This Nail-Biter House Race Is All About Bogeymen

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Inside Washington

Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Cait Conley are in a dead heat for the race in New York’s 17th congressional district. Lawler is painting Conley as a radical socialist, while Conley is tying Lawler to President Donald Trump and MAGA. Only one of those strategies is rooted in fact, but either could wind up deciding a race that could, in turn, determine what the next Congress looks like. If Lawler wins, it could also set him up for a higher office, experts say.

Polls show a tight race, and the Cook Political Report lists the 17th as a “toss-up.” The district is one of the most centrist in the country—one of just three, nationwide, that voted for a Republican congressperson while also voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. The district’s Democratic lean has decreased over time, Lawler is quick to point out: President Joe Biden won it by 10 points in 2020, while Harris won it by less than one point.

“There’s not a minute in this campaign that we’ve ever thought that he would be easy to beat,” said Jennifer Colamonico, the chair of the Putnam County Democratic Party, about Lawler. In Putnam County, volunteers have knocked on four times the amount of doors than they knocked on in 2024, and Colamonico says that Republicans and independents have been more receptive than they were last cycle. She attributes that in part to Lawler’s association with Trump, who is deeply unpopular in the district and the country.

Experts agree that Lawler’s closeness to Trump—the president visited the district in May—could cost him the seat. “Lawler was originally able to wear the mantle of change when he beat the incumbent in 2022, but he now has been in office and is tied to an extremely unpopular president in a district that the president lost,” said Laura Tamman, a professor of political science at Pace University.

As Conley attempts to tie Lawler to Trump, especially by emphasizing his vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Lawler and his allies have tried to tie Conley to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

“There’s not a ton of evidence that Cait Conley, who served in the military and in the Biden administration, is super tight with Mamdani,” said Tamman. “Like, she’s not in the same city. She shares the same party, but she doesn’t have Mamdani out campaigning for her.”

The fact that neither Conley’s platform nor her past fit with the radical socialist attack makes no difference, Colamonico explained. “It doesn’t matter who we run,” she said. “They were going to come at us as being socialists and aligned with DSA and Mamdani.”

This narrative about Conley being a secret socialist has been boosted by money from Elon Musk’s super PAC, America PAC. Through that group, Musk has spent more than half a million dollars to boost Lawler. Colamonico has seen the influence of that money firsthand, describing floods of mailers that call Conley a socialist and canvassers dropping off door hangers with the same message.

While the narrative about Conley appears to be baseless, it could hurt her with the district’s Jewish population, experts said. Some of those voters are frustrated with the DSA’s position on Israel and could be inclined to vote for Lawler because of it, despite the fact that Conley doesn’t share the DSA’s positions on Israel. In Rockland County, specifically, there’s a large Orthodox Jewish population that experts say Lawler needs to back him. “It would be very difficult for him to win without them showing up enthusiastically for him,” Tamman said.

Despite the unfavorable environment for Republicans, Lawler could still pull off a win. If he does, then it could have even bigger implications in 2028 or beyond. “If Mike Lawler does survive this year, I think you’ll have a lot of talk of him being a statewide candidate in the future,” said Shawn Donahue, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo who pointed to the potential for Lawler to run for Senator Chuck Schumer’s seat. Tamman suggested that he could seek the governorship. House Speaker Mike Johnson may have said it best on Tuesday while campaigning in the district with Lawler: “Everybody around America is watching this election. Everybody.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Another thing potentially hinging on the outcome of next week’s elections: whether fire survivors are able to rebuild their homes. CalMatters’s Levi Sumagaysay this week reports on the status of survivors of the Los Angeles fires, an estimated 28 percent of whom have run out of so-called displacement coverage. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding for renters ran out on October 9, and the Trump administration so far hasn’t supported further FEMA funds being directed to California. “People are wondering if they have to live out of their cars and pull their kids out of school,” Altadena Tenants Union co-founder Katie Clark tells Sumagaysay. Democratic Representatives Norma Torres and Judy Chu tell Sumagaysay they’re hoping that if Democrats win big in the midterms, a newly Democratic House could help get money moving.

The Guardian’s Oliver Milman talks to residents of Southaven, Mississippi, who say that Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, which is currently constructing a massive data center complex with an on-site power plant, has offered to buy their homes “as the owners agree to not join a lawsuit against the company over the power plant’s noise.” Come for the window into data center politics, stay for the spicy quotes from a paramedic, a piano teacher, and other residents who are more or less telling the company to take their offer and shove it.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Thursday at 1 p.m., the Urban Institute will host a “virtual workshop exploring how local leaders can foster dignity and belonging in their communities—and why these conditions are essential to advancing upward mobility.” Speakers will include the institute’s Myriam Hernandez Jennings and Isabella Remor, as well as Ricki Ellison of the Greater Wichita Partnership and Marshall Ogier of Seeding Success.

