Sen. John Fetterman, his home state colleague, told the Washington Examiner he won’t campaign against McCormick in 2030, an unusual promise from a member of the opposite party and one of the clearest signs of their political alliance yet.

“Well, I would absolutely never move against my friend,” Fetterman said when asked if he would support or oppose McCormick. He sidestepped whether he would endorse McCormick’s campaign, instead calling him a “great guy.”

“I would never, ever move against my friend,” Fetterman repeated.

His comments come after the senators formed a joint fundraising committee last month that could be a vehicle for GOP donors to give to Fetterman’s political operation, and vice versa. The move fueled speculation that Fetterman is toying with the idea of leaving his party — something he has repeatedly rejected.

Fetterman’s reluctance to take sides in a future McCormick race represents a reversal from 2024, when he fundraised for Sen. Bob Casey, the Democratic incumbent in Pennsylvania. During the campaign, Fetterman also openly criticized McCormick — who was then Casey’s GOP challenger — as a carpetbagger from Connecticut. (McCormick is a Pennsylvania native but spent years there managing a hedge fund.)

Since then, the two have become friends and often co-sponsor bills or sit for joint interviews in which they emphasize bipartisanship. Fetterman once called Casey his “mentor,” and now uses that label for McCormick.

Fetterman has not said whether he will run again in 2028, when his own Senate term is set to expire, but his neutrality is part of an evolving political brand that has alienated him from his Democratic voting base and made him a darling of the political Right.

He was elected lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and then senator as an avowed progressive, but has since rejected that label and readily spars with members of his own party — particularly on Israel and the ascendant socialist movement in Democratic primaries.

McCormick’s team did not respond to a request for comment on whether he would extend the same courtesy to Fetterman should he run in 2028. In repeated polls, Fetterman’s favorability rating is higher than McCormick’s among Republicans in Pennsylvania.

In the interview, Fetterman said he and McCormick are “Team Pennsylvania” and that there is nothing “sinister” about the joint fundraising committee, created under the name Common Ground PA. 

“I’m not about changing my party,” Fetterman said. “It’s just, we are Team Pennsylvania, and we work together. And it happens to be there are donors that actually like that or support that, and it doesn’t mean that you’re my enemy, or it doesn’t mean that your views are trying to destroy our democracy.”

Fetterman stoked further speculation about leaving the party when he drew a “red line” on support for Israel, telling reporters last month that if Democrats drift too far left on the issue, it would be a “much different situation.”

He’s also criticized multiple Democratic nominees for Senate, mocking Abdul el Sayed in Michigan and Graham Platner in Maine before he withdrew under a cloud of scandal.

Fetterman’s friendships on Capitol Hill are one part of that dynamic. Besides McCormick, he is close with Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) and spends time in the GOP cloakroom off the Senate chamber.

On the Democratic side, Fetterman is close with Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT), his freshman classmate. Welch echoed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in calling Fetterman a good member of the caucus.

“He votes with us 95% of the time, and his views are in the minority on Israel and to some extent Trump appointees, but it’s a big caucus, and he’s with us,” Welch said. “There’s plenty of room for John Fetterman.”

When asked about who he counts as a friend on Capitol Hill, Fetterman also mentioned the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, telling the Washington Examiner the two bonded over their “devotion for Israel and of course Ukraine” and that he was grieving the South Carolina Republican’s death.

Fetterman was part of a small group of senators who attended a memorial dinner for Graham last month and sat on the bus with the McCormicks for the public ceremony honoring him the following day.

“He’s just such a funny guy that I thoroughly enjoyed,” Fetterman said of Graham. “I mean, he checks every box: statesman, serious guy, but also super — a fun dude to hang out with.”

Inevitably, Republicans have felt out whether Fetterman might be willing to switch parties, but he described the outreach as absurd given that President Donald Trump criticizes and often threatens to primary any Republican who bucks the GOP line.

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“Trump just liquidated perfectly great, committed Republicans,” Fetterman said, alluding to the successful primary challenges against Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA). “He just wasted them, ended their careers.”

“And now he’s attacking Thune,” Fetterman added, referring to the Senate majority leader. “What’s going to happen to, like, a Democrat? It’s a pretty strange pitch.”

