Florida’s 7th and Tennessee’s 5th are not supposed to be competitive. They voted for Trump by double digits, they were uncompetitive in 2024, and they started the 2026 cycle rated Solid Republican by the ratings agencies. But the incumbents in both districts, Cory Mills in FL-07 and Andy Ogles in TN-05, are exactly the type of candidates who put these districts on the map. Mills and Ogles are polarizing, baggage-heavy, and far from the low-drama incumbents (how many of these guys have you heard of seriously?) that keep these seats “safe.”

Now the fundraising reports are starting to reflect that and people are paying attention.

We’ve been hammering these districts for literally years (literally!) and this week we were excited to see The New York Times feature the races, particularly Tennessee’s 5th:

That Mr. Ogles’s seat is even in the conversation is an indication of the political shape Republicans find themselves in as they approach the midterm elections. Anger over President Trump’s war in Iran, spiking gas prices and persistent affordability concerns have led to shifts of up to 20 percentage points in recent elections compared with the 2024 election that returned Mr. Trump to the White House.

Tennessee Republicans thought they drew a safe seat during the last redistricting cycle, slicing a Democratic district in Nashville into three districts stretching into rural areas. The Fifth Congressional District now reaches south of even Columbia, a town of nearly 50,000 about 50 miles south of the state capital. Mr. Ogles won it for the first time in 2022, by nearly 14 percentage points. The question is whether Mr. Trump’s 18-point advantage in the district in 2024 is enough to guarantee a win this fall.

What’s raising interest? Fundraising.

In Florida’s 7th, Mills was outraised in Q1 by his top Democratic challenger, Bale Dalton, by a wide margin, roughly $350,000 to just $74,000. Dalton’s continued advantage shows up even more clearly in cash-on-hand. Dalton is sitting on about $460,000, giving him a commanding financial edge over the Mills campaign, which has just $115,000 in the bank and is carrying $2 million in debt.

Mills had flown a bit under the radar, but the recent resignations of Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales may force his misconduct to center stage. Mills is the subject of a wide-ranging House Ethics Committee investigation covering campaign finance violations, misuse of congressional resources, and sexual misconduct. In February 2025, D.C. police responded to a domestic assault report at his residence after a woman showed officers fresh bruises and let them listen to a call where Mills instructed her to lie about the origin. A new Washington Post investigation this week based on body-camera footage and police documents obtained by the paper goes further: officers were preparing to take Mills into custody and had summoned a transport vehicle before a lieutenant intervened and downgraded the incident to a “family disturbance” after the woman appeared to speak with Mills by phone and recant. The responding officer, Richard Mazloom, can be heard on his own body camera telling the alleged victim that his supervisors were “making this into a family disturbance instead of an actual domestic assault.” The next day, police reversed course and sent an arrest warrant to the interim U.S. Attorney, who refused to sign it. A Florida judge then issued a protective order against him last October after a different ex-girlfriend, a sitting Republican state committee member, accused him of threatening to release explicit videos and to harm future boyfriends.

It gets worse. Five veterans who served alongside him, including two of the men he claims to have saved, have disputed the Bronze Star actions in his official biography. Before Congress, he built his fortune selling arms to undisclosed foreign governments and crowd-control munitions used against civilians in Egypt, then moved from a $4.2 million house in Virginia into the 7th district to run for the seat. An Office of Congressional Ethics inquiry found his companies had secured close to $1 million in federal contracts for munitions distributed to prisons since he took office, none of which he properly disclosed on his House financial forms. He was the subject of three separate censure resolutions in 2025, including one filed by fellow Republican Nancy Mace. Welcome has tracked Mills across our Dark MAGA Police Reporting series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).

Tennessee’s 5th is even harder to ignore. Andy Ogles has spent much of his time in office dealing with questions about his background and ethics filings, including scrutiny over discrepancies in his resume and campaign finance reporting. Trump’s DOJ dropped the charges. Like Mills, he’s built a brand that generates attention, but not the kind that typically helps shore up a general election.

And the numbers are worse. Ogles was outraised in Q1 by Democrat Chaz Molder by a wide margin, and the gap shows up clearly in the bank. Molder enters Q2 with more than $1.2 million cash-on-hand. Ogles has about $85,000. That’s a million-dollar advantage in a district that isn’t even supposed to be competitive.

Ogles has built his own opposition research file. Nashville’s NewsChannel 5 has spent the past three years documenting his fabricated resume, including claims to be a trained economist, a law enforcement officer, and an expert in international sex crimes, none of which held up on review. The FBI executed a search warrant on his personal cell phone in August 2024 as part of an ongoing investigation into a $320,000 personal loan he reported making to his 2022 campaign, a figure he later amended down to $20,000 after records indicated he did not have the money to begin with. The House Ethics Committee voted 6-0 in January 2025 to extend its review. His policy record is similarly off the mainstream. He has introduced a resolution to let Trump run for a third term, still denies the 2020 election result, supports overturning the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage, and recently called for a congressional inquiry into Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. Welcome has had Ogles on the competitive radar for some time, and the financial picture is now catching up to the political one.

Of course, finances are only part of the equation, and these gaps do not guarantee success in November. However, both Dalton and Molder are running locally-focused campaigns that can appeal to a large portion of the electorate. This is exactly the kind of setup that turns “safe” races into real ones: incumbents with baggage, challengers who can raise money and appeal to their voters, and early financial gaps that force national groups to at least take a look.

If those conditions hold through the next quarter, these districts won’t stay under the radar for long.

Shannon is part of Welcome’s Win the Middle slate for the 2026 cycle, and we wrote about her in our endorsement of her campaign last year:

Shannon is the only candidate in the [CO-08] primary who’s won contested campaigns, and she’s working to build the broadest coalition possible. With her bio, record, and commitment to service, Shannon is uniquely positioned to not only flip this must-win district “blue” in 2026, but to remain in elected office for cycles to come.

Shannon served in the Colorado State House for seven years and has been a pragmatic voice and leader for Democrats in the state. As a results-oriented legislator with an independent streak, Shannon has built a record of challenging the status quo to deliver tangible outcomes for her constituents.

In the state legislature, Shannon focused on issues that resonate across party lines: protecting Colorado jobs, improving public safety, and expanding economic opportunity. She has consistently shown a willingness to take politically difficult votes when they align with the needs of her district, reinforcing her credibility with moderate and unaffiliated voters.

Colorado’s 8th congressional district is the near definition of a swing seat and is likely to play a decisive role in determining the control of the U.S. House in 2026.

Located just north of Denver, the district includes many of the region’s northern suburbs. CO-08 has a Cook PVI of even and is currently rated as a toss-up, and Trump won the district by 2 points in 2024.

The district is on the DCCC’s Districts in Play list, a possible precursor to being added to its prized Red to Blue list.

In our conversation, Shannon shares remarkably thoughtful takes on governance and effective leadership.

When we’re elected into office, we are vested with a vote, and that’s a vote on behalf of the people who sent us there.

It’s not my vote — my own personal capacity, my own wishes, how I’d cast maybe even my own ballot… Your voters vest you with agency and with power to weigh in and to either advance an idea forward if it’s going to be good on their behalf, and to stop it if it’s going to be bad for them. And that is something that I take personally… Our votes mean something, and that’s something I wish people understood is not theory. Those votes we take on the floor, on the dais, they mean something to people’s lives… The votes are not without consequence.

I recognize the vote is the power comes from the people. And I just couldn’t live with myself to give that power away to someone else trying to achieve their own objective if it wasn’t in the best interest of the people who trusted me to go and represent them and fight for them.

I couldn’t live with myself.

I often think to myself, what if I had my representative come and say to me, “you know, Shannon, I know you really cared about such-and-such thing, but this person in House District X over here really wanted this and wanted me to show up for them, and I didn’t want to make them mad, so I’m sorry that now your costs have gone up exponentially, but I didn’t want to make them mad over in this other district.”

They would have my head on a platter! And rightfully so.

So every time I put it to myself like that, it’s like, no, I’m not going to do that.

So I vote my district.

Shannon is part of our Win the Middle slate of endorsed candidates for the 2026 cycle. You can support Shannon in her race in CO-08 here.

SUPPORT SHANNON BIRD

Let’s bump a few dynamics of the Hungarian election, given their implications for American politics.

First, authoritarians lose when they become unpopular AND the opposition is more popular (as we wrote in Relative Popularity). That means neutralizing attacks, not mobilizing the base. The leader of the opposition, Péter Magyar, vowed to take a hard line on immigration and did not adopt progressive positions on culture issues. You won’t be shocked to learn that “some liberal voters remain wary of his … conservative views.”

Second, it seems like Orbán may have done what we warned MAGA about: changing the rules for short-term gain that backfired into a Dummymander. Here’s Yascha Mounk:

There is a delicious irony to how lop-sided Magyar’s victory is. During his 16 years in power, Orbán repeatedly changed the electoral system to tip the balance in his party’s favor. Because the opposition was divided and he counted on always retaining the most votes of any single party, he adopted an electoral system which strongly boosts parliamentary representation for the numerical victor. Now that Hungarian voters have finally turned on Orbán, he is a victim of his own machinations. Despite winning about 40 percent of the vote, his party will hold less than a third of seats in parliament.

Third, how’s this for a medium-term take on populism? Via CNN:

One reason that Orbán’s campaign focused so heavily on foreign policy is that his domestic record was so poor. This is another lesson of his defeat: Populism is about winning the day, the week, the news cycle. To function, this one-battle-after-another mode of governance needs a steady stream of enemies. Orbán found plenty: NGOs, liberal universities, George Soros, the LGBTQ movement, the European Union.

But eventually you run out of dragons to slay. Much of Orbán’s campaign vilified neighboring Ukraine. Budapest is plastered with posters of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Some read: “Danger!” Others read: “Don’t let him have the last laugh.”

Without a thriving economy, or a well-run healthcare system, or other policy achievements to point to, Orbán’s campaign instead aimed to scare Hungarians into voting for Fidesz by posing as the “safe choice” to protect Hungary from threats allegedly posed by Ukraine. “He is always talking about sovereignty, but to believe that the major threat to Hungarian sovereignty in Ukraine (became) comical,” said Krastev.

To counter Orbán’s vague warnings of danger from abroad, Magyar simply had to point to his record at home – with which Hungarians were less than impressed.

Fourth, opposition leaders have varied backgrounds:

the sharpest message from Budapest should be for the Democrats, strange as that may sound.

