Politics
Pro-Israel group wades into Democratic House primaries
A pro-Israel group is wading into nearly a dozen contentious House primaries as it tries to shape the Democratic Party’s approach to the controversial issue.
The Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, which backs pro-Israel Democrats, is endorsing 11 House candidates, including several in expensive and crowded primaries the party must win in order to retake the House. The group’s initial endorsement list was shared first with Blue Light News.
DMFI, first launched in 2019, is one of several groups across the political spectrum looking to influence the party’s views on Israel, even as its military operations in Gaza have divided the Democratic Party and become an early litmus test for both 2026 congressional candidates and 2028 presidential hopefuls.
The endorsements include candidates in six battleground races and five more in safe-blue, but crowded, Democratic primaries. They are backing moderate state Rep. Shannon Bird over progressive state Rep. Manny Rutinel for the right to face Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) in a swingy Colorado district.
In New York, the group is backing Cait Conley, who has entered a crowded primary to take on Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) in a district which Kamala Harris won by a one-point margin in 2024. In Texas, DMFI has endorsed police officer Johnny Garcia in a wide-open primary for the newly drawn, red-leaning seat.
DMFI is backing a pair of candidates in two of the four most competitive seats in Pennsylvania — Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who will face off against Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), and former TV anchor Janelle Stelson, who is also on track to run against Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). And in Virginia, former Rep. Elaine Luria picked up the group’s support as she vies to take on her former opponent, Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.).
The other candidates who are receiving DMFI’s endorsement are all running in crowded primaries in safe blue seats: Maryland state Del. Adrian Boafo, who is running to replace retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.); Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is running to replace Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who is running for Senate; and former Obama administration official Maura Sullivan, who is running to replace Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), who is running for the Senate.
“The vast majority of Americans support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and understand the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said former Rep. Kathy Manning, who serves on the DMFI PAC board. “If you’re running in a competitive district, you need Democrats, you need independents, you need Republicans.”
Several groups, including DMFI and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, are boosting pro-Israel candidates with significant outside spending. The two groups have often overlapped in their endorsements, but AIPAC supports Democrats and Republicans — and has drawn the ire of progressives. DMFI, for its part, is focused on regaining a Democratic congressional majority.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, dropped more than $38 million on independent expenditures in 2024, while DMFI spent about $4.3 million. DMFI President Brian Romick said the group expects to be spending “comfortably” in the “seven-figures again” in 2026 but declined to elaborate further on the plans.
In Illinois, among the first primaries next month, DMFI and AIPAC appear aligned in their preferred candidates. DMFI announced it is backing former Rep. Melissa Bean, who is running to replace Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who is running for the Senate, and Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, who is vying to replace Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), another Senate candidate.
Bean and Miller have also attracted attention for their connections to AIPAC. Their primary opponents in both races have accused them of benefiting from AIPAC’s spending, concealed by shell super PACs that are boosting them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in positive TV spending. But DMFI has not yet endorsed in Illinois’ 9th District, another contentious primary to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky that AIPAC appears to have waded into.
Earlier this month, AIPAC triggered a wave of criticism and frustration, even from its own allies, for spending $2 million to sink former Rep. Tom Malinowski in a congressional special election in New Jersey. The group’s spending backfired, eliminating Malinowski, but failing to lift up its preferred candidate. Analilia Mejia, a progressive organizer who has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza, ultimately won.
Romick and Manning declined to comment on AIPAC’s strategy, with the former congresswoman noting DMFI is “a distinctly different and separate organization.”
In 2024, DMFI and AIPAC targeted former Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) in 2024, both of whom lost their primaries to pro-Israel candidates. Romick demurred on whether DMFI planned to target any Democratic incumbents in 2026, adding that it is going “to take these primaries as they come and see if things develop.”
Jessica Piper contributed reporting.
AUSTIN — Democrats’ vision of a blue Texas is finally here.
James Talarico has been elected a U.S. senator and Gina Hinojosa as governor, the first Democrats to win either office in more than a generation. The four other statewide candidates are leading as ballots continue to be counted. Democrats further down the ballot are leading some red districts, changing the complexion of the state legislature, congressional delegation and courts.
“It’s something that I haven’t seen in decades, that none of us have seen in decades,” said former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a moderate Republican.
