There were some stories to conclude the past week in politics regarding the House, Senate, and Governor races happening in 2024 and 2026. In the House, the GOP’s mainstream fundraising arm has announced the battleground candidates that they were supporting versus the other members who were more solid in their bets for re-election. In the Senate, a myriad of polling is showing competitive Senate races in places where the races shouldn’t theoretically be competitive. Regarding the gubernatorial elections, North Carolina’s election is showing signs of movement as the baggage surrounding Lt. Governor Mark Robinson appears to be roosting around his campaign with the numbers tightening in the campaign. Let’s get to the stories.
Starting with the Congressional Leadership Fund, the Republicans have started their main fundraising effort for their frontline members tasked with keeping swing districts Republican or flipping swing districts from blue to red. This is juxtaposed with the Democratic “Red to Blue” program where the party is getting involved in their primaries to weed out their negative candidates to try to choose the best candidates to face incumbent Republicans. The reason why this matters is that the current fundraising for the parties so far has been focused on the mainstream candidates fairly reliably already without the presence of a guiding force such as the Congressional Leadership Fund, but the focus could shift away as the general election nears. This is because the politically disengaged voters who only become activated around the general election will finally turn on their small dollar amounts, meaning that having the best candidates to donate towards is better than assuming that the party members just know automatically whom to support. It’s also a chance for the GOP to show an increasing commitment to avoid being labeled a homogenous party of stereotypically white men which was the main attack line from Democrats after the 2018 midterms saw the conference have many Republican women and minorities removed from Congress after losing their elections.
Moving onto the Senate, there were a couple of polls that were worth observing that came out in the past week. In the Maryland Senate race, Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) appears to be neck-and-neck with Congressman David Trone (D-MD) in the Democratic primary to take on the frontrunner for the Republican nomination former Governor Larry Hogan (R-MD) at 40% to his 43% according to her internal polling. She polls slightly worse against Hogan in the general election, but has been more widely endorsed after Trone allegedly mentioned a racial slur by accident in a congressional hearing. The same polling shows a close contest between Hogan and both Democrats in deep-blue Maryland in the general election. There was also polling from SurveyUSA that showed Sen. Amy Klobuchar barely crossing over the 50% mark against little-known challenger Joe Fraser (R-MN) who maintains his 34% in the polling, suggesting that the race leans heavily in her favor, but there’s a faint, faint possibility that the race could become competitive if Democrats severely underperform. If that were to happen and Democrats have to invest in Minnesota’s Senate race, that would suggest immediate problems in other down-ballot races and would say that races like Florida, Ohio, and Texas are off the table for Democrats to hold or snag.
Concluding on the gubernatorial election in North Carolina, the issues with Mark Robinson appear to be mounting where the number of negative stories regarding his candidacy appear to be mounting at an absurd rate. While one could believe that the Democratic opposition research firms have heavily investigated him leading up to this point, there may be some hinting that Robinson’s feuding with Sen. Thom Tillis may be costing him dearly regarding his approval rating. As a general rule in North Carolina, Thom Tillis’s opposition research firms are second-to-none and are not to be trifled with, so the decision for Robinson to cross Tillis wasn’t smart in the slightest. This isn’t to suggest that Tillis is uncovering the information to undermine Robinson’s campaign as Attorney General Josh Stein’s (D-NC) campaign was hoping for Robinson’s baggage for victory, but the reliable leak of new damaging information is indicative of professional opposition research strategists.
Also, there is new Victory Insights polling showing Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz leading the Florida Governor primary in 2026 at 21% and 13% of the vote. While one would hope that more moderate voices would stand out, they are languishing in the single-digits. We’ll see what happens as we get closer to 2026.
Sources: Trailblazers – Congressional Leadership Fund
Mark Robinson (American politician) – Wikipedia
Mark Robinson comes unglued over Thom Tillis endorsing his opponent | Opinion (yahoo.com)
The Conservatarian Millennial 