Let’s start with a bit of electioneering history. Say you were born in 1995: The first presidential election you were eligible to vote in was 2016, having just missed 2012’s Obama vs. Romney donnybrook.
Which means that despite the previous century’s crushing economic depression, two world wars, ongoing threats of nuclear annihilation, the multiple assassinations of political and social leaders in the 1960s, and the Vietnam quagmire, followed by 2001’s 9/11 attacks, which launched a pair of interminable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that only recently ended, you have come of age in a United States that feels — and in too many ways is — more cruel and unusual than perhaps any time since the Civil War.
Whether we’re talking about the murders on U.S. streets perpetrated by masked, unidentified ICE agents; people grabbed off those streets by those same agents and disappeared without legal recourse; rampant government corruption; purposeful lies about election integrity; multiple botched lethal injections of a convicted murderer in Tennessee; the canceled-at-the-last-minute livestream execution by firing squad of a mass killer by the U.S. military; and myriad other strongman outrages, we could as easily be in Caligula’s bloodthirsty Roman Empire as 2026 Washington, D.C.
Add to this the fact that folks who have come of age during Trump’s political rise — with the exception of New Yorkers, who long knew him as a nepo-baby braggart, con man, and serial bankrupt — live amid the constant static of social media, which has splintered our attention spans and enveloped us in a smog of digital misinformation. In our epoch of everything available near instantaneously — whether food or product deliveries or almost the entire history of cinema and television and theater and music through the ages — we can more easily numb ourselves with culinary, shopping, and digital dopamine rushes at the expense of civic engagement, which requires historical context and thoughtful consideration about necessary government functions. An age in which corporate behemoths offer 24/7/365 tools to “flood the zone with shit” — Trump sycophant Steve Bannon’s phrase for inundating social media channels and airwaves with bread, circuses, performative cruelty, and targeted lies — fits an OG grifter like Trump much better than those infamous gloves fit the sure hands of the star running back O.J. Simpson during his murder trial.
Perhaps the best way to return to some of the civic gravitas necessary for democracy — an always shifting, too often lumbering endeavor — is to remember Winston Churchill’s famous statement: “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” It is also well to recall another declaration the old Tory made during some of the bloodiest days of World War II: “At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper — no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.” Certainly, in a functioning democracy, one place we can all live large is in the voting booth. So let’s stand on the shoulders of giants in these last few weeks before the 2026 midterms, and target a few more races that can lead to the defeat of some of the most anti-democratic — and therefore, unpatriotic — forces in all of American history.
JoAnna Mendoza is running to flip the 6th Congressional District in the important swing state of Arizona. Here’s how the Times characterized her run earlier this year: “It is one of the most important seats that Democrats are targeting, and Ms. Mendoza is a unique candidate. Working class people remain a rarity in Congress. And her biography — she is a queer single mother who grew up in rural poverty and served in the Navy and as a Marine Corps drill instructor — checks so many boxes it almost feels out of a movie.”
Considering that her GOP opponent, incumbent Juan Ciscomani, has been ducking town halls — most likely to avoid discussing his multiple votes in favor of the Iran war — and that Mendoza is leading in the prediction markets, this looks to be a good chance to turn a red seat blue.
In Florida, Pia Dandiya offers voters a compelling story as she runs for an open seat in the 22nd District. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Dandiya was raised in the Sunshine State and worked as a teacher; she then headed north and, at age 28, helped found the Democracy Prep Endurance High School, in Harlem, whose mostly low-income students achieved a remarkably high college admissions rate. She was selected as a White House Fellow in 2020 and has continued focusing on education, while her opponent, Casey Askar, a businessman who has never held office, can best be judged by the pols who have endorsed him, such as Michael Flynn, the retired U.S. Army general who lied to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. in 2016 (the case was dismissed before any conviction when he was pardoned by President Trump in 2020), and terminal bully — and outgoing Florida governor — Ron DeSantis. And of course, Donald Trump, who calls Askar an “an America First Patriot.”
Polling is light for this race, but the prediction markets are giving Dandiya an 8- to 10-point edge. Some worry that prediction markets can be subject to insider trading or big bets placed to skew odds, and while that’s a concern with any financial market, most bettors don’t like to lose, so they wager to profit from what will be a definite outcome — who wins a baseball game or a political contest are hard facts. (Unless you’re the Chicago White Sox throwing games in 1919, the Houston Astros using cameras to steal signs in 2017, or Donald Trump lying about how he won the 2020 election.) So a donation to Dandiya is a way to support democracy, and at the same time confirm the efficacy of the invisible hand of capital.
Retired firefighter and union leader Bob Brooks is grounded in the labor movement, and has worked hard to meet voters as he’s traveled throughout Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District seeking to send Republican Ryan Mackenzie packing after a single term. While Brooks has pounded the pavement throughout the Lehigh Valley to hear voter concerns about the cost of living in this heavily Latino district, Mackenzie has been less available. Perhaps it has to do with his support of the war in Iran, which neither he nor his constituents were given a rationale for prior to President Trump joining with Israel to launch Operation Epic Fury this past February 28. As Allentown radio personality Victor Martinez put it in an opinion piece in the Morning Call: “Mackenzie’s 2024 platform criticized American involvement in forever wars. Yet in 2026, he voted six times against resolutions directing the president to stop the hostilities with Iran: March 5, April 16, May 14, June 3, July 23 and Sept. 15. Six opportunities to stop this war. Six votes against it. He owes us an explanation for campaigning against prolonged foreign entanglements and then voting against ending this one. Families facing higher fuel costs deserve answers.”