It’s an outcome that even the most bullish Democrats didn’t dare enunciate in the late days of the election. But as results have poured in Tuesday night, the party is outpacing its expectations across the country’s second most populous state amidst a national romp.
Both Hinojosa’s and Talarico’s victory margins came by running up vote counts in Texas’ deep-blue urban centers and while also leading in the largest Republican-led county in the country, Tarrant County. They reversed Republican gains across the Latino-heavy Rio Grande Valley region, an ancestrally Democratic area that had swung hard to the right in recent years. Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez romped to a near-20 point victory in a seat Republicans drew to favor them during last year’s redrawing of the state’s House map, ousting a top Republican recruit who campaigned alongside Speaker Mike Johnson to begin election day.
It amounts to a set of remarkable results in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988 and to the governor’s mansion since 1990. In recent cycles, Democrats have tried and failed to flip the state in presidential and U.S. Senate contests but have been largely uncompetitive for state offices. But Tuesday’s blue wave slammed into Texas particularly hard, as it combined frustrations over the economy, immigration enforcement, data centers and corruption with a collapse of Trump’s 2024 coalition.
“We reminded voters that Republicans have been in charge in Texas for 30 years. That every problem we have, was caused by Republicans,” Michelle Lowe Solis, chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party. “They aren’t going to fix the problems, they caused them.”
As votes continue to be counted, Democrats appear poised to blunt the impact of Republicans’ attempted gerrymander, likely sweeping the Rio Grande Valley congressional seats while holding onto another San Antonio-area district drawn to favor Republicans. In state Supreme Court races, they lead in all four seats up for grabs, potentially turning a 9-0 conservative majority into a 5-4 split. Among the first 36 state house races called by the Associated Press, 34 have gone to Democrats and just two to Republicans.“Voters aren’t dumb,” said Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ BOLD PAC. “Even though the Republicans have tried to cheat with the series of gerrymanders, that has, I think, only made voters in those areas more willing to participate.”
Talarico’s and Hinojosa’s victories will be felt nationally. Texas Democrats, who have long asked for national money and resources in a state where elections are costly, now have a test case of how to win. And it will bolster their arguments that their state, with 40 electoral votes, should be treated as a presidential battleground.
Ali Bianco and Jonathan Martin contributed reporting.
Just a few hours into election night, Republicans acknowledged what appeared to be a historic midterm defeat — a long-feared “blue wave” that had started washing across the nation.
The extent of the washout became clear soon after polls closed: Republicans lost a South Carolina Senate seat for the first time in nearly 30 years. Democrats nipped on the heels of House incumbents in deep red Florida districts. And the man in charge of the party’s House reelection effort was at grave risk of losing his own seat.
By 10 p.m., Democrats had already flipped three GOP House seats — itself enough to win a majority if Republicans can’t make gains elsewhere — and many in the party feared dozens more could follow as voters registered their dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump.
Voters in Texas, a ruby-red state for a generation, appeared at risk of handing multiple statewide races to Republicans and possible control of the legislature. Joe Straus, a former state House speaker, cast it as a historic rebuke of an unpopular president.
“President Trump hasn’t exactly done any Republicans favors across the country,” he said on a Blue Light News election night broadcast. “They haven’t done themselves favors, frankly, by following so closely along.”
Many of the political professionals charged with getting GOP candidates elected in this environment said the results could be potentially historic in nature.
“We are looking at tsunami territory,” said one national Republican operative who, like others, was granted anonymity to candidly describe the returns.
“This is the worst electoral defeat in my lifetime and likely in history,” said another GOP operative working on battleground races. “Trump said his name and record was on the ballot and people responded — resoundingly.”
At an ill-fated victory party for Senate candidate Michael Whatley in North Carolina, staff were already packing up the room less than two hours after polls closed. Returns showed Democrat Roy Cooper on track to win by as many as 20 points in a race that was supposed to have been tooth-and-nail.
Standing in the room, one North Carolina Republican openly pondered what many others in the party had long avoided saying openly — that it was finally time to think about life after Trump.
