centers to their affordability concerns, which are particularly acute in a “hardscrabble” area like the 2nd district, Rasmussen said. Plus, there are environmental concerns: Rasmussen’s own mother lives four miles from the data center and can hear it humming at night. The center runs on diesel generators that release pollution into the air without state permission.

Van Drew might well prevail despite all this. But Democrats are hungry to hand him a loss. “He has certainly earned the everlasting animosity of Democrats in the district,” Rasmussen said. “There’s a tremendous sense of betrayal.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Julian Curo-Churata’s family is still waiting for answers about how the 47-year-old died of “cardiac arrest” due to “septic shock” while at an ICE detention center on September 29, two days after reportedly being in perfect health on a phone call with his wife. Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen has demanded a “full independent investigation” into the death, which is one of “at least 59” that occurred in ICE custody under the second Trump administration, according to The Washington Post’s tally. The Post’s Liam Bowman reports the troubling details of the case: from ICE arresting the father of three in Laurel, Maryland, on his way to work; to Curo-Churata’s three-month detention in Louisiana; to his daily attempts to reassure his six-year-old daughter via video call that he was just working on a construction job and would be back soon; to him actually volunteering to self-deport to Peru so he could “reunite” with his family (a judge denied this request); to a drive between the detention center and the hospital that should have taken seven minutes and inexplicably seems to have taken almost two and a half hours. Bowman reports that, as of Monday, the local coroner still had not completed an autopsy report.

The Texas Tribune reports that 288 new data centers currently planned for the state could raise nitrogen oxide emissions (famously bad for the respiratory system, in addition to causing acid rain and combining with other molecules to increase fine particulate pollution) by 35 percent by 2031, erasing “decades of progress.” But if the centers rely largely on natural gas, nitrogen oxide levels could rise by 146 percent, alongside large spikes in volatile organic compounds and particulate matter. Data centers have become an unexpectedly large issue in the governor’s race. Texas now has 419 of them, making it second only to Virginia (490). Democrat Gina Hinojosa has called for a moratorium on the centers until the government can pass protective legislation. In recent months, Governor Greg Abbott has declared his support for regulations to curb the industry. But a recent report from FracTracker and Public Citizen found that, despite his very public ordering of a “pause” on permits in late August, state regulators are still processing permits. (The Abbott administration responded to the report by insisting that no permits have been “approved.”) On Monday, the Tribune calculated that Abbott has received some $9 million from “data center-related donors” since July 2025.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

At the Center for American Progress, Angelo Villagomez and Beth Pike review the Trump administration’s proposed policy changes on fishing in protected marine national monuments and explain the potential impact. Their takeaway: “Nationally, the five rollbacks threaten to eliminate 87 percent of the nation’s highly protected ocean waters; at the same time, they account for a staggering 21 percent loss in high-level marine protection globally. The United States would be left with only 3 percent of its marine waters protected and likely to support biodiversity benefits.”

Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation estimate that the price of “Halloween candy favorites have jumped 15.3% over the past year, more than four times the rate of overall inflation.” You might assume that’s just due to the global increase in chocolate prices, but no: The company behind Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish raised prices by an eerie 39 percent.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Book of the Week: The Creativity Con
By Thomas Frank

THE GIST: The Baffler founder and “scoffer by trade” is back, and this time it’s with a book aimed at innovation—which is to say at America’s very self-conception.
PRAISE: Publishers Weekly says that “Frank’s wry critique exposes how creativity and innovation are ‘a marker of ghastliness,’ wielded as a justification for policy that benefits only the so-called enlightened few. It’s a sharp look at how prized American values mask inequality.”
CRUISING THE INDEX: Like many of Frank’s books (including What’s the Matter with Kansas? and Pity the Billionaire), The Creativity Con is sweeping—part history, part sociology, part exposé. It’s not shocking that the tech industry comes under special scrutiny, but Frank’s target is larger than Silicon Valley: It encompasses Lockheed Martin, Madison Avenue, Donald Trump, and Richard Florida.
TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: “Creativity and innovation are essential to the story of how our modern economic order was cemented into place,” Frank writes. That’s what this book is really about: not just the con at the heart of innovation, but how elites use innovation as a tool to ensure an economic order that benefits them—and leaves everyone else behind.

