Politics
#Resistance Democrats are flopping in primaries
During President Donald Trump’s first term, they were resistance stars. During his second term, they couldn’t survive primaries.
Alexander Vindman’s Senate primary loss in Florida on Tuesday is the latest stumble for Democrats who rose to prominence during the impeachment trials and accountability protests of Trump’s first term. Vindman, a former National Security Council aide who testified during the 2019 House impeachment inquiry, made standing up to Trump and other forms of corruption a centerpiece of his campaign.
His national profile helped haul in big money, but that wasn’t enough to stave off an upset loss to democratic socialist Angie Nixon, whose win showed the shifting politics of the Democratic base.
“Vindman is a hero, but memories fade and the focus of most folks is on the cost of living,” said longtime Democratic strategist David Axelrod. “She made those issues her focus.”
Democratic voters clearly want fighters who will stand up to the president and the GOP. But the string of losses for resistance candidates from the first Trump term illustrates a new era for the restive Democratic base, where vocal opposition to the president through official channels and public remonstrations no longer guarantees success.
The political graveyard of Trump-resistance-fighter campaigns is growing by the week.
Two of the 2021 House impeachment managers, Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), are among them: DeGette lost her reelection bid to a democratic socialist this summer, while Swalwell dropped out of the California gubernatorial primary after a string of sexual assault allegations. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), the lead majority counsel in the first Trump impeachment inquiry, was ousted in his primary. Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer honored for his heroics on Jan. 6, 2021, lost a House bid in Maryland — his second unsuccessful run.
Other Democrats who built their profiles on Trump resistance flopped as well.
Tom Steyer, a prominent financier of the Trump resistance movement, failed to advance in the California gubernatorial primary. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), a member of the Oversight and Intelligence committees during the 2021 impeachment, fell short in his Senate bid. Reps. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) and Al Green (D-Texas), both of whom led impeachment pushes against Trump, were ousted by younger challengers. And George Conway, a longtime Trump critic and Lincoln Project co-founder, won just six percent of the vote in a House primary in New York City.
“‘#Resistance’ was a very Trump 1.0 mood, and now we are in a different moment of anger,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president at center-left think tank Third Way. “They’re mad about the war. They’re mad about costs. They’re mad about the establishment not having delivered anything for them.”
Not all the races were defined by Trump accountability politics. Swalwell dropped his bid after multiple sexual assault allegations, several incumbents lost to DSA challengers in closed primaries, and in Goldman’s case, the debate over Israel was a major factor.
A Democratic operative who worked on one of the resistance races, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the throughline is that those candidates are “institutionalists” who argued the justice system was going to hold Trump accountable. But voters have lost faith in those institutions after he returned to office, and were sold by other candidates’ messaging that relied more on railing against those very systems.
“The prescription isn’t what they were looking for anymore,” the operative said.
If Democrats retake control of the House, they will have to confront their base’s appetite for holding Trump accountable. Republicans have long warned that Democrats will immediately move to impeach Trump should they regain a House majority in 2027, which Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) — the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee — has signaled openness to.
But some Democrats are more careful. “There are certain sections of people that definitely want Democrats to prioritize impeachment of the president. There are also other segments of people that want Democrats to prioritize bringing down the cost of living,” said Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), who lost a runoff in a newly gerrymandered district. “You can’t just focus on one thing at the exclusion of the other.”
These electoral results, along with a growing list of Trump-endorsed candidates who have lost their primaries, suggest Americans are ready to move past Trump, argued Mike Madrid, who co-founded (and later disaffiliated with) the anti-Trump GOP group Lincoln Project.
“People are just tired of him, broadly. They don’t want to deal with him and the fights and the exhaustion and the never-Trump model, but also the sycophantic MAGA support model either,” Madrid said, pointing to the string of Trump-endorsed candidates who lost primaries on Tuesday, from Florida to Wyoming. “It’s Trump fatigue.’”
Some candidates are taking note — and adjusting accordingly.
David Jolly, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Florida and a former GOP House member, left the Republican Party in 2018 over disagreements with Trump. He was an independent after that and a regular BLN talking-head criticizing the president. He registered as a Democrat more than a year ago, before launching his bid for governor.
Despite Trump’s role in his political evolution, Jolly hasn’t made Trump central to his race for governor. “I’m not running the race about Trump. I rarely talk about him. But I am going to tie Byron to Trump’s economy,” Jolly told Blue Light News after winning the nomination on Tuesday night, referring to his Trump-endorsed opponent, GOP Rep. Byron Donalds.
Former Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), who served on the House Jan. 6th Committee, is running for her old seat against Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.). She said in a statement that she was “proud of the work I did in Congress to hold Donald Trump and his Administration accountable,” but quickly pivoted into an attack focused more on pocketbook issues.