Whatever the freshman GOP congressman’s answers turn out to be this late in the game, challenger Brooks has characterized the current situation in Washington as a “dumpster fire,” and he has the background to build something better from the ashes.
We covered the Senate race in Texas last week, but with James Talarico still holding an edge over a GOP candidate so odious that even the Machiavellian Republican operative Karl Rove has pointed out that Texas attorney general Ken Paxton was once tried (but not convicted) by his own party in the Texas legislature on 16 articles of impeachment alleging corruption and bribery, and is also a “guy who’s got multiple girlfriends [and] $200,000 worth of improvements in his house from a corrupt business guy for whom he does favors…,” we need to take a look at another crucial Lone Star State race.
If Talarico can turn out a strong anti-Paxton vote, his coattails may help pull gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa over the line, even though she is currently trailing by 2 to 4 points. Currently a member of the Texas House of Representatives, Hinojosa took her campaign directly to the governor’s mansion in Austin this week, where she spoke next to an empty lectern after supposed tough-guy incumbent Greg Abbott repeatedly ducked any debates. Hinojosa told a crowd of press and citizens, “I guess the governor is a no-show, which is not surprising because he has been a no-show for Texans for years,” adding, “If Greg Abbott’s not man enough to debate me, then he doesn’t deserve to be the governor of Texas.”
Abbott was the instigator of unprecedented midterm redistricting, seeking to gerrymander congressional districts in favor of Republicans. But having a challenger willing to engage with the opposing party as well as boasting a strong record of helping local public schools — Abbott is a huge booster of vouchers for private charter schools — means throwing a bit of cash at Hinojosa might pay off in these frenzied final weeks of the campaign.
And then there’s “dummymandering” — redrawing districts based on such voting patterns as heavy Hispanic turnout for Trump in 2024, even as his poll numbers have plummeted with that bloc since his inaugural. Abbott and the GOP braintrust might be in line for aneurysms if current predictions on some redrawn districts across the country hold through November 3. Because, in a year when every congressional seat represents either a blue brick in democracy’s wall or a red hammer battering same, a few dollars or volunteer hours from average citizens can be crucial. So, consider the following two candidates, who have a good chance of turning the GOP’s dark chicanery into electoral gold.
First, our longest shot: Leticia Gutierrez, whom the Houston Chronicle endorsed on Wednesday:
When Texas Republicans redrew Congressional District 9 — keeping only 3% of the once-reliable Democratic stronghold — they did it hoping to craft a slam-dunk win.
They dragged the district’s tail east, toward the Houston Ship Channel’s scarred streets and refinery-stained skies, where working-class Latinos dominate — and tend to show up less to the polls. And they absorbed all of rural, majority-white Liberty County, hoping conservative voters way out in the Piney Woods will turn out like they always do.
But that was before Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents right in this district’s Magnolia Park neighborhood. It was also before President Donald Trump’s approval ratings took a nosedive. Now, it seems, the race could be anyone’s to win.
Gutierrez’s opponent, MAGA convert Alex Mealer, following a template of avoidance common to the responsibility-ducking movement, refused to meet with the paper to discuss her views. So, yeah, Gutierrez is a long shot, but maybe, just maybe, it’s the righteous Texans who are being undercounted by pollsters this time, rather than those MAGAs who were missed in 2016 and ’24 because they were too ashamed or belligerent to admit they voted for Trump.
Republicans tried to redraw Dem Don Davis out of his North Carolina District 1 seat, but it appears that Trump’s unpopularity may keep the two-termer in office. Davis is Black, and the MAGA map manipulators apparently counted on white voters shoved into his district to be as racist as they are, not taking into account Davis’s history of moderate votes that appeal to centrist voters of all stripes. Polls commissioned by his GOP opponent, Laurie Buckhout, give her the barest of edges, but bettors are bullish on Davis. His new district stretches to the Tar Heel State’s expansive beaches, so a donation to Davis’s campaign might be a great way to kick sand in the faces of the anti-democracy GOP.
We’ll conclude close to home — New York’s 21st District, which borders Vermont, Lake Champlain, and Canada. Former GOP moderate turned hard-core MAGA Elise Stefanik decided not to run for various reasons, including a withdrawn 2024 offer to be Trump’s UN ambassador (the ever-vacillating POTUS belatedly realized her purple seat was vulnerable), as well as her aborted run at the GOP nomination for NY governor. Her MAGA replacement in the contest for the open seat, Anthony Constantino, has, according to Mother Jones, interesting ideas about who to invite to your nuptials:
Matt Moller, the reported victim, says he was one of three friends who attended Constantino’s 2022 wedding. One of the other two, he adds, was Tommy Marcellino — a former MMA fighter who is now accused of abducting and strangling Moller. The second alleged assailant is Ricardo “Porsche Truck Ruk” Henderson, a rapper whom Constantino and affiliated companies have paid more than $500,000 in recent years.
Constantino has not been charged in this incident, but he has business connections to the alleged perps. And, again as reported in MJ, the fact that he “erected a ‘Vote for Trump’ sign massive enough to be seen in satellite images and dropped an album called ‘Thank You President Trump’ that includes a ‘Baby Shark’-like track in which he mostly just repeats the president’s name” certainly adds to questions about the Republican’s judgment.
Although the polls and the money are split between Constantino and challenger Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer, the Democrat has strong labor support, which, at minimum, signals a far better choice to address the needs of New Yorkers statewide than another spectacle-obsessed Trump booster. ❖
