While President Donald Trump was yelling at Democrats and berating the Supreme Court at his State of the Union address, members of his party were getting trounced at the polls.
Three Democrats won special elections for state House seats in Maine and Pennsylvania, helping the party keep slim majorities in both legislatures and offering insights into voters’ priorities in two states that will likely prove decisive for congressional control come November.
In Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins is facing a tough re-election campaign that Democrats see as one of their best chances for picking up a Senate seat during the midterms.
Collins endorsed Republican Janet Beaudoin in Tuesday’s race, but voters chose Democrat Scott Harriman by more than 6 points, according to the Maine Morning Star.
In Pennsylvania, where several crucial House races will help determine which party keeps control of the lower chamber of Congress, Democrats Ana Tiburcio and Jennifer Mazzocco easily won, Lehigh Valley News reported.
All three districts at play leaned blue, but Republicans in Maine especially brought in big names hoping for an upset.
Besides Collins, former Gov. Paul LePage, who’s running for Congress, also campaigned for the Republican candidate, while Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin stumped for Harriman earlier this month, The Hill reported.
The wins offered a clear rebuttal of Trump’s insistence during his record-long State of the Union that he has overseen an economic “turnaround for the ages,” and that the affordability crisis was a “dirty, rotten lie” concocted by Democrats.
In both states, affordability, housing, and ICE’s violent enforcement tactics emerged as voters’ top issues, according to the Morning Star and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
During his speech Tuesday, Trump ranted about “illegal aliens” while ignoring the killings of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration agents.
Prior to Tuesday’s contest, Democratic candidates had overperformed Trump’s 2024 electoral results by 10 to 14 points in 20 state-level special elections in Virginia, New York, Minnesota, and Connecticut.
In a Texas district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024, a first-time candidate for state senate, Taylor Rehmet, defeated his Republican opponent by 13 points, becoming the first Democrat in decades to hold the seat.
Those performances have put a handful of new seats in play in the midterms, leaving Republicans scrambling to fire up their base before November.
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