Some of the candidates who lost primaries say their resistance bona fides did help — just not enough.
Dunn, the Capitol Police officer, earned the Presidential Citizens Medal from former President Joe Biden for his heroism on Jan. 6, 2021 and became well-known for his outspokenness about that day. He said that had little to do with his primary loss — although he acknowledged that Democratic voters’ top priority this cycle has shifted to affordability concerns.
“While name recognition got me to be a formidable challenger, it didn’t put me across the finish line,” said Dunn, who finished third in a crowded primary in Maryland’s 5th District. “I just think it’s too nuanced to just drill it down to ‘people just don’t care anymore.’” The Democratic nominee, Adrian Boafo, is “strongly about holding Donald Trump accountable,” Dunn added.
Goldman, similarly, lost to former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who often highlighted how he put his “body on the line” to push back against the administration’s immigration policies.
Steyer, the billionaire who ran for California governor, lost to Xavier Becerra — who campaigned hard on his court fights with the Trump administration as California’s attorney general, but also leaned into unrelated sections of his resume like his time as Biden’s health secretary.
Months before entering the race, Steyer reminded voters of the Need to Impeach campaign he once funded in an ad supporting last year’s Democratic gerrymander in California. But those credentials — which he later stressed on the campaign trail — were too dated and too intangible to push him over the top, according to his former campaign spokesperson Kevin Liao.
“Tom Steyer led an impeachment movement almost 10 years ago now, and I think it’s hard to expect the electorate to hold that long of a memory on anything that happened almost a decade ago,” he said.
Adam Wren, Kimberly Leonard, Riley Rogerson, Blake Jones and Madison Fernandez contributed reporting.
Michael Cohen and President Donald Trump have apparently patched up their differences in private. Now, they can do it in public.
The president is scheduled to do a phone interview Thursday with Cohen on the New York City radio show that Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” began hosting last month.
Cohen said in an interview ahead of the broadcast that he and his former boss have met privately three times and reconciled since a bitter and very public falling out during the president’s first term.
“I suggest you listen to the show. You may find it extremely interesting,” he told Blue Light News.
Cohen, who made a stunning conversion from pro-Trump bulldog to fierce critic, said he wasn’t sure if during the interview he and the president would discuss presidential clemency for the conviction that landed him a three-year prison sentence.
He isn’t sure he will even push for clemency from the president.
“We’ll see,” he said. “Will I make that request down the road? I don’t know. Maybe maybe not.”
That the president’s erstwhile attorney is even considering asking Trump for a pardon is somewhat remarkable.
Cohen was the star witness in New York prosecutors’ 2024 hush money case against Trump, which saw the then-candidate become the first ever former president to become a convicted felon when he was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records to keep word of an affair with former porn star Stormy Daniels from public view.
Cohen, who testified that he lied and bullied for Trump during his years working for the Trump Organization, later turned on his former boss. He told Blue Light News in an April 2024 interview, for example, that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was “grotesque” and predicted “there will never be another election again in America” if he was reelected.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 on charges related to hush money payments to help conceal his boss’ affair with a porn star.
He said he sent pardon applications to former President Joe Biden’s administration and the Trump White House but doesn’t consider clemency, which would enable him to recover his law license, critical to his life at this point.
“I’m turning 60 next week. What am I going to go start practicing law again?” he said. “What has the loss of my law license prevented me from actually doing? Though I do believe I’m deserving of it, that’s a whole nother story.”
Thursday’s interview will mark the culmination of a months-long effort by Cohen to get back in the president’s good graces. He told a New York radio station this summer that they had a text exchange that started their reconciliation.
Teasing the interview, Cohen said people will be “interested to hear two individuals that were friends for a decade and a half who have not publicly spoken in eight years” talk about their long shared past. “What could they talk about?” he said.
The hard-right Freedom Caucus is having a rough primary season.
Candidates with backing from the caucus and its allies flopped in primaries from Florida to Wyoming on Tuesday, adding to a string of recent losses for the group.
In Florida, Catalina Lauf lost in a House GOP primary to replace Freedom Caucus member and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds — despite backing from President Donald Trump as well as a late, small ad buy from the Freedom Caucus Fund and millions from other groups supporting her.
Hours later, more than a dozen Wyoming Freedom Caucus candidates in the state’s legislature lost to moderates. The group’s chair, Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, lost to a moderate in the secretary of state race, as did Freedom Caucus candidates for state superintendent and treasurer.
Those losses followed Rep. Andy Ogles’ (R-Tenn.) ouster earlier this month, Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) defeat in his run for Attorney General and Rep. Ralph Norman’s third-place primary finish in the race for South Carolina governor — all candidates who the Freedom Caucus Fund, the federal campaign apparatus of the House Freedom Caucus, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost.
