Democrats are arguing and criticizing and buzzing about candidates like Jon Ossoff, James Talarico and Graham Platner.
What about Republicans? The Texas Senate primary drew some attention, and angst. Anyone else? Anywhere in the country?
Benjamin Domenech, opinion editor of The Daily Wire and the writer of the newsletter The Transom, assessed some of the G.O.P. candidates in a written conversation with John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion. It has been edited for length and clarity.
John Guida: Politico reports that Republicans see Maine as “the linchpin” to holding their Senate majority. So, no pressure on Susan Collins! She will face Graham Platner. She’s a rarity these days, a senator representing a state that elected a president of the opposite party the last time she ran. What’s the secret to her survival in Maine?
Benjamin Domenech: The interesting thing about this whole focus on Maine is that if you talk to Senate Republican staff and consultants, they’re actually less worried about it than other states. This is partially because of Platner’s shall we say unique collection of scandals and challenges, but it’s also because of enormous faith in Collins as a survivor.
Guida: To that point, the Politico report also quotes the memo as saying that “the political fundamentals in Maine remain challenging, and it is a fatal mistake to assume Platner is too damaged to win.”
Domenech: I think that’s correct, and top Republicans should actually be more concerned. Platner clearly has energy behind him. He speaks to a desire on the left for a strong message, and he’s shown no signs of bowing to pressure to get out for a more centrist-coded candidate.
Collins is absolutely capable of winning, but national assumptions are taking over based on her last election, in 2020, when she came back from what seemed like a deep hole by keeping her campaign hyperlocal.
Guida: Joe Biden won Maine by nine points that year, and Collins beat her Democratic opponent also by nine points. She did it in part by drawing the votes of women. But that was before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Is that development — and her vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the majority that overturned Roe — at least part of the reason for your skepticism, as well as the broader political atmosphere in 2026?
Domenech: On the Supreme Court question, Collins has made it a mark of her career to show deference to presidential nominees, Republican and Democratic alike. (She voted for all of President Barack Obama’s and Biden’s nominees.) That takes on a new character in the post-Roe context, and she’s also running in a moment when economic concerns are far more paramount.
But the Platner questions seem to cut against the priorities of the exact demographic he needs to find support from to wrest the state from Collins. He’s already shown he’ll lean heavily on the idea of “redemption,” though I’m not sure how that plays when he denies any wrongdoing. And there’s still an abiding feeling among the G.O.P. consultant class that the opposition research hasn’t dropped yet — and perhaps won’t until it’s too late, in July, for the Democratic committee to replace him.
Just as a measure of how unique Maine’s population is, they turn out at a much higher percentage than typical states — and roughly one out of every 40 people speaks French in their home.
Guida: Collins is not known as what we might call a big personality. She does not seem to crave national attention. Are there other attributes about her that have contributed to her staying power over the years? For example, to your interesting factoid about Maine, does she speak French!?
Domenech: It’s a combination of authenticity and delivering for voters. She leads by getting money for the state, and she comes from a potato farming background in Caribou, where you can expect Republicans to play up the fact that Platner is essentially a blue blood, grandson of a famous architect who went to the private boarding school Hotchkiss. And as for whether she could carry on a discourse with Victor Wembanyama — the N.B.A.’s most famous French speaker — not that I know of. To my knowledge, Platner’s a lot more likely to speak French!
Guida: You mentioned above that Senate Republican staff and consultants are actually less worried about Maine than other states. Which states and candidates are they worried about?
Domenech: The top concerns for Republicans are states that Trump won by double digits in the 2024 election: Alaska, Iowa and Ohio. Each of these has presented a situation where Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party successfully recruited their preferred candidate. And in North Carolina, the decision by Senator Thom Tillis, a frequent Trump foe, to not run for re-election has the G.O.P. on its back foot — though they still think they can hold on.
In Ohio, Republicans have a difficult situation on their hands because an appointee who has never won a Senate election, Jon Husted, is facing off against a Democrat who won several even as the state was trending toward solid red: Sherrod Brown. This is where you’re going to see a ton of attention paid by Vice President JD Vance, who doesn’t want to see his state allow Brown back in to a fourth term.
In Alaska, Schumer recruited Mary Peltola, who became the first Democrat in many years to win statewide when she pulled off an upset in a special House election, beating Sarah Palin. Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, has the advantage there, but again, we’re talking about a unique state, and Peltola is an Alaska Native.
In Iowa, the Democratic establishment based in Washington was happy to see their preferred choice, the Paralympic gold medalist and state legislator Josh Turek, win the Senate primary. Iowa could turn out to be a real test for Trump’s tariff policies, which have been a decidedly mixed bag in many of the states that backed him. The president will probably have to take that argument to the people of Iowa himself.
Guida: I’m not getting a sense that these Republican candidates — or even someone like Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, an incumbent facing a tough challenge from the independent candidate Dan Osborn — have much buzz around them. Is there a candidate this cycle who is setting Republican hearts aflutter? Maybe in races for governor or the House?
Domenech: It’s a pretty short list for the Senate. Republicans in Washington are champing at the bit for a potential face-off in Michigan — depending on the outcome of the Democratic Senate primary — between Abdul El-Sayed and former Representative Mike Rogers. That is one reason Schumer threw his support behind one of El-Sayed’s more moderate opponents, Representative Haley Stevens (the other is Mallory McMorrow, a state senator), in that primary.
