Politics
Ohio returns as a bellwether
The money spigot is sputtering in Georgia’s Senate race amid growing expectations that Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff will win reelection.
The Senate Leadership Fund, Republicans’ top Senate super PAC, did not spend on broadcast television in the state last week — the first week they were off air in the race, according to tracking firm AdImpact. Neither did Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC.
Senate Majority PAC will also be dark again this week, the Chuck Schumer-aligned group shared first with Blue Light News. It was not immediately clear whether SLF would follow suit. The group declined to comment on their future spending plans in the state.
The spending slowdown underscores how dramatically Georgia’s place on the Senate map has shifted, as Ossoff maintains wide margins over Republican Rep. Mike Collins in public polling and fundraising. Georgia was expected to be one of the cycle’s most expensive and preeminent battlegrounds — now some of the biggest outside spenders are pulling back and turning their attention to more competitive races in redder territory.
The two major Senate super PACs have closely mirrored each other’s spending decisions in recent weeks, with neither fully retreating from the state. They still both technically have future ad reservations booked past this week, but those are not binding, leaving both sides with the flexibility to redirect money as they assess the Senate map. And with two weeks until Election Day and early voting already underway in Georgia, it’s unclear whether either will spend any more in the state.
“National Republicans are abandoning Mike Collins as he continues to show Georgians why he’s unelectable and unfit for office. We are committed to seeing Jon Ossoff through to victory as we come to the final days of this campaign,” SMP spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.
Collins’ campaign, in a statement, said they were “grateful to every group that’s standing with Rep. Collins and welcome their continued support.”
“With early voting underway, he’s working every day to earn the vote of every Georgian, because Jon Ossoff is a radical leftist who wants to raise their taxes and make their families less safe. Rep. Collins will keep making that case until Ossoff is held accountable on Election Day,” Collins spokesperson Meyer Siegfried said in a statement.
Ossoff’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.
SMP had pledged in the spring to spend $20 million on television for the race, but as of Friday had only spent or reserved $11.5 million, per AdImpact. SLF had announced an initial $44 million investment, but has so far only spent or reserved roughly $20 million.
No Going Back PAC, which is affiliated with President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, has also dramatically scaled back its own spending on the race over the last two weeks, according to AdImpact.
Republican operatives are still monitoring Georgia’s governor’s race, where recent public polling shows GOP nominee Rick Jackson slightly ahead of Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms. Republicans believe Jackson’s strength could keep the Senate race closer than currently expected.
But they have grown increasingly pessimistic about their prospects of flipping Georgia’s Senate seat, as Collins trails Ossoff in the polls and the overall environment for the GOP continues to grow more difficult. SLF’s decision to go dark last week — so close to the election — raises questions about how much more the group will ultimately invest in the state.
“Every dollar Schumer spends in Georgia is one not spent on offense in red states. Republicans’ financial advantage doesn’t just show up in more ads, it keeps Dems on defense,” a person familiar with SLF’s spending plans told Blue Light News.
Ossoff also holds a massive fundraising advantage over Collins, who had just over $1 million cash on hand as of Oct. 1, giving Ossoff a major financial cushion in the final stretch even before the major Senate super PACs pulled back their spending.
The GOP has been triaging races across the map: SLF shifted money out of North Carolina, another perennial battleground, while moving resources toward defending GOP-held seats in states like Kansas and South Carolina, where the Senate contests have become increasingly competitive.
Still, even as the money going into Georgia has continued to slow, Trump appears to be prioritizing the longtime battleground.
At a rally in Dalton on Friday, he urged voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot, while praising Collins and the state’s GOP governor’s nominee, Rick Jackson.
Meredith Lee Hill and Andrew Howard contributed.
EDINBURG, Texas — A man walks out to a packed arena filled with fervent fans. Nostalgic music blasts out over the speakers as the audience of the spectacle sways and sing along. Firehouse-red campaign hats litter the heads of the devotees jammed in tight to see the show.
But this isn’t a MAGA rally, and that’s not Donald Trump hitting the stage.
On stage is Bobby Pulido, the Tejano star turned Democratic House candidate clad in head-to-toe leather and a black cowboy hat. The occasion? “La Ultima Desvelada,” what he said will be his final concert in Edinburg on Saturday night.
Pulido is trying to flip a district that has steadily, over the past decade, slipped from the grasp of the Democratic Party and became the ultimate swing test for the country’s most culturally conservative Latino voters.
If Pulido wins in Texas’ 15th District against incumbent GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz, the Democratic Party stands to gain much more than just a seat that could make a House majority. As the party looks to rebuild with Latinos and lay the groundwork for 2028, the Tejano crooner could become a strong messenger to one of Democrats’ weakest voting blocs.
