HOW WE DID IT: All-Star Slate of Democratic Senate Recruits Sweeps to Historic Victories – Including in States Trump Won by Double Digits in 2024

New York Times: “James Talarico, Jon Ossoff, Roy Cooper and a number of others pursued a very grounded economic populist agenda, railing against President Trump’s economic record and castigating corruption, all while underscoring their local authenticity”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “The Democrat and his team spent nearly two years methodically preparing for this race, rebuilding the party, amassing resources and shaping the opposition”

New York Times: “After decades of Republican rule, [James Talarico’s] well-funded, disciplined and scandal-free U.S. Senate campaign helped convince voters that winning was possible this time”

After Senate Democrats’ historic rout of the GOP across the Senate battlegrounds on Tuesday, coverage nationwide highlights the strategic decisions and disciplined campaigns that propelled Democratic Senate candidates to victory.

Across the map, star recruits and Democratic campaigns spent the last year “hammering Republicans on pocketbook issues,” “castigating corruption,” and “underscoring their local authenticity” – while Republicans and the NRSC backed weak, scandal-plagued candidates who, in some races, had already lost before Election Day, with Democrats banking enough early votes to win before a single election-day ballot was cast.

See how we did it: 

ACROSS THE SOUTH: 

New York Times: How Democrats Won Across the South

• A new wall of blue states emerged from the midterm election map. It was not along the edges of the Great Lakes but along the Atlantic Ocean, from Virginia to Georgia.
• Democrats won competitive races in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia on Tuesday, gaining ground across the South.
• In North Carolina, Roy Cooper, the popular former governor, won the Senate race by nearly 20 percentage points, a resounding victory that appeared to make waves down-ballot, helping flip control of the state’s congressional delegation and State House.
• In Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff won re-election by 18 points, helping to lift Keisha Lance Bottoms, who became the nation’s first elected female Black governor. Democrats won every statewide race in Georgia and flipped the State House.
• Even in South Carolina, which had hardly been on the battleground Senate map, Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, upset Senator Darline Graham, the interim Republican incumbent, by more than four points.
• And Democrats’ power in the South could expand even further: The Mississippi Senate race remained too close to call on Thursday, with the Democratic nominee, Scott Colom, a district attorney, leading Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican incumbent, by a razor-thin margin.
• The winning nominees made key decisions at pivotal campaign moments that contributed to their victories. Here are some of them:
• In North Carolina, Mr. Cooper knew that voters knew him and mostly liked him. But he also knew that Republicans would spend vast sums to defend the Senate seat in North Carolina, a state that Mr. Trump won three times. So he raised money knowing that national Republican political groups would be able to outspend Democratic ones.
• His campaign went on television early, reminding voters who he was and defining Michael Whatley, his Republican rival, who was little-known to most voters, as a Washington lobbyist for energy companies. When Mr. Whatley’s campaign attacked the former governor as soft on crime, Mr. Cooper’s team pushed back with fact-checking ads — and tied Mr. Whatley to a convicted sex offender who held roles with the state Republican Party.
• Mr. Cooper wanted a short and direct campaign slogan that could cut across party lines and demographic groups, and he found it: “Make Stuff Cost Less.”
• By the time October arrived, Mr. Cooper was so consistently ahead that Republicans pulled their advertising money from the state. Then, so did Democrats, allowing them to spend in competitive races elsewhere.
• In Georgia, Mr. Ossoff laid the foundation to win a second term during his first. He built a robust constituent services operation. He maintained strong relationships with Black communities and churches. He befriended local Republican officials, including mayors and county commissioners, and tried to fulfill their federal needs. Some of them later endorsed him.
• The senator’s fund-raising prowess helped scare off potential opponents. When Representative Mike Collins won the Republican primary, Mr. Ossoff tagged him as a bigot, an attack that resurfaced following several news reports connecting his aides and his son-in-law to white nationalism and racism. 
• Mr. Ossoff’s message was an aggressive critique against President Trump and his administration — not only on tariffs and the war in Iran but also on corruption. When he started delivering it, some Democrats worried he might be going too far. By the end of the campaign, corruption was a motivating issue for many voters.
• In South Carolina, […] Ms. Andrews campaigned with well-known Black Democrats, such as Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia. She gave interviews to conservative media outlets. She held town hall-style events in rural and Republican parts of the state. She leaned into a message of rejecting family dynasties in politics.
• Ms. Andrews saw a way to win over independents and Republicans after Representative Ralph Norman lost to Ms. Graham in a bitter Republican primary. Mr. Norman’s son, Warren, said he was leaning toward voting for Ms. Andrews. They spoke; in her final rallies, she referred to the support she was getting from her “new friend” — Warren Norman.