Flint City Councilman Leon el Alamin is set for a September evidence hearing over claims that he lived outside the ward he represents during the 2024 elections and an October trial for allegedly beating an ex-girlfriend he lived with, according to Genesee County court records and local media reports. El Alamin, an ex-drug dealer whose prior record was expunged, endorsed Democratic Michigan primary winner Abdul el Sayed’s Senate run last year before el Sayed’s campaign called his domestic violence and assault case “deeply” disturbing.

El Alamin’s Instagram account still displays the el Sayed endorsements in April and July 2025 posts, including one featuring what appears to be a now-deleted webpage from el Sayed’s campaign site. The advocacy group Muslims for American Progress also featured el Sayed and el Alamin together in a 2017 “Impact Report of Muslim Contributions to Michigan.”

El Sayed’s campaign and el Alamin’s attorney did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment. “Domestic violence is directly against Abdul’s values,” an el Sayed spokesperson previously told the Daily Caller. “Our campaign will continue to focus on uprooting it — and to standing with survivors. We will never partner with anyone found to have committed domestic violence.”

El Alamin called the assault case “false and deeply disheartening” in July 2025, and his defense attorney, Rolland Sizemore, told Flint Beat this month he does not think prosecutors will “be able to prove” he lived outside his ward.

While out on bail, el Alamin is running for a different city council ward in November due to recent redistricting — but he will lose his office if convicted of a felony.

El Alamin calls himself a “survivor of mass-incarceration” after Democrat-backed legislation signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) in 2020 allowed the state to expunge his drug and weapons convictions. The politician and nonprofit leader took a photo one-on-one with the governor at an event, which he posted online in 2024 alongside photos with other elected Democrats.

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Whitmer remained silent on el Alamin’s mounting controversies despite multiple media outlets questioning her office, and her administration said last September it would not investigate the residency fraud claims against him, leaving it to local officials, MLive reported. Whitmer’s office did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.

“These bipartisan bills are a game changer for people who are seeking opportunities for employment, housing, and more, and they will help ensure a clean slate for hundreds of thousands of Michiganders,” she said about her 2020 legislation.

314 Action Fund, a left-wing political action committee that helps candidates with science backgrounds win federal and state elections, spent $750,000 in a television, digital, and mail advertising attack campaign against Miller-Meeks.

Miller-Meeks, an ophthalmologist by training who first won office in 2019, secured her reelection in 2024 by fewer than 800 votes. This year, she faces the same challenger, former Democratic state Rep. Christina Bohannan.

Shaughnessy Naughton, president of 314 Action, told the Washington Examiner via email that her organization is investing heavily in the race because “the path to winning the Democratic majority in Congress runs through Iowa.” 

“As a doctor in Congress, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks should be standing up for Iowans on healthcare, but instead she’s sided with insurance companies and Donald Trump,” Naughton said.

The 15-second and 30-second television and online video ads against Miller-Meeks hone in on her support for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Trump last year, which Democrats denounce as cutting $1 trillion in funding for Medicaid health insurance for low-income Americans over the next decade. Republicans maintain that the savings are not from spending cuts but rather from reforms that strengthen work requirements and cut down on fraud.

The ad also notes that Miller-Meeks, who sits on the GOP Doctors Caucus in the House, has received nearly $262,000 from the pharmaceutical and health industry while in office, according to the campaign finance website Open Secrets.

Anticipating the Democratic attack line that the spending reductions would imperil rural hospitals, Republicans included a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund in the legislation aimed at helping hospitals and health systems improve the quality of care they provide to rural communities. Miller-Meeks played a significant role in that effort.

The Washington Examiner contacted Miller-Meeks’s office to request comment on the ad and her healthcare policy record.

314 Action is throwing its support behind Bohannan, an engineer and attorney by training and a former law professor at the University of Iowa.

Bohannan has a comprehensive healthcare agenda on her campaign website. Unlike more liberal Democrats pushing for a Medicare for All agenda, Bohannan says she does not support “forcing everyone onto Medicare” to create a universal healthcare system that eliminates private health insurers. 

“I want everyone to have health care coverage, and I want everyone to have choices,” Bohanna’s campaign website reads. “I want you to have the choice to have Medicare as your health insurance if you want it, and I want you to have private insurance as an option too.”  

Naughton said via email to the Washington Examiner Miller-Meeks “has betrayed her Hippocratic Oath, taking money from Big Pharma and voting with Donald Trump to strip healthcare coverage from hundreds of thousands of Iowans.”