“Mexican-American men haven’t really felt like they have a home,” in either party, Pulido told Blue Light News in an interview. “It almost feels like the Latino man wants to be that provider, and he can’t fulfill that right now.”
Like many Democrats this cycle, Pulido has dialed in on affordability and an aggressive economic messaging slamming Trump’s tariffs, the war with Iran and the growing stream of big corporate money in political campaigns.
But unlike his fellow Democrats, Pulido echoes a social conservatism that has defined the region. He’s “chapado a la antigua,” he told reporters Friday — a Spanish saying for old-school or traditional.
“Those traditions of how [Latino men] were raised are going away, and I think there’s a lot of frustration,” Pulido told Blue Light News. “They want somebody to talk to them in the language of, ‘Let me go out there and work, right? So I can provide for my family.’”
Pulido has tapped into a level of political fervor and cultural star power for which the Democratic Party has been starved. Trump won the district by a staggering 18 points in 2024 — and it was redrawn by Republicans last year. But Pulido’s near-universal name ID as an Edinburg native and music star, combined with historic headwinds buffeting, put the south Texas district on the map as one of the biggest toss-ups this cycle.
With just over two weeks to go, Pulido is in a dead heat against De La Cruz. He’s leaving behind three decades as a musician, multiple Latin Grammys and packed arenas for a shot at representing his hometown in the halls of Congress.
The 956 region knows Pulido and his family to an extent that very few would-be members of Congress could boast. They know his father, Roberto Pulido, also a famous Tejano singer who joined his son onstage. They know his uncle, a former county judge. But beyond that, with billions of streams to his name, Pulido’s 90s hits became a ubiquitous sound for the RGV. And only in the RGV would his supporters trot up to the arena on horseback, coming off the nearby expressway.
That fame, and his deep district ties, made Pulido one of the party’s most prized recruits this cycle. He’s one of the DCCC’s top candidates, with a campaign staffed in part by blue dog organizations like The Bench while also boasting the same Latino consultants as Sen. Ruben Gallego’s (D-Ariz.) 2024 Senate campaign.
And Democrats see the potential for the kind of surrogate Pulido could become on the 2028 campaign trail. Many of the party’s biggest Latino voices — and attention grabbers — are further on the left.
“What we haven’t had is someone like Bobby Pulido, who’s going to come from the moderate wing of the party, that is going to be a rock star,” Gallego told Blue Light News.
Should Pulido head to D.C. next year, he’d be joining alongside a crop of fresh progressive Democrats who have ridden the wave of democratic socialism in blue enclaves — most notably New York’s Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez.
“We’re not going to agree on everything,” Pulido conceded. But with Texas primed to get even more electoral votes in future presidential cycles, the party’s direction has to “resonate inside the middle of the heartland,” he said.
But it’s not only electoral numbers: the early Democratic nominating calendar is heavily Latino, with both New Mexico and Nevada in the lineup. Mexican-American men could help tip the scales in either state.
Pulido knows if he pulls off the win, potential 2028 hopefuls will come flocking, asking him how to win over the Rio Grande Valley. Could he see himself backing 2028 presidential candidates if he wins? They’ll have to convince Pulido first.
“I will hold any type of endorsement or anything very close to my chest, and I will definitely make sure that I get behind somebody that has a policy that resonates with Hispanics,” Pulido said.
Since Pulido released his hit single “Desvelado” in the mid-90s to today, his hometown of Edinburg and its sister cities across the area transformed from a once-reliable blue working class district to a part of the country deeply wary of the Democratic establishment. Latino voters have embraced the economic populism of Trump and other GOP candidates who touted their more conservative values. In 2022, De La Cruz clinched the district for Republicans.
By 2024, Democrats lacked an economic message or answers for what many in the area decried as wide-open borders, Pulido told reporters on the sidelines of his rally in Mercedes on Friday.
That’s made the stakes for his races all the bigger, with the RGV becoming the ultimate bellwether.
“Bobby’s politics are different from the way that we have branded ourselves nationally as a party, but I think that’s a good thing,” said Melissa Morales of Somos PAC, which has poured millions into Pulido’s race.
But Pulido’s campaign has been marred by scandal. He’s taken heat for crude social media posts about women and gay people. Frankie Caballero, one of his former bandmates, was convicted as a child sex offender. Pulido insisted he was not aware of Caballero’s history while he was in the band as a contractor, having not done a background check. Caballero was convicted in 2014, but later returned to performing with Pulido.
De La Cruz’s campaign has made Pulido’s ties to Caballero a staple of attacks. “Bobby Pulido had his uncle drop a child rape charge against a friend so he could play in his band. Then he bailed this pedophile out of jail, brought him to a middle school, and looked the other way while he molested children in South Texas. Latinas are choosing Monica De La Cruz, a working mom fighting for their families, over a corrupt scumbag celebrity who will make life more expensive and already put a predator back on the streets because he likes his accordion,” James Shook, De La Cruz’s campaign manager, said in a statement.