That is because Orbán’s ouster represents a new triumph for a particular brand of disruptive politics: one defined by reformist candidates who launch new parties and blow up old ones, winning elections by rendering traditional political structures obsolete. Hungary’s Peter Magyar, the leader of the anti-Orbán Tisza party, is the latest victor in this mold. There is no equivalent figure among Trump’s American opponents …

What these politicians have in common is a path to power. And it is one that Democrats have resisted for a decade since Trump became the dominant figure in American politics, killing off the traditional Republican Party along the way.

The American party system is heavily armored against disruption. It would be all but impossible to replicate here what Magyar has done in Hungary — or what France’s Emmanuel Macron and Argentina’s Javier Milei did before him — and turn a fledgling political organization into a personal vehicle and bring it to national power in a flash. We do not have secondary political parties that can surge to prominence in a single campaign, like Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia or Rob Jetten’s D66 in the Netherlands.

Yet as Trump himself has shown, it is possible to devour a major party from the inside — commandeering an old institution with grassroots support, casting aside its entrenched leaders, remaking it in a new image and earning a fresh look from voters who didn’t like the old version. Mark Carney has done something similar in Canada, with a very different political agenda. So has Lee Jae Myung in South Korea.

It takes a special kind of candidate to carry a political project like this, and probably not one likely to win popularity contests with members of a conventional party committee or legislative caucus. Magyar… is viewed by his peers as stubborn, imperious and self-absorbed, and also manifestly the most lethal rival Orbán ever faced. I remember hearing from a senior Canadian lawmaker that Carney was an academic stiff sure to flop in electoral politics, only a few months before he freed the Liberal Party from Justin Trudeau’s shadow and led it to an astonishing upset.

If Democrats want to take the hint, they’ll give a closer look to the leaders frustrating their peers in Washington and defying their home-state political bosses, and less time measuring the applause meter at various special-interest conventions and donor retreats.

Like the Democrats frustrating their peers in DC? Check out the Win The Middle slate of reformist disruptors.

I wrote, then deleted, two thousand words on the topic. Instead, I want to share this:

There is a debate on what messages can best repair a Democratic brand that’s gone toxic with too many swing voters: communicate popular mainstream messages to voters, especially swing voters (“popularism”) or go to ideological extremes to fire up the base.

But this argument, unfolding in upscale media outlets and online, is relatively low stakes because Democratic message discipline is not available at the party level.

If message discipline were possible at the party level — if there were a Board Chair for The Democrats, Inc. who could approve a multi-year strategic plan enforceable for a range of party actors (from candidates to advocacy groups to media outlets) — then this debate might be worthwhile. But no such structure exists.

…

While enforcing message discipline on high-profile far-left leaders is impossible, the good news is that pragmatic Democrats focused on winning swing districts can achieve message discipline (focused on popular issues) at the faction level.

The “popularism debate” is a waste of time. Even if it is possible to win, there is no payoff — the benefits accrue to those who organize.

We don’t need better facts, we just need to organize.

We wrote this exactly four years ago, in our April 10, 2022 newsletter.

318 people got it by email. It gained 52 more subscribers, a record at the time (thanks to a laudatory tweet from ).

Two years later, more than 318 people were gathered *together in person* for the first WelcomeFest. And then it doubled in year two.

My natural instinct is to write 2,000 words about Hasan Piker. To argue on the internet.

There is some value there. We can’t have zero people explaining how “going on a show” is different than “campaigning with” someone. It would be bad if no one pointed out that hyping the nasty in your own base is different than bridge-building into the opposite tent.

But as an individual1, and as a faction, every 1 unit of energy spent arguing should be paired with 10 units of organizing. Party-level message discipline is not available - there is no “Democrats should do X” button to push.

But faction-level community building is available, and it can get things moving. But only when you get involved!

Here are a few things you can do:

• Join us on June 3 for WelcomeFest III: Building to Win - registration now open for our readers

• We have more fellowship-type opportunities than ever before, so drop a line with interest or recommendations

• Spread the word on Investing to Win to make sure dollars go where they’re needed most

• For anyone who needs the 101 on how Democrats can win again, it’s always a good time to share Deciding to Win

• And please, share this newsletter to get likeminded people in the game

Share

It is so tempting to debate for the sake of it.

We are four years into preaching organizing. And we still have to repeat it to ourselves because, like most worthwhile things, it takes more effort to build community than to get sucked into a screen (there is someone in your pocket right now saying something outrageous on the internet, and you could be arguing with them!).

But if you must debate, then debate as a tactic for organizing. And do 10 things to build community.

Full piece below for a refresher.

Hope to see you soon.

Register for WelcomeFest - June 3 in DC

A week after the 2022 election, there were about 80 of us. We asked a red-district candidate to share what we could do to help him next time:

“Outgrow this room.”

That’s how 300 of us ended up together - still in a basement, although a much bigger one in a hotel - for the first WelcomeFest in 2024 under the theme For The People in the Middle. Jared Golden presented how he’d win again that cycle (he did, in a district Trump won by 10 points). Milan Singh, during Peak Brat Summer, explained why Democrats would actually lose ground with young and non-white voters in 2024 (they did, for the reasons he said). Matt Yglesias held a prescient discussion on the pitfalls of immigration, energy, and education with Senators Chris Murphy & Michael Bennet. Sarah Longwell and WelcomePAC-endorsed Janelle Stelson discussed how PA-10 would be in play from the art of persuasion (it was nearly the median district nationally, after being uncontested in 2022).

We were building. Not we, Welcome. Something bigger. And it was fun!

Then 600 of us gathered last year, with the theme Responsibility to Win. More than two dozen candidates were in the room, including the majority of Trump-district over-performers. All of a sudden, everyone noticed. With nicknames to boot:

“The Totally Normal Party” - Slate

“Who’s-who of center-left Democratic politics” - Politico

“CPAC for the Center” - The New York Times

“Centrist Coachella” - MSNBC

And, best for last, “Boring Man” (New York magazine). And the haters, of course (“The Centrist WelcomeFest was everything that’s wrong with the Democratic Party” read a wordy headline from Rolling Stone).

But one day making headlines isn’t the point. The point is the building.

WelcomeFest 2026 Theme: Building to Win

We spent years studying the far left entrepreneurial ecosystem. And as much as we thought intersectional maximalism and tent-shrinking dickery was terrible for both America and the Democratic Party, we admired how effectively they built organizations. As we learned in Centrist School, they had the hallmarks of a dynamic ecosystem that builds: the easy flow of ideas, talent, and resources.

WelcomeFest is designed to make that flow even easier. And after five years of basement gatherings, this community is building. Not just growing, but really building programs that can depolarize our politics and empower the center of the country to win sustainable majorities.

We need that impact - the electric collision of ideas, talent, and resources - to match the scale of the problems we face within this party, society, and country.

And the problems are massive! We fell short in the 2024 election. Then we didn’t affect the trajectory of the party enough in the months following, allowing the current state of Trump-induced disaster to allow more Resistance energy to ride the Blue Wave toward a potential repeat.

Three Tracks

In those early Basement gatherings, we would focus on three major challenges or opportunities. Each would have a pre-reading, and partners would lead conversations on the dynamics. Here are three for this year’s WelcomeFest this community must address to continue Building to Win:

I. Telling Our Story

There were two clear critiques of WelcomeFest last year: it focused too much on hitting the left, and it lacked a larger ‘story.’

These critiques aren’t just about WelcomeFest, though. These are larger community and faction-wide problems.

On hitting the left, some of it is the nature of the media. Even if just 10% of programming critiques the left, that is the juiciest material for reporters on the hunt for conflict. And there’s no way to study over-performers, ask them what they need help with, seek to amplify those lessons & actions … and not have the organized left come out looking badly. It would be disingenuous to try teaching the lessons of the Democratic Party’s most over-performing candidates while obscuring the challenges presented by the left. And, obviously, if climate protestors rush the stage harassing speakers, the left is going to look bad.

But we can be more explicit in framing leftist activists as what they are: an obstacle on the path to building a community that wins majorities and governs well. Hitting leftist activists is not the goal. Overcoming them is just a necessary part of getting to the goal.

That is part of the overall storytelling problem. Marshall Kosloff goes deeply into it in this piece, our first recommended reading before WelcomeFest.

II. Getting Uncomfortably Specific

“Specificity is a character issue this year,” proclaimed George Stephanopoulos during the 1992 presidential primary. It is safe to say that specificity has not been the central theme of 2026. After years of lurching leftward with great specificity, we’ve entered a period of vague moderation interspersed with radical phrasing.

We may not have the intersectional maximalism of the left, but we’re also not defined solely by opposition to the extremes on left and right. We can engage in disagreement and debate, and come out stronger for it.

Our first recommended read in this category is Jared Golden’s keynote on The Rise of Progressive Conservatives from the first WelcomeFest, in which he articulates a specific vision (that many centrists would disagree with!)

Second picks up on a theme from the second WelcomeFest: Varieties of Abundance from Steve Teles of the Niskanen Center, a typology of seven groups, including the lamely-named Moderate-Abundance Synthesis (in keeping with the above storytelling theme, all the other groups have cool names like the DSA’s Red Plenty and MAGA’s Dark Abundance).

Third is the 1990 DLC manifesto The New Orleans Declaration, which is shockingly difficult to find on the internet - the past link we’ve used can now only be found on the Wayback Machine (in an instance of symbolism that hits a little too close to home).

III. Investing to Win

Philanthropy and fundraising have always been major topics in the basement. Since we just launched Investing to Win last week, we’ll keep the pre-reading light here. But the ecosystem doesn’t spin into a major flywheel with just ideas and talent - it takes resources, too.

See you on June 3 in D.C.

Register Here for WelcomeFest 2026

In most elections, the votes “roll-off” as you move down the ballot. Marquee races that appear at the top of the ballot ticket, like President, Senate and Governor, typically get the most votes while “Down-ballot races,” like county and local offices, typically get much fewer votes.

But in South Texas this year, something unusual happened: there was a reverse roll-off on the ballot.

In both Texas’s 15th congressional district and Texas’s 28th congressional district, more votes were cast in the U.S. House race than in the U.S. Senate race, by thousands of ballots.

At the topline, both districts show the same dynamic:

• TX-15: 50,935 House votes vs. 48,557 Senate votes (+2,378)

• TX-28: 58,058 House votes vs. 55,646 Senate votes (+2,412)

Specifically in Texas’s 28th congressional district:

• Starr County (98% Hispanic): +11% more votes in House

• Zapata County (94% Hispanic): +13%

• Webb County (95% Hispanic): +3%

The relationship is pretty clear: the more Hispanic the county, the more likely voters were to participate in the House race relative to the Senate race. Why?

