Surprise nominees, candidate scandals scramble the battle for Congress

The final stretch of primary season has scrambled the battle for Congress, as scandals, insurgent victories and voters’ rejection of party leaders’ preferred candidates reshape a small but critical set of races.

Democrats’ path to a Senate majority narrowed with the triumph of progressive insurgent Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, whom polls show faring worse against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) than his primary rival. Republicans suffered their own setbacks as a Trump-endorsed congressional candidate in Michigan lost to a rival who had suspended his campaign, while misconduct allegations drove a vulnerable North Carolina incumbent from the race.

Republicans are eager to face several Democrats they believe are too far left for their districts, while Democrats see new openings where GOP candidates have suffered from controversies. With control of Congress potentially turning on a handful of seats, both parties are betting individual candidates will matter as much as the political terrain — though operatives’ judgments about electability often prove wrong.

“It’s really hard to tell you what the board’s going to be like,” said Democratic strategist Andrew Acosta, noting that antiestablishment fervor among grassroots organizers has made prognosticating harder for consultants and pollsters, and scandals are adding more volatility.

For Trump, the stakes include the fate of his policy agenda for the rest of his term, as well as burdensome oversight and possibly a third impeachment. But he has taken a hands-off approach to the midterms, frustrating some Republicans who want him to help mobilize his supporters and dip into his super PAC’s $400 million war chest.

“I said to somebody, ‘Wait a minute, you don’t understand — I won, I’m not campaigning,’” Trump said in an interview with Punchbowl News released Friday. “If I don’t run, will those people go out and vote? … Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans.”

To win the Senate, Democrats need to defend their seats in Michigan and Georgia, pick up North Carolina and Maine, plus win in two more states that Trump won by more than 10 points in 2024 — a tall order even in a year expected to favor them.

The latest polls show how individual candidates can defy a state’s typical partisan makeup. Democrats are currently leading in red states like Ohio, Iowa and Texas by more than in left-leaning Michigan or Maine.

Without Michigan, Democrats would have to win in a third state that Trump won by at least 10 points in 2024. Polls showed Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan), who was endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), faring at least slightly better against Rogers than El-Sayed. But he edged her out in Tuesday’s primary by about one percentage point.

“There’s a serious distinction, a big difference between somebody like Haley Stevens, who has far-left positions — and we would hammer her every day and litigate those positions — and somebody like Abdul,” said Alex Latcham, who runs Senate Leadership Fund, the flagship Republican super PAC in Senate races.

Schumer, who spoke to El-Sayed on Wednesday, said in an interview that he was confident Democrats would hold Michigan. No Republican has won a Senate race there in more than three decades, and Trump is not popular there.

El-Sayed just needs to “keep talking about jobs, talking about lower costs, talking about corruption — the same things that our candidates talk about across the country,” Schumer said.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton beat incumbent Sen. John Cornyn over the objection of GOP leaders and now trails Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in most polls.

In Maine, establishment favorite Gov. Janet Mills stalled out against Graham Platner, who later withdrew amid sexual assault allegations. The Democrats’ new nominee, Troy Jackson, is in a tight race against five-term incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R).

Republicans had already largely written off Georgia after no formidable challenger to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) emerged. Their nominee, Rep. Mike Collins, trailed by 13 points in a Fox News poll conducted in late June and came under further pressure after CNN reported that his live-in son-in-law shared white supremacist and neo-Nazi content online.

Collins disavowed those views but did not distance himself from his son-in-law. The campaign argued the race remains competitive by pointing to $60 million commitments from outside groups to help Collins.

“Political ‘experts’ and the news media were laughingly wrong — just this week — about the competitiveness of the Senate primary in Michigan,” Collins spokesman Corbin Keown said. “Mike Collins will beat Jon Ossoff in November, and the media will once again be left wondering how they got it so wrong.”

The primary calendar could still reshape another Senate race. Alaska generally votes Republican, but Sen. Dan Sullivan faces a competitive race against former Rep. Mary Peltola (D), so Republicans are hoping a second candidate named Dan Sullivan does not make the top four and advance to the November ballot, where he could confuse voters and siphon off votes from the incumbent.

While midterms are historically tough on the sitting president’s party, Republicans moved the House map in their favor by gerrymandering additional states to eliminate blue seats and narrow the competitive field to only a couple dozen districts. Democrats are hoping Trump’s unpopularity can push them deeper into red territory.

