Electoral Power
Julie: Liam is home. The 5 year old in the bunny hat with the Spiderman backpack who was taken by ICE agents from his home in Minnesota, along with his father, was freed from the detention center in Texas where he was held. A federal judge demanded they be set free, and they are now home. The trauma of being taken to begin with - and the evil of knowing there are four other students from Liam’s school in the detention center in Texas - remain heartbreaking. But there is hope in Liam’s return home.
Traci: I am grateful for that too. Thanks for leading off with such good news!
In other news, as you know, Julie, I’m a little obsessed with the 2026 elections. While we’ve all been doing our best to hold as much ground as possible in the opening months of this authoritarian regime, the ‘26 elections are the key moment to regain some power to stop MAGA’s stranglehold on federal power. It’s hard to overstate how important they are, and now that we’ve begun this critical year, let’s talk about where things stand and what’s giving us hope for success.
Julie: The Century Foundation recently created a Democracy Meter. While the results are scary overall, one of the biggest sources of hope in the metrics is that the elections measure held steady from 2024-2025 (while the three other areas were on the decline). My colleagues write: “The explicitly decentralized nature of U.S. elections, which are the responsibility of the states and not the federal government, has protected them, for now, from the harshest effects of an authoritarian government in federal office. At the time of publication, the current government can still be removed through voting.”
Earlier this week, Trump floated the idea that “Republicans should take over the voting, in at least, many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” While folks debate what he meant by that and how serious he was, the good news is that at the moment, this is not an easy change to make.
Perhaps part of his thinking was that too many Democrats are winning under free elections. For example, Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a machinist and union leader, defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss last weekend in a runoff election for a Texas state Senate seat by 14 points. This was a district Trump won by 17 points in 2024. That’s a 31-point swing from 2024.
Traci: There’s hope in that large swing. There’s hope seeing young Democrats winning. And there’s hope seeing winning campaigns focused on supporting the working class, which was the Dems’ winning strategy for decades. Two other special elections in red state legislative races have followed that trend. In December, Democrat Gary Clemons crushed it with a similar profile to Rehmet: veteran, union leader, focused on the needs of working families. In a Kentucky district that Kamala Harris won by only five points, Clemons received a whopping 70 percent of the vote. And here in Iowa, the Democrats had to defend a state senate seat when one of the chamber’s female leaders died unexpectedly. The seat was in a swing district, and was critical as the Democrats had just broken the Republican supermajority in that chamber. So I think many of us found hope when Democrat Renee Hardman not only won, but increased her share of the vote from 58% in the last election, to 71%. In total in communities across the United States, Democrats flipped 21 percent of all the Republican-held seats up for a vote in 2025.
And in another critical local election, in December, Miami elected its first Democratic Mayor in nearly 30 years and its first ever female mayor, Eileen Higgins. Higgins - who ran on an agenda of restoring trust and a prosperous, affordable future received one of every three votes cast in the city’s red precincts, compared to the one in 10 Trump-backed GOP candidate Emilio González took in the blue precincts. This win came from a combination of a new law protecting immigrants, a community standing up for their neighbors, and a Democratic electoral win that pulled in Republican voters.
We’ve talked a lot over the past year about how important it is for us to not just push back against what’s happening in this country under the tyranny of MAGA, but to formulate a proactive vision of the country we want to see. These elections show us a vision where we fight for what working families need, protect our neighbors, and reestablish a common commitment to democracy and the rule of law regardless of partisan affiliation. That’s a country I’d be pretty happy to live in.
Julie: These wins are definitely hopeful. The Democracy Meter I mentioned notes the decline in checks and balances and growth of executive power. Shifting the balance in power in Congress would make a big difference. We saw during the first Trump presidency, there was pushback in the midterms. In 2018 we saw a midterm blue wave. There is a lot riding on the 2026 midterm elections, and a lot of hope that we will see a similar wave - much like we have seen in 2025 elections.
Traci: Yes to the importance of shifting the power of Congress – I’d go so far as to say it’s the most important goal of the 2026 midterms. But I also want to encourage people to consider the importance of state elections, too. Even if the Democrats are able to reclaim one or (by some miracle) both chambers of Congress, states will continue to be important actors in defending democracy and counteracting some of the worst policies coming from Washington.
And state legislative races are really easy to get involved in and actually make a difference. In 2024, 64 legislative races were won by less than 100 votes In Iowa, one House district was won by just 45 votes – and that district was the one that protected the Republican supermajority in that house. It can be hard to convince people that their vote makes a difference in a presidential election, or even many Congressional races. But a couple dozen people in that district made a critically important difference in my state. If elections are your jam, I encourage you to learn about the critical local elections in your area, pick a race and a candidate that you believe in, and get involved! (The good news is that if you can get people to cast their vote for a local candidate, they will probably also place votes up the ticket, as well!)
Julie: A friend recently shared with me that he always volunteers to work the polls on election day. He talked about how he feels like he’s a part of the nuts and bolts of democracy and has the privilege of witnessing so many citizens exercising their rights. This is one of many ways to get involved in the 2026 elections - work the polls, volunteer, donate. The amazing Joan Baez said “action is the antidote to despair.” 2026 elections are such an important way to take action.