On Thursday at 3 p.m., the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) will co-host an event on how to modernize the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is the basis for calculating the unemployment rate. One possible reform to be discussed: a way to add an online component instead of relying on in-person and phone interviews, which are increasingly struggling with non-response rates. Speakers will include the Census Bureau’s CPS Director Kyra Linse, Nicholas Johnson from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Tom Evans from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics, New York Fed economic research advisor Wilbert van der Klaauw, Michigan Federal Statistical Research Data Center co-director Joelle Abramowitz, OpenAI economics researcher Alex Martin Richmond, University of Maryland professor Katharine Abraham, and Georgetown University professor Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. Brookings’s David S. Johnson and John Sabelhaus and AEI’s Michael R. Strain will moderate.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Here’s Why That’s B.S.

TNR’s Edie Olmsted reviews the troubling allegation in House Dems’ new report: former Miss Switzerland Beatrice Keul saying Donald Trump raped her in 1993 when she was a contestant at his American Dream Pageant in New York.

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

Though it’s been Republican for many years now, when Alaska became a state in 1959, its first two senators were both Democrats. The name of one is mostly lost to history. The other, however, made a name for himself as an early and vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and was one of only two Democrats to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which the Johnson administration pushed to authorize U.S. intervention. Can you name either man? (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

When Republicans set out to redistrict in the middle of the decade, they thought they were all but ensuring more seats in the House. But, one week before the midterm elections, many of Republicans’ tailor-made districts are looking vulnerable.

Texas was the first state to redistrict in 2025 under pressure from the White House, kicking off a nationwide flurry of gerrymandering in red and blue states alike. Across the country in the past year, Republican-controlled state legislatures have drawn maps that increased their advantage in 16 districts, with five of those districts in Texas and four in Florida. Those two states are epicenters of the Republican gerrymandering effort. But, according to polling and ratings from the Cook Political Report, only one of those nine districts is projected to be a sure Republican win next week, and the others will be competitive.

When Florida and Texas first unveiled their new maps, critics immediately noted that the districts appeared to be drawn based on race. They argued that Republicans carved up Black and Latino districts to dilute the political power of those voters. A federal court ruled that Texas’s gerrymandering was, in fact, illegally racially based, but the Supreme Court sided with the state and allowed the new maps to stand.

This race-based gerrymandering now appears to be backfiring. Republicans, explained Tom Bonier, senior adviser at political data firm TargetSmart, were “counting on levels of support from Hispanic voters that at least came close to Trump’s 2024 levels of support.” But now it appears “that calculation is going to be very much incorrect.”

Early voting numbers and polling suggest that Latino voters are reversing their 2024 support for Republicans and turning out to vote for Democrats, at least in part because of the Trump administration’s devastating crackdown on immigrants. Gerrymandering may have exacerbated the problem. “It should have been expected that people are going to be very unhappy with the Republican strategy of undermining political power of African Americans and Latinos,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center’s Washington, D.C., office.

In addition to nationwide trends favoring Democrats this year—frustration with the president and Republicans broadly, as well as affordability concerns—young professionals are moving to states like Texas and Florida from more expensive areas, like California. The newcomers are subtly shifting districts’ demographics.

“Some people have looked at this and they’ve used the term ‘dummymander’ to suggest that Republicans have really shot themselves in the foot with these maps,” Bonier said. “I think that misses the truth, at least somewhat.” Even though these districts are more competitive than Republicans originally hoped, the new maps ultimately still make races easier for them to win and have forced Democrats to spend more than they might have to defend their incumbents.

Here are nine districts to watch on election night to gauge the success of gerrymandering in Florida and Texas:

FL-9
In this Central Florida district, Democratic Representative Darren Soto is running against Navy reservist Dan Green. Polling shows an even race, and the Cook Political Report rates the race as “likely D.”

FL-14
Trump won this Tampa Bay-area district by 11 points in 2024, but the race is now rated as a “toss-up” by the Cook Political Report. Democratic Representative Kathy Castor, who is leading in polls, is hoping to defend her seat from Republican Mike Beltran.

FL-25
Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz is facing Republican Scott Singer in this South Florida district. Polls give mixed messages, but the Cook Political Report moved the race from “toss-up” to “lean D” in mid-October.