High Turnout, Low Enthusiasm

Turnout numbers also tell an enthusiasm story. Nate Cohn noted:

Take Starr County, a heavily Hispanic county along the Rio Grande. It was ground zero for the Trump surge among Hispanic voters: He won the county by 16 points in 2024; Hillary Clinton won it, 79 to 19, just eight years earlier. The turnout was enormous, leading some to highlight the surge as a sign of a Democratic rebound. Well, about half of Democratic primary voters left their ballots blank in the Senate race and left their ballots blank for most races, other than the county judge election. And among those who did vote in the Senate race, 8 percent voted for Mr. Hassan.

So yes, turnout was high. But participation in the Senate race wasn’t as high. Nearly half of the people who turned out to vote only voted for one race: the primary for county judge.

That distinction matters because it helps explain what we’re seeing in the congressional and Senate data.

If this were a simple turnout and enthusiasm story, more Hispanic voters showing up, more engagement, a rebound for Democrats, you would expect that to show up consistently across the ballot. You’d expect Senate participation to rise alongside House participation. You’d expect Democratic candidates to benefit in the most heavily Hispanic areas.

That’s not what happened.

Instead, voters showed up and then made decisions about where to engage. They’re voting in the House race, but not the Senate race. They’re participating in local contests, but not completing the ballot. And when they do vote, their choices don’t line up cleanly with ideology or party expectations.

What does this mean?

The simplest way to understand what’s happening in South Texas is that voters are becoming more selective.

They’re showing up to vote, but they’re not treating the ballot as a single, partisan decision. They’re deciding which races and candidates matter to them, which races they feel informed enough to vote in, and which ones to skip entirely. And those choices don’t neatly track with party, ideology, or traditional measures of engagement.

That’s what “reverse roll-off” is capturing.

It’s evidence that a meaningful share of the electorate is no longer participating uniformly across the ballot. Because if voters are opting out of certain races altogether, then turnout and vote share alone aren’t enough to explain what’s happening.

Don’t Call It An Autopsy

Democrats have finally released their autopsy - er - “Playbook.” While the party isn’t focusing on what went wrong, there are some nuggets in the report, for instance:

“Over the past decade, the Democratic campaign industry and its funders have become obsessed with massive, shiny output numbers from traditional tactics: Millions of calls made and hundreds of thousands of doors knocked,” the playbook writes. “Despite making 300+ million phone calls in 2024—more than any campaign in history—only 3% of the calls the Harris campaign made actually resulted in a contact with a voter.”

Only 3%!

It’s worth a read, but it’s important to remember that every position is a communication with a voter. Organizing can’t make up for ignoring the positions of the median voter.

Fundraising Eve

Your phone probably exploded last week, the end Q1.

“FINAL NOTICE.” “Account status: LAPSED.” “We’re BEGGING.” Language designed to mimic debt collectors, targeted disproportionately at seniors. Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica found that 95% of the money raised through these churn-and-burn operations comes from donors 65 and older, with a significant share from people over 80. This is elder fraud dressed up as democracy.

Before you tap that button, here’s where the money actually goes.

Ninety-one percent of top Democratic House fundraising went to races decided by 18 points or more. Safe seats. Our own Lauren Harper Pope documented this in The Bulwark: Democratic donors are getting bamboozled by fantasy campaigns. Marcus Flowers raised $10.8 million to unseat Marjorie Taylor Greene in a district Trump won by 48 points. He lost in a landslide. Meanwhile, 16 of 21 actually winnable districts had Democratic challengers who started the year with less than $100,000.

As Lauren told CNN: “We get so caught up on the super villains that we don’t focus on the villains.”

Our “Conceding Democracy” analysis (now Congressional Competition Index) has tracked this for years. In 2022, Democratic nominees had raised less than $100,000 across the entire cycle in 8 of 29 GOP-held districts where Trump received 50-54% of the vote. No Democratic candidate even filed in 19 of 45 competitive districts by mid-2023. Winnable races go uncontested or barely contested with candidates raising paltry sums. The party concedes before a single vote is cast.

Tomorrow, when the texts hit, remember: the machine doesn’t need your money. The candidates in winnable districts do.

Our 2024 slate over-performed Kamala Harris in Trump-won districts by an average of nearly six points. Independent analysis confirmed the highest “Wins Above Replacement” among Democratic groups that cycle. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Vicente Gonzalez, Jamie Ager. These are the candidates who win by differentiating, who compete in districts the national party has written off.

So while you spend your day unsubscribing from the emails and replying Stop2End the texts consider giving through our Investing to Win project to support differentiated Democrats running in districts Trump won.

Support Investing To Win

While we often ask you to contribute to the highest-ROI House candidates flipping Trump districts, today we are asking you to educate some of the 10 million donors who contribute to Democrats online every cycle. Read the brief on InvestingToWin.org and watch this video overview:

Then share! This is a community problem and a market problem. There are billions of dollars trading hands, and the incentives are wrong every step of the way. So money gets siphoned away from candidates by big tech companies and niche consultancies, and away from beating swing district Republicans towards padding the coffers of safe-seat Democrats.

Those are two of the Seven Deadly Sins of Democratic Fundraising detailed on InvestingToWin.org.

Money doesn’t go to beating GOP

When money does reach actual candidates, it flows disproportionately to the wrong ones. The top 8 fundraising House Democrats outside of leadership raised more than $18 million in 2024, compared to $11 million for their Republican counterparts. Sounds like an advantage, but it isn’t. Ninety-one percent of that Democratic money went to races where the presidential result was decided by 18 points or more. Meanwhile, Republicans raised money for competitive races.

The Middlemen Problem

The biggest lesson we’ve learned since we started studying swing-district Democratic overperformers: the market isn’t built for them.

Digital fundraising is controlled by the middlemen - like data brokers, who sell your email address and cell phone number, and giant companies like Meta who rake in the advertising fees. That works fine if you are in a seat that Kamala Harris won by 40 points and just take the Acela down to DC when Congress is in session. It does not work when you are a Win The Middle candidate trying to flip a rural district won by Trump.

WelcomePAC candidates can’t just pad their coffers and build up lists over time, working all those middlemen to get the best rates. They need the money now to beat MAGA.

Here’s an example of how the math works for a candidate who has $100,000 to invest in digital fundraising:

• $30,000 on a consulting firm ($5,000 a month for six months)

• $40,000 buying 400,000 phone numbers at ten cents per record.

• $30,000 sending texts at a cent and a half per send, blasting those numbers five times each.

On a good day, the first-time candidate will eventually get back $120,000 in donations. So the consulting firm made $30,000 and the data vendor made $40,000 and the texting platform made $30,000.

And the candidate has $20,000 in net profit, which they’ll be told to put back into buying more emails.

Let’s Invest to Win

We have a solution. Our due diligence process has the best record in politics: we identify the overperformers. But we needed to educate the millions of Democratic donors who want to beat MAGA, but mostly get nonsense emails from Scam PACs and safe seat progressives.

So WelcomePAC spent the last year building a database of Democratic donors, starting with someone who knows the problem. was the first candidate we ever endorsed, and became a case study of both how the market is broken and how it can be fixed. In 2022, our own was in The Bulwark and CNN and The Washington Post arguing that Adam needed just a few more bucks to beat Lauren Boebert - but the middlemen were directing more than $10 million to the challenger against the unbeatable Marjorie Taylor Greene in a deep red seat.

After losing by just a few hundred votes, Adam built one of the best digital fundraising operations with more than 300,000 donors in the 2024 cycle. And then he brought that base & expertise to WelcomePAC, giving this Investing To Win program a head start that we’ve built on over the last year.

We are building a machine that gets your money where it is needed most AND where 100% of the money goes to candidates. No middlemen allowed.

We want you to Give Smart. But today, we most want you to get smart and build this community by sharing.

Share

Responsibility to Win was the theme of WelcomeFest last June, gathering the community of leaders who deliver majorities. Digital fundraising is one area where Democrats have been flat-out irresponsible.

Deciding to Win came out in October with the most comprehensive breakdown of how Democrats alienated the majority of Americans from 2012-2024. Many of the lessons there are seen in the disastrous fundraising ecosystem.

You are responsible, and you have decided to win. Now let’s grow our community so we can Invest to Win at the level needed for this November and beyond.

Check out InvestingToWin.org

Bobby is a native South Texan and a Grammy award-winning Tejano music artist. His hits and star status have helped define modern Tejano music and solidified his reputation as a cultural ambassador for the region.

TX-15 is one of the newly-drawn congressional districts that the Texas GOP is betting will result in a Republican hold. It has a PVI of R+7, and Trump won the district in 2024 by 18 points. But Hispanic voters in South Texas have shown significant volatility in recent cycles, and recent polling has shown meaningful movement away from Donald Trump among Hispanic voters, creating a real opening in this district that may not be as red as recent results suggest.

The district was also recently added to DCCC’s Districts in Play list, a possible precursor to being included in the Red to Blue program, an indication they view the district as a key battleground.

On the Winner, Winner podcast, we speak with the Democratic Party candidates who prove they can win the middle, beat Republicans on Trump turf, and recalibrate the party to the median voter. Here at Welcome, we work to strengthen the centrist faction that wins and governs responsibly. We support centrist Democrats running in Trump districts through WelcomePAC.

We wrote about Bobby when we endorsed him late last year:

Bobby Pulido is a legendary Tejano musician (check him out!) and small business owner, making him the ultimate political outsider. He represents a new-generation challenger whose appeal aligns with Welcome’s belief that Democrats can regain ground in South Texas by focusing on costs, community safety, and resisting the status quo that has frustrated voters. In a district Republicans redrew to be safe (+18 Trump), Pulido’s deep cultural ties and name ID offer a unique opportunity to reclaim the working-class vote.

Pulido has criticized Biden’s open borders policies, called out the use of the term “Latinx,” and highlighted his faith and support for American energy, calling himself a “Tejano Democrat.”

Bobby will be speaking at this year’s WelcomeFest, so be sure to mark your calendar for June 3 so you can join us in D.C. in person.

Be sure to listen to the whole Winner, Winner episode on YouTube, but check out this quote from my conversation with Bobby when I asked about his response to people who ask him why he’s not just running as a Republican, since he’s someone who identifies as a conservative Democrat.

I am a Democrat, but I am conservative. I want to make sure I can conserve the traditions my dad passed on to me and raise my sons the way my dad raised me, because I happen to like it. So I want to conserve that. Is that such a bad thing for me? I don’t think so. The problem with that was saying, well, I’m a conservative Democrat. People look at that and go like, “oh, no, no, then you’re just a MAGA guy.”

No, I’m not.

I’m absolutely not.

A lot of the things about our way of life that we have in South Texas people do not want them to change… And I’m here to tell you that rural America is probably polar opposite [from urban areas] when it comes to change.