“Trump has done some excellent things, and I appreciate that. But it can’t be the party of Trump forever,” said Jonathan Fletcher, a former GOP county chair. “If the Republican Party is going to be serious about winning, we have to be serious about winning people in the middle.”
Nearly every state, district and county shows movement toward Democrats, from counties that Trump won three times to blue strongholds where Democrats are improving their margins. County-level data shows Democrats doing on average more than 5 points better than Kamala Harris did in the 2024 presidential race.
That suggests that districts Trump won by double digits just two years ago are in reach for Democrats.
The losses threatened to pile up even after Republican candidates, committees and super PACs spent massive sums in an effort to retain control of Congress — including more than $380 million from President Donald Trump’s political operation.
“I can’t believe how these House races aren’t close given the amount spent,” a senior Senate GOP operative said. Another senior Senate GOP official called it a “bloodbath.”
Many of the Republicans said the war in Iran, which sent voters’ gas prices soaring, and continued frustration with the economy drove frustration with a party that won on those same issues in 2024.
On top of that some quickly vented about substandard candidates — such as Darline Graham in the South Carolina Senate race and Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate contest.
“Not only were folks upset about the war, inflation and gas prices, but add to that the fact they think he was making them eat a shit sandwich in Darline, and they just had enough,” said Mick Mulvaney, a former Trump White House chief of staff and South Carolina congressman.
Trump said on Truth Social his own absence from the ballot for the drastic Republican underperformance — even after barnstorming the country begging Republicans to “vote like I’m on the ballot.”
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump posted shortly after 10:30 p.m.
Other Republicans were ready to blame Trump’s own decisions.
“Republicans got their asses kicked tonight because of the Iran war — plain and simple. Everything else is just noise and spin,” said a person close to the White House.
Meanwhile, power in Washington was already shifting. The likely next chair of the House Oversight Committee, who has been gearing up for massive probes into the Trump administration, issued a two-word statement Tuesday addressed to administration officials and the “Trump Crime Family.”
“Lawyer up,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California said.
Will Steakin, Erin Doherty, Lauren Fedor, Ashley Ahn and Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
Joe Biden was unceremoniously ushered out of the White House two years ago.
On Tuesday, he got a small measure of revenge.
Prominent Biden administration alumni are winning in a handful of notable races, with Keisha Lance Bottoms — the one-time Atlanta mayor turned Biden’s senior adviser and director of the Office of Public Engagement — leading the pack by flipping Georgia’s governorship.
The victories, his former staffers say, are an important part of rehabilitating his legacy within a Democratic Party that all but banished him in 2024.
“It’s proof that President Biden assembled a talented team of public servants — who the public is calling on now to help turn this country around,” said Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff. “These fantastic men and women will make life more affordable, health care more available, protect our rights, fight corruption, and make our country stronger.”
Biden was not a regular on the trail this year, and most Democrats kept their distance from the former president. But he did weigh in on a handful of primaries, helping put loyal lieutenants in front of voters who still held him in high regard.
While Bottoms was the highest profile victory, there’s a number of Biden alumni also poised to head to Washington. Gabe Amo, who won a 2023 special election in a blue Rhode Island seat, secured his first full term in Congress. And Dan Koh, who won Massachusetts’ 6th District to succeed Rep. Seth Moulton, was Biden’s deputy Cabinet secretary and deputy director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
He leaned into his Biden endorsement throughout the campaign and this week reposted a video of a phone call he and his family had with Joe and Jill Biden on primary night in September.
“Mr. President and Madame first lady, thank you so much for all of your support,” he told them. “It wouldn’t have been possible without both of you. … You changed my life by giving me a job of a lifetime. And you got my back the minute I decided to run.”
Biden’s Cabinet also had a strong night in other governor races. Xavier Becerra, Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services, had a solid polling lead over Republican Steve Hilton in the race to be California’s next governor going into Tuesday. And, Deb Haaland, Biden’s Interior secretary, was projected to win the New Mexico governor race.
“In his farewell speech, President Biden warned that ‘an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy,’” said Andrew Bates, the former president’s longtime spokesperson. “He urged his team and supporters to keep standing up for the values that we all care about, including decency, hard work, and a sense of national community. On the ballot and off, a whole lot of his alumni are fighting to carry on that legacy.”
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