—Alex Shephard

Political Trivia Question of the Day   

According to howstuffworks.com, the most offensive political ad of all time (arguably until today, that is) was a 2011 right-wing attack ad on Democratic Los Angeles-area congressional candidate Janice Hahn in a special election. What kind of activity did the ad try to tie her to? (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

Dems and GOP differ in one big way when it comes to cash

With just two weeks to go until the midterm elections, competitive races are blowing through cash at unprecedented rates. “This is a whole new world, even in the post-Citizens United era,” said Jake Grumbach, a professor at UC Berkeley, about the amount of money raised and spent in the 2026 cycle. More than $15 billion has already been raised, and AdImpact predicts ad spending will hit a record-shattering $11.6 billion.

So far, Democratic candidates in the most competitive races have raised the most money. In some races, the difference is massive: In the Georgia Senate contest, Senator Jon Ossoff has outraised his competitor, Representative Mike Collins, by more than a factor of 10. But add super PACs and party spending into the mix, and suddenly Republicans have the advantage. “Republican megadonors and the super PACs they’re funding are more than making up that gap, and in our system, money matters,” said Eric Petry, counsel in the Brennan Center’s elections and government program. “It’s helping to keep Republicans in some of these key states, key races, competitive.”

Elon Musk is one such Republican megadonor. Musk, the richest person in the world, has poured more than a quarter of a billion dollars into super PACs and Republican groups. Over the summer, Musk gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the GOP’s PAC for Senate candidates. That single donation was more than the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC raised from all its donors during that quarter.

The flood of money from wealthy donors like Musk has made this a uniquely expensive election. “In the past, it’s typically been not complete parity between Democratic and Republican candidates, but by and large, the two parties have kind of raised and spent relatively equal amounts,” Petry explained. “So far this election cycle, Republicans are on track to dramatically outspend Democrats in a way that we just really haven’t seen before.”

Super PACs like Fairshake, which is aligned with the cryptocurrency industry, and AI-focused Leading the Future, which is backed by tech giants like OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, have also spent millions to support their preferred candidates and oppose those they see as hostile to their agendas. Experts worry that this unbridled industry spending will ultimately affect the legislation that Congress pursues, particularly now, when Americans want to see the AI industry regulated. “When you’ve got major tech titans spending just gobs of money to influence the political process, that sends a real message to members of Congress to think twice about how they’re approaching these issues,” said Michael Beckel, the director of money in politics reform at Issue One.

PAC money has been a lifeline to Republicans like Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, who has raised far less than his opponent, James Talarico. Between July and September, the GOP’s main Senate super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, raised a record $272.9 million, about $122 million more than its Democratic counterpart. In turn, the Senate Leadership Fund funneled $158 million into Texas PAC, which backs Paxton.

Republicans have also benefited from a June Supreme Court decision that struck down limits on the amounts that parties could spend in coordination with candidates. National parties, like the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), can accept much larger donations than individual candidates can, and they can now coordinate their spending of that money with their preferred candidates. At the end of August, the RNC had more than seven times the amount that the DNC had in cash on hand, and the June decision made that advantage all the more powerful.

“Both parties feel like they’re in a political fundraising arms race that they don’t want to fight with one hand tied behind their back, and so they’re using every weapon available,” Beckel said. That’s led Democrats to engage in some strategies that others find unsavory, such as constant spam texts asking for donations and an embrace of their own megadonors like George Soros. (He and his family have  given $103 million to support Democrats this cycle.)

Whether Republican spending is enough to counter the mounting blue wave remains to be seen. But no matter the outcome, experts say, this election should change how we think about money in politics. “This election cycle is really kind of shining a spotlight on just how unequal our campaign finance system has become,” Petry said.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Josh Turek had a busy weekend in his campaign for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat, knocking on doors with former Senator Tom Harkin. Talking to the Iowa Capital Dispatch’s Robin Opsahl, both politicians argued that they don’t see Iowa as an inherently red state: “I just think that a lot of Iowans felt—rightfully so—that people maybe in both parties were not really paying attention to their basic needs,” Harkin told Opsahl. “They then sort of said, ‘Well, we’ll try something new and maybe flashy, like Trump.’” Turek added: “I think that Iowans, more than almost any other state, they vote for the person, not just the party.” He contends that Trump “accurately identified the problem” that Iowans face, with lots of talk on the campaign trail about bringing prices down. But then he did “the opposite.”

