Tuesday’s primaries exposed vulnerabilities that are expected to plague incumbent lawmakers in both parties throughout this year’s primary elections.
Several old-guard House Democrats faced spirited, successful challenges from younger and more liberal candidates, while several Republicans were imperiled by a lack of an endorsement from President Donald Trump.
In the lead-up to the midterms, Democratic voters expressed eagerness for new faces, while Republican voters were emphatic about their desire for more candidates who hew close to Trump. Key races in Texas and North Carolina found voters acting on those preferences, and incumbents stumbling in response, a development that could foreshadow the results in races still to come.
Tuesday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who has broken with Trump at times and was vying for his fifth term, lost his seat by 15 points in a decisive primary. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), an 11-term congressman, trailed a younger challenger in a close race that is headed to a runoff because neither candidate won a majority of the vote. And the scandal-plagued Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), a three-term congressman, is also headed to a runoff in a tight race with his closest GOP challenger.
Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), whom Trump has shunned, faces an uncertain May runoff against a figured beloved by much of Trump’s base.
Some of Tuesday’s races were also complicated by redistricting efforts — Texas and North Carolina races both featured new districts, and several other states, including California, could have new maps this year as well.
In Texas, the redistricting effort put two incumbents in the same district: Green, and newly elected Rep. Christian Menefee. Green, 78, has been in Congress since Menefee, 37, was a teenager. Earlier this year, Menefee won a seat to replace Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died suddenly last year. Green has made a name for himself nationally by repeatedly interrupting Trump at the State of the Union and filing resolutions to impeach the president.
Neither candidate has received over 50 percent of the vote; under Texas election rules, both must compete in a runoff for the Houston-area seat. Votes are still being tabulated, but Menefee has a slight lead on Green, which Democratic campaign strategists say is attributable to the younger lawmaker campaigning over the past year to win his current seat. Green, drawn into the district in recent months, has been less visible on the campaign trail.
“We’ve always needed strong Democrats willing to step up and forge a path when the moment demands it. Right now, voters aren’t looking for the same old playbook,” Menefee said in a statement. “The playbook is being written in real time, and we’ve got to keep our eyes forward if we’re serious about delivering a better future for our communities.”
In response, Green told The Washington Post, “I am generational change.”
The outcome in the Menefee-Green race is a warning sign for other old-guard Democrats who are facing young challengers across the country. Rep. David Scott (D-Georgia), 80, has filed for his 13th term in Congress despite being voted out by colleagues from his perch as the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee for myriad health issues that contributed to absences.
In Michigan, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D), 71, is lagging in fundraising behind 33-year-old state Rep. Donavan McKinney. Rep. John B. Larson (D-Connecticut), 77, has also been outraised by Luke Bronin, 46, a former mayor of Hartford, which sits in the district.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D), who first ran for his Tennessee seat 20 years ago, is facing a legitimate challenger in state Rep. Justin Pearson, 31, who gained national attention for being expelled from the General Assembly after protesting GOP-backed gun policies over a 2023 mass killing at a Nashville school. In California — a state where the two top candidates also compete in runoffs if they do not notch 50 percent of the vote — three incumbent Democrats have legitimate challenges from younger rivals.
Generational battles are roiling Democratic Senate primaries as well, with 47-year-old Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Massachusetts) challenging 79-year-old Senate incumbent Edward J. Markey and, in Maine, oyster businessman Graham Platner, 41, running against Gov. Janet Mills, 77.
One bright spot for older incumbents may be in North Carolina’s Fourth Congressional District. The race is very close, but two-term Rep. Valerie Foushee (D), 69, is currently edging out Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, 32, for the second election in a row. Allam has requested a recount in the race.
Foushee got considerable help from outside political groups in the closing days of the campaign, namely $1.6 million from Jobs and Democracy PAC. The group is affiliated with a political organization largely funded by money from the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic. The money helped Foushee dominate the race’s closing messaging campaign.
David Hogg, the head of Leaders We Deserve, a progressive group that backed Menefee and Allam and is focused on ousting incumbent members of Congress, said Tuesday’s races reflected “a real hunger for new leadership. But it also shows us … that it is really hard to defeat incumbents.”
Still, Hogg said, the difficulty incumbents had in their races — even those that prevailed — should be a warning for longtime lawmakers in races yet to come.
“If I were an incumbent right now being challenged by us, I would have a pit in my stomach,” Hogg said.
Republicans have less of a problem nationwide when it comes to challenges to incumbents. But incumbents who do not notch Trump’s endorsement could be at a significant disadvantage. And those who do gain it could use it to overcome other vulnerabilities.
Trump’s endorsement of Gonzales in Texas may have helped keep him afloat in his primary amid a scandal involving an alleged affair with a former staffer who died after lighting herself on fire. Gonzales is heading to a runoff with far-right gun activist Brandon Herrera for the second cycle in a row, with Herrera currently holding a narrow, two-point lead. Herrera almost unseated Gonzales in a 2024 runoff, losing by a few hundred votes.
A lack of endorsement likely hurt Crenshaw’s chances. The lawmaker found himself in a new district this cycle, following Texas’s redistricting effort, which was meant to increase the overall number of safe GOP seats in the state.
Crenshaw lost to Texas state Rep. Steve Toth, whose state-level district is squarely inside Texas’s new Second Congressional District, making the race one between two known entities in the region. Republican campaign strategists say Crenshaw may have had an edge had Trump endorsed him, but that blessing never materialized given the former Navy SEAL’s frequent criticism of the president.
Texas’s Republican Senate primary was complicated in part by Trump’s refusal to endorse any candidate. Now that race is headed to a runoff, with Cornyn, the incumbent, facing off against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has weathered several scandals, including an affair, a fraud investigation (settled with a $300,000 payment), a federal abuse of power investigation (eventually dropped), and an impeachment.
National Republicans fear these scandals would make Paxton a weaker candidate in the general election, but Cornyn, lacking Trump’s endorsement, was unable to garner a majority of the vote in Tuesday’s primary.
On Wednesday, Trump said he would intervene in the race to spare the party spending time and resources on the runoff.
The runoff “cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW!,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!!”
In the House, incumbents losing races could have a major impact on Republican’s working majority. Privately, some House GOP leaders worry that lawmakers who lose their primaries, or are in runoffs, will no longer show up for work in Washington. House Republicans can only spare one vote to pass bills on party lines.
Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), who ran for Senate against Cornyn and Paxton, has been notoriously absent this year, forcing leadership to postpone votes until he returned to Washington to break stalemates.
“It’s always a concern,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) told reporters, before dismissing the issue. “We’ve had elections along the way, yet we’re still able to move our agenda.”
Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota) also publicly downplayed the concern, saying Crenshaw’s and Hunt’s losses are “disappointing” but that they remain “valued members of the team, and they will be here.”
Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
correctionA previous version of this article said that Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas) won a U.S. House seat to replace Rep. Sylvester Tyler. The late congressman is Sylvester Turner.
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