Congress
Maxine Waters is the newest target in Democrats’ intergenerational war
LOS ANGELES — Rep. Maxine Waters, an institution of Los Angeles Democratic politics, is facing an upstart challenger from her party seeking to capitalize on the national wave of generational change-seekers.
Myla Rahman, a nonprofit executive, hopes to turn Waters’ 35 years in Congress — and 50 years overall as an elected official — against her, arguing the 87-year-old incumbent has lost touch with her district.
“The community has said that they’d like new energy, a new perspective,” said Rahman in an interview. “And the reality is, the average age is 36 years old in the district. The average person is a renter in the district. So we’ve got a lot of issues that are relatable to my life experience.”
Waters is the rare member of Congress to be both a local icon and a national meme. She gained near-celebrity status in President Donald Trump’s first term as “Auntie Maxine” who regularly lobbed acerbic barbs at the president and his administration. She has maintained an electoral lock on her South Los Angeles district, normally winning with more than 70 or 80 percent of the vote.
That commanding presence has deterred any serious challenge against Waters in decades. But Rahman is aiming to tap into Democrats’ party-wide discontent over their graying representation, spurred on by President Joe Biden’s initial decision to run for reelection in 2024 despite concerns about his advanced age and mental acuity.
In California, long-serving Democratic incumbents like Reps. Brad Sherman and Mike Thompson are facing insurgent campaigns from younger opponents. The generational rift is also roiling the Congressional Black Caucus, whose members are facing challenges from younger Black politicians who argue the old guard is not fighting hard enough for the current political moment.
Rahman, who is 53, pointedly noted Waters has been her representative since she moved into the district at age 6. She said her differences from the congressmember are stylistic, not ideological, and that she considers herself “more energetic, younger, more relatable in terms of the experiences that people face in the district.”
Rahman said she is especially focused on affordable health care after surviving two occurrences of breast cancer. She received her diagnosis the second time just as she was elected city clerk in Carson and stepped down from the role one day after winning because of her health. She is now cancer-free.
Waters’ seniority in Congress has made her a powerful force on Blue Light News; she is currently the top-ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services committee and is in position to become its chair if the Democrats win control in the midterm elections.
But Waters is not particularly flush in campaign cash, perhaps because she has so rarely faced a serious challenge. She raised roughly $430,000 in 2025 and started the year with less than $150,000 cash on hand.
Rahman initially sought a state legislative seat in 2026 and raised less than $35,000 for her Assembly campaign, most of which she donated herself. But she said she’s “very confident” she’d be competitive fundraising for a congressional seat. She’s hired veteran Democratic consultant Mike Trujillo to work on the campaign.
After working as a high-level staffer for Los Angeles-area legislators, Rahman said she’s well aware her decision to go up against a pillar of the city’s political scene will stir some outrage.
“I’m sure I’ll get a lot of calls. I’m waiting for ‘how dare you? The audacity of you, who do you think you are,’” she said. “And what I can say is that there’s a choice, and this is a democracy. That’s why we have elections, and the voters can decide.”
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan announced Wednesday he will seek to lead House Republicans as they enter the minority for the first time in four years.
“As we look to the future, we must learn from these results,” he said in a letter to colleagues a day after voters delivered an enormous rebuke to GOP candidates. “When Americans get knocked down, they pick themselves up and get back to work. Now our Conference must do the same.”
With Republicans at risk of losing 40 seats or more, Jordan is seeking to lead a much diminished corps of lawmakers. He pitched himself in the letter as a “battle-tested” combatant who is well-equipped to tangle with an emboldened new Democratic majority.
“In these next two years, our job cannot be merely to spotlight how radical this new Democrat party is — offense, not defense, wins elections,” he wrote, promising to “prioritize making Americans’ neighborhoods safer, keeping more money in their pockets, and protecting enduring American values and freedoms.”
“To restore our majority, we must restore voters’ faith in our ability to deliver on these principles,” he added.