Turek has been polling neck and neck with Republican Representative Ashley Hinson so far—some polls putting one a couple points ahead, some the other. Democrat Rob Sand, who is running for governor, by contrast has consistently polled between four and 12 percentage points ahead of Republican Zach Lahn. Newsweek’s Anna Skinner on Monday tackled the question of why Turek seems to be lagging behind Sand right now. One big factor that experts identified was name recognition—not just for Turek and Sand but for their opponents. Many people don’t know who Lahn is, which gives Sand an advantage. Turek’s opponent, Hinson, on the other hand, is much better known, since she currently holds one of the state’s four seats in Congress, while Turek as state legislator represents a “district on the far western part of the state,” University of Iowa professor Timothy Hagle told Skinner.

Elsewhere:

• A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds, alongside the usual dismal Trump approval rating, that 66 percent of likely voters think the president “is using the presidency to enrich himself, up from 56 percent last fall.” Also of note: For the first time since this poll began in 2014, more voters trust Democrats than Republicans to handle the economy—but that’s only 40 percent of people trusting Dems versus 33 percent trusting Republicans. A more useful way to think about this might be that voters think neither party is especially good at managing the economy!

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Wednesday at 10 a.m., the Brookings Institution hosts “AI on the ballot: Data centers and the 2026 midterms,” an in-person and online conversation with Elham Tabassi, Representative James A. Himes, Kyle Chan, Anthony F. Pipa, Mark Muro, Thomas Wright, Valerie Wirtschafter, and Sanjay Patnaik, probing “how decisions about where AI is built and how it is used have become part of the choices facing voters this fall.”

Government watchdog Public Citizen releases a report quantifying the strangeness of the Make America Healthy Again movement’s alliance with the Trump administration. In May 2025, Public Citizen notes, the Trump admin published a “MAHA report” on the dangers of various environmental contaminants. Yet “for 20 of 21 environmental chemical substances that the MAHA report focused on,” Public Citizen notes, “the administration has either moved toward loosening regulations that protect public health (nine chemicals), done nothing (ten chemicals), and endorsed one chemical’s use despite its links to cancer.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

For a few days in October 2008, Ashley Todd seemed like she might loom large in that year’s election. But her story turned out to be false. What did she allege happened to her, and what was the bizarre tell that she was lying? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

* An earlier version of this piece misstated the tool used to create the charts.

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Inside Washington

Can a former climate and housing activist make it to the halls of Congress? Will Lawrence’s opponents are trying to paint him as too radical for Michigan’s swingy 7th district. But as Lawrence races to eight town halls in six days, he told The New Republic that his background as an organizer has helped him win voters’ trust on the hottest topic of the 2026 election cycle: data centers.

The 7th district, which includes the state capital, Lansing, and its surrounding area, is currently represented by Republican Tom Barrett, who won with just over 50 percent of the vote in 2024. Before Barrett, the seat was held by now-Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who also won in a tight race. Limited polling suggests that the 2026 race could be just as tight.

Lawrence, who co-founded the youth environmental advocacy organization Sunrise Movement in 2015 before going on to found a tenant advocacy organization in Michigan, has become a well-known figure in the district since launching his campaign a year ago. “Will Lawrence has been spending every day in the district—extremely open and public throughout,” said Matt Grossman, a professor of political science at Michigan State University. 

2026 is the perfect environment for an activist and organizer to win in a purple area, Lawrence argues: “People feel that nobody in D.C. gives a damn about them, and nobody in Wall Street or Silicon Valley gives a damn about them, either,” he said. In that context, he views his organizing background as a plus. “Being able to motivate and inspire people to take action to win the better life that we deserve, that’s what I’ve been doing all along.” He also thinks his campaign has benefited from an active volunteer network; during the primary, over 800 volunteers knocked on 100,000 doors, his campaign said.

Still, not everyone is eager to elect a former organizer. Attack ads have portrayed Lawrence as too radical for the district. Grossman compared it to Michigan’s Senate race, where Republicans have similarly been trying to portray Abdul El-Sayed as too radical to represent the state. Lawrence also came under fire in July when The Huffington Post published comments from a podcast episode in 2024 when Lawrence said that “the older generation of Black political leadership” holds up capitalism and “defangs the white left.” And during the general, Lawrence has been somewhat more cautious about leaning into his background in climate activism, instead focusing on issues with broader appeal.

“One of the ways he did that early on was, of course, being among the most strident in taking on data centers,” said Grossman. Indeed, Lawrence began talking about data centers before they became a key issue in campaigns across the country. I asked Lawrence how he was able to identify a firebrand issue—one that caught many politicians by surprise—so early on. “It’s because I know how to listen,” he said. “That’s what an organizer’s job is: to listen to people and to take them seriously. And I started hearing last fall that people were very concerned about hyperscale data centers proposed in various corners of my district.” 

