The political world is in a frenzy over left-wing challengers’ wins in New York City’s primaries Tuesday.
Leftists are overjoyed, and think they’re beating back the Democratic establishment. Many on the right and center are horrified, arguing extremists are taking over the party.
And yet if you look past deep blue urban areas — and toward the swing House districts that will actually determine which party wins a majority in November — a very different story is unfolding, one that could have a much bigger impact on America.
Just a few miles north of the city, in the Hudson Valley, lies a GOP-held district that’s one of Democrats’ top targets. The winner of this week’s primary there was Cait Conley, an Army veteran and Biden administration staffer who had the support of much of the Democratic Party’s establishment. She won easily, while the most notable progressive challenger in the race pulled just 15 percent of the vote.
That’s just part of a larger pattern throughout the country this year: In the districts with the most competitive general elections ahead, the Democratic establishment has mostly seen its preferred nominees win.
“Most of these Democratic candidates in these toss-up, top-tier districts are fairly conventional,” Jacob Rubashkin, the deputy editor of the publication Inside Elections, told me. “That’s not a judgmental statement on them at all. But it is rarer cases where you’ve got a candidate who breaks the mold a little bit.”
There have been about two dozen primaries so far in districts that could swing in November. (The exact count depends on how generous your definition of “swing district” is.) So far, only two of those primaries have resulted in the establishment candidates backed by the DCCC — the Democrats’ House campaign committee — losing to a challenger from further left. In fact, national left groups didn’t even participate in many swing district contests at all, preferring to prioritize blue-district battles they had a better chance of winning.
So who are Democratic voters nominating? There are a handful of nominees with unusual backgrounds, though they vary ideologically — a firefighter union leader and smoke jumper lean left, while a farmer and musician are more moderate.
But mostly, Democrats’ nominees fall into familiar categories: candidates who have run before and lost, local officeholders, or women with military and national security backgrounds like Conley. (Party leaders heavily recruited that candidate profile in the 2018 midterms.)
All this means that, in a year where the energized left is getting all the attention, the Democratic Party’s chances of gaining a House majority depend largely on candidates who are…pretty standard Democrats. And if the party does take over the House, it’s the winners of these districts — not the far left candidates in the headlines — who will be most decisive in determining what can actually pass.
The “normal” candidates winning Democratic nominations in key swing districts
Despite their devastating defeats in 2024, Democrats haven’t engaged in a wholesale rethinking of who they should nominate in swing House districts. In a few contests, the party and its voters are even nominating the same people who have run before and lost, betting that a more favorable political climate will allow them to win this time.
In Iowa’s First District, Democratic nominee Christina Bohannan, a law professor and former state representative, lost to Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) in 2022 and 2024. But that latter loss was by a mere 799 votes.
Former TV anchor Janelle Stelson in Pennsylvania’s 10th District is another repeat nominee (she lost by about 5,000 votes in 2024). And, though she hasn’t won her primary yet, former Rep. Elaine Luria, a Navy veteran first elected in 2018, who lost in 2022, is trying to reclaim her old seat.
Other nominees are trying to make the jump from state or local politics to Congress — like San Diego city council member Marni von Wilpert (CA-48), Scranton, Pennsylvania, mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Iowa state Rep. Lindsay James (IA-02), and Iowa state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-03).
There’s a group of female military veterans who call themselves the “Hellcats” running, of which three have locked up their nominations so far – the aforementioned Cait Conley (NY-17), Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett (NJ-07), and Marine veteran JoAnna Mendoza (AZ-06). (Arizona’s primary is in July, but Mendoza is running unopposed.)
These candidates aren’t bomb-throwing provocateurs — but for the most part, they aren’t left-punching centrists, either. They haven’t gotten many national headlines, which may be by design. “As a House candidate you don’t really wanna be noisy if you’re running in a Republican district,” said Rubashkin. That is: it isn’t helpful for the Eye of Sauron — or Fox News — to be trained on you.
The more against-the-grain candidates
Yet there are other nominees who have more unusual backgrounds or political profiles.
Some — like farmer Jamie Ager (NC-11), musician Bobby Pulido (TX-15), and sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia (TX-35) — are more moderate. Others, like smoke jumper Sam Forstag (MT-01), are more progressive.
In a few contested primaries, there’s been a surprising trend where Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the centrist Blue Dog Democrats have backed the same candidates — generally, because both like their populist credentials. That happened for firefighter union leader Bob Brooks (PA-07) and ironworker Brian Poindexter (OH-07). Bernie and the Blue Dogs are also both backing Rebecca Cooke, who grew up on her family’s dairy farm, in the August primary for Wisconsin’s Third District.
“These are people trying to run in that more populist lane and bridge the ideological divide,” says Erin Covey, the House editor for the Cook Political Report. “The Blue Dog brand has evolved a lot — they’re looking for candidates who don’t have elite backgrounds.”
Finally, there are the outliers: Matt Dunlap (ME-02) and Randy Villegas (CA-22) are both progressive challengers who defeated DCCC-backed favorites, in classic “insurgent versus the establishment” fashion. But so far, their stories are not typical.
Will conventional candidates be enough to win in November?
Taken together, the Democratic Party is essentially betting that it doesn’t have to change much to take back the House — that the party can run similar types of candidates as in the past, and win because of a national backlash over affordability.
“These candidates are not making a ton of time talking about Trump on the trail,” Covey says. Their messaging, for the most part, is “all about lowering costs.”
The risk is that they might be underestimating just how damaged the Democratic Party brand is in these swing districts. After all, their voters elected Republicans last time around.
“I’m not trying to be glib, but I do think the biggest challenge to any Democrat running in a competitive district is simply that they’re a Democrat,” Rubashkin said. “The last four to five years of national coverage of the party under Biden and Harris has been so negative that there’s a cloud over everyone with a D next to their name.”
But Rubashkin is skeptical that the party needs more loud centrists — or loud leftists — to win swing districts. “Not everyone is going to have the ability and inclination to drive national news cycles of how they’re not like other Democrats. And I don’t think it’s necessary to do that to win these races.”
So despite all the sturm und drang about leftists winning a few blue district primaries — and the high-profile Maine and Michigan Senate races — the Democratic establishment is still very much getting the candidates they want in the battle for the House. If they win, that portends a Congress in which the lightning-rod New York newcomers are still outliers, and the institutional party still has the majority-making seats.
And in the meantime, the party’s success in November, or its failure, will rest on the establishment — because they’ve overwhelmingly gotten the candidates they want.