As for governor’s races, there’s a lot of confidence in Vivek Ramaswamy — despite his distance from some of the president’s coalition — pulling off a win of the governorship in Ohio. That’s just a hold, but if the Michigan race turns the way the G.O.P. hopes, John James — who represents Michigan’s 10th district — could have a shot at an upset. And then there’s Byron Donalds, whom people expect to coast to victory in his attempt to replace Ron DeSantis as governor in Florida. By the way, all three are representative of a version of the post-Trump G.O.P. that isn’t just white men.
Don’t forget: The great white whale for Republicans in the Trump era is Arizona, where Andy Biggs will try to knock off incumbent Gov. Katie Hobbs. Biggs has sought to mend fences while running — he was a Freedom Caucus hard-liner who voted to kick McCarthy out of the speakership, but he needs Arizona’s sizable portion of independents to win — but it may still not be enough in a state that was just a short time ago dominated by the G.O.P. but is now trending blue.
Guida: Despite the lack of enthusiasm, you think Republicans are still confident. Why?
Domenech: Much of it comes from a belief that Democratic radicalism, particularly the various examples of what they view as a renewed cultural leftism in opposition to Trump during his first term, will play in their favor. Talarico is a good example of this — thanks to many past comments, some of which he’s distanced himself from, Republicans view him as representing a form of progressive Christianity that’s anathema to Texas voters.
But the real question is if that cultural shift is enough to keep Trump’s 2024 coalition together. He won by making inroads with minorities, particularly Hispanic voters. Republicans need to find a way to convince these voters that they’re the better answer on the economy, crime and border security than Democrats, or else they’ll be stuck with just loyalists at the polls.
Guida: Are there noncandidate Republicans in this cycle, particularly those who operate outside of Trump’s circle of attention, worth keeping an eye on? Someone like Gov. Brian Kemp or Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia?
Domenech: I admit that I don’t personally understand the idea of people being truly excited by politicians, but online Republicans tend to be most drawn to candidates running in solidly Democratic states without a real hope of victory.
California has gotten outsize attention this cycle for exactly that reason. Every consultant has an opinion on what their candidates can do to emulate Spencer Pratt without the losing aspect of it. And Steve Hilton has done an impressive job as a consultant turned candidate of adapting his message for California voters. But it’s safe to say nobody’s jumping up and down for any of these folks — though are California Democrats really excited about Xavier Becerra?
As for the general tone of the party, though, it’s notable how many significant members are headed to the exits, particularly from the House. Nancy Mace came in fifth in her attempt to win the South Carolina governorship. Representative Chip Roy of Texas, often a foil for the White House, lost his attorney-general runoff. All four Black Republican members of the House are headed for the exits. It’s a real shift. It’s not just on the G.O.P. side — I am definitely going to miss Jasmine Crockett.
Guida: You mentioned Nancy Mace. There are very few women G.O.P. candidates this year, and very few in the Trump cabinet. Should the party be more worried about the gender gap?
Domenech: With a few exceptions — such as Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee, Julia Letlow in Louisiana and Ashley Hinson in Iowa — the statewide candidates certainly skew more male than Republicans would like.
At the same time, there are ebbs and flows in how much attention the G.O.P. pays to these perennial recruitment issues. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was a strong recruiter of women and minority candidates, but he still ended up with an extremely narrow House majority.
Parties that lose midterms tend to learn lessons about this sort of thing. But Republicans still seem to think that, thanks to redistricting and their advantages in fund-raising, they could buck historical trends and hold on, perhaps even in the House. They’re just scared about gas prices. Personally, I’m skeptical.
Guida: In the meantime … the super PAC aligned with President Trump, MAGA Inc., is sitting on a $300 million war chest. The strategic team involved in previous Trump campaigns, including Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio, will have a lot of money to spend. What’s your sense of how and where they will spend it?
Domenech: The president’s political team is supremely confident in their ability to pick and choose candidates after a cycle where his endorsements proved decisive and where they believe that they emerged with a stronger slate of candidates than in recent cycles. They are likely to focus on the Midwest, so if you live in a Rust Belt or Great Plains state, get used to seeing political ads.
One outstanding question, though, is what will happen in Texas. After Paxton cruised to victory in the Senate primary runoff, there’s a general attitude among Washington Republicans that Texas should have to take care of Texas given Paxton’s past difficulties fund-raising. (As I noted on Fox, the attitude is “you break it, you bought it.”) But there’s a great deal of confidence that James Talarico is a weaker candidate than past statewide Democrats, and Paxton should still have enough energy to win in a red state without significant national help.
Guida: Finally, you cover politics, but you just said that you don’t personally get the idea of people being excited by politicians. Why is that?
Domenech: Politics is the art of deal-making and trade-offs. No politician is perfect; they’re all just men and women trying to do a job or make themselves rich. Some of them are better at it than others. Even the most noble politician will let you down eventually. Having lived through the heights of Barack Obama’s rise that was so truly thrilling for so many in my generation, and now witnessing the revisionist nostalgia for some friendly, more civil time in politics — as if the 1990s were just a comfortable blur — it’s healthier to believe in something deeper than an elected official.
Don’t treat politicians like some king, queen or savior. We are a nation of citizens, not subjects. America’s strength in our 250th year certainly isn’t going to be found in the halls of Congress. It’s the people outside this city who make this country great.
Benjamin Domenech (@bdomenech) is opinion editor of The Daily Wire and writes the newsletter The Transom. John Guida is a Times Opinion editor.
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