John Avlon
View all posts by John Avlon September 21, 2026 Add us as a Google Preferred Source
Add us as a Google Preferred Source 
James Talarico speaks during a campaign rally at the Cailloux Theater on Aug. 31, 2026 in Kerrville, Texas. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) The road to a broad Democratic majority doesn’t run through Berkley or Brooklyn. It runs straight through the middle of America and the middle of our politics.
While Democratic Socialists have sucked up the oxygen this cycle with primary wins in deep-blue cities, the real stars of the 2026 election are flying below the radar and reaching out beyond the base to bring new seats into the Democratic column.
If you take a closer look, you’ll see a consistent story. These purple state warriors are a mix of military veterans and pastors, former Republicans and red state independent candidates — actively undercutting negative stereotypes of the Democratic brand. They are calling out the wingnuts, keeping the focus on working families, and bringing much-needed populist energy to the center left while taking the fight to Trump’s corrupt establishment. They are blazing the trail to a durable Democratic majority and pointing the way toward how to win the White House in 2028.
The Senate
Let’s start with the Senate, where a Democratic majority seemed unthinkable a year ago.
Democrats’ strongest pickup opportunity is North Carolina, where popular former two-term governor Roy Cooper is running for an open seat and holds a lead of nearly eight points in the RealClearPolitics average. Cooper’s pitch is relentlessly focused on affordability, reflected in his “Make Stuff Cost Less” tour, telling crowds, “I’m going to be a senator who’s going to put the people before power, the people before party.”
In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola, a former member of Congress, got a boost from the state’s nonpartisan top-four primary, where she finished first — ahead of Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan, who has proven a dependable Trump vote in a state with a strong independent streak. Peltola’s message is “Alaska First”: putting partisan politics aside to work together, like the independent-minded Republican Lisa Murkowski, while calling out the polarization and higher prices coming from Trump’s Washington. “I am right down the middle,” she told Gray Television after the primary. “I’m as moderate as a person could possibly be.” Recent polls show the race a coin toss.
Editor’s picks
The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far
The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
In Texas, James Talarico is perhaps the most exciting candidate of the cycle. A state representative and Presbyterian seminarian — a pastor in training — he is facing Attorney General Ken Paxton, a man impeached by his own party’s Texas House and whom Talarico calls, with a great deal of evidence, “the most corrupt politician in America.” Talarico is a soulful, pragmatic progressive and an avatar of an emerging religious left — a candidate whose faith informs his politics rather than the other way around. “We will not defeat the politics of division with more division,” Talarico says. “When you extend an open hand rather than a closed fist, you’ll be surprised by who takes that hand.” A half-dozen September polls have Talarico leading Paxton between one and six points.
Another faith-based Democratic Senate candidate gaining traction is Adam Hamilton in Kansas, an author and pastor of the largest United Methodist congregation in the country. He is defiantly moderate in his approach to politics. “Here in Kansas, we’re proud of being in the middle politically,” he said in remarks reported by the Kansas Reflector. “That puts us about a million miles away from the extreme politics of Washington that are tearing us apart and driving up prices.” An Emerson poll this week showed him edging Republican incumbent Roger Marshall, 45 to 43. This is in a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932.
Even Ohio is a battleground, with the OG heartland economic populist Sherrod Brown in the lead while battling to regain a Senate seat from JD Vance replacement Republican John Husted, telling voters in a Marietta diner, “I don’t believe politics is left or right. I’ve always been on the side of the middle class and workers and people struggling.”
Related Content
Inside the Fear, Anger, and Hope at Ed Sheeran’s Philadelphia Concert
Trump Is Dismantling the World America Built
Ed Sheeran Breaks Silence on Israel-Gaza at First Show Amid Tour Controversy: 'I Cannot Hide How I Feel About It Anymore'
Dropkick Murphys' Ken Casey Says Ed Sheeran ‘Took the Knee’ With Macklemore: ‘Doesn’t Sit Right With Me’
The Independents
In search of an offramp from hyper-partisan polarization, three independents are running serious Senate campaigns in deep-red states across the Plains and the Mountain West. All three are military veterans. All three have pledged not to caucus with either party.
Dan Osborn is making a return run in Nebraska, this time against Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts, after holding Sen. Deb Fischer to a single digit win in 2024. A Navy veteran, mechanic and former union president, he told CNN: “We have to stop looking left and right and pointing fingers, and we have to start looking up.” Democrats have stood down in the race, and a recent SurveyUSA poll showed Osborn four points ahead, 46 to 42.
In Montana, Seth Bodnar, a former Green Beret and Rhodes Scholar who served as president of the University of Montana, is also running as an independent. “I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States,” he told me in an interview for How to Fix It. “I didn’t swear loyalty to a political party.” His race is complicated by the fact that, unlike in Nebraska, the Democratic nominee remains on the ballot. One summer poll found Bodnar beating Republican Kurt Alme head-to-head, 50 to 44 — but Alme leading when the anti-Trump vote is split. The Democrat should drop out.
Finally, in nearby South Dakota, Brian Bengs, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, is challenging Republican Sen. Mike Rounds. His goal is an independent coalition that could serve as a bridge across the partisan divide. Deny either team a majority, he told CNN, and “we become the fulcrum” which can force bipartisanship in the Senate.