They say, “I just want you to make my life better —Don’t change it.”

So we have that divide where as a Democrat, I feel like we have to understand rural America a little bit better.

Bobby is part of our Win the Middle slate of endorsed candidates for the 2026 cycle. You can support Bobby in his race against Monica de la Cruz here.

Give to Bobby

The word parents used for baseball was boring. Slow. Expensive.

Baseball was mostly dead.

But, as a former Yankee said, mostly dead is slightly alive.

I’m in The Boston Globe this morning with an essay on the lessons from our pastime’s recent comeback:

This spring, the resurgence of a storied American institution just might offer an antidote to tech doomerism. Baseball is back.

The pitch clock, instituted in 2023, shortened game lengths without cutting any of the excitement. And this season’s introduction of the robo-umpire, which is not really a robot but a system of specialized cameras set up to review challenges to umpire calls, made it the first sport to make instant replay a thrill rather than a commercial-inducing slog.

The modern renaissance of the nation’s pastime is clear in the data: The average duration of baseball’s notoriously long games has dropped by more than 30 minutes. Attendance is up three years in a row. And the last World Series game drew the largest audience in three decades.

But it was even more obvious in the stands at Worcester’s Polar Park on Opening Day of the Triple-A season, when a Red Sox minor leaguer tapped his helmet to instigate a challenge to the called strike. The crowd rose to its feet in anticipation. In 15 seconds, we got a clear call from the robo-umpire and the chance to exult in the correction of the human umpire’s mistake. It was downright exhilarating.

Read the full thing in The Boston Globe here, with the case for how lessons from baseball’s resurgence can be applied to other parts of American life.

Many American institutions are in crisis. But they have irreplaceable assets: multigenerational history and inimitable nostalgia create the opportunity for network effects that ground you.

Baseball is back.

My younger son/editor was displeased that I used that phrase in the Globe. After all, baseball never went anywhere. But it has changed - largely thanks to the rules changes shepherded through baseball’s Competition Committee by our own Theo Epstein, whose curse-breaking leadership of the Red Sox (ok, and the Cubs) was a prelude to staving off baseball’s decline.

The significant uptick in popularity and cultural cache matters!

Talking to my boys about the Sox outfield logjam is a joy. But overhearing them in February arguing with friends about whether the Sox should release Masataka Yoshida?

That is transcendent. It makes me think I’ll be talking about it with their kids one day.

Missing that was the big fear. An uncertain future, without baseball.

Bart Giamatti has one of the most well-known quotes about baseball that pops up each spring. So popular it shows up on those quote cards when you google it:

But it is actually the line following this oft-cited quote that captures what was so hard about baseball’s cultural irrelevance:

You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

We were counting on baseball. Just like we were counting on going into the office each day after grabbing the newspaper, and the kids going off to college after years of schooling and churching, and America leading the world.

Baseball’s 21st century decline was leaving us to face a larger fall alone.

Giamatti was a Renaissance scholar before becoming president of Yale and then Commissioner of Major League Baseball. The Green Fields of the Mind closes with a pitch for a deliberate immaturity:

It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

In the climactic scene of Field of Dreams, the oracular James Earl Jones pronounces “they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters.” Fewer people are getting literally baptized anymore, but walking up the Fenway ramp feels like walking into an old church where you feel preternaturally at home. It “reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”

America may fall from world supremacy.

The Catholic Church may never revive.

Newspapers may stop being delivered.

Schools may just be screens.

AI may destroy humanity.

But baseball is constant.

First pitch on Saturday is 4:10pm. I’ll be at Fenway with my family and an old friend and, while the sun may hide, the green grass doesn’t know anything is different than in 1912 or 1989. For a few hours, I won’t either.

Thanks again, Theo.

Net Intensity

The intensity of these ratings is most interesting. And a good reminder of how different things were after Trump’s second inauguration.

Look at the movement between the “Strong disapprove” and “Strong approve” lines:

It may be hard for those of us who read politics newsletters to believe, but just 30% of Americans strongly disapproved of Trump two years ago. That is now up to 47%. More than the MAGA base “Strongly approved” of Trump shortly after inauguration, with 36%. It is now 23%.

Pollsters often report “Net Approval” for the difference between approve and disapprove. Let’s refer to the difference between “Strong approve” and “Strong disapprove” as Net Intensity.

Following inauguration, Trump’s Net Intensity was +2. It is now -24. And cracking 50% Strong disapprove looks possible.

Relative Popularity

Nearly half the country really dislikes Trump. And less than a quarter really likes him. This dynamic is essential to preventing what political scientists call “competitive authoritarianism.”

Daniel Stid had a thoughtful piece this time last year on the increasing risks from Trump. Here’s a bit from Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society:

Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way first developed the concept of competitive authoritarianism in the early 2000s. Their goal was to describe and classify a growing number of hybrid regimes in which elements of ongoing democratic competition coincided with undeniable patterns of autocratic rule. Today, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Narendra Modi’s India, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey stand as classic examples of this type of regime.

Trump has long made no secret of his admiration for these strongman rulers. In his second term, the U.S. will come to operate more like their countries.

One optimistic take is that these leaders have been far more popular than Trump. Pew Research shows majorities of Turkish adults held favorable views of Erdogan for most of the last thirteen years, with a peak of 75%. Pew has had Orban at 56% among Hungarian adults, a majority he has sustained for a decade. Modi has been even more popular in Pew polling, reaching 88%.

MAGA’s unpopularity is key, not only for the midterms but for the long game.

Warning!

Stid’s piece has one other vital warning. Let’s not get high off the fumes from Trump’s slide into unpopularity:

It will once again be tempting for progressive philanthropists, advocates, and activists to intermingle their pre-existing policy preferences with their efforts to defend democracy. This helps them maintain their intersectional commitments and alliances on immigration, climate, DEI, trans rights, political economy, etc. But it makes it much harder to build the cross-partisan coalition of supporters that liberal democracy requires.

Civil society actors who are serious about stopping and reversing authoritarian drift should ask themselves a clarifying question: “Do the policy positions we hold currently appeal to a broad majority of Americans, including the median voter?” If the answer is “no” or “not really,” then they should either modulate the intensity with which they insist coalition partners and leaders share their policy preferences, or candidly acknowledge that they are prioritizing those preferences over the recovery of liberal democracy.

This is key. It is the dear leader’s relative popularity, not just the raw numbers, that determine who wins a competition in a two-party democracy.

Even in polls that show Trump deeply unpopular and Democrats dominating the midterms, like this one from NBC News, the opposition is still not trusted on many priority issues.

Keeping Trump unpopular - and Democrats relatively more popular - will require a lot of restraint, and not just from politicians.

Give to Candidates Most in Need

The first quarter of the year ends at midnight, which means you’ll have a tremendous amount of “urgent” emails and texts headed your way. Get ahead of that anxiety and head on over to the Welcome Win The Middle slate of candidates. 100% of your contribution goes directly to candidate campaigns who need it most, will win back Congress, and will improve the relative popularity of Democrats!

Donate to Win The Middle slate

David Broockman and Joshua Kalla’s new paper - helpfully titled “Should Moving to the Middle Win Candidates Votes? It Depends Where Voters Are" - affirms core Welcome theses: voters care about issues, and the electoral benefits of moderating are underrated.

But it wasn’t just a high-level validation. They found that the type and amount of moderation matter:

• Where the Party is Misaligned: Moderating is most effective on issues where your party is misaligned with public opinion. This is true for both parties.

• Multidimensionality Risk: Voters care about multiple issues, which presents cross-pressure risks - moderating on a single issue can pick up some votes while losing others.

• … and Aggregation Opportunity: Because voters care about multiple issues, the effects pile up as candidates move towards voters on multiple issues.

• Towards the Voter, not Other Party: Moving towards the opposition party does not have the benefit of moderating by moving towards the median voter.

Broockman captures the intraparty debates on moderation succinctly, explaining that when research shows moving towards the elite middle helps only modestly, “it is easy to look at this and say ‘voters don’t care about moderation/issues.’ But the averages masks enormous variation across people/issues.”

The Golden 4 x 9 x 10

Let’s look at this in practice, from a case study in Deciding to Win:

I'm fighting against Biden's electric car mandate while voting to increase domestic oil and gas production, working with Republicans to secure the border, and standing with law enforcement against defunding the police.

This is an excerpt of an ad for Rep. Jared Golden. In a span of 9 seconds, Golden hits four issues where he differentiates from the party. And not just any issues - on issues where the party is misaligned with voters.

Golden is the only Democrat to win a district Trump won by 10 points.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that those four aggressive moderation points in nine seconds did more than the 281 subscribers he has on YouTube.

Some in the Democratic Party think voters can be tricked by TikTok videos. They think that, when issues come up where the party is misaligned with voters, candidates should just dodge the hard questions. But as wrote this week, the Shut-Up-And-Pivot Approach Won’t Work for Democrats.

Golden’s ad hit four areas where the party was misaligned with voters. Add them up, and you have literally the only Democrat winning a Trump +10 district.

Four policy positions in nine seconds to win a district Trump won by ten.

It wasn’t pivoting away from discomfort, or dressing up like a blue-collar character in a sitcom.

It was policy, on top of policy, on top of policy. Moderation worked, and the benefits of each moderating policy aggregated.

And that’s a good thing. We live in a democracy. Let’s act like it.

Check out the full paper at this link, Yglesias in the NYT here, and a helpful Twitter thread summary from the researchers here.

Here at Welcome, we work to strengthen a centrist faction that wins and governs responsibly. We support centrist Democrats running in Trump districts through WelcomePAC.

Today, I’m excited to be in conversation with Jamie Ager, who’s running for Congress in North Carolina’s 11th congressional district in Western North Carolina. Jamie’s a fourth-generation farmer and a business owner running Hickory Nut Gap Farm, a sustainable meat company that today employs 25 employees and works with dozens of farmers across the region.

NC-11 has a PVI of R+5, and Trump won the district in 2024 by 9.5 points. The district was recently added to the DCCC’s Red to Blue list.

Jamie is part of our Win the Middle slate of candidates for the 2026 cycle. You can support Jamie here.

SUPPORT JAMIE AGER IN NC-11

We wrote about Jamie’s campaign when we endorsed him late last year:

Jamie Ager is a populist moderate with a distinct rural identity. He’s centering his campaign on his agricultural roots. As a fourth-generation farmer who focuses on local economic resilience rather than national culture war issues, Ager explicitly campaigns on a willingness to “speak out against [his] own party” to position himself as an independent voice.

