The House battleground map is increasingly filled with alluring possibilities for Democrats as President Trump’s support has cratered. But with their financial resources limited, one question keeps coming up as Democratic strategists puzzle over where to invest during the crucial final four weeks of the campaign.
Do they seek to rent — or own?
Democrats are trying to figure out where their money goes furthest. Are they better off seeking to run up their numbers by competing in less expensive races or for open seats in Republican areas? If they do, they might struggle to hold onto many of those seats in a couple of years, when there is less likelihood of a blue wave.
Or is it a better bet to spend more and go all-in to try to oust a handful of entrenched Republican incumbents who represent more Democratic areas, a difficult path that, if successful, could put those seats in the Democratic column for a longer time.
For all the party’s current bullishness, Democrats presently hold zero seats in districts that Mr. Trump won by double digits in 2024.
“Obviously we want the strongest majority possible in 2026,” Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview. “But also with an eye toward 2028.”
Exhibit A of the Democratic conundrum is Pennsylvania’s First District, where Representative Brian Fitzpatrick is the only Republican in the House seeking re-election who was able to win in a district that Mr. Trump lost all three times he ran, in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
In recent elections, Democrats did not fully try to knock off Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose district includes Bucks County, the swingy Philadelphia suburban area, and a slice of Montgomery County. The Philadelphia media market was too expensive, and Mr. Fitzpatrick was seen as too difficult to unseat.
But the party is making its biggest play there in years in the campaign’s final sprint.
Bob Harvie, the Democrat who is challenging Mr. Fitzpatrick, said in an interview that he got a call from the Democratic Party’s campaign arm last week informing him the group was planning to plunge $900,000 into his race. The top Democratic super PAC, the House Majority PAC, has reserved more than $6 million in television time on top of that, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact.
The decisions on where to spend are being made day by day and district by district, according to interviews with a more than a half dozen Democratic strategists involved in the discussions, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private strategy.
Winning the majority of House seats remains the most vital task, they said — even if doing so risks seeming to waste money in some must-win seats. But there are different ideas about which races, beyond the core battlegrounds, provide the most return on their investment.
“The map is larger than the bank account can sustain,” said Ian Russell, who previously served as national political director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
How many seats Democrats ultimately win will have repercussions for the ability of Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York to govern his party if he becomes speaker next year. But the types of seats that Democrats carry will also shape the party’s political strategy into the future.
Targeting a throwback: a moderate Republican.
Mr. Fitzpatrick, a former F.B.I. agent, is a throwback to a disappearing brand of moderate Northeastern Republican. He has the support of top labor unions, gun-control groups and environmental organizations who typically support Democrats — and signs promoting them at intersections throughout Bucks County.
Mr. Fitzpatrick’s latest ad hails him as the “most independent” lawmaker in the nation and features a carousel of rare-for-a-Republican endorsements, from groups including the LGBT Unity Fund and an arm of the Humane Society.
“The parties are the worst thing that our country has right now,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said in an interview at a Jewish deli in Langhorne on Monday. Mr. Fitzpatrick said that he hadn’t been to a House Republican conference meeting this entire Congress and that his family’s bipartisan brand — his brother served in the House before him — runs deep.
“People know us around here,” he said. “There’s no poll that has us down.”
Yet he has already had to spend more than $3 million on ads — far more than Mr. Harvie and his allies to date — and the race remains tight. National Republicans have not spent big or reserved airtime in the closing weeks.
“I think that they think that we’re OK here,” he said. “I think they think that, but that’s a gamble on their part.”
He acknowledged the headwinds of running under the Republican banner at a moment when Mr. Trump is deeply unpopular. But he said he had done it before.
“There is not a single person in this district that is not seeing an ad where they’re trying to tie us to the president,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said. “I just don’t see it working.”
As he stood up to leave, he watched as an anti-Fitzpatrick ad played on the television in the corner. He asked the cashier whether the television was tuned to cable or streaming.
A Democrat gets a late infusion of cash.
Democratic strategists believe that if they can dislodge Mr. Fitzpatrick now, the seat will lean Democratic into the future.
After all, Mr. Trump lost only three seats in 2024 that were held by Republicans at the beginning of the 2026 cycle, including Mr. Fitzpatrick’s. This fall, Democrats are aiming to flip all three, and on Monday, one of them, in Nebraska, seemed safe enough in hand that a Democratic group began to pull its advertising.
Pennsylvania’s First, however, remains a battleground.
“Where we’re at is very, very, very, very hard to flip,” Sharon Bastone, 47, a Democratic activist in Upper Hanover Township, said while attending a Democratic barbecue on Sunday that was attended by Mr. Harvie. “But I think this is our year to do it. If we don’t do it this year, it’s not going to happen.”
At the barbecue, one attendee passed along the good news to Mr. Harvie that a big endorsement sign from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. for his rival, Mr. Fitzpatrick, had been wrapped around a truck so tightly that it was illegible.
At a moment when many Democrats are creating an image independent of the national Democratic brand, Mr. Harvie, a Bucks County commissioner, seemed unconcerned about being aligned with the party. He told one voter on Sunday that he would support statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., if they wanted it. And he invoked both Barbra Streisand, the songwriter and Democratic activist, and Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, in his remarks at the barbecue.
The Harvie campaign is running a new ad saying that “Congress changed Fitzpatrick” and highlighting key recent votes on which he was aligned with Mr. Trump. The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Mr. Harvie this weekend after backing Mr. Fitzpatrick in 2018 and 2020.
“Brian is an independent when his party tells him he’s allowed to be,” Mr. Harvie said in an interview.
The argument has resonated with some past Fitzpatrick voters in the second Trump term.
Rich Fain, 74, who lives in Upper Hanover Township, said he figured he was the lone Republican voter at Sunday’s Democratic barbecue. He has never been a Trump voter. But he has previously voted for his local Republican congressman — until now.
“I just can’t stomach what the administration is doing and how all the Republican Congress people have gone along with Donald knowing it’s wrong,” Mr. Fain said. “I am switching this year.”
Some worry about vulnerable Democrats.
Now is decision time for national Democrats.
Party strategists are eyeing potential new spending to take out two Republicans in Ohio, Representative Mike Turner and Representative Mike Carey, and one in Michigan, Representative Bill Huizenga, and are spending more heavily in Wisconsin against Representative Bryan Steil.
All four represent seats Mr. Trump won by single digits in 2024.
Meanwhile, in Florida, private polls show a dead heat in the Miami district of Representative Maria Elvira Salazar — a seat that Mr. Trump carried by 15 percentage points just two years ago — but the cost of advertising in the Miami media market could prove prohibitive.
At the same time, some Democrats are worried that Republicans could do the same thing to Democratic incumbents in swing seats.
Millions of dollars are being spent by G.O.P. groups targeting lawmakers such as Representative Tom Suozzi of New York and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington that has been mostly unanswered by national Democratic groups.
Mr. Suozzi, for instance, has been opposed by $6.9 million in outside spending, with only about $340,000 in support. Mr. Jeffries referred to the deluge over the weekend, calling it a “wild” waste of millions of dollars.
“Democrats need to make sure our eyes aren’t bigger than our stomachs and our aspirations aren’t bigger than our campaign accounts,” warned Phil Gardner, senior adviser at Blue Dog Action, a super PAC aligned with the moderate Blue Dog caucus, whose members Republicans are targeting.
He feared the party’s spending on far-afield races in the final weeks. On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added six new candidates to the “red-to-blue” program — the designation for top races — including two in districts that Mr. Trump carried by more than 20 percentage points in 2024.
”Odds-wise it’s better at this point to shore up a truly vulnerable incumbent with a proven ability to win, or reinforce a Democratic challenger who’s spent the last year building a strong campaign,” Mr. Gardner said, “rather than risk resources on too many late-breaking untested candidates.”
Mr. Russell, the former D.C.C.C. strategist still involved in congressional races, said the climate could shift quickly come October, recalling the late convulsions of the 2016 campaign.
“Now is the fun part of the cycle where you decide where can you make a last-minute play to snatch a few extra seats,” he said. “But you also have to be conscious that the political environment can change.”
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