The State Freedom Caucus Network, which backed the Wyoming legislative candidates, is not officially affiliated with the House Freedom Caucus, but its website says its mission is “building on the success of the House Freedom Caucus” to bring the fiscally conservative principles of the group to statehouses nationwide.
While there have been some wins for Freedom Caucus members this cycle, the combined pattern suggests that the ultra-conservative group’s name and influence is waning with GOP voters, and it comes as the factions of the party battle for relevancy when Trump’s presidency ends.
“They became largely an island of misfit toys: problematic in their party, and not for reasons that are necessarily popular with the public,” said GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett, who served in Trump’s first administration. “So you’ve seen diminished influence, and you’ve seen them losing seats, losing stature.”
In Wyoming, Robert Short, a moderate Republican, defeated Rodriguez-Williams by campaigning on a slogan of “make the secretary of state’s office boring again.”
“What Wyomingites were not and still are not is extremists,” Short told Blue Light News, arguing that by pushing an “extremist agenda” in the state, the local Freedom Caucus tried to “usher in a national-driven agenda that really does not have a home in Wyoming. And I think the voters of Wyoming responded resoundingly last night in saying, ‘not up in here.’”
The Wyoming losses were especially notable given how conservative that state is. Just two years ago, Freedom Caucus-aligned members took control of the state legislature and the state and gave Trump the highest vote share of any state in the nation. Two years before that, the state’s GOP primary voters resoundingly ousted former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who defied Trump over his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. It’s still one of only a handful of states where Trump’s approval rating is still positive. So for the Freedom Caucus to get thumped there is particularly notable.
Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus members struggled to pass its priorities and tried to axe broadly popular programs, from public media funding to dismantling the state’s economic development agency. In proposing those changes, the caucus often sparred with more traditional conservatives.
The caucus aimed to secure a supermajority through Tuesday’s primaries to ram its agenda through the legislature. Instead, voters resoundingly rejected them.
“It was a butt-whoopin,” said Wyoming GOP state Rep. Andrew Byron, who ran unopposed on Tuesday and is not a member of the Freedom Caucus. “It was a huge statement by the Wyoming voters that shows that if you’re not willing to govern and listen to your constituents, they react.”
Multiple Republicans in the state, including Byron, pointed to big spending from national outside groups backing the Freedom Caucus that made Wyomingites feel like out-of-staters were trying to influence their politics as reason for the sweeping losses.
“Wyoming people live in Wyoming because we like our way of life,” Byron said. “We’re not good at getting told what to do, and we really appreciate the Wild West out here.”
In a statement posted to social media, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus said it “IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE.”
“Last night’s results will not undo the policy wins we’ve delivered on behalf of the people,” the group wrote.
Their struggles are part of a broader pattern. The Freedom Caucus Fund has failed to elevate its candidates in four of the five races it spent in this year, spending a combined $1.5 million dollars to boost Lauf (who got just $30,000 in support from the group), Ogles, Norman, Roy and Nevada Republican David Flippo (who is the only candidate the group spent for and won).
These candidates didn’t all lose for the same reasons. Ogles had been plagued by various scandals, was running in a newly redrawn district with a number of new voters unfamiliar to him, and had limited campaign resources. Roy was hammered for his past support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and criticism of Trump in the 2024 presidential primary. Norman was running in a crowded field in which Trump was backing another candidate (and he is again in the South Carolina special Senate primary). For her part, Lauf struggled to break out in a crowded 10-way primary in a ruby red seat.
But observers say there’s often a common through-line: The candidates have been mired in controversy.
“In a day and age where candidates matter, they tend to create their own headaches,” Bartlett said. “Sometimes behavioral, sometimes ideological.”
Neither the Freedom Caucus Fund nor a spokesperson for Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) responded to a request for comment on Wednesday. Multiple Wyoming Freedom Caucus members who lost on Tuesday also did not return calls.
The only victory for the group where it spent money this cycle was in Nevada’s 2nd District, where it elevated Flippo in the race to replace retiring Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada), who has declined to support Flippo in the general election for the deep-red seat. In other races where the campaign arm didn’t spend, Donalds and Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) cruised to their states’ GOP nominations for governor, and Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) won the primary to succeed Sen. Tommy Tuberville in the upper chamber.
Some of those candidates, like Biggs and Tiffany, will face tough general election bids in battleground states — providing another test for the Freedom Caucus among a broader swath of voters.
South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham has given opponents fresh ammunition to attack her on her biggest vulnerability: her inexperience.