His candidacy is built around his small business Hickory Nut Gap Farms, a regional meat producer that allows him to speak authentically about how Trump’s tariffs are punishing America’s farmers. Ager’s platform is explicitly constructed to distance him from the “Asheville liberal” stereotype that Republicans often use as an attack. He is instead running as a “Mountain Democrat” who talks about his faith, his love for America, and his support for the Second Amendment.

In case you missed it, you can also catch our short documentary on Jamie’s candidacy on YouTube.

This is top of mind for us - midterm primary season just kicked off and runs into September - and is clearly top of mind for many ahead of the 2028 presidential primary. There has been a flurry of research and opinion on this question in recent weeks.

So we put together this typology based on two key axes: ideology (from left to center) and prioritization (from issue purity to winning).

The easiest way to make this framework click is to see it laid out visually. We put together a short video walking through the typology and how the pieces fit together:

Here is the compelling stuff that’s come out recently:

• The Truth About Democratic Primary Voters based on a poll of 1,400 likely primary voters from Third Way

• Do Democrats Want to Be “Normal”? Survey Analysis of Today’s Democratic Coalition based on a poll of 2,593 Democrats and Kamala voters from the conservative Manhattan Institute

• Primary voters prize ideology over electability as their parties get low marks from NBC News

• Are Moderate Democrats Becoming Extinct? and The Democrats’ White Liberal Problem from The Liberal Patriot

Read them all - and also watch the related Third Way presentations from their recent Win The Middle conference.

And think about what your mental model is for the Democratic Party, primary voters, and our path forward.

Moderates are outnumbered in the Democratic Party, and that is certainly true in many congressional primaries. Roughly 55% of Democratic primary voters are progressive, liberal, or socialist. But a decent chunk of those lefties have a struggle between heart and head.

And there are enough lefties who prioritize electability over ideology to deliver moderate nominees.

Target Rate for Lefty Inflation: 1%

The trend towards a more liberal Democratic Party, chronicled in Deciding to Win, has a legitimate source: rank-and-file Democrats have gotten more liberal in recent decades.

Let’s zoom out to the big picture. The trends are nationalized: parties are increasingly sorted by ideology, and voters overall are becoming slightly more liberal.

Emphasis on slightly more liberal. This blue bar has been on the incline over a long period. Going from 18% to 25% is a significant change on a relative basis.

But that still leaves moderate and conservative as a supermajority of voters.

That used to be true within the Democratic Party as well. In 1994, 74% of Democrats were moderates and conservatives. That has been on a steady decline in the three decades since, falling on average by a point per year to its current 43%

Focusing only on moderates and conservatives, you see a slight decline (black line below) but a sharp decline among the share of Democrats who identify as conservative or moderate (blue line).

The gap between the black line (share of all voters) and the blue line (share of Democrats) tells a story. The difference (yellow bar) shows no sign of slowing down.

That chasm presents a problem in nominating candidates who can win a majority of voters.

A solution is sewn into the suit of liberal armor, however. Many progressive Democratic voters prize electability over ideology. When a chunk of them are combined with moderate-to-conservative Democrats, that’s enough to win.

Quadrant I: Majority Mods (30%)

About 30% of all Democratic primary voters are both moderate and prioritize electability. We like winning, we like candidates with mainstream views, it’s good all around.

Quadrant II: Mod or Die (15%)

Roughly 15% of all Democratic primary voters are moderate-to-conservative but are not “Electability Democrats.” They vote for the mainstream candidate, not to “win at all costs to protect democracy” but just, well, because it’s a democracy and their preferred candidate is moderate.

Quadrant III: Purity Left (30%)

Let’s get the uncompromising socialists out of the way. This group mostly loves socialism, hates compromise, and tells pollsters winning is not as important as purity.

This group is roughly 15%, but joins together with another 15% of Democrats who have the same effect on the primary: progressives who think the party needs to move to the left to win voters. A recent think tank analysis said these voters tend to be younger and live in the Northeast. I’ve met them. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably met them too.

Quadrant IV: Strategic Left (25%)

OK, on to the swing constituency. About 25% of Democratic primary voters are both progressive/liberal and prioritize electability. This is the swing constituency.

And it is relatively new.

In Fall 2015, just 36% of Democrats prioritized electability over positions on the issues and just 45% identified as liberal.

Four years later, 60% of Democrats prioritized electability and a majority identified as liberal.

Democratic voters know the country is polarized and that the party has gotten too liberal to win consistently. But that doesn’t mean they know how it is too liberal, or how to demonstrate electability.

The number-torturers on the Purity Left know this, which is why they’ve been practicing the dark arts of Electability Muddying for the last year. They want the Strategic Left voter to think that swing voters are completely unknowable, while there are millions of latent socialists just waiting to be activated from the couch. The problem is that Democrats just haven’t elected the True Progressive or held the right rally.

This is part of why the WAR WARs matter. Why amplifying political science research, like did in The New York Times yesterday, is so important. And why overperformers, like our Win The Middle slate of House candidates in Trump-won districts, can show a path forward to win both primaries and set the party on a path that wins again.

Watch TV, scroll social media or listen to politicians, and the verdict seems clear: Americans are hopelessly divided and increasingly hateful.

• It’s a ubiquitous, emphatic, verifiable ... lie.

Why it matters: Most Americans are too busy for social media, too normal for politics, too rational to tweet. They work, raise kids, coach Little League, go to a house of worship, mow their neighbor’s lawn — and never post a word about any of it.

This isn’t a small minority. It’s a monstrous, if silent, majority. Most Americans are patriotic, hardworking, neighbor-helping, America-loving, money-giving people who don’t pop off on social media or plot for power.

• The hidden truth: Most people agree on most things, most of the time. And the data validates this, time and time again.

Our entire team lives far from Washington, DC.

I live in Needham, Massachusetts. There are a few TRUMP and MAGA flags here, about on par with flags for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills (the real enemy).

Kamala Harris dominated my hometown, 75% to 22%.

A few years ago, the Democratic nominee for Governor lived in our town. He got blown out by the moderate Republican, 67% to 33%. In Massachusetts. During Trump’s first term.

Hey, the Republican was normal.

The sign outside Memorial Park, where the high school football team plays in the nation’s oldest Thanksgiving Day rivalry, says GOD BLESS AMERICA.

Our basketball team entered the state tournament ranked third, earning home court advantage a few days after the Olympics wrapped up. That home court advantage = a rambunctious student section wearing USA hockey jerseys and Uncle Sam overalls.

They stood silently for the national anthem.

Our team lives a version of this normal offline life, in Alabama and Colorado and Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Lauren lives in South Carolina. In September, she wrote about the struggles our team faced with candidates last year:

This cycle we are seeing a plethora of progressive Democrats shrouded in the “authenticity” they believe will make people like them more than Democrats in Congress.

I’ve been calling it the “progressives in sheep’s clothing” phenomenon, where a “regular guy/gal” decides to run for office to prove that normal people can be Democrats, but they espouse the same positions as those who are in the progressive caucus and are notably disagreeable with median voter sympathy.

So they’re not actually normal, aka where the median voter is. And their candidacy will just further estrange moderate-to-conservative voters from our Party.

I tell people often that Welcome was founded in 2019 to cultivate a more welcoming Democratic Party that appeals to Republican and independent voters.

But as of late, I often find that we are working to cultivate a more welcoming Democratic Party that ensures Democrats still feel welcome! Voters like myself who don’t identify as progressive and are people of color who still need a home in our politics.

Being forthright about this reality helped us build an incredible slate of candidates.

But it isn’t always easy. Most people in politics are very online, and very polarized. Back to the Axios description of The Big Lie:

Oh, but you’re so naive, so delusional and detached from reality. Everywhere I look, I see dispute and decline!

But it’s the terminally online news junkies who are detached from the actual reality.

• We’ve been manipulated by algorithms and politicians amplifying the worst of humanity. Our feeds and screens spread a twisted, inaccurate view of America.

• It makes it seem like the nation is hopelessly broken ... Political enemies are evil ... Facts are no different than fiction ... Morality, honesty and service don’t matter ... And salvation can only come from magical technologies or a powerful few.

What if we told you it’s a big lie that makes you stop believing your own two eyes?

• Every day, people battle over outrageous things said on X. Did you know that four out of five Americans don’t use X, and therefore don’t see what you see? Pew Research Center found last year that only 21% of U.S. adults use X, and just 10% visit it daily. The loudest platform in politics reaches barely one in five Americans.

• But what about the wacky claims made on cable TV? Did you know that during most hours of most prime-time nights, less than 1% of the country watches Fox News, CNN or MS NOW, combined?

Maybe, just maybe, it’s the very people on these platforms who are the crazy ones.

• Maybe, just maybe, most people are simply normal, sane, real.

• A Gallup World Poll out last week found Americans are more anxious about their political system than citizens of almost any other country — yet the data consistently shows this anxiety is driven by the noise, not the neighbors. The system feels broken. The people are not.

The first in-person meeting we had in DC, a participant said “either we’re crazy, or everybody else is.”

Five years later, it is more true than ever. We live it every day.

Believe your own two eyes.

Both candidates embody what it takes to win in competitive territory: local authenticity rooted in real world experience, a willingness to buck political pressure when it matters, and a record of putting community ahead of party.

Paige Cognetti: A local leader who took on the machine and won

Paige Cognetti’s rise in northeastern Pennsylvania began not by climbing a party ladder, but by taking a broken system head-on.

After years working in government oversight and accountability, Cognetti stepped into Scranton politics in 2019 after Scranton’s mayor was indicted for extortion. When the local Democratic establishment closed ranks around its preferred candidate, she made the bold decision to run as an Independent.

In the 2019 special election for mayor, Cognetti rejected the machine politics that had become the norm in the city and appealed directly to voters by running on a platform of transparency, fiscal responsibility, and reform. She won, becoming Scranton’s first female mayor and sending a clear message that voters wanted clean government and practical leadership.

Two years later, Cognetti ran for a full term as a Democrat and won decisively, continuing her focus on stabilizing city finances, investing in infrastructure, and restoring confidence in local government.

Now she’s running for Congress to defeat Republican Rob Bresnahan, who campaigned on a promise to ban members of Congress from trading stocks, then became one of the most prolific traders in Congress. Bresnahan has made headlines for trades that coincide with his votes – he dumped up to $130,000 in Medicaid provider stock the week before he voted for the largest Medicaid cuts in history. He’s also bought AI stocks while pushing for data centers.

Cognetti’s independence, her willingness to stand up to party insiders, and her results-first type of leadership is exactly why she’s the right candidate for Pennsylvania’s 8th, a swing district that will help determine control of the U.S. House. Cognetti isn’t defined by party labels; she’s defined by delivering for working families, rooting out government corruption, and meeting voters where they are.

