Democrats Notch Another Unexpected Win in Special Election, Swinging Louisiana Legislative Seat 30 Points to the Left

With just nine months to go until this year’s midterm elections, Democrats are proving across the country that they are able to move districts won by President Trump in 2024 significantly to the left. On Saturday, a Democrat won a seat in the Louisiana house of representatives to serve a district that voted for Mr. Trump by double digits in the last presidential election. The special election overperformances by Democrats began in earnest last April, when two Florida congressional districts each moved 15 points to the left during special elections to fill those vacancies. The swings toward their party, for the most part, have only gotten better for Democrats. Last month, an Air Force veteran in Texas won a special election to the state senate with nearly 60 percent of the vote, despite Mr. Trump having won the district by 17 points in 2024. On Saturday, that kind of 30-point shift was replicated in Louisiana, where Democrat Chasity Martinez won a special election with 62 percent of the vote, even though Mr. Trump won the district by 13 points in his most recent election. “The Democrat just crushed another Republican extremist by 24 and dramatically overperformed the presidential election,” the U.S. House minority leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, wrote on X Sunday morning. “News of our demise was greatly exaggerated,” he added. “The GOP was aiming for their first flip since 2024, but couldn’t get it done,” the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee — the party’s campaign arm for state legislatures — said in a statement Sunday. “Dems have now flipped 26 seats since Trump’s election, while Republicans have flipped none.”Republican leaders have grown increasingly concerned about these results, especially considering the significant amount of money Democrats have been raising ahead of the midterm elections this year. In the House, Democrats need to pick up just three GOP seats to take the majority, which seems to be an easy task given how aggressively Democrats have fought back in the gerrymandering war kicked off by Texas Republicans last summer. As it currently stands, the redistricting battles may end up being a wash after all states have settled their new congressional lines, though the biggest question marks remain in Virginia, where Democrats’ map proposal is facing a court challenge, Maryland, where the Democratic state senate president is blocking redistricting, and Florida, where Republicans could overplay their hand and actually put more Republican seats in play if Hispanic voters continue their shift dramatically toward the Democrats. One vulnerable House Republican, Congressman Tony Gonzales, who Democrats are aggressively targeting this year, told CNN in an interview this week that he is “very concerned” about his party’s standing after the state senate seat in Texas moved so far toward the Democratic Party.“Republicans should absolutely be mindful of this,” Mr. Gonzales said, arguing that his party needs better results on security issues and economic issues. Mr. Trump himself seems to have grown personally anxious about the midterm results, going so far as to say that Republicans should “nationalize” the elections in heavily Democratic states before November. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office this week, he says states are merely “agents” of the federal government with respect to elections, meaning that he and Republican-controlled Washington should play a more significant role in counting votes. “Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta,” Mr. Trump said, surrounded by Republican members of Congress in the Oval Office. “The federal government should get involved.”It isn’t just the House that could now flip to Democrats this year, but the Senate as well. At the beginning of Mr. Trump’s second term, few believed that Democrats would be able to pick up the four seats necessary to win back the upper chamber, but thanks to the strong election results, Senator Chuck Schumer’s successful recruitment operation of top-tier candidates, and those candidates’ ability to raise money, some believe it is now a possibility. Mr. Schumer has said his path to the majority runs through four states — Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Alaska. Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, jumped into the race at Mr. Schumer’s urging, while in North Carolina, Mr. Schumer convinced a popular former governor, Roy Cooper, to run for that open seat. In Ohio, the Senate minority leader was able to get his old colleague, Senator Sherrod Brown, to mount a comeback campaign. A former House member, Mary Peltola, has also launched her Senate campaign in Alaska, where she is now within single digits of bearing her Republican senator, based on recent polling.

Democrats Notch Another Unexpected Win in Special Election, Swinging Louisiana Legislative Seat 30 Points to the Left

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