IN GEORGIA

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: How Jon Ossoff turned the tables on Georgia Republicans

• The Republican runoff for U.S. Senate had hardly ended when Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff gave his senior campaign staff a two-word directive.
• “Bury him.”
• U.S. Rep. Mike Collins had just won the GOP nomination. But Ossoff had been preparing for this fight long before the votes were counted.
• Within minutes, the Democrat branded Collins a “notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist,” previewing an assault that would dominate the rest of the campaign.
• It was the opening salvo in a campaign that ended Tuesday with Ossoff’s landslide victory […]
• But his transformation from the nation’s most vulnerable Democratic U.S. Senate incumbent to runaway victor was anything but inevitable.
• His ties to GOP officials and reputation for constituent service gave him crossover appeal. Several Republican mayors and local leaders endorsed his reelection, complicating Collins’ efforts to paint him as a “radical Democrat.”
• At the same time, Ossoff worked to energize progressives and Black voters, the backbone of his coalition. He was a mainstay at Black churches. And at a May rally in Atlanta, Pastor Jamal Bryant of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church offered an extraordinary tribute, comparing Ossoff to his late mentor.
• He raised $11 million in the first three months of 2025, then doubled that over the next two quarters, sending a resounding signal to Republicans that he would be no pushover. 
• It set the foundation of a fundraising juggernaut that helped bankroll his growing political operation long before Republicans settled on an opponent.
• After Bottoms clinched the Democratic nomination for governor without a runoff, Ossoff called to congratulate her and pledge his support. He invited her to his next rally. She quickly accepted.
• Ossoff could have kept his distance, particularly given the flood of well-financed Republican attacks on Bottoms’ record as Atlanta mayor. 
• Bottoms could have stayed away, too, wary of playing second fiddle or letting national issues overshadow her race for governor.
• Instead, Ossoff and Bottoms embraced an alliance that only deepened as the campaign unfolded.
• Ossoff’s blistering “bigot” attack on Collins was unusually harsh, even for the Democrat’s bare-knuckled campaign. And it was only the beginning. 
• There was already plenty of ammunition. Collins had a history of provocative social media posts, and he had fired a longtime adviser over a vulgar campaign post mocking an alleged rape victim. 
• Then came a cascade of revelations, some uncovered through opposition research by Ossoff’s extensive campaign staff.
• Collins’ son-in-law, who lived on his property, was posting racist and antisemitic content online even after the Republican’s runoff win. A former aide had shared images of himself in Ku Klux Klan robes. And two “convoy captains” in Collins’ grassroots orbit had ties to a far-right group founded by a former Klan leader.
• Ossoff amplified each disclosure, hammering Collins at rallies while demanding answers. Collins was constantly forced to the defensive, arguing that voters should judge him by his own actions. 
• Collins’ paltry fundraising couldn’t help him go on offense, either. In the final campaign disclosure, Ossoff reported $26 million in the bank for the last weeks of the race. Collins hardly had $1 million. And national GOP groups that pledged to spend tens of millions in Georgia quietly shifted to more competitive states. 
• The Democrat and his team spent nearly two years methodically preparing for this race, rebuilding the party, amassing resources and shaping the opposition.
• And on Tuesday, what began as a battle for Ossoff’s political survival ended as a race that he fought — and won — on his terms. 