Support Mayor Paige Cognetti

Dr. Jasmeet Bains: A Doctor who brings real-world solutions to public service

Dr. Jasmeet Bains comes to politics the same way she came to public life: through service.

A family physician and addiction specialist in California’s Central Valley, Dr. Bains has spent her career on the frontlines of healthcare, treating patients, navigating broken systems, and seeing firsthand how policy decisions affect everyday lives in rural and working-class communities.

When she ran for the California State Assembly in 2022, she did so not as a career politician, but as a doctor determined to fix problems she had lived with every day: lack of access to care, rising costs, and communities too often overlooked by Sacramento and Washington alike.

Since taking office, Dr. Bains has built a reputation as a pragmatic legislator focused on results and standing up for the economic realities of the Valley. She has shown she is willing to break from party pressure when she believes policies would increase costs or threaten local jobs.

As CalMatters observed, Bains “has never been particularly shy about voting ‘no,’ even if it irks her Democratic colleagues,” reflecting her willingness to put her constituents ahead of political convenience.

That independence is rooted in the people she represents. Dr. Bains has made clear that her priority is ensuring Central Valley families can afford to live, work, and build their futures in their own communities. Her approach has earned credibility across a diverse district that expects leaders who understand working-class realities and deliver practical solutions.

In her run for Congress, Dr. Bains brings what Washington desperately needs: real-world experience, independence, and a commitment to fighting for affordability, local jobs, and the communities she serves.

Support Dr. Jasmeet Bains

Support Dr. Jasmeet Bains and Mayor Paige Cognetti

These two races in Trump-won districts will be among Republicans’ top targets in 2026. Incumbents David Valadao in CA-22 and Rob Bresnahan in PA-08 have both been named NRCC “Patriots,” signaling that national Republicans are prepared to pour millions in outside spending into defending these seats. Winning here will take early resources, strong grassroots support, and sustained investment, which is why supporting Dr. Bains and Mayor Cognetti now is critical.

Support Welcome's Win The Middle Slate

How will America escape the polarized mess of our politics?

By following the example of Democrats who win Trump districts: with the deep confidence that comes with knowing you share the values and priorities of your community.

Getting to know those candidates over the last five years has been the most energizing part of our work. And so now we’re bringing those personalities to you in a more vivid way.

Last month, members of the Welcome and Blue Dog Action teams spent three days in Western North Carolina with Jamie Ager, who woke up yesterday as the Democratic nominee in North Carolina’s 11th congressional district. Jamie is a farmer and small business owner who we endorsed last year.

Majorities are won when Democrats go on offense in Trump-won districts that have been pushed away from the party in recent cycles.

This video is the first in a series following Democratic candidates as they navigate the realities of campaigning in Trump country. Get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the strategies, pressures, and day-to-day realities of running in some of the most competitive races in the country, along with a closer look at the personal stories behind the campaigns.

How will we get out of this mess? As Jamie shows us, sometimes you just have to chainsaw your way out.

Follow him: get to know Jamie on YouTube here and support his campaign here.

Contribute to Jamie

PS for more on Tuesday’s elections, check out the rundown from

Democrats will turn to November with state Rep. James Talarico as the nominee in this marquee Senate race, but Republicans will be in a brutal all-out war between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and ultra-MAGA (and deeply corrupt) Attorney General Ken Paxton, though Trump may intervene to protect Cornyn. If Paxton, whose impeachment trial centered around bribery and extramarital affairs, becomes the nominee, Democrats have a shot at their first Senate victory in Texas since 1988.

In the House, we saw early signs of volatility. As of this morning, one incumbent was defeated by a primary challenger and 3 advanced to the runoff election.

In Texas’s 2nd, Crenshaw’s defeat shows how far right the GOP has moved. Crenshaw is no moderate, and he voted against impeaching Trump but he has also been a staunch supporter of aid to Ukraine, and was negatively impacted by redistricting.

In Texas’s 18th, a member vs. member Democratic primary continues into a runoff, with longtime Rep. Al Green and recently elected Rep. Christian Menefee both coming up short of 50%.

In Texas’s 23rd, the story is less about ideology than scandal. Late in the primary allegations surfaced that Rep. Tony Gonzales had an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide. Gonzales has occasionally demonstrated moderate Republican inclinations, working on gun control legislation after the Uvalde shooting. Challenger Brandon Herrera has invoked Nazi themes in his YouTube content.

In Texas’s 33rd, the Republican redistricting set up a brutal member on member primary between Colin Allred and Julie Johnson, which now goes to a runoff. In Texas’s 18th, another district where two Democratic incumbents were gerrymandered into a single district, Christian Menefee leads 78 year old Al Green, whose age may have been an issue in the primary.

In North Carolina’s 4th, incumbent Valerie Foushee barely held off a primary from leftist Nida Allam who criticized Foushee for her ties to pro-Israel groups. While it’s important not to over-interpret primaries, Allam’s strength and Mejia’s victory in NJ-11 suggest that Israel is becoming a powerful issue in Democratic primaries.

The general election battlefield is starting to take shape. Nominees are now set in several districts that will help determine control of the House, including Texas 15, Texas 35, and North Carolina 11. In seats like these, the primary outcome doesn’t just settle an internal debate, it determines whether November will be competitive at all.

The South Texas Story

Over the last decade, South Texas has become the clearest case study of Democrats losing ground with non-white and non-college voters. In the span of 8 years, the most Hispanic county in the country swung a staggering 76 points to the right, going from Clinton +60 in 2016 to Trump+16 in 2024. These ideologically moderate voters have drifted towards the Republican Party during this time, while a small number of Blue Dog-style Democrats have managed to hold ground by positioning themselves closer to the views of their constituents.

The first step in addressing this in 2026 was to ensure that the right candidates made it out of the primary. Last night, that happened.

In Texas 15, Bobby Pulido secured the Democratic nomination in TX-15, defeating progressive and self-funding challenger Dr. Ada Cuellar, who dropped over $1 million of her own money to fund negative attack ads against Bobby.

This is a district, like everywhere else in South Texas, has moved sharply to the right since 2016, averaging around a 17 point swing each election. It is heavily Hispanic, culturally distinct, and increasingly skeptical of national Democratic messaging. Pulido ran with that reality in mind: personally pro-life but supportive of a woman’s right to choose, economically focused, regionally rooted, and culturally fluent.

Democratic primary voters chose the candidate attempting to recalibrate the party’s image in the region rather than doubling down on a more ideological approach. That decision materially affects November competitiveness. Pulido will now face Republican incumbent Monica De La Cruz in a race that is gaining more attention following Pulido’s victory. CBS News said, it will take a Democrat with a strong name ID, like Pulido, and a candidate who can appeal to conservative Latinos” and The Downballot said attacks that Pulido may be too conservative “might make him the right fit to unseat” de la Cruz.

To the west in the neighboring 34th district, incumbent and Blue Dog member Rep. Vicente Gonzalez won re-nomination by defeating a DSA endorsed challenger. His continued ability to outperform top-of-ticket Democrats in a region trending Republican remains instructive. He was one of two South Texas Blue Dogs who ran an average of 10 points ahead of Harris in 2024. Gonzalez’s model of pragmatic positioning, economic emphasis, and local credibility has allowed him to hold terrain that would otherwise be structurally difficult. He will face Eric Flores in the general election, who is a former federal prosecutor, Army Veteran and has the backing of President Trump.

North Carolina

In North Carolina’s 11th District, farmer, small business owner, and self-described “Mountain Democrat” Jamie Ager easily won the Democratic nomination with 65% of the vote and will face Republican incumbent Chuck Edwards in November.

Ager has run a campaign that is regionally rooted and culturally aligned with Western North Carolina, placing emphasis on cost of living, agriculture, and local economic concerns rather than national ideological fights.

He also enters the general election better positioned than most challengers in contested seats. Ager holds both a fundraising and cash-on-hand advantage over Edwards, a relative rarity for a first-time candidate running against a multi-term incumbent.

Looking Ahead: California 22

There are a number of primaries over the next few months, but one of the most consequential takes place on June 2 in California. Welcome-endorsed State Assemblymember Dr. Jasmeet Bains is running in CA-22 against educator and activist Randy Villegas.

CA-22 is not an easy pickup opportunity for Democrats. Donald Trump carried it by two points in 2024, and it is currently represented by Republican incumbent David Valadao, who is one of the most electorally durable Republicans in a district carried by both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton by double digits.

Dr. Bains is a two-term assemblymember with a reputation as a pragmatic, results-focused legislator who has consistently run ahead of the top of the ticket. Villegas, by contrast, is backed by Bernie Sanders and national progressive organizations such as the Working Families Party and Leaders We Deserve, groups that have focused more on defeating Democratic incumbents than flipping Republican-held seats.

The parallels to Texas 15 are hard to miss:

• Both districts voted for Trump in 2024

• Both districts are heavily Hispanic (roughly 70% in CA-22 and 80% in TX-15)

• Both neighbor Blue Dog incumbents (Adam Gray in CA-13 and Vicente Gonzalez in TX-34) who have demonstrated the value of pragmatic positioning in difficult terrain

• Both feature Democratic candidates who were recruited by the aforementioned Blue Dogs (Dr. Bains in CA-22 and Bobby Pulido in TX-15).

In Texas, primary voters chose Bobby Pulido, the candidate arguing that competitiveness requires meeting the district where it is, not where activists might prefer it to be. California 22 now presents the same test.

If Democrats nominate Dr. Bains, who is aligned with the district’s fundamentals, then the race against Valadao is real. If they nominate Villegas, then the path to victory narrows considerably before the general election even begins.

“Most political commentary doesn’t think highly of voters” -

The first real test of 2026 is tonight, with primaries that will set the midterm tone in Texas and North Carolina.

But the headliner is not an ideological battle, as Nate Cohn demonstrates in the NYT:

Is that a good thing? Some prominent progressives think so.

Run For Something founder Amanda Litman wrote this afternoon that “the fight over “progressive vs moderate” misses the point (and is mostly a waste of time.)”

I’m sitting next to former congressional candidate Adam Frisch right now (it’s election day!), and we disagree.

We live in a democracy! Voters care about issues! They deserve a choice not only of style, but of substance.

In 2022, some Democratic candidates like Adam said we should secure the border, increase energy production, respect the Second Amendment, and tone down the culture war offensives.

Adam ran in the primary against Sol Sandoval, a progressive activist endorsed by the left-wing Working Families Party. Adam would open his primary stump speech to activists with “I know the Democratic Party isn’t looking for a straight middle-aged white Jewish guy living in Aspen. But …”

After clearing the air, the “But” would be followed by a confident and commonsense explanation of why Adam believed in these policies - and why a majority of voters would too. Before running ten points ahead of baseline in the general election, he won his primary by just 289 votes.