Many Republicans expected Jordan to run for the position if Republicans lost the House after spending months laying the groundwork for a third leadership bid. Most recently chair of the Judiciary Committee, the 62-year-old House veteran has long been a popular figure among the GOP’s conservative base and helped a variety of candidates across the party’s ideological divides in the final weeks leading up to the election.
Jordan is expected to be joined in the minority leader race by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who could make his own announcement later Wednesday after Speaker Mike Johnson told his staff he plans to step aside.
Jordan took aim at the current House GOP hierarchy in his letter to colleagues: “For too long, we have operated without a clear plan to survive the hour or the day in front of us. That will not cut it against an emboldened and energetic Democrat majority.”
“We need a Leadership team that is active and engaged, forward-thinking and straight-shooting,” he added.
A co-founder of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, Jordan has made inroads with more moderate colleagues in recent years. His previous bids at a top leadership position — for minority leader against Kevin McCarthy in 2018 and then later to replace McCarthy as speaker in 2023 — were unsuccessful.
When he ran for the speakership, a group of moderate House Republicans blocked Jordan in a public vote on the House floor. This time, Jordan will only need a majority of the Republican Conference to win as minority leader.
The race for House minority whip is shaping up to be a contest between the current House majority whip, Tom Emmer of Minnesota, and Republican Study Committee Chair August Pfluger of Texas.
Emmer, who already said he had planned to run for the job regardless of the outcome of the midterms, has officially started making calls, according to two people directly familiar with the outreach, granted anonymity to describe private conversations. Pfluger, meanwhile, formally announced his plan to run for whip Wednesday morning in a letter to colleagues.
“We started 2025 with a clear mandate, and although there were successes, I believe we left a lot on the table,” Pfluger said in the letter, obtained by Blue Light News. “Some circumstances may have been out of our control, but we also missed many opportunities.”
Pfluger was among those who had pushed previously for Republicans to crack down on alleged fraud in social safety net programs in party-line budget reconciliation bills. He said Wednesday that while House Republicans have “a lot to be proud of,” the time has come to “regroup, recharge and fully unify.”
It’s all unfolding after the GOP’s devastating loss on Tuesday night, which could have some members looking for a fresh leadership team. Already Speaker Mike Johnson has said he has no intention of running to be minority leader, clearing the path for Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio or the current House majority leader, Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
House GOP leadership elections will begin next week, with candidates having until this Friday at noon to make their bids official.
Democrats have taken back control of the Senate. But two marquee races remain too close to call — and may not be decided any time soon.
In Mississippi, with nearly all precincts reporting, Democratic challenger Scott Colom and incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith are in a dead heat, with each claiming 48.9% of the vote. According to the latest count, Colom leads Hyde by just 43 votes with more than 900,000 ballots cast.
The state will count all mail-in ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 and received within five days of the election. Provisional ballots, which are provided to people whose eligibility to vote is uncertain, are also allowed to be counted for up to five business days after Election Day.
Neither candidate has claimed victory, but both projected confidence in election night speeches. Hyde-Smith said she would “continue” as the state’s senator, while Colom said that “deep down” in his “soul” he believed he would win. If Colom pulls it off, he’ll be the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in Mississippi in nearly four decades as well as the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.
Mississippi state law does not have a mechanism for automatic vote recounts, and it remains unclear whether, or how, a recount could be initiated.
Meanwhile in Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola is leading Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan by a razor-thin margin of several hundred votes with about three-quarters of ballots counted. But a final margin may be weeks away.
Alaska accepts absentee ballots up to 15 days after Election Day. The state uses ranked-choice voting if no candidate gets at least 50% in the first round of counting. As of Wednesday morning, Peltola was at 48.2% of ballots counted so far, while Sullivan was at 47.9%.
The state won’t even begin to tabulate voters’ preferences for two weeks, meaning we may not know who won in Alaska until closer to Thanksgiving.
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