FL-22
Democrat Pia Dandiya is up against Republican Casey Askar. Limited polling shows a tight race, with a small advantage for Dandiya. The race is considered a “toss-up.”

TX-32
A lack of polling makes this race hard to judge, but a Harvard-ElectIt forecast gives Democrat Dan Barrios only a 20 percent chance of beating Republican Jace Yarbrough.

TX-9
The Cook Political Report considers this race “likely R” after a leftward shift from “solid R” in late September. Polls show Republican Alex Mealer ahead of Democrat Leticia Gutierrez.

TX-35
Another toss-up race, and this one could be anyone’s game. Polls show Democrat Johnny Garcia neck-and-neck with his GOP opponent, Carlos De La Cruz.

TX-28
Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar has held this seat for 11 terms, and recent polls suggest he’ll win another against Republican Tano Tijerina. Last week, the Cook Political Report shifted the race from “lean D” to “likely D.”

TX-34
Democratic Representative Vicente Gonzales is facing former federal prosecutor Eric Flores in this race, which recently moved left from “toss-up” to “lean D.” Polls suggest Gonzalez is in the lead.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

A quarter of American adults experienced medical debt last year, either for themselves or a family member, the Ohio Capital Journal reports this week, based on a study from the Urban Institute. Hospital visits were the biggest reported source of that debt, closely followed by bills to specialist doctors (41.5 percent).

This finding comes as medical debt—and medical debt to specialists in particular—continues to roil the unexpectedly competitive Kansas Senate race between Republican incumbent Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton. A quick recap: The New York Times reported last month that Marshall, formerly an ob-gyn, sued more than 700 of his patients over past-due medical bills, and, per the Times story, “routinely charged patients an 18 percent annual interest rate.” Hamilton’s campaign subsequently ran an ad featuring a woman who said she was eight months pregnant when she was arrested in front of her two-year-old daughter for missing a $50 payment to Marshall’s office. Marshall’s lawyers then sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Hamilton campaign, alleging defamation, and during a debate last week, Marshall called the allegations “blatant lies”: “This particular patient actually had legal issues in three different counties, she had missed 16 court dates, and I’m sorry about that. We did everything possible to keep them from going to collections. It was a very, very rare situation, but once it was turned over, it was the same process that KU Med Center would do, Via Christi in Wichita. Once we turned them into collections, it was out of our hands.” Hamilton’s camp stood by the ad and has run additional ads featuring doctors and another former patient attacking Marshall over the issue.

A GOP PAC returned fire last week by running an ad accusing the church that Hamilton leads of covering up child sex abuse allegations at a church camp. Kansas City Star reporter Matthew Kelly, reviewing court records, dubbed the claim “misleading,” noting that the church “conducted an internal investigation that court records show was inconclusive” and then reported the issue to local law enforcement after another accuser came forward.

Elsewhere:

• Against the backdrop of this year’s cyclospora outbreak, a Washington Post investigation finds that the Food and Drug Administration “rarely inspects the foreign facilities exporting the vast majority of fresh produce to the United States” and has only inspected 7.6 percent of all facilities exporting to the United States since 2009. The past two decades have seen a huge growth in the percentage of American-consumed produce sourced from abroad, the Post’s Caitlin Gilbert and Rachel Roubein report. Meanwhile, “though foreign food inspection numbers were already low, they dipped even further in early 2025. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cut FDA coordinators who arranged investigators’ foreign travel, though some were later rehired.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

At noon on Wednesday, New America will host a conversation between Peter Bergen and security and foreign policy researcher Amy J. Nelson about Nelson’s new book, The Arms Control Paradox: Managing Uncertainty in an Insecure World.

In case you missed it: Data for Progress this week published poll results in which significantly more voters identifying as disabled (45 percent) reported being “very stressed financially” than voters who did not identify as disabled (25 percent). Thirty-two percent of disabled voters “rate[d] their community’s economic conditions as poor,” while only 19 percent of nondisabled voters said the same.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Book of the Week: The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World
By Nathaniel Philbrick

THE GIST: Philbrick, the author of Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea, explains how the California Gold Rush helped lead to the Civil War and how its culture of opportunity and greed—and history of booms and busts—is still felt in today’s Silicon Valley.

PRAISE: Popular historian deans Jon Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Ken Burns have all penned blurbs praising this book. But Erik Larson captured it best: “In The Rush, Nathaniel Philbrick takes the old maxim ‘follow the money’ to an engaging and revelatory extreme,” the author of Devil in the White City writes. “Through an intricate skein of little-known stories, he shows how the discovery of gold in California drove tectonic shifts in the way Americans thought about wealth, and about each other—and in the process fueled the Civil War and today’s mad rush toward who knows what.”