Voters deserved the choice.

Voters Over Pundits

How do we know the median voter is smarter than fancy political pundits? Here’s one example: there is a 20 point difference in voter approval of Trump’s border policy and his immigration policy.

Last year we told the story of MSNBC personality Chris Hayes, who as a recent Brown grad in 2004 went knocking on 1,000 doors because he could not understand “how could any halfway intelligent human remain undecided for long?”

His conclusion? Swing voters are deserving “of the derision that the political class has heaped on them.”

Hayes, ever the committed progressive, stated that “undecided voters aren’t as rational as you think” and “don’t think in terms of issues.”

Yet these three things are all true about the most contentious issue of the last five years:

1. Voters strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration (-17)

2. Voters still net approve of Trump’s handling of the border (+3)

3. Voters still trust congressional Republicans more than congressional Democrats on the border (+28) and immigration (+11)

Unlike professional anti-Trumpers, the median citizen is taking that highest duty seriously enough to distinguish between “the border” and “immigration.” AND distinguishing between the executive branch and the legislature.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Back in 2021, the first article written about Welcome focused on the word ‘empathy.’ The reporter from Slate was “intrigued” that centrists would use such a liberal-coded word.

Over the last five years, the problem is worse than Democrats “lacking empathy.”

Democrats - or at least their elite tone-setters - just don’t RESPECT voters.

The journalist Gabe Fleisher recently said this pointedly: “A lot of political commentary doesn’t think highly of voters, but Americans often do a better job sitting in nuance…”

Fleisher gives a similar example to our border/immigration split:

41% of Americans oppose Trump’s immigration goals + execution. That’s the “never Trump” coalition. (Almost all Dems, about 1/3 of Independents.)

27% support Trump’s immigration goals + execution. That’s the “Trump diehard” (at least on immigration) coalition. (2/3 of GOP, about 1/5 of Independents.)

And, most interestingly, 24% support Trump’s immigration goals, but NOT his execution.

Voters are comfortable with nuance!

That’s why candidates like Mary Peltola and Jared Golden and more are able to run a dozen points ahead of the national ticket by breaking from the party on issues.

Let’s say that again: breaking with the party on issues. The thing Chris Hayes claims they don’t think about.

Voters distinguish between immigration and border security, and many prefer different parties to deal with each one. For a long time, there has been a strain in Democratic thought that denies this fundamental reality: voters know where the parties stand on issues, and vote for the party that agrees with them on the issues they find most salient.

What’s The Matter With Pundits

During the same 2004 period in which Chris Hayes was mentally demeaning swing voters at their doors, liberals were taken in with Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”

The book purported to show that working class voters were voting against their economic interests because they were tricked by Republican support for conservative social issues. He argued the way for Democrats to win back the voters of Kansas was not to move to the center, but rather to move to the left, blaming centrists for costing Democrats working class voters.

Political scientist Larry Bartels responded to Frank, finding that working class white voters had pretty conservative views on the economy. In fact, what Bartels found was that Frank had it backwards,

… contrary to Frank’s account, most of his white working-class voters see themselves as closer to the Democratic Party on social issues like abortion and gender roles but closer to the Republican Party on economic issues.

Bartels found:

Frank’s white working-class voters were neither liberal in absolute terms nor closer to the Democratic Party than to the Republican Party on economic issues. On the central issue of government spending and services, voters who saw themselves as closer to the Republican Party outnumbered those who saw themselves as closer to the Democratic Party by four percentage points. On the issues of government jobs and aid to blacks the pluralities seeing themselves as closer to the Republican Party were even larger – nine and 15 percentage points, respectively. Moreover, 60% to 85% of the voters who perceived differences between their own position and the Democratic Party’s position on each of these economic issues said the Democratic Party was too liberal, not too conservative. Thus, it is hard to see why taking even more liberal positions on these issues, or stressing them more heavily, would help the Democrats win back the white working class.

What’s The Matter With Justice Democrats?

But let's put away the polls and spreadsheets. What happens when progressives run left-wing candidates in Republican areas?

It doesn’t work. The last decade has been defined by attempts from Justice Democrats and their allies to recruit and support the types of candidates who they think would fix the problem with Kansas.

All of them have failed.

• Randy Bryce (WI-1): The union ironworker and progressive folk hero lost to Bryan Steil by double digits despite raising nearly $8 million, earning endorsements from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Bryce was touted by groups like the Working Families Party and ran as a populist, pro-Medicare for All progressive, but he still lost badly, running 10 points behind the district’s fundamentals.

• Jess King (PA-11): The progressive running on Medicare for All and debt-free college lost by 18 points (though gaining extensive media coverage in the process). Justice Democrats-aligned consultants believed they could make this district competitive by building the most extensive field operation in the district’s history, but she ran in line with the fundamentals. A local post-mortem casts doubts on the canvassing effectiveness, noting that King received fewer votes than Gov. Tom Wolf (7,000) and Bob Casey (1,376) while Smucker out-performed Republican gubernatorial nominee Scott Wagner (11,520) and Senate candidate Lou Barletta (6,321).

• Kara Eastman (NE-2): After beating DCCC-backed former Rep. Brad Ashford in the primary, Eastman lost in the general election, running 2 points behind the fundamentals. In her second attempt in 2020, she ran 6 points behind the fundamentals. Kara Eastman was the only Justice Democrats attempt in a swing district, and she lost a district Biden won running on a progressive, pro Medicare for All platform.

• Dana Balter (NY-24): Ran in a Clinton+4 competitive district and lost, underperforming Clinton by 10 points — the worst result of any Democrat running in a Clinton-Republican district that year. (Balter ran again in 2020 and lost again). Balter ran 19 points behind the fundamentals in 2018 and 16 points behind in 2020.

Justice Democrats, Working Families Party and the like have tried again and again to replicate their primary playbook with swing voters. Every time it fails.

From “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” to thinking “Tim Walz is a cheat code for white men,” Democrats want to deny that their struggles with working class voters are rooted in legitimate policy disagreements.

Maybe these voters are not just bozos lurching from one candidate to the next, but are onto something?

“Not giving voters enough credit”

A summary of the research from Anthony Fowler of the University of Chicago, via the Niskanen Center:

Anthony Fowler finds that most Americans’ political views fall between the opinions of Democratic and Republican elites. And that’s not because they don’t understand politics in the same way. Most Americans’ views fall into the ideological continuum from left to right; they’re just somewhere in the middle. These moderates matter for election outcomes. While they participate a bit less, they are the consequential swing voters. Fowler also finds that selecting candidates on policy grounds could matter more to voters than the power of partisan identity. We may not be giving voters enough credit.

Pundits often cast voters into narrow, polarized buckets. But voters demonstrate again and again that substance matters.

Fowler shows that perceptions of ideological extremism are driven by the limited response options on most surveys (e.g. do you support or oppose Medicare for All?).

Fowler changed this dynamic by offering respondents a more open set of response options. For instance, when he asked what the minimum wage should be, he simply offered an open-ended text box. Offering specific numbers or a slider to choose different numbers could anchor or artificially constrain opinion.

The results show this nuance clearly. Take the minimum wage example: when Fowler asked what the federal minimum wage should be, the median response was $12 and even 41% of Democrats prefer a minimum wage below $15, while 97% of Democrats prefer a minimum wage below $25. Democratic voters are far more moderate than their representatives (who now support a $25 to $50 minimum wage).

Fowler finds that on other issues, there is significantly less extremism than our politics implies: “only 13% of respondents say that abortion should not be legal at any point in a pregnancy, and only 9% say that it should be allowed through all 40 weeks of a pregnancy.”

Voters are capable of nuance - but too much of our research isn’t designed to measure it. Most issue polling is like measuring the 40-yard dash with a sundial.

Warning Signs

While Democrats are well-positioned for the midterms because of the significant, predictable weakness of the incumbent party, the latest Wall Street Journal polling should be a flashing warning sign for Democrats. While Trump’s approval has fallen more and more, Democrats still aren’t trusted in Congress, relative to Republicans. Congressional Democrats trail on border security (-28), immigration (-11), the economy (-6) and inflation (-5). Democrats lead on the issues where they have effectively messaged such as healthcare (+15).

Voters don’t like what Trump is doing, but Democrats need to prove they’ve moved past the extreme positions many took during 2020, like banning gas-powered cars.

“Elite Disdain”

The attitude of a twenty-something Chris Hayes and his fellow What’s The Matter With Kansas readers epitomizes the ‘elite disdain’ that progressives have towards voters.

The problem is that Chris Hayes is all grown up, but his disdainful mindset has not - and is now dominant in the Democratic ecosystem. And despite all the progressive podcast ads for online therapy services, it doesn’t seem like more empathy for the confused masses is around the corner.

We need to respect the voters.

Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas will hold the first primaries of the year. Most of the attention is on the Texas Senate race (and for good reason), but the House races will tell us more about whether either party understands the terrain heading into November.

Texas: Ground Zero for the Redistricting Wars

It’s impossible to talk about Texas this cycle without talking about maps.

Texas is at the center of the redistricting fights that are taking place across the country. It’s both a battleground and a proving ground for how far states are willing to push things.

The Senate primaries at the top of the ticket are sucking up most of the oxygen. On the Democratic side, James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett are locked in a competitive race. On the Republican side, a messy three-way primary could easily go to a runoff. If that happens, Republicans will burn another 12 weeks and tens of millions of dollars while the Democratic nominee gets to pivot to the general.

But there are consequential fights further down the ballot.

South Texas has been the story of the last two cycles. What used to be safely Democratic territory shifted hard to the right at the presidential level. If Democrats are serious about clawing that back, they can’t just run the same playbook and hope demographic trends save them. They need candidates who fit the district.

Texas 15: Moderate vs. Progressive Test

The Texas 15 Democratic primary was featured in the New York Times last week and is becoming the first moderate versus progressive primary of the cycle.

Tejano star and Welcome-endorsed candidate Bobby Pulido is running to be the Democratic nominee who takes on incumbent Monica de la Cruz. Pulido brings something Democrats haven’t had in South Texas in a while: cultural credibility and a willingness to say what he actually thinks about issues. He has not been afraid to call out where Democrats have failed or why they have lost the trust of South Texas voters. This is crucial in a district that Trump carried by 18 points less than two years ago.

He’s facing Dr. Ada Cuellar, an ER physician and recent law school grad running to Pulido’s left. Cuellar has described herself as a working mom who understands the lives and shares the struggles of South Texans. She has also put more than $1 million of her own money into the race and has raised only a fraction of that from individual donors. That’s not just a fundraising stat, it’s a campaign theory. Cuellar’s campaign is an almost entirely self-funded operation that’s running on a progressive message in a district that has been trending the opposite direction.