IN KANSAS

New York Times: How Kansas Democrats Laid the Groundwork for a Historic Senate Upset

• On an Election Day with historic Democratic victories across several conservative states, one of the most momentous happened in Kansas, where Adam Hamilton became the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate election in nearly a century.
• Entering this year, Kansas was at the center of the Senate map only in the geographic sense. Few expected Senator Roger Marshall, the Republican incumbent, to lose his seat.
• But Mr. Hamilton, a moderate Democrat, changed the political landscape when he entered the race. He had strong name recognition in the Kansas City suburbs, where the United Methodist congregation that he started has grown into a megachurch. And he proved to be a skilled messenger and fund-raiser on the campaign trail.
• Mr. Marshall, a doctor and first-term senator who aligned himself closely with President Trump, was the ideal opponent. He faced scrutiny for his frequent trips to Florida. And he struggled to respond to criticism after The New York Times reported that, as a doctor, he often sued his patients over medical debts, leading to dozens of them being arrested.
• But many of the same economic themes that resounded across the country, as Democrats won races in several bright-red states, were also driving the conversation in Kansas.
• No Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s. And while past U.S. Senate races — including in 2014 and 2020 — had generated hopes of breaking Republicans’ 94-year winning streak in that chamber, liberals ended up disappointed.
• Mr. Hamilton and State Senator Cindy Holscher, the Democratic nominee for governor, are both from Johnson County, the state’s most populous county, and both were leading there by more than 20 percentage points.
• Like other Democratic officials, she expressed hope that Tuesday was not a fleeting high-water mark for her party, but rather a sign of a durable political shift — a counterpoint to anyone who had written her state off as permanently Republican.

IN MAINE

New York Times: How a Logger From Maine Toppled a Giant of the Senate

• Only weeks before stumbling into one of the most consequential races in the country, [Troy Jackson] had come in third in the Democratic primary for governor. 
• But today he is a giant slayer, having toppled a five-term Republican incumbent, Senator Susan Collins, in Tuesday’s election.
• How Mr. Jackson, a former logger and state lawmaker from a struggling northern outpost, got from there to here — in just 101 days, no less — is an extraordinary story of the man meeting the moment.
• Even amid the blue wave that swept Democrats into power across the country, Mr. Jackson’s triumph over Ms. Collins was notable, considering her seniority in the Senate and five previous statewide wins, versus his abbreviated campaign and limitations as a candidate. A fortuitous mix of personal narrative, message and timing powered him to a victory no one could have imagined just months ago.
• Drawing on his working-class roots and populist record as a state senator, Mr. Jackson could empathize with voters’ frustrations and fears like few other congressional candidates. Perhaps even more important, Ms. Collins, despite her efforts to assert her independence, could not escape the shadow of an exceedingly unpopular president — especially in a state hit hard by his tariffs and war with Iran, inflating costs for Mainers dependent on heating oil and trade with their Canadian neighbors.
• Mr. Jackson had less than four months to wipe out Ms. Collins’s 30-year record of constituent services and federal patronage that had brought billions of federal dollars to the state.
• At more than 100 public events, including 15 town halls, he endeared himself to voters by sharing stories of his hardscrabble youth in Aroostook County, along the Canadian border. At 19, he followed his father into Maine’s North Woods. At 30, he helped to lead a logging blockade at the border to protest powerful landowners hiring cheaper Canadian labor. Mr. Jackson greeted supporters as “brothers and sisters,” and the labor anthem “Solidarity Forever” became a campaign staple.
• When he wasn’t leaning into his up-from-the-bootstraps biography, Mr. Jackson was pledging to hold the line against a Trump administration he argued was destroying the dreams of the working class. […] His unflattering portrayal of Ms. Collins as a corrupt creature of Washington was reinforced by a widely circulated ProPublica report that said the F.B.I. had examined her interactions with a donor seeking federal contracts.
• Anger over the rising cost of living was a driving force in Senate races across the country. But in Maine, Mr. Jackson also seized on simmering resentment over Ms. Collins’s vote to elevate Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, which cemented the conservative majority that gutted the federal right to abortion.
• “What I’m not going to be is talked down to by Senator Collins,” he said in a televised interview. During the debates, she had repeatedly referred to Mr. Jackson, who served as a legislator for nearly 20 years, including six as president of the Maine Senate, as “Troy.”
• Her apparent disrespect toward Mr. Jackson permeated the race — and may have backfired. 
• Ms. Collins also ran a widely criticized ad in the homestretch of the campaign featuring a supporter who scoffed, “We’re not talking about buying a cord of wood here. We’re sending someone to the U.S. Senate, and Troy doesn’t have the tools he needs to be effective.”
• Ms. Collins and her allies outspent the Democrats by about $40 million, according to AdImpact, with a deluge of attack ads that decried Mr. Jackson as a “crook” and a “creep.” Voters at town hall meetings urged Mr. Jackson to fight back more aggressively.
• “In general, he allowed those things to roll off his back,” said Charles Dingman, chairman of the Maine Democratic Party. “Or he greeted them with humor.”
• For Halloween, Mr. Jackson dressed up as a cord of wood. Three days before the election, he was already having the last laugh.