“While Christina has spent her entire career working to fight corruption, lower costs and expand healthcare, Rep. Miller-Meeks has spent her career talking out of both sides of her mouth,” Naughton said.

A multitude of physicians, healthcare professionals, and other scientists are running for office in the 2026 elections, many of whom are Democrats backed by 314 Action. 

For example, Dr. Annie Andrews is running as a Democrat for Senate in South Carolina against Republican Sen. Darlene Graham Nordone, the sister and successor of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. Andrews, who has run for office multiple times, launched her campaign earlier this year following a state-wide outbreak of measles among unvaccinated children. 

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Dr. Amy Acton, a former public health official, is also running for governor of Ohio with the help of 314 Action against former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

Since its first election cycle in 2016, 314 Action has raised more than $100 million over the past decade and $25 million this cycle alone. The organization has contributed $14.5 million to Democratic campaigns across the country in the midterm elections so far, its largest primary investment to date.

A trimmed-down voter ID proposal from Republicans failed to attract any Democratic support and overcome a Senate filibuster last week, adding to the list of items GOP operatives plan to use against Democrats in the remaining months of the 2026 midterm cycle.

The vote came before senators left Washington for a five-week recess and acted as a one-two punch for Republicans: get them to stop fighting over the GOP’s broader SAVE America Act while giving them new ammunition against Democrats, especially those like Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and others with competitive November races.

“I’ve heard support for it from Senate Democrats and the American people,” said Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), who sponsored the provision he called “commonsense.” “But when given the chance to make it the national standard, Senate Democrats representing 9 states that already have some form of voter ID — and the rest of their caucus — voted against it.”

His Democratic opponent in battleground Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, criticized the proposal as “creating unnecessary barriers” earlier this year after a previous failed vote on Husted’s measure.

The legislation would amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to create federal photo ID standards for in-person and vote-by-mail. Democrats argued the move would create hurdles for casting ballots and addresses what they claim is the largely nonexistent problem of widespread voter fraud. Nonetheless, the vast majority — upwards of 80% of Americans — endorse photo ID requirements.  

A majority of states, 36, require some form of ID at the polls. Of those, 23 mandate a photo ID, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. The other 14 states and Washington, D.C., do not require ID to cast a ballot. Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, and New Hampshire — all states with competitive Senate elections this cycle — require photo IDs.  

The SAVE America Act, which has deeply divided Republicans, establishes voter ID requirements and goes further by mandating proof of citizenship at the time of registration. Voting on the Husted measure was part of a GOP compromise to avert another failed attempt at the SAVE Act while putting Democrats on the record. Republicans also punted a doomed vote on a party-line spending blueprint that included portions of the SAVE Act.

A major target for Republicans and voter ID requirements is Ossoff, who is facing Rep. Mike Collins (D-GA) in a purple state. Republicans have already used the vote to ding Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), although she is not up for reelection. Michigan has an open battleground seat to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI).

The Senate GOP’s campaign arm cut an ad earlier this year criticizing Ossoff for requiring ID at a campaign rally while opposing a federal voting standard.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the Ossoff campaign regarding his latest vote.

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt got into a brief spat on the subject after Leavitt shared a story on social media noting Schumer previously said Democrats “support voter ID.” Schumer pivoted the conversation back to the SAVE America Act.

“Sorry, @PressSec — the SAVE Act will never pass the United States Senate,” Schumer responded. “No amount of whining on Twitter will change that.”

The Office of Legal Counsel quietly posted the 21-page memorandum opinion on Monday, without a press release or public announcement. It was issued the same day Attorney General Todd Blanche was sworn in at the White House, and just days after Trump announced White House staff secretary Will Scharf will soon take over as White House counsel following the departure of David Warrington.

The memo, signed by Assistant Attorney General for the OLC T. Elliot Gaiser, concludes that executive privilege can apply to presidential communications with private advisers, including attorneys outside the government, if the exchanges concern official presidential decision-making, involve or reflect communications with Trump or his direct advisers, and otherwise remain confidential.

The opinion could give the DOJ and White House a framework for responding to subpoenas from a Democrat-led House of Representatives if Democrats were to regain control of the chamber following the November elections, when lawmakers would likely begin to investigate Trump’s dealings with outside lawyers, business executives, and political advisers.

OLC relied in part on a 2007 department opinion by then-Solicitor General and Acting Attorney General Paul Clement, involving the dismissal of U.S. attorneys and the D.C. Circuit’s 1997 decision in In re Sealed Case. That decision held that the “presidential communications privilege” can cover information direct presidential advisers solicit or receive from outside sources while preparing advice for the president. But it also warned against extending the privilege so broadly that government material becomes “sequestered” from public view.