She revealed a major blindspot in her understanding of a critical foreign policy issue, U.S.-Taiwan relations, during Tuesday’s debate for the Aug. 25 snap Senate primary runoff to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham. Her response spread like wildfire on social media, with critics saying it proves she is “unprepared” to take office.
Asked whether Taiwan and the South China Sea are relevant national security priorities, Graham responded: “I’m just going to be honest here … I’m not that informed on national security, so.” She added that “national security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.”
It was a notable acknowledgement from a sitting senator, as tensions rise between China and Taiwan — and as the U.S. preoccupation with the Iran war calls into question how reliable a supporter it might be amid fears of a possible future invasion of Taiwan.
The gaffe exposed the exact weakness that her runoff opponent, GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, has been eager to highlight: the senator’s lack of tenure.
His allies immediately piled on.
Norman supporter and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote in a post on X that foreign policy experience is “not something you inherit” — a swipe at Graham’s appointment to fulfill her brother’s current term. Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official, expressed support for Norman, writing that Graham has “worked hard to hide any firm positions, and here she is at least being honest.”
“It very much confirmed many of our suspicions that while she might be a very nice lady, she is woefully underprepared or unprepared to be one of the 100 U.S. Senators in the Senate,” state Rep. Jordan Pace, who is supporting Norman in the runoff, said in an interview.
Norman said in a statement that South Carolinians deserve a senator with “know-how” on foreign policy: “Whether it’s spy balloons flying overhead or buying up land near South Carolina military bases, China continues to prove that it is a threat to the United States.”
Graham’s campaign, asked to clarify her response on U.S.-Taiwanese relations and her critics’ attacks over her misstep, pointed toward comments she made in the spin room after the debate: “What’s important are the people of South Carolina. They’re worried about their pocketbooks more than they’re worried about the South China Sea, quite honestly.”
Graham’s answer is also raising eyebrows among some of her own allies, with less than a week before next Tuesday’s election. And it increases the pressure on President Donald Trump, who had championed Graham’s appointment in July, encouraged her to run for a full term and is even planning to rally with her on Friday to boost her election chances.
“[Darline] just doesn’t have the experience of executing, you have to be able to deliver a story about herself and right now her story is that she’s Lindsey Graham’s sister,” said a former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to speak openly about private conversations.
The White House is still backing Graham, this person said, because the president had a close relationship with the late senator but also sees her as a better alternative to Norman, who endorsed Haley over Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
A second person familiar with the White House’s thinking, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said, “POTUS is still all in on the endorsement.”
The White House declined to comment on Trump’s support for Graham.
Still, the flub highlighted the danger for Trump, as he seeks to propel a political novice into a six-year term in the Senate and avoid yet another stain on his endorsement record. His high-profile rally for Graham in Myrtle Beach later this week is a particularly notable step in a year otherwise marked by a decrease in his explicit campaign travel.
Norman, for his part, said during the debate that Taiwan is a “definite ally” and that Trump is right to enable them to “defend themselves against China.” He declined to take a swipe at Graham over her comment in real time, but that hasn’t stopped his supporters from hammering the newcomer for the embarrassing misstep.
Graham’s stumble was a far cry from her late brother’s hawkish defenses of Taiwan, in which Lindsey Graham had openly criticized the expansionist aims of Chinese President Xi Jinping, called allies of China “dirtbags” and stressed the need to maintain the status quo between Beijing and Taipei to protect U.S. national security interests.
“Anyone running for a seat in Congress should be able to explain to the American people why Taiwan is important to American interests. Taiwan is a vibrant democracy of 23 million people and the source of over 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program. “A Chinese takeover by force would shatter U.S. credibility with its allies across the Indo-Pacific.”
American intelligence has long suggested that China’s People’s Liberation Army will be sufficiently capable of seizing the island starting in 2027.
Trump in June said he was open to speaking with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, despite China’s warnings against doing so, in what would be the first direct dialogue between American and Taiwanese leaders in decades.
But the U.S.’ war with Iran is casting doubt on how effective an ally the Trump administration will be if China does invade Taiwan. Extended naval deployments to support airstrikes against Iran and a corresponding blockade of its ports have left the U.S. without a deployed aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific, as the USS George Washington steams toward the Middle East to relieve the extended Abraham Lincoln carrier, for instance.
The heightened risks and the rapid race to replace Lindsey Graham have left some in South Carolina’s GOP circles feeling less than optimistic about the choice they have to make to select a key proxy in Washington.
“It was shocking how we’re gonna give someone who was on stage last night six years in the U.S. Senate, and I think that’s the overall impression people are having today” said one South Carolina-based Republican operative who has stayed neutral in the Senate race and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “One of these two is gonna get six years in the Senate? Like, big hanging question mark.”
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