IN MICHIGAN

Detroit News: El-Sayed defeats Rogers to become America’s first Muslim U.S. senator

• In a historic win, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers in the race for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat by 7 percentage points, closing a chaotic chapter of the 2026 campaign.
• The 42-year-old from Ann Arbor is the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Senate.
• “Michigan, we did it,” El-Sayed told supporters in Detroit just before 2 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4. “We showed that in a battle between the money and the many, that the many really can win.”
• “They might have been pointing to my name and my faith, but we all know that my name and my faith aren’t the reason you can’t afford your gas, not the reason you can’t afford your groceries, not the reason you can’t see a doctor,” El-Sayed told Democrats gathered at The Department at Hudson’s in downtown Detroit.
• El-Sayed slammed Rogers for his ties to corporate and foreign interests and accused him of using the “revolving door” to profit off his work and connections from Congress after he retired in 2015. He’s labeled Rogers “a sock puppet” and rubber stamp who would carry out Trump’s policies.
• “The reason they keep pointing to my name and my faith is because they think they can distract us. But the MAGA rule is this,” El-Sayed said at a Sunday campaign event. “If they’re trying to distract you, they’re picking your pocket. That’s always the game.”

IN NORTH CAROLINA

Axios: Cooper flips North Carolina Senate seat

• Democrat Roy Cooper has defeated President Trump’s handpicked candidate, Michael Whatley, flipping one of North Carolina’s two GOP-held U.S. Senate seats.
• Why it matters: Cooper, the popular two-term governor, delivered Democrats one of their best shots at flipping a Republican-held Senate seat. Even in a state that voted all three times for Trump, Cooper has never lost an election.
• The big picture: While the race was originally expected to be tight and expensive, Cooper consistently widened his polling lead throughout campaign season.
• His name recognition boosted his chances against Whatley, a lawyer who served as Republican National Committee chair but had never run for office.
• As enthusiasm lagged behind Whatley, GOP-aligned super PACs canceled their ads and redirected spending to more promising states, even as Trump still campaigned for Whatley in North Carolina.
• Catch up quick: Cooper will succeed Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who decided not to seek reelection after clashing with Trump over the “big beautiful bill” and its associated Medicaid cuts.
• On the trail: Cooper focused his campaign on affordability, blaming Republicans for high gas prices and tying GOP policies to inflation.
• Meanwhile, Whatley centered his platform on helping execute the Trump agenda, despite the president’s historically low approval rating.
• What’s next: Cooper will take office in January. He will be the first Democrat to represent North Carolina in the Senate in over a decade.