A source familiar with the matter pointed the Washington Examiner toward some of the limiting principles outlined in the memo.

“While the issue has not been litigated frequently, the Opinion reaffirms the longstanding position of the office going back at least as far as Paul Clement in 2007 and arguably as far back as 1972,” the source said, referring to former President George W. Bush’s solicitor general and the Nixon administration, respectively.

For example, the guidance would not assert an automatic block on subpoenas or bar testimony. Instead, the White House would need to assert executive privilege over particular records or questions. A court could then decide whether the communications satisfy the OLC test and whether the party seeking the information has demonstrated a sufficient need for disclosure.

While Democrats’ success in the upcoming midterm elections is largely still an open question, the guidance could have more immediate consequences in the Trump administration’s fight with the American Bar Association over its effort to subpoena Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s personal lawyer and a longtime informal adviser.

The ABA is presently challenging in federal court what it calls Trump’s “law firm intimidation policy,” including his executive orders issued in the first months of his presidency targeting major firms and agreements with others that sought to avoid similar action. The ABA has sought White House and Epshteyn communications related to the orders and the law firm agreements.

The administration has argued that Epshteyn-related communications are protected by the “presidential communications privilege” and has asked a judge to block the discovery request, according to a July 2 filing on the court docket. Separately, the DOJ has also subpoenaed the firms for communications involving Epshteyn.

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Those subpoenas do not require the firms to turn material over to the ABA. But they could allow the administration to argue that the firms are a possible alternative source of nonprivileged information and that the court need not decide the executive-privilege question to resolve the ABA’s discovery request. The ABA could counter that records held by the firms are not an adequate substitute for testimony or White House communications.

Epshteyn is not a government official, but he has served as a liaison with private law firms that reached agreements with the White House. Nine firms collectively pledged roughly $940 million in free legal services for mutually agreed-upon causes.

Unfortunately, federal programs don’t always operate using this kind of common sense. In fact, the 340B drug discount program, which moves more than $100 billion a year, has never worked that way. 

So it is refreshing that the Trump administration is proposing to change that by asking participating hospitals to itemize their invoices before discounts are paid.

Paying a 340B claim without claims-level data is like settling that tab sight unseen, right down to the risk of being charged twice for the same steak, which in 340B is the same drug getting discounted under two programs at once. The principle is the same either way: show your work before the money moves. 

Some nonprofit hospitals mark up steeply discounted drugs by hundreds of percent while patients pay full cost-sharing on those same drugs. Under current rules, almost no one can see which hospitals are doing what.

That murkiness is the heart of the problem, and it helps us to understand how we got here. Congress created 340B in 1992 to help safety-net providers serve low-income patients by requiring drug manufacturers to sell outpatient drugs at steep discounts. Lawmakers expected providers to pass the savings to patients or reinvest them in charity care.

But Congress never wrote strict enrollment limits and never required hospitals to show where the savings actually went. Enrollment soared. It was originally estimated that about 90 hospitals would enroll. Today, over half of all U.S. hospitals participate.

With no requirement to route savings to patients and no window into how the money is used, the results were predictable. Hospitals buy discounted drugs and resell them for 10 times or more what they paid. In Michigan, 340B hospitals report nearly 50% higher revenue than non-340B hospitals, yet provide 34% less charity care on average. In Virginia, The New York Times found one system used 340B to generate as much as $100 million a year in profit while slashing staff and supplies at facilities serving low-income communities. Across the country, the windfall flows to reserves and executive pay rather than patients. In Michigan, the average 340B hospital’s investment portfolio is more than twice as large as a non-340B hospital.

But almost everything we know about this abuse came from outside researchers and journalists who went looking for it, not from any disclosure the program requires. Reforming the 340B program has become a top concern of this administration and Congress. The fixes currently being considered are not spending mandates, but transparency and accountability measures. Two stand out.

The first is the Department of Health and Human Services’ revised 340B Rebate Model Pilot. It targets duplicate discounts, cases where the same unit of a drug is improperly discounted twice under two programs meant to be mutually exclusive. The fix would have hospitals pay for a drug, dispense it, then submit a validated claim for a rebate, the same way nearly every other health claim is already processed, instead of the current upfront discount policy.

