For Democrats, the midterms have been a test of which ideological wing of the party has more juice: the progressive left, which notched high-profile wins during the primaries, or the moderate middle.
But, as the general election draws near, there’s also a stylistic gulf emerging, most notably in the purple and red states that have become major Senate battlegrounds. And it poses another big question for the party.
Should a candidate thrill an audience and light the world on fire? Or is being a little bit boring actually a secret weapon?
What works in November could shape the way the Democratic Party thinks about 2028. Tonight, we’ll dig into this divide.
Team Electric
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, puts it this way: “Politics is the alchemy of turning attention into power.”
It’s not clear whether El-Sayed is going to win power. But he definitely has the attention part down.
He has leaned into his status as a political lightning rod, criticizing U.S. support for Israel and promising to be a thorn in the side of the powerful in Washington, whether they be Democrats or Republicans. And he has spread that message through viral social posts — he has a penchant for dancing on camera — and soaring speeches on the campaign trail.
“No one understands how deep and profound the gift of this country is like a kid who was born here but for the accident of history that allowed that to happen,” he said earlier this month at a rally in Marquette, Mich., as the crowd roared its approval. “I know America.”
In Florida, state Representative Angie Nixon, who brought a pink bullhorn onto the House floor there to protest redistricting, is running an insurgent campaign for U.S. Senate. She delivers fiery speeches that draw audiences into call-and-response, and has promised to be the “biggest pain” for President Trump.
Not everyone in the electric cohort started out this way. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia kept a somewhat low profile after he was first elected to the Senate in 2021. But, in his run for re-election this year, he’s found ever-more-viral ways to accuse Trump of corruption.
It was a speech of his this summer, you may recall, that brought a formerly inconspicuous White House figure — Trump’s assistant Natalie Harp — to mainstream attention.
Team Normal
When was the last time you saw a viral clip from Roy Cooper?
He’s the Democrat running for Senate in North Carolina, a state that has been a perennial Democratic heartbreaker in cycles past. This year, though, Cooper has built such a solid polling lead over his Republican opponent, Michael Whatley, that most national Republican groups have essentially given up on the race.
Cooper is a former governor, and he has drawn on voters’ familiarity with him to distance himself from the national Democratic brand, my colleague Pati Mazzei recently wrote. He isn’t a terribly exciting candidate — but that’s kind of the point, state Senator Woodson Bradley told Pati.
“If you can talk to people like human beings, like Team Normal, that resonates,” Bradley said in an interview last month, adding, “I think 80 percent of people live in the Team Normal world.”
In New Hampshire, Representative Chris Pappas is nobody’s idea of a barnburner. He seems, in fact, like he would be perfectly content to never draw attention to himself. He speaks little about the fact that he would be the nation’s first openly gay male senator — something I wrote about last week — and shrugged off concerns from some in his party that he has failed to adequately excite Democrats.
“My style is to understand what’s happening in New Hampshire,” Pappas told me, saying he wasn’t concerned with “what you have to do to get on cable news.”
There are others on Team Normal. Josh Turek, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Iowa, “lacks a certain stage presence and oratorical buzz,” my colleague Michael Kruse wrote in September. Adam Hamilton, the Democrat who has turned the Kansas Senate race into a surprisingly competitive contest, likes to talk about common ground and “leading from the middle.”
They’re all betting that staying low-key and conciliatory will help them win in tough territory. If they do, their understated style might turn heads anyway.
Get Caught Up
In the midterms
-
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, disparaged Arabs at a campaign rally in Michigan last night. He said, falsely, that Arab Muslims “don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Field Prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
-
Trump, rankled by former President Barack Obama’s “Cheesecake Factory” jab over the weekend, devoted a portion of his campaign rally in Mississippi last night to defending his White House projects. “For you to say it’s a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president,” Trump said of Obama.
-
These midterms are now the most expensive political advertising cycle ever, according to AdImpact. Total ad spending has topped $11.2 billion, eclipsing the 2024 presidential election.
Election security
-
Trump said today that he would respect the midterm results “if they are honest elections.” State and local election officials are making plans for how to respond if the Trump administration attempts to meddle with the voting process or the outcome.
-
The State of Alaska asked a federal court to dismiss the Trump administration’s lawsuit seeking to block certification of the Senate race there if the Republican incumbent loses narrowly.
-
Trump offered $1 million to anyone who reports voter fraud that leads to a conviction, though he did not explain how people could make such tips, or where the money would come from.
-
After Trump said he would be “watching closely” for fraud in Minnesota’s Senate race — and that the only explanation for a Republican loss there would be cheating — the retiring Senator Tina Smith accused the president of laying the groundwork to interfere.
-
The Justice Department has brought forth a dizzying succession of investigations and indictments in recent days, many promoting Trump’s false claims of rampant election fraud. A former department official called it a “classic flood-the-zone strategy.”
Poll after poll shows Democrats in a strong position to take control of the House. But what does that look like on the ground?
My colleagues Leanne Abraham, Lisa Lerer and Reid Epstein have published this comprehensive guide to the 105 races that will determine control of the chamber. They’ve sorted the races into four groups:
1. Where the Latino vote is a factor. The 35 districts in this bucket can be sorted into two groups: the ones where Latino voters’ displeasure with Trump could swing a seat away from Republicans, and ones where a booming Latino population has remade the electorate.
2. Rural areas. Areas that depend on farming and ranching have reliably voted for Republicans. But rising prices, tied to Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran, have put these 20 seats in play.
3. Where redistricting could play a role. The chaotic redistricting earlier this year was supposed to give Republicans an advantage, but Trump’s unpopularity has dulled its impact. We’re watching 19 redistricted seats.
4. Seats Democrats are trying to hold. Democrats are trying to hold on to seats in 31 districts that the Cook Political Report rates as competitive. Quite a few of those races are in districts that Trump won in 2024.
In One Number
350
That’s how many trips Ken Paxton has taken outside of Texas with a taxpayer-funded security detail since he was sworn in as attorney general in 2015. The Times analyzed the travel records of Paxton, who is now running for Senate, and found that 25 of those trips were to foreign countries — and that the cost of the security detail was more than $3.1 million.
In One Chart
California’s Proposition 40, on the ballot next week, asks voters if the state should impose a one-time 5 percent tax on the 250 or so billionaires who live there.
Proponents of the tax expect it to raise around $100 billion, most of which would be used to offset federal cuts to Medicaid. Opponents — including many big names from Silicon Valley — contend that some of the state’s highest earners would flee rather than pay the tax.
Those wealthy opponents have pooled more than $330 million to try and defeat the measure, Theodore Schleifer and Erin Griffith report. The biggest donor? Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, who has contributed more than $100 million to the effort.
ONE LAST THING
Bipartisan buddies
For Democrats running for Senate, the hottest endorsement of 2026 is … a Republican.
James Talarico of Texas has Neil Bush. Annie Andrews of South Carolina has a former governor. Not to be outdone, Adam Hamilton of Kansas has two former governors. And Chris Pappas of New Hampshire has his state’s Republican nominee for Senate in 2022.
The endorsements are a sign of how some Democrats have worked to soften their partisan edges at a moment when their party is still unpopular. But it’s also reminiscent of the strategy that former Vice President Kamala Harris deployed, unsuccessfully, in the closing weeks of the 2024 presidential election.
And it raises a question in an era of tribal politics: Are voters still willing to cross the aisle?
Taylor Robinson contributed to this newsletter.
The post Low-Key or Electric? The Style Gulf Splitting the Democratic Party appeared first on New York Times.