IN OHIO 

The Guardian: Democrat Sherrod Brown wins Ohio Senate race in major blow to Republicans

• Democrat Sherrod Brown will return to the US Senate, as Ohio’s voters rejected the incumbent Jon Husted in a significant defeat for Republicans.
• Brown’s bid for a comeback after being ousted from the seat he held for 18 years in 2024 became one of the marquee contests of this year’s midterm elections, and a key test of whether Democrats can regain support among the working-class and rural voters who have deserted them in recent years.
• “My pledge to all Ohioans, whether you voted for me or you didn’t, is that I will always be on your side – always,” Brown said on Tuesday evening at the Ohio Democrats election watch party. “I do not work for the utility companies. I do not work for datacenters. I do not work for Wall Street. I work for you, I work for Ohio.
• “This is your victory,” he said. “Corporations and billionaires tried to buy this election but it turns out there’s a whole lot more of us than them.”
• Brown promised the crowd that the first thing he would aim to do as senator is ban members of Congress from trading stocks.
• “Starting today, Ohioans have a senator who puts working people first,” he pledged.
• In the two years he has spent in the Senate, Husted adhered closely to Trump’s policies, rarely breaking with him even as the president’s approval ratings cratered amid voter dissatisfaction with the war with Iran, rising prices and Trump’s aggressive immigration policies.
• Brown made lowering the cost of living for the working class a cornerstone of his campaign, and railed against Trump’s war with Iran, the administration’s tariff regime and the construction of datacenters.
• Husted welcomed the new developments while serving as Ohio lieutenant governor, leading Brown to call him “the face of datacenters” on the campaign trail.

IN SOUTH CAROLINA

Semafor: How a Democrat shocked the world in South Carolina

• On Oct. 5, the Andrews campaign received a poll showing her with a 3-point lead over Graham. But the Democrat’s campaign decided against publicly releasing the poll — or any subsequent internal poll — showing Andrews with a lead over Graham, wary of drawing too much attention from national Republicans and jeopardizing a peak at the right time, according to Chas Goldman, a strategist for Andrews.
• That Republican attention did come, but not in time to save Graham in a state where Democrats hadn’t won a Senate race since 1998. On a Senate map filled with shocking GOP losses, South Carolina stands out: It’s the home of the National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, Tim Scott, and territory on which Democrats tried to compete statewide in 2020 — and lost handily.
• Former GOP Rep. and Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., told Semafor on Wednesday that he could feel the anti-Graham sentiment building on the state’s coast but that most Republicans still felt that Graham could “nose it out” elsewhere. Ultimately, though, he said President Donald Trump’s backing of Graham in a crowded primary which included Sanford and Reps. Ralph Norman and Russell Fry “never sat well with folks.”
• Andrews outran her party’s gubernatorial nominee by 4 percentage points, evidence of both her strength and Graham’s weakness as a candidate. Graham ran behind Alan Wilson, the Republican governor-elect, by roughly 100,000 votes.
• In an interview with Semafor in early September, Andrews said she welcomed help from national Democrats and “anyone who wants to help me win this race, but I am confident I can do it without investment from the national party.”
• “I’m on TV, she’s not up yet, and that’s a huge advantage,” Andrews said of Graham at the time. “All of the ingredients are in place, and I’ve been gifted with what is frankly an incredibly weak opponent. I’m ready.”
• Andrews exploited divisions in the Republican Party over Trump’s endorsement of Graham, reaching out to supporters of Norman and former GOP Gov. David Beasley, according to details shared with Semafor.
• She ran an ad with her Republican dad to appeal to former supporters of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham R-S.C., and worked with Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., and other Black leaders in the state to juice turnout. Beasley ended up cutting a joint endorsement ad with former Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges while Norman’s son, Warren, warmed publicly to Andrews.
• By traditional campaign metrics, Andrews swamped Graham. She raised more than $25 million, according to her campaign, and was largely able to keep her own campaign afloat into October, when both national parties began spending in the race. Graham raised nearly $2 million, a sum that meant she would need outside support to win.
• Ultimately Democrats joined Andrews in the fray. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee quietly spent $500,000 there and Senate Majority PAC spent $750,000. Lauren French, a spokesperson for Senate Majority PAC, said that “Graham brought significant negatives and baggage to the race, that’s undeniable, but Andrews won this race as much as Graham lost it.”
• “For 18 months, she traveled all 46 counties, earning voters’ trust one conversation at a time. She worked just as hard to raise the resources to go up on TV early and stay there. Those relationships and that early investment built a lead that she never gave up,” said Brexton Isaacs, Andrews’s campaign manager.
• I interviewed Andrews throughout this saga: Once when she launched, once earlier this year when it appeared Lindsey Graham would be her opponent, and once after Darline Graham replaced her brother on the ticket. Each time she explained to me why this wasn’t like 2020, when Jaime Harrison raised gobs of money but lost to Lindsey Graham.