Claims from hospital lobbyists that documentation would bankrupt hospitals on a payment model already in use are laughable and a ploy to continue lining the already-rich pockets of hospital executives instead of helping patients in need.

The second is H.R. 9504, the Tax Exempt Hospital Transparency Act. Introduced by Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), it was recently advanced by the same House Ways and Means Committee that pressed hospital CEOs this past spring over the prices they charge patients. The bill would require tax-exempt hospitals to report — on the forms they already file — the charity care they provided and how many patients who applied for financial assistance were approved or denied. It dictates nothing about how a hospital spends a dollar. It simply makes them show their work. 

If hospitals are in fact providing robust charity care, the bill would only work to boost their reputation. We won’t know until the bill becomes law, which is why Congress should pass it quickly. 

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Neither of these reforms tells a hospital how to run its business; both simply end the guessing. Once it’s transparent and 340B dollars reach the patients the program was built for, we can have an honest debate about what reforms come next.

Congress created 340B with good intentions. But good intentions do not guarantee good results, and right now we cannot measure the results. Before we argue about how to fix this program, we should be able to see into it. Transparency and accountability are where that starts.

Joel C. White is president of the Council for Affordable Health Coverage.

He wasn’t running contraband. He was trying to comply with a federal statute that has told Americans for 40 years that this exact trip is legal, yet still leaves them guessing at the details.

Congress passed that statute, 18 U.S.C. § 926A, as part of the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986. The text is simple enough: if you can lawfully possess a firearm where your trip starts and ends, you may pass through anywhere in between, provided the firearm is unloaded and locked away from the passenger compartment. Straightforward, until you need gas, a hotel room, or a rest stop — none of which the statute mentions.

That gap isn’t academic. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives proposed a rule in May clarifying that ordinary travel activity, fuel, food, an overnight stay, or a breakdown still count as protected transportation rather than a fresh violation of whatever state you happen to be sitting in at 11 p.m. It’s the kind of clarification that shouldn’t require a federal rulemaking docket, since Congress already told us what the law protects. It never quite told us what a trip is.

Four senators don’t want that question answered. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) wrote ATF Director Robert Cekada on Aug. 4, arguing the agency had overreached by extending protection to overnight stops and to routine gear such as slings and optics. Read past the public safety language, and their real objection is to certainty itself. A hunter who can’t say for sure whether his rifle scope travels under federal protection is a hunter who thinks twice about the trip. For some of the letter’s signers, that hesitation is the entire point.

To be fair, there’s a narrow textualist case for their position. The statute says “transporting,” not “transporting, plus whatever stops the agency later decides are reasonable.” Read it literally, though, and you’ve made it a legal gamble to buy a sandwich while your unloaded rifle sits locked in the trunk, which isn’t federalism. It’s a trap built out of ambiguity, and it catches the law-abiding far more often than the criminal, who was never counting on § 926A in the first place.

This is where a national reciprocity law does something the ATF rule can’t. H.R. 38, the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, would let a permit holder who can lawfully carry in his home state carry in any state that permits their own residents to do the same. It wouldn’t touch § 926A’s transport rule, and it wouldn’t override a private landowner’s property or a state government building. What it would do is stop treating a law-abiding citizen as a suspect who has to relitigate his rights at every state line.

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I don’t need a hypothetical to make this case. My professional life runs through people who own firearms as tools rather than symbols, and my family runs through people who carried rifles for the government before they ever owned one for themselves. None of them is asking for a loophole. They’re asking Congress to say plainly what it implied in 1986: a law-abiding citizen doesn’t forfeit his rights because he crossed a state line.

H.R. 38 has been sitting in front of Congress, in one form or another, since 2017. It clears the House Judiciary Committee with some regularity and dies everywhere past it. The senators who wrote ATF this month have made their preference plain. They’d rather govern through ambiguity than legislate through clarity. Pass reciprocity, and the trunk of your car stops being a legal gray area. Until Congress acts, keep the case locked, keep the ammunition separate, and keep your receipts. You’re going to need them.

Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.

I always see the race that could go wrong, the supposedly safe seat that isn’t safe, and the political wave that could disappear before reaching shore.

But pessimism isn’t the same thing as denial. Republicans need a sober, detached assessment of 2026 because nobody who isn’t being paid to say otherwise will say that 2026 is a good year for Republicans.

It isn’t.