CRUISING THE INDEX: This is a sweeping history with a colorful cast of characters both familiar (John C. Fremont, William T. Sherman) and obscure (like David C. Broderick, the sharp-elbowed anti-slavery Democrat who was killed in a duel with the scandal-plagued California Supreme Court Chief Justice David S. Terry). But its value comes from looking where others rarely do: at the discrimination and violence faced by early Chilean and Mexican miners; at the machinations of pro-slavery Southerners who went West; and at how the possibility of extraordinary, quick wealth provoked a frenzy.

TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: The Rush puts the Gold Rush—and with it, California—in context, which is to say into the context of American history itself. For Philbrick, the state was not some far-off place where a few men made their fortunes (and, in many cases, quickly squandered them) and many more struggled. It was a state intimately connected to the divisions—racial, ethnic, and economic—that define the United States to this day. Philbrick, the author of Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea, explains how the California Gold Rush helped lead to the Civil War and how its culture of opportunity and greed—and history of booms and busts—is still felt in today’s Silicon Valley.

—Alex Shephard

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

What state has had the most female governors? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

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Inside Washington

Here’s what’s missing from the affordability discussion

In a midterm season focused on affordability, one big thing is being sidelined in campaign rhetoric: actual poverty. Crushing budget cuts kicked in this month, with government numbers now showing that more than five million Americans have already lost their SNAP benefits due to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, changes taking effect. More could follow. But compared to fuel prices, SNAP remains a backburner issue for many Democrats. Advocates working on hunger policy say that has to change.

“It’s frankly scary to think about how bad it could get if our leaders don’t listen to constituents and take action,” said Anne Filipic, CEO of Share Our Strength, a hunger relief organization. In the country as a whole, SNAP participation has fallen by 13 percent since the OBBBA, also known as H.R. 1, was signed in July 2025. That pencils out to around 5.5 million people, including two million children, who lost their benefits. Some states have been hit harder than others. In Arizona, the number of people enrolled in SNAP was slashed in half.  

In Alabama, more than 97,000 residents lost their SNAP benefits between January 2025 and August 2026. That number, explained LaTrell Clifford Wood, a hunger policy advocate at Alabama Arise, “is enough to fill the football stadium, the Jordan-Hare Stadium, at Auburn University.” Alabama is one of many states that doesn’t have extra space in its budget to account for increased costs, and it has already had to make funding changes to keep its program up and running.

Despite the acuteness of the SNAP cuts, they’ve only become a headline issue for the 2026 midterms in a few key races. In California’s 22nd congressional district, for example, progressive Randy Villegas is challenging incumbent Republican Representative David Valadao, who voted for the OBBBA. In the Central Valley district, one in four families rely on food assistance. In the state, 300,000 people have already lost their benefits since the bill was signed. “Like so many people in the Central Valley, I grew up in a working-class family where we relied on programs like WIC, SNAP, and Medi-Cal to get by,” Villegas wrote in a statement to The New Republic. “These very same programs are now at risk because David Valadao voted to cut them to give tax breaks to billionaires.”

In Kansas last week, Senate candidates Adam Hamilton and Senator Roger Marshall sparred over SNAP cuts during their debate. “As he laments the SNAP benefits, he’s managed to cut SNAP benefits for thousands of children across the state of Kansas,” Hamilton said during the debate. “Apparently, our sitting senator is not ashamed of letting kids go hungry.”

While SNAP in particular hasn’t gotten a lot of airtime, the cost of groceries for all Americans has been a major talking point in the midterms. Lawmakers and advocates are increasingly trying to tie SNAP cuts to the broader food affordability crisis. Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins outlining what she calls the “food misery index.” According to analysis from Warren’s office, the combination of inflated grocery prices and SNAP cuts has cost Americans $22 billion since OBBBA was signed. 

Meanwhile, the anti-hunger community is looking ahead to the day after the election, and setting demands for lawmakers. “Certainly, we’re aiming for a repeal of H.R. 1,” Filipic said. “But [we’re] also looking at some more immediate steps that can be taken. In particular, delaying the cost-sharing provision.”

That provision is set to start in October 2027 and would shift more SNAP costs to states based on their error rates—a measure of how accurately benefits were sent out to recipients. That change would force states to pay millions more on SNAP than they ever have, which could be downright impossible for states with the tightest budgets. This, in turn, could cause millions more to lose their benefits. The states with the highest error rates were granted a two-year delay before the cost shift kicks in, and advocates want every state to receive the same delay.