Pulido was defensive over his past, but apologized for his social media posts in an interview with Blue Light News. He has given varied responses on what he knew about why Caballero went to prison. “I apologize for everything that I’ve ever joked about that offended anybody,” Pulido told Blue Light News in August. “But I can’t continue to revisit every single one.”
With hundreds flocking to Bert Ogden Arena to witness his final show, Pulido’s popularity has hardly dimmed because of it. Multiple voters in attendance who spoke with Blue Light News said they had heard the allegations about Pulido and his accordionist, but none said that it was affecting their vote.
“It’s unfortunate, but I’m not gonna hold it against Bobby,” said Joe Barrera, a musician from the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo area. Barrera, an independent, added that he’s still undecided between voting for Pulido or De La Cruz — but said he feels “it’s time for a change.”
The economy and immigration dominated the reasons why voters in the crowd pledged their support for the singer. The cost of living has gotten “re pe caro” — super expensive — Frank Trevino, a Democrat from Edinburg, told Blue Light News. He and fellow Edinburg voter Felix Sandoval said they knew Pulido’s mother and remembered Bobby as a kid. “We need to support him, God help him,” Sandoval said.
Pulido’s final show Saturday was the talk of Edinburg, from the hallways of the nearby inns to the post-concert stop at Whataburger. Clocking in at nearly two hours, it served as a greatest hits replay for the last 30 years of his life — and a trip down memory lane for many of the voters who grew up with him. “Of course I’m emotional, but I’m leaving with no regrets,” Pulido said from the stage. Pulido is simultaneously up for yet another Latin Grammy recognition this year.
And for his status as a longtime entertainer, Pulido is not a fan of the comparisons to Trump, who in his words, is “full of shit.” Yet it’s also something his campaign has been (perhaps ironically) leaning into, with “Make Quinceñeras Great Again” hats nodding to what’s become his signature campaign move.
With early voting kicking off on Monday, Pulido sharpened his closing pitch: He’s not for Democrats or Republicans — he’s for his district.
“I want to give something back to the place that’s given me so much,” Pulido said. “And if you give me the honor of representing you in Congress, I give you my word that I’ll never forget where I came from.”
JACKSON, Mississippi — Raphael Warnock is racing to get Democrat Scott Colom elected in deep-red Mississippi. It’s part of his bigger bet on the South.
Colom, a charismatic local prosecutor, is within striking distance in the polls of unseating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. And in the absence of more dedicated resources, Warnock himself is trying to fill the gap by directing money and donors to the race.
He has raised over $500,000 directly into Colom’s campaign committee, according to a person with direct knowledge of his efforts, granted anonymity to share private details. And, over the course of four separate fundraisers, has tried to steer Senate Democrats’ top donors to the race.
In April, he told attendees at a Democratic donor breakfast that he thinks the party is “sleeping on” the Mississippi contest, prompting surprised laughter from the crowd, according to a recording of the event obtained by Blue Light News.
“I’m going to ask you to resist the Democratic tendency to ignore the South,” he told the assembled donors. “And for our own sake, for the sake of us having a possibility of winning over time, I think we can win in Mississippi if the conditions are just right.”
Warnock, who is also widely seen as a potential presidential contender, is trying to capitalize on an incredibly unfavorable midterm environment for the GOP that has put more and more traditionally red states into play. He has been criss-crossing not just Mississippi, but the broader South, to convince Democrats to expand into the region and shore up their support with Black voters ahead of 2028.
The time is ripe, he said, for a “new kind of Southern strategy” — a play off of former President Richard Nixon’s plan for Republicans to best Democrats in the region in the late 1960s that capitalized on white backlash to the civil rights movement.
It’s been a hard sell so far, particularly in Mississippi: Republicans control all levers of state government, and Trump handily won by 24 points in 2024. The last time Mississippians sent a Democrat to the Senate was 1982.
Even though national Democrats speak highly of Colom’s candidacy, their resources to compete on an expanded Senate battleground map are already strained, and money has been prioritized in more expensive, high-profile contests like Iowa, Alaska and Maine. The half-million Warnock has raised for Colom is 15% of the $3.5 million he’s managed to raise over the cycle.
It’s still a strategic move on Warnock’s part: An upset win by Colom would boost the Senator’s own profile as he continues to leave the door open to running for president. And even if Colom loses, the South is a treasure trove of delegates for 2028 — and Black voters dominate the region in Democratic primaries.
Pressed whether he’s interested in the White House himself, Warnock evaded, saying he’s “trying to think and pray about the highest and best use of my skills.”
“I’ve been at crossroads many times, and in the moment, I’ve always known what to do,” he added.
Other Democrats see the work as helpful regardless of what Warnock does in 2028.