The House
These same trends are clear in the crucial toss-up races for the House, where Democrats are most likely to win their majority.
In always tight Wisconsin, Rebecca Cooke is making her third run for Congress in the third district, arguing that folks in D.C. “are either too far left or too far right, and we need more people in the middle that want to work across the aisle to get things done.”
It’s a message echoed by strong female candidates across the country, many of whom are military veterans. In New Jersey’s 7th District, Rebecca Bennett — a former Republican, a former Navy helicopter pilot and business leader — is challenging Rep. Tom Kean Jr., who went MIA for months and later revealed his unexplained absence was due treatment for depression. “In the aircraft, you’d never ask your crew if they’re Democrats or Republicans,” Bennett says in her first general-election ad. “We’re all there to serve our country and do the mission.” Notably, in New Jersey, she also pledges to stand up to corruption in both parties.
In New York’s 17th District, Cait Conley — a West Point graduate and 16-year Army officer with three Bronze Stars — is challenging Rep. Mike Lawler. “Government’s job is to deliver for the people, not a party, not people of a party, but people and we’ve gotten way too far away from that.” Likewise in Arizona’s 6th District, JoAnna Mendoza, a retired Marine with 20 years in the service, is challenging Rep. Juan Ciscomani. “We need servant leaders today,” Mendoza says. “A new generation of patriots who are going to put people first. Who are going to put our country first and put politics aside.”
Even in South Carolina, Nancy Lacore — a former Republican, and a retired three-star Navy Reserve admiral — is running for the 1st District seat Nancy Mace gave up. A poll this month showed her within a point of her Republican opponent. “We need to get folks in there who are a little bit closer to the middle who are willing to work across the aisle,” she told Charleston’s Live 5 News. And in Pennsylvania’s 10th District, Janelle Stelson — another former Republican — is battling MAGA loyalist Rep. Scott Perry in a rematch of their close 2024 race. A longtime television journalist, she draws the continuity between her old job and the one she is aiming for. “My job was not to answer to a political party. It was not to defend the rich and powerful,” Stelson explains. It was to hold the powerful accountable on behalf of her community.
The Governors
The trend extends to pick-up races for governor.
In Iowa, Rob Sand has led by wide margins in recent public polling and would be the first Democrat elected governor of the Hawkeye State in 20 years. Sand, the current State Auditor, focuses on fiscal responsibility while his campaign signs across the state also promise to make Iowa “better and truer, not redder or bluer.” He takes partisan politics to the woodshed: “I think our political system is broken largely because it’s run by two private clubs,” he told a town hall in Iowa City. “Neither the Democratic or Republican parties do a very good job of solving our problems,” he said on PBS’s Iowa Press. Instead, Sand opens town halls by leading the crowd in the first verse of “America the Beautiful.” He focuses on what unites us rather than what divides us in a way that feels rebellious and common-sense Americana at the same time. Sands’ strength is also putting the Senate seat in play, with centrist Democrat state rep Josh Turek squaring off against GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson, in what few previously thought would be a pick-up opportunity.
In Florida, David Jolly — a former Republican congressman from Tampa Bay is the Democratic nominee, squaring off against hard-core MAGA Rep. Byron Donalds after two terms of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ MAGA mimicry, in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1994. The latest St. Pete Polls survey has the race a dead heat. Jolly makes the case that there is continuity between the old-school Republican he was and the Democrat he is today, saying: “I think we should get politicians out of the classrooms, out of the doctor’s offices.”
In ruby red Alabama, Doug Jones — who defied political conventional wisdom by winning a Senate seat in 2017 — is running as a pragmatic, Alabama-first candidate against the dull-bulb Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Tuberville has spent the campaign fending off challenges to his Alabama residency while reporting has found no evidence he kept his promise to donate his Senate salary to military veterans; and Jones has raised ethics questions about Tuberville’s personal investments in the deeply unpopular data-center industry he champions. Doug Jones is arguing for a different kind of state government: “One that actually belongs to the people of Alabama. One that listens before it lectures. One that solves problems instead of staging distractions.”
Finally in Ohio, Dr. Amy Acton leads Vivek Ramaswamy, 48 to 45, in the latest Bowling Green State University/YouGov poll, by highlighting her bipartisan, common-sense credentials — leaning on the fact that she served as director of the Ohio Department of Health in Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration during the COVID crisis. “As a doctor, I never asked my patients whether they were Democrats or Republicans,” she said in pledging to put Republicans in her cabinet. “My job was to listen, understand their concerns, and help solve their problems.”
The Winning Formula
That’s a lot of names and data, but you don’t have to squint to see the commonalities. These Democrats who are competitive in the purple districts and red states embody the broader coalition Democrats need to win beyond their base and turn the tide against Trumpism. Unlike the DSA, they can win in places where Democrats have lost for too long.
Yes, the wind is at the Democrats’ backs right now. Donald Trump’s approval sank to 25 percent among independents in an Economist/YouGov poll this summer, and independents now favor Democratic House candidates by two to one. Independents decide who wins elections: they are a clear plurality of Americans, at 44 percent according to Gallup, compared with 31 percent for Democrats and 25 percent for Republicans. And it isn’t just how people describe themselves: registered independents outnumber both Democrats and Republicans in 10 states.