“Democratic leadership like Mr. Schumer, Mr. Jeffries, need to know that this is a priority,” said Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center. “We hear them talking quite a lot about health care, which is super important. We don’t necessarily hear them talking about SNAP.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Last-minute get-out-and-vote operations are in full swing. Kansas Reflector reporter Tim Carpenter spoke to Becca Peck of Overland Park, Kansas, who has knocked on an astonishing 4,627 doors in Johnson County and plans to keep going in the final week before the election. “Normally in the midterms, I will get a lot of people that say, ‘I’m not voting this year.’ This year, everybody’s voting,” Peck said. Carpenter noted that the numbers somewhat support this impression. As of the end of last week, 73,000 registered Democrats, 20,000 registered independents, and 60,000 registered Republicans had voted early or by mail. The total of 154,000 early ballots cast is considerably ahead of where that number was at the same point in the 2022 (119,000) and 2018 (92,000) midterms. Kansas’s Senate race has gotten unexpectedly competitive this year, with Democrat Adam Hamilton tied with or even a couple points ahead of Republican incumbent Roger Marshall in recent polls. 

“They are not crazy. They’re not making it up,” Urban Institute fellow Gregory Acs told Stateline’s Kevin Hardy, discussing new research that suggests 49 percent of families are now struggling with basic living expenses due to price increases. The increasing gap between voters’ views of the economy and the economic indicators (GDP, unemployment) that politicians typically rely on has been the topic of a lot of debate recently—spurring the use of the rather dismissive term “vibecession” to describe consumer pessimism. But this new research, Acs said, shows that people are “not being marketed into feeling bad. They really do have struggles.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Tuesday at 10 a.m., the Brookings Institution will host an online discussion about the complexities of college pricing, specifically “how families can navigate these decisions to choose a college that is a fit not only academically but also financially, and what changes are needed to improve the process.” Speakers will include Sarah Reber, Phillip Levine, Christina Lopez, and Ron Lieber.

On Wednesday at 1 p.m., the Center for American Progress will host an online discussion about policy approaches to the challenges that small businesses are facing. In addition to the usual problems of navigating economic upheaval, or tax advantages that disproportionately accrue to larger players, “an estimated 6 million business owned by Baby Boomers are expected to need to transition ownership by 2035 as their owners retire, raising urgent questions about how to ensure successful business transitions and preserve the local businesses that communities depend on.” Speakers will include Virginia Representative Don Beyer, Terri-Nichelle Bradley, Kathleen DeLaney Thomas, Gina Schaefer, Anne Zimmerman, and Michael Negron. 

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Four Questions For: Manny Pastreich, President of 32BJ SEIU, headquartered in New York City

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?

A: I’m the president of 32BJ SEIU, the largest property service workers union in the country. Right now, we are running campaigns across the East Coast to get pro-labor candidates elected and flip the House—we have more than eight competitive House races just in our coverage areas. This past week, hundreds of 32BJ members knocked on doors and made phone calls. At the same time, we are preparing for what happens if the administration doesn’t honor the will of the voters. 

Q: What is the most difficult thing about your line of work?

A: Facing large employers and a hostile federal administration, we’ve had to look for creative solutions on the state and local level to give workers a voice on their jobs and in the ballot box. Currently, we are bargaining contracts for 70,000 Uber/Lyft drivers, thousands of security officers, and over 10,000 airport workers, who are all trying to achieve the wages and benefits they need to not just live but to thrive. The majority of our union members are immigrants, so the impacts of the administration’s cruel attacks on Temporary Protected Status designations and immigrants generally is destabilizing for our members, their families, and our communities.

Q: What was your biggest success in the last year or two?

A: In addition to the industry-leading contracts we have won for cleaners and residential workers, we have opened the door for Uber and Lyft drivers to have a union. The union of 70,000 drivers will provide a powerful voice and path forward for so many more who are deemed to be independent contractors without many of the protections so many of us take for granted.

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?

A: On Saturday, I was with 300 SEIU members ready to knock doors in New Jersey in D-7. The energy was amazing. Our members know we have the power to win at the bargaining table, win in politics, and work toward a vision of a better society. They motivate me every hour of every day. I am truly lucky to have that in times like these.

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

You may be old enough to remember the wave elections of 2006, 2010, and 2018. But when was the biggest wave midterm election in U.S. history, when the opposition party picked up a mind-bending 110 seats? Hint: It was a very long time ago, and it was the Republican Party that gained. (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

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