The national environment is tilting Democratic. The RealClearPolitics average has Democrats leading Republicans by 7 points on the generic congressional ballot.

The warning signs are everywhere.

Republicans are having to pay attention to Senate races in Montana, Alaska, and Iowa — states President Donald Trump won overwhelmingly. Democrats are even making noise about Mississippi, although that is surely a ruse intended to make Republicans spend money defending territory that shouldn’t require defending.

But North Carolina? That’s real.

Former Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is running strongly for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. Had Tillis remained the Republican nominee, does anyone seriously believe North Carolina would look as bad for Republicans as it does today?

Then there is Texas.

Democrat James Talarico is leading the Republican nominee, state Attorney General Ken Paxton. This is Texas, a state where Democrats haven’t won a statewide election in 32 years.

Republicans should ask themselves whether they would be spending August worrying about Texas had Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) survived the Republican primary.

That is political malpractice. And yet Democrats have their own candidate problem.

In fact, 2026 increasingly looks like it could become the Democrats’ version of 2010.

The tea party wave that year was enormous. Republicans delivered then-President Barack Obama his famous shellacking. But they left Senate seats on the table.

Sharron Angle lost a winnable race in Nevada. Christine O’Donnell knocked off then-Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware’s Republican primary, only to lose a seat Republicans otherwise might have won to Chris Coons. Ken Buck, then a county district attorney, lost in Colorado.

Two years later, Republicans repeated the mistake when then-Rep. Todd Akin transformed Missouri from a Republican pickup into a Democrat landslide.

The tea party didn’t fail. It simply failed to reach its full potential. Democrats may be about to do the same thing.

Exhibit A is Michigan.

Democrats nominated Abdul el Sayed for the Senate in a state Trump carried two years ago. El Sayed isn’t merely liberal. He comes from Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) wing of the party and has taken positions considerably to the left of the Wolverine State’s famously ticket-splitting electorate.

Michigan should terrify Democrats. In theory, the race should be theirs in this environment. Instead, they nominated perhaps the one candidate capable of turning it into a Republican pickup.

The irony is delicious.

For years, Democrats laughed as Republican primary voters nominated candidates who could win applause at rallies but couldn’t win enough independents in November.

Now Democrats are discovering the same intoxicating temptation: ideological purity feels wonderful until the votes are counted.

Democrats should have a big year. They could win the House. They could win the Senate.

But House redistricting has narrowed their path. And candidate quality matters enormously when only a handful of Senate races will determine control.

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Republicans have plenty of problems. Democrats’ biggest problem may be themselves.

If Republicans wake up Nov. 4 still controlling one or both chambers of Congress, it probably won’t be because 2026 suddenly became a Republican year. It will be because Democrats found a way to blow their own wave.

Dennis Lennox (@dennislennox) is a political commentator and public affairs consultant.

Yet, Graham Nordone, on the ballot for a full six-year term, isn’t seen as a shoo-in to replace her late brother, Lindsey Graham.

“It is a complete free-for-all, three-way race for second place,” predicted Tyson Grinstead, a Republican National Committee member and a 2014 Graham campaign adviser who’s a neutral observer to the primary.

Tuesday’s special election, largely seen as a wild-card contest due to a condensed campaign period lasting only a few weeks, likely will not be the end despite the November general election safely in GOP hands. An Aug. 25 runoff between the top two vote-getters is expected unless one amasses more than 50% of the vote.

The top contenders to be South Carolina’s Republican Senate nominee include Graham Nordone, Reps. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and Russell Fry (R-SC), former Gov. Mark Sanford, and businessman Mark Lynch. Lynch lost the initial June primary to Graham prior to his sudden death in July from an aortic tear.

“You can make a good case for any of the other three coming in second,” Grinstead said of Norman, Fry, and Sanford.

Graham Nordone is leaning on support from Trump and leading Senate Republicans, including Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), but she has also made clear that while honoring her brother’s legacy is a priority, she intends to focus less on foreign policy and more on domestic issues such as affordability.

“Obviously, I think Lindsey was an amazing senator. His interest was foreign relations and national security,” Graham Nordone said Monday on Fox & Friends. “And while national security is really important, I’m a little different, because here I want to focus on the struggles of the South Carolina families because, like them, I feel those same struggles.”

Should Graham Nordone ultimately fail to secure the nomination, her appointment to the seat will conclude in January 2027. Polling varies and suggests the race is tight, but some surveys have shown her with sizable leads while still below the runoff threshold.

