Welcome to At the Races! Each week we bring you news and analysis from the CQ Roll Call campaign team. Know someone who’d like to get this newsletter? They can subscribe here.

By Daniela Altimari, Mary Ellen McIntire and Niels Lesniewski

Organized labor is ramping up for the midterms.

In her annual State of the Unions address this week, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler laid out the labor federation’s concerns and how it intends to mobilize its members.

Affordability, including the cost of housing and health care, along with the social and economic upheaval presented by AI, are among the chief worries of the AFL-CIO’s nearly 15 million members.

“It’s harder to win on AI when we have politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, who cash checks from Big Tech CEOs instead of doing their job and regulating them,’’ Shuler said. “That’s why these midterm elections matter. If we don’t right the ship in November, it gets that much harder to build an economy that works for all of us.”

Donald Trump made historic gains with working-class voters in 2024; Teamsters President Sean O’Brien even had a speaking role at the Republican National Convention. Teamster branches have endorsed an array of Republican candidates this cycle, including in Kansas, where Teamsters Local 696 in Topeka announced Thursday it was backing Sen. Roger Marshall for reelection.

But since returning to the White House the Trump administration has tangled with unions representing federal workers and sought to make it harder for labor to organize.

Still, Shuler cautioned that Democrats shouldn’t take union workers for granted. 

“Workers are sick and tired of both parties. Republicans … enable a White House that has made our life worse and more expensive at every turn … have rubber-stamped Trump’s needless wars, chaotic tariffs, and attacks on our communities,” she said. “ At the same time, we have too many Democrats who pay lip service to working people, say they understand us and want our votes on Election Day, and then take office and cozy up to the same corporations we’re fighting on the picket lines.”

The union is launching its largest effort ever to mobilize for the midterms: Through door-knocking, get-out-the vote initiatives and regular conversations with co-workers and family members, the AFL-CIO aims to turn out 16 million voters, 2 million more than it says it brought out in 2022.

The group has endorsed candidates for House, Senate and governor’s races across the spectrum, from democratic socialists and moderate Democrats to independents and one Republican seeking federal office: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.

The fifth-term congressman who represents a Philadelphia-area swing district called the endorsement “a proud honor.”

Starting gate

#NH01: The tenor of the Democratic primary for the seat New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas is vacating for his Senate run has turned increasingly sour ahead of Tuesday’s election, with both front-runners, Maura Sullivan and Stefany Shaheen, taking swipes at each other. Recent polls show Sullivan pulling ahead of Shaheen, but many voters remained undecided. 

Mass. message: The results of Tuesday’s Democratic primaries in Massachusetts were a mixed bag, with signs for optimism for candidates across the generational and ideological spectrum. Sen. Edward J. Markey, an 80-year-old progressive who’s been in Congress for nearly five decades, won his primary. So did two septuagenarian House Democrats, Reps. Richard E. Neal and Stephen F. Lynch, who turned back younger, more liberal challengers by highlighting the benefits of seniority and their skill at bringing federal funding home to their districts. And an establishment-linked candidate, Dan Koh, won the Democratic primary for an open House seat, bolstered by endorsements from former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Bad bet: Laurie Buckhout, a retired Army colonel running against Democratic Rep. Don Davis in a key North Carolina swing district, was fined and suspended by the prediction market Kalshi after she bet on her campaign. The platform also announced it was penalizing several other former candidates for violating its rules, including disgraced GOP former Rep. George Santos of New York, who drew a lifetime ban. 

State of emergency: Some Democrats and voting rights advocates are taking seriously the possibility that Trump could declare a national emergency before the midterms if the Senate does not pass the GOP-crafted elections package, known as the SAVE America Act, our colleague John T. Bennett writes.

ICYMI

Trump on the road: The president told vulnerable Republican candidates he plans to hit the campaign trail hard starting 30 days out from Election Day, Bennett reports. “We’re going to do something like I did for myself in the last presidential election,” Trump said at a Rose Garden dinner Wednesday. “I’m not going to go out and play golf. I’m not going to do anything. All I’m going to do is work, work, work and fight, fight, fight and win, win, win.” His announcement comes as The Washington Post reports that Republicans are concerned it may be too late to fully deploy the millions of dollars in Trump’s super PAC to support GOP candidates this fall. 

Speaker on the road: Speaker Mike Johnson hit the campaign trail in 54 cities and towns over 18 states during the August recess on behalf of 71 members and candidates, the Louisiana Republican announced this week. 