“The ’28 chatter is something he will listen to, but I don’t think it’s something that’s part of a checklist he’s marching towards,” said Georgia Democratic strategist Andrew Heaton, who has worked on Warnock’s Senate campaigns. “Regardless of what happens on that front, ’28 is going to be a very busy year because — especially if he decides not to run — I think there’s no question he’s planning on running for the Senate again.”
Free from the constraints of reelection this year, Warnock has traveled across the Carolinas, Mississippi and his Georgia home to support local candidates and pitch a vision of his party’s future that runs through the region that launched his political career.
In interviews with Blue Light News on the campaign trail, Warnock drew parallels between Democrats’ 2020 wins in Georgia — his own, Sen. Jon Ossoff’s and former President Joe Biden’s — and the conditions he sees emerging in the Magnolia State for Democratic growth. Those kinds of wins will disappear from the horizon if Democrats fail to invest now and in the Black voters who are core to the party’s coalition, he argued.
Mississippi, where over 35% of the population is Black, would be key to the Democratic Party’s efforts to win back voters of color, as many shifted toward Trump and Republicans in 2024. Strong Democratic candidates have reached around 45% of the vote in the state in recent years, but none have been able to punch through for a victory in Mississippi, which has a long history of extremely polarized voting along racial lines.
But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act, there are signs Black voters are surging to the polls in higher numbers — and some Democrats hope that could remake the state’s politics.
“It is in the interest of the party to invest in the base and have the base understand that the party understands that these are loyal Democratic voters, and Black voters want what other voters want,” said Warnock. “They want the same kind of prosperity and opportunity that all families want.”
Colom was more blunt. Asked if he equates ignoring Mississippi and its Senate race to the party ignoring Black voters, he said: “Yeah, of course, 100 percent.”
Democrats have not been averse to flooding money into traditionally red states in the final stretch of the campaign, but Mississippi has not yet made it high on that list, where Colom still faces an uphill battle to close the gap with Hyde-Smith. Building out the statewide grassroots infrastructure that has proved effective in places like Georgia takes time and resources, which have yet to land in Mississippi at a significant scale this cycle.
“Democrats are investing in Mississippi, but not enough. And, I think, certainly not as much as I think we should, and not as much as we could,” Warnock said in an interview between campaign stops in the state. He was in somewhat of a rush: between a fundraiser for Colom and an event with local faith leaders, Warnock wanted to visit the home of Medgar Evers, the civil rights era titan who was shot and killed in the car port of his Jackson home in 1963.
“We’re playing enough here to force the other side to compete in Mississippi, and that is an improvement, but it’s not enough,” he said.
Colom himself has begged national Democrats to focus on his race.
“Mississippi has really always been competitive. It just hasn’t got the attention, the resources it deserves,” Colom said in an interview at his campaign headquarters.
Some has come: American Bridge, a Democrat-aligned super PAC, pumped over $2 million into the race earlier this month, and earlier this week the New York Times reported that a single megadonor is set to split $7 million of his personal wealth between Colom’s race and others.
Several top Democrats have made an effort to signal their support.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg plan to visit the state before Election Day. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair, Kirsten Gillibrand, have each hosted separate fundraisers for Colom, according to a source familiar with the events, granted anonymity to share private details. And Delaware Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a DSCC vice-chair, campaigned with Colom in Mississippi.
Colom’s campaign committee outraised Hyde-Smith’s over the summer, posting $1.3 million to her just over $640,000. But it pales in comparison to the tens of millions that have flooded into other states.
In separate statements, spokespeople for the DSCC and Senate Majority PAC lauded Colom as a strong candidate, but said they were constrained by how much they could spend. Both groups said they were monitoring the race “closely.”
Republicans are still publicly maintaining their confidence in their hold on the seat. Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, tied Colom to Washington Democrats in a statement and said the campaign “planned for Colom to have plenty of resources. We are executing our own campaign plan with that in mind.”
One day after his sojourn in Mississippi, Warnock was presented with a stark contrast in what Democrats are capable of when they devote resources to a Southern state. He was in North Carolina on Thursday, where Democratic Senate nominee Roy Cooper is dominating his Republican opponent, Michael Whatley, in fundraising and polling. As one of Democrats’ top candidate recruits of the cycle, Cooper has attracted significant resources and national attention from the outset of the race.
But Mississippi and North Carolina are two enormously different states, in population, income, and demographics — and that change didn’t happen overnight. Democrats began significantly investing in the state ever since President Barack Obama’s 2008 victory there and ramped up their efforts after the GOP-led state government redrew the state’s congressional maps in 2013.
“It’s taken a lot over the last 13 years,” Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.) said on the sidelines of a party canvass kickoff in Durham. “Our eye has never been taken off the ball, and because we believe that we could make that change, that we needed to be the change that we wanted to see, we have put that in action now, and we’re going to win because of it.”
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