But so far, she’s approaching voters in “a smart way,” according to Grinstead.           

“I think she realizes that people right now are concerned about, you know, the affordability issues,” he said. “To focus on some of those domestic issues rather than foreign policy to start with, I think that’s a smart move.”

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Among the criticisms Graham Nordone has faced from primary rivals, particularly Fry, are accusations that she pushed diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in her past role in helping the blind. It is a charge that, if it sticks, could doom her in the eyes of some conservative voters.

“I’ve got some opponents that have been attacking me on some DEI issues, which I don’t understand,” Graham Nordone said in the Fox & Friends interview. “I’ve led a state agency for seven years, where I help people who are blind find work so that they can live independently and not rely on the government, thus saving taxpayers’ dollars. So I’m not sure how that equates to DEI.”

Here are the most notable races to watch in Minnesota this election cycle:

Governor

The most high-profile race in Minnesota this year is undoubtedly the gubernatorial election. Many candidates on both sides of the aisle are seeking to replace Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), who is not seeking a third term.

In the Democratic primary, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is by far the front-runner. She is running alongside her lieutenant governor running mate, former Fergus Falls Mayor Ben Schierer. Though the primary is crowded, it is not competitive for Klobuchar. She already secured the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s endorsement.

The other six Democratic candidates are Po Vang, Mohammad Wazwaz, Ole Savior, Bill Gates Jr. (unrelated to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates), Thomas Evenstad, and Kobey Layne.

On the Republican side, the primary race is more competitive. Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, former MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and businessman Kendall Qualls are among the top contenders, while the remaining four candidates are behind in the polls.

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Qualls previously ran for governor as a failed Republican candidate in 2022, and it appears he may come up short again despite an endorsement from the Republican Party of Minnesota. Demuth and Lindell, whom President Donald Trump endorsed, take the lead in multiple polls compiled by the New York Times.

Whoever secures the GOP nomination will have a difficult time defeating Klobuchar, who holds a sizable lead over any Republican candidate. The one who closes the gap most with the likely Democratic nominee is Demuth. She is 8 points behind Klobuchar, according to a general election poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research in June.

Senate

Another race to keep an eye on is for the state’s open Senate seat, to be vacated by retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN).

Of the six Democratic primary candidates, Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D-MN) are the top two. Flanagan is backed by Smith, and Craig is supported by Walz’s wife, Gwen. The outgoing governor has not weighed in on the race.

Flanagan is ahead of Craig by 14 points, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released in late July. One month earlier, the same pollster showed Flanagan holding a 7-point lead over her opponent. If the polls hold true, the lieutenant governor may be the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat.

Meanwhile, the Republican primary is filled with political outsiders seeking to challenge the eventual Democratic nominee. The candidates who top the list are former Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze, who clinched the Minnesota GOP’s endorsement; former NBA player Royce White, who ran against Klobuchar in 2024; and Emmy Award-winning sports broad­caster Michele Tafoya, whose Senate campaign marks the first time she’s running for public office.

Tafoya has consistently held double-digit leads over her competitors, according to four different polls since February. Despite the clear advantage within her own party, she may not be able to win the general election. The Democratic nominee, whether that’s Craig or Flanagan, is 8 points ahead of the Republican nominee in the aforementioned Mason-Dixon Polling & Research survey from June.

The state’s other Senate seat is occupied by Klobuchar. Notably, she will have to resign from her Senate seat to make way for a temporary replacement until a special election can be held if she becomes Minnesota’s next governor. Her current Senate term expires in January 2031.

House

While Craig runs for the Senate, the congresswoman is opening up her House seat to some competition.

Former state Sen. Matt Little, state Rep. Kaela Berg, and state Sen. Matt Klein are the main candidates running in the Democratic primary. Meanwhile, state Sen. Eric Pratt is running unop­posed in the Repub­lican primary.

PEGGY FLANAGAN HOLDS LAKEN RILEY ACT AGAINST ANGIE CRAIG IN FINAL PUSH BEFORE MINNESOTA SENATE PRIMARY

Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District, represented by Craig, will likely see a Democratic victor come November. The Cook Political Report believes the district will remain blue, but the publication noted that the open race “provides a glimmer of hope for Republicans, who had written [Craig] off as unbeatable.”

Craig has not endorsed any candidate in the race to replace her. With his DFL endorsement, Little appears to be the favorite contender.