The Senate result in Michigan immediately spilled into House races. Trump and other Republicans immediately moved to cast El-Sayed as a new party standard-bearer, seeking to make his progressive positions a drag on the entire Democratic ticket.

“Michigan Democrats proved that their party has been completely taken over by the radical socialist left,” Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Michigan) said in response to Tuesday’s results, linking El-Sayed with his own Democratic challenger, Sean McCann.

The controversy around El-Sayed may have also hurt the Trump-endorsed candidate in Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, Amir Hassan. Republican operatives said voters may have confused him with controversial podcaster Hasan Piker, who campaigned with El-Sayed.

Hassan lost Tuesday’s primary to another Republican named Tom Smith who raised almost no money and suspended his campaign last month. In lieu of a campaign finance report, he sent the Federal Election Commission a handwritten letter.

Smith acknowledged his race got far less attention than the Senate contest and said his win surprised him too. In a statement Friday, he echoed national GOP attacks on left-leaning candidates, saying he and Trump-aligned Michigan Republicans would be a foil to the “failed socialist policies” of progressives like El-Sayed.

Incumbent Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet’s (D) campaign manager, Bobby Bennett, said the campaign didn’t see either Republican as harder to run against. The Cook Political Report rates the race as leaning Democratic.

Voters also rejected Trump’s endorsement in Tennessee by ousting incumbent Rep. Andy Ogles. Still, national Republicans did not rue his roughly six-point loss to Charlie Hatcher on Thursday, since Ogles had faced ethics investigations and raised less money than Democrat Chaz Molder. Ogles lost much of his incumbency advantage when Republican-led redistricting replaced about 80 percent of the district’s voters as part of an effort to eliminate a Democratic-held Black-majority seat.

Trump endorsed Hatcher on Friday, saying he had stuck with Ogles “even though he had virtually no chance of winning.”

Elsewhere, both parties seized on primary results they argued had strengthened their prospects in competitive House races. Republicans cheered when national Democrats lost their preferred candidates in California’s 22nd District, where Bernie Sanders-endorsed Randy Villegas will take on incumbent Rep. David G. Valadao, and Arizona’s 1st District, where failed 2024 nominee Amish Shah beat ex-Republican Marlene Galán-Woods to take on Trump-endorsed Jay Feely.

Democrats also acknowledged a tougher road against Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Michigan) with their nomination of William Lawrence, a progressive activist who co-founded the Sunrise Movement. “Even Democrats admit that Socialist William Lawrence is too extreme for Mid-Michigan and that he will be rejected this fall,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Zach Bannon said Thursday.

A few consequential House primaries remain. In Florida’s primary on Aug. 18, some House Republicans are backing a challenger to Rep. Cory Mills (R), whom they view as unusually vulnerable amid a House Ethics investigation and assault allegation.

Democrats see several Republican-held seats becoming more competitive because of scandals or candidate vulnerabilities. Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) faces pressure to resign over domestic abuse allegations, and Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-North Carolina) dropped his reelection bid after the Ethics Committee found inappropriate conduct toward female staff. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-New Jersey), also drew criticism for missing almost four months of votes while struggling with depression. Cook rates Kean’s race a toss-up.

Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pennsylvania), running in another toss-up district, is facing scrutiny over extensive stock trading after campaigning on banning the practice among lawmakers. Democrats are also bullish about flipping Texas’s 23rd District after Tony Gonzales admitted to an affair and resigned. The replacement Republican nominee, Brandon Herrera, known on YouTube as “The AK Guy,” faces San Antonio attorney Katy Padilla Stout.

The odds of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) hanging onto her seat, after Republicans redrew her district to favor them, improved in Democrats’ eyes when the GOP nomination went to former state Rep. Derek Merrin, whom she beat in 2024.

Staffers of candidates who defeated national Democrats’ preferred contenders dismissed electability concerns and pointed to the quick post-election support of the party’s House campaign arm, a typical practice. In Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, state Auditor Matthew Dunlap defeated state Sen. Joe Baldacci, whom the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had included in its “Red to Blue” program. Since the primary, Dunlap’s campaign has built working relationships with the national group, spokesperson Matt Herdman said.

“It’s going to be a difficult race, everyone knows that, but we feel like we’re on a good path,” Herdman said.