IN TEXAS

New York Times: To Sweep Texas, Democrats Built ‘a Machine’ With Every Piece in Place

• The Democratic Party’s stunning domination in Texas on Tuesday began with the promise of one candidate, James Talarico.
• After decades of Republican rule, his well-funded, disciplined and scandal-free U.S. Senate campaign helped convince voters that winning was possible this time. He soon had help.
• With Democrats poised to occupy nearly every statewide office — a tectonic shift — top campaign advisers, newly elected leaders, party operatives and strategists described in interviews how Mr. Talarico’s campaign had galvanized voters and fueled improbable triumphs.
• Mr. Talarico and Ms. Hinojosa, who will be the state’s first Latina governor, sat at a table and toasted with orange-and-white soda cups as giddy supporters cheered and snapped photos.
• Republican Party leaders had long assumed that the only threats to their power were from the right, even as Texas became a landing pad for transplants and immigrants, its cosmopolitan urban centers ballooning to include five of the nation’s 15 largest cities.
• That assumption that moving right was always the right move led Ken Paxton, a scandal-scarred attorney general, to challenge and defeat Senator John Cornyn in the primary. It also allowed Bo French, a brazenly anti-Muslim candidate, to become the party’s nominee for oil and gas regulator. He complained publicly about the number of South Asians at the University of Texas. He lost.
• The long rightward lurch had not been a problem for Republican officials. Then, on Tuesday, the lurch back swept most of them away.
• The Democratic Party’s candidates, especially in statewide races, stuck to a consistent middle-of-the-road message, promising to address cost-of-living concerns and to curtail cultural battles that have consumed Texas politics for years.
• By contrast, Republicans leaned into culture wars that had seemed potent just two years before. They believed they had easy targets in Ms. Hinojosa and Mr. Talarico, who had spoken publicly about gender, race and equity.
• “Some people know him as ‘Tofu Talarico.’ Some people call him ‘Six Gender Jimmy,’” said Mr. Paxton on the night of his primary victory in March. “I’ve even heard some people even call him James Talafreako.”
• That nickname stuck, but not as Mr. Paxton expected.
• At a Houston rally the next day, Mr. Talarico told supporters that they could buy a T-shirt declaring “I’m a Talafreako.” More than 43,000 did, netting his campaign more than $1 million.
• The nimble response — parrying rather than counterpunching — captured the instincts of his campaign. Mr. Talarico stuck relentlessly to a core message: Texas politics was dominated by billionaires and politicians like Mr. Paxton who had served their own interests at the expense of ordinary Texans.
• Mr. Talarico navigated fraught moments in his speeches, often germinating in iPhone notes shared with his 26-year-old speechwriter, Antonio Esparza.
• The approach underscored what Mr. Talarico presented in his campaign as a commitment to bipartisanship, to faith and to getting beyond divisions. He hammered home that message to audiences listening to hourlong podcasts. He delivered it in person around the state, first with town halls where he took questions and then in speeches to thousands.