The fight against data centers makes sense for the former climate activist. Though data centers aren’t just an environmental issue, Lawrence said, they raise concerns about emissions and water usage. If elected, Lawrence said, he’d like to focus on making sure diesel-fueled data centers don’t “blow a hole in the climate.” He also said he wants to address pollution in the Great Lakes. 

But Lawrence has had to walk a fine line between leaning into his background as a climate organizer and avoiding coming across as a political radical. “It’s not like he runs away from it or distances himself from it,” said Grossman. But “he doesn’t want to run as the climate activist.” That’s particularly true in 2026, when climate politics have fallen precipitously out of the national discourse. Lawrence acknowledged that himself: “The climate crisis is no less urgent now than it’s ever been, and urgent action is still necessary,” he said. “And also, we’re dealing with other acute crises.” He pointed to democratic erosion, the cost of living, and existential threats from AI. 

Data centers have become a flashpoint for all of these issues. While Lawrence supports a full moratorium on data center construction, Barrett has said that he doesn’t think the federal government should be involved. As locals face off against powerful industry forces in their backyard, they’ll be voting, at least in part, on whether they want their leaders to stand back—or instead join the fight.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

A Harris/Guardian poll released Thursday finds that 72 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of independents, and 50 percent of Republicans currently believe the country to be in a recession—up from 67-54-39 in May–June. Economists, by contrast, do not rate the economy as being anywhere close to a recession—although BlackRock CEO Larry Fink conveniently insisted this week that a data center moratorium would trigger one. (Current Chicago Fed president and former Obama-era chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee has argued that an AI slowdown would do no such thing.) 

Amid the panoply of recent attempts to lower fuel prices—note the gas tax holidays in multiple states, the loosening of restrictions on certain types of diesel, etc.—it’s worth noting that neither candidate running in Iowa’s intensely agricultural 4th congressional district can bring themselves to back Trump’s diesel deal. “I have not spoken with any voters who believe that one of the solutions ought to be working with a dictator from Russia,” Republican Chris McGowan said in a televised debate this week. Democrat Dave Dawson called the deal illegal. You can read Iowa Capital Dispatch’s coverage of the debate here. While Cook Political Report has recently suggested that Dems might be ahead in the state’s 1st and 3rd districts, and might even have a shot at the 2nd, McGowan is heavily favored to win the 4th. (There hasn’t been much public polling.) In that context, it’s tempting to read his insistence on distinguishing himself from Trump—he also heavily implied during the debate that he might take action to end the war in Iran—as a sign of the president’s deep unpopularity even among staunch Republican voters.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

Monday at 10:30 a.m., the Brookings Institution will host an online panel discussion about the upcoming midterms. William Galston, Erin Covey, Christopher S. Warshaw, and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas will talk about “potential election outcomes, the role of public opinion, the impact of mid-decade redistricting, and the consequences of new majorities in the House and Senate.”

At the Brennan Center for Justice, Celina Avalos Jaramillo and Joanna Zdanys explain the significance of California’s Proposition 4, a public campaign finance proposal on the November ballot. “Public financing programs currently exist in at least 14 states and 26 localities, including five California charter cities,” write Jaramillo and Zdanys, “but state law currently bans other localities and the state from creating similar programs. Prop 4 would repeal that ban, giving the legislature and local governments the opportunity to create new public financing programs.” The pair call public campaign financing “one of the most powerful” tools to give candidates options outside of courting billionaires and powerful industries.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good Week: Greece

For the past year, the proud people of Greece have had to politely endure one of the most unqualified U.S. ambassadors of the Trump era (and that’s saying something!). True to her reputation, Kimberly Guilfoyle has been nothing but a fame-seeking party animal since she washed ashore in Athens. But now that Trump has ditched her over the “honey please” scandal, the Greeks have cause to celebrate.

Bad Week: Katie Zacharia

The new White House press secretary’s first week at work has been one for the ages. On Tuesday, Zacharia held her inaugural briefing, and the reviews were unkind. Then her questionable claim of being a lawyer was exposed, prompting a complaint by the California bar. She only made things worse by saying she passed the bar exam in China, backtracking on that answer, and then revealing on Fox News that she’d failed the California bar exam and has been relying on the distinction between “lawyer” and “attorney.” And her first week isn’t even over yet.

—Ryan Kearney

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

Name all of Trump 1.0’s White House spokespeople, in order.

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

—Michael Tomasky