The district’s recent history demonstrates the progressive message hasn’t been well received. Previous iterations of the district were represented by Blue Dog Vicente Gonzalez before redistricting shifted him to the 34th. In 2020, Gonzalez defeated Monica de la Cruz by 3 points. In 2022, de la Cruz faced progressive Democrat Michelle Vallejo and won by nearly 9 points. In a rematch in 2024, de la Cruz expanded that margin to 14 points. The story is clear: South Texas voters are willing to vote for a Democrat, just not a liberal one.

If Democrats are serious about competing in South Texas again, Bobby Pulido is exactly the kind of candidate to nominate.

Support Bobby + The Win The Middle Slate

Texas 35: Open Seat Chaos

Just north of the 15th is TX-35, a completely redrawn district with no incumbent running. That alone makes it volatile. It is a district that will be another test of how Democrats navigate newly configured, Hispanic-majority districts that don’t vote the way they used to.

Johnny Garcia is a sheriff’s deputy who is running as an “old school Democrat” and is part of a four-way primary that has not garnered a lot of attention or money, leaving the race relatively open. Garcia has raised the most money and is well positioned to finish first and advance to a runoff.

The Republican side is even more chaotic. There are a staggering 11 Republican candidates on the ballot, setting up a crowded and unpredictable contest that could very well head to a runoff too.

North Carolina 11: Expanding the Map

In NC-11, Jamie Ager is running in western North Carolina, an area that historically is Trump country, culturally conservative, and typically tough terrain for Democrats. But it’s also a district where the Republican lean has softened slightly in recent cycles.

Ager’s background as a farmer, small businessman, and grandson of a former Democratic congressman is tailored to the region. He’s not running a nationalized, cable-news campaign. He’s running as someone rooted in western North Carolina. He’s talking about agriculture, rural investment, small business growth, and showing up in communities that Democrats too often write off.

If Democrats want to expand the map in places that aren’t obvious on paper, this is what it looks like. This isn’t theoretical: the DCCC’s decision to include NC-11 in its first batch of Red to Blue targets is a signal that national Democrats see a real opportunity here. Ager has outraised the Republican incumbent Chuck Edwards and holds a $63k cash on hand advantage going into March, both of which are warning signs for any incumbent running for re-election.

If Democrats are going to prove they can compete in culturally conservative, working-class districts again, Ager’s race is one of the first real tests of that theory in 2026.

Support Jamie + The Win The Middle Slate

One Week Out

South Texas and western North Carolina are very different places, but they share one reality: voters there are not looking for nationalized messaging experiments. They’re looking for candidates who understand their communities, speak their language, and are serious about winning.

Bobby Pulido, Johnny Garcia, and Jamie Ager are early tests of whether Democrats have absorbed the lessons of the last two cycles or whether they’re going to keep assuming the map will correct itself.

In one week, we start finding out.

The latest Congressional Competition Index report from Welcome Democracy Institute tells the story.

The Map So Far

There are now 113 seats that should be fully competitive (based on the partisan lean of the district), up one from 112 at the end of Q3. The addition is the newly redrawn Texas 35th, which went from a D+19 seat to an R+4 seat after Texas Republicans aggressively redrew their map.

Of those 113 seats, just 42 have challengers who have raised at least $1 million this cycle. Another 33 are on pace to be competitive, with challengers posting strong numbers early. That leaves a significant gap: seats where the electoral math says “compete here” and neither party has answered.

The gap between where competition should exist and where it actually does will become increasingly difficult to close.

Follow The Money

At the topline level, the financial environment looks balanced. Democratic challengers are raising an average of $492,000 compared to $455,000 for Republicans. On the incumbent side, both parties average roughly $1.5 million. Neither party is conceding its own turf.

Party committees and SuperPACs are close. The Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) holds $54.5 million on hand, while House Majority PAC (HMP) sits at $46 million. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has $50.8 million and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has $49.2 million.

The wild card: Republicans hold a significant national cash advantage. The RNC has nearly $100 million more than the DNC. Trump’s SuperPAC, MAGA Inc., has over $300 million on hand. Some of that may go to Senate races. Much of it could flow into the House.

The Lopsided Challenger Field

This is one of the most significant findings this quarter. Democrats currently have challengers raising money in 169 Republican-held seats, more than double the 79 Democratic-held seats that Republicans are contesting.

Whether this breadth translates into actual gains is an open question. But the asymmetry matters. Republican challengers are either absent or underfunded across large swaths of the map, effectively ceding terrain that recent results suggest should be in play. Democrats are present even in tougher districts, creating the possibility of volatility if national conditions shift.

Democracy Deserts

The most persistent problem the CCI tracks: competitive districts where one party simply isn’t showing up.

FL-13: Anna Paulina Luna remains one of the weakest electoral performers in the GOP. The Democrat running against her overperformed the fundamentals by 6.1 points in 2024. This cycle, Earle Ford has raised just $144,098 in an R+5 district that could flip with real investment. Welcome has flagged this district before. In an environment like 2026 is shaping up to be, she is at real risk of defeat if Democrats field a strong challenger. With the August primary still a ways off, there is still time for a challenger to emerge. In just the last few weeks, retired Army Brigadier General Leela Gray has entered the race with the support of Whitney Fox (2024 nominee and friend of Welcome), signaling Democrats are ready to mount a strong challenge here.

WI-01: Bryan Steil’s R+2 district is among the most competitive Republican-held seats in the Midwest. Democrat Mitchell Berman has raised $217,257. In Wisconsin, where statewide races are decided by fractions, that’s a missed opportunity. Trump only won this seat by 4 points in 2024 and 2 points in 2020. However, congressional candidates have been unable to keep up with the top of the ticket, with Steil scoring a 9 point victory in 2022 and a 10 point victory in 2024. Wisconsin also has an August primary, so there is still time for one of the candidates to move this seat onto the map.

Early Warning Signs: Challengers Outraising Incumbents

Over 20 Democratic challengers outraised the Republican incumbent in Q4, including returning candidates like Christina Bohannan, Rebecca Cooke and Janelle Stelson.

Two new challengers stood out.

FL-07: Bale Dalton, a Navy veteran and former NASA Chief of Staff, launched his campaign against embattled Cory Mills and raised $343,650 in just six weeks. Mills raised $61,309 in Q4 and started the year with just $110,651 on hand, with over $2 million in debt. This R+5 district could be an unexpected opportunity in Florida. For those who haven’t followed Welcome closely, Mills has had… quite a few scandals. We wrote about him here, here, here, and here. Let’s summarize quickly. Cory Mills is under House Ethics Committee investigation for campaign finance violations, misuse of congressional resources, and sexual misconduct stemming from an extramarital affair. A Florida judge issued a protective order against him after he threatened to release explicit videos of his mistress. He faces stolen valor allegations after five veterans who served with him, including two he claims to have saved, say they have no recollection of him being at the scene that earned him a Bronze Star. Before Congress, he made his fortune selling tear gas and crowd control weapons used against civilians in Egypt, and he carpetbagged into Florida’s 7th district to run for the seat. An Office of Congressional Ethics investigation found that Mills’ companies had secured close to $1 million in federal contracts for munitions and weapons distributed to prisons since he took office, and he misrepresented this information on his House disclosure forms. Mills became the subject of three censure resolutions in 2025, including one from fellow Republican Nancy Mace. So yeah… he’s vulnerable, if Democrats can raise enough to make it competitive.

NC-11: Jamie Ager, a farmer and small businessman from western North Carolina, raised $391,129 in Q4 against Chuck Edwards, who raised $350,407. Ager is the grandson of former Democratic Representative James Clarke, who held this seat more than 30 years ago. The district’s Republican lean has shrunk from R+9 to R+5 in recent years. Democrats haven’t had a shot this good at this seat in a generation, and Ager can make this a tight race.

Potential Surprises

GOP-Held Seats

TN-05: Andy Ogles is underwater. $62,080 in cash on hand, $70,368 in debt. The FBI executed a search warrant on him in 2024 over campaign finance irregularities. Meanwhile, Chaz Molder, the Mayor of Columbia, raised $412,744 in Q4 and holds $977,977 in cash. The top Republican fundraiser last quarter wasn’t Ogles but Charlie Hatcher ($410,910 raised), suggesting Ogles may not survive his primary. This R+8 district was held by Democrats for nearly a century before 2022 redistricting, and the DCCC has targeted it for a reason. Ogles has been on our radar for quite some time, due to his penchant for scandal and extreme positions. Ogles has proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow Trump to run for a third term, denies the results of the 2020 election, supports overturning the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage, and called for a Congressional inquiry into Bad Bunny’s halftime show (what?). He’s extreme.

Molder is exactly the type of candidate who can make this seat competitive. When Molder first ran for mayor in 2018, he unseated a two-term incumbent. He secured reelection in 2022 against the popular local chair of the Maury County Republican Party. More impressive: he won both elections in a county Donald Trump carried by over 45 points. As mayor, he passed seven balanced budgets with no property tax increases while investing in public safety and saved taxpayers $10.5 million.

TX-15: Trump won this R+7 district by 18 points in 2024. It shouldn’t be on anyone’s radar. But Bobby Pulido, a Tejano music legend with a recent Latin Grammy win, raised $415,452 against Monica De La Cruz ($809,763 raised, $2.01 million on hand). In a district that is 75% Hispanic, Pulido’s cultural celebrity could be a factor that traditional metrics don’t capture. Latino voters (particularly Independents) have swung dramatically against Trump, which could break this gerrymander. However, Democrats may field Ada Cuellar, a progressive (no relation to Henry Cuellar) whose extreme views could make the district unwinnable in the general election.

What Comes Next

There is still time. But the window is closing.

Redistricting decisions in Florida and Virginia could still alter the battlefield, either expanding the number of competitive seats or further constraining it. How parties respond to those changes may determine how competitive 2026 actually becomes.

In a midterm environment, the out-of-power party should seek to build the largest battlefield possible, because their base will be extremely motivated, a dynamic that Trump’s polarizing approach to government magnifies. So far, Democrats are doing that, with some exceptions. Uniquely vulnerable incumbents like Andy Ogles and Cory Mills could put even more seats in play.

In Texas, the GOP’s attempt to gerrymander Latino voters could backfire if Latinos swing back, and Trump’s brutal immigration policy could cause that.

The next quarter will bring primary outcomes, post-primary fundraising and signals from party committees that will sharpen the picture. We’ll be tracking it.

See here for the full Q4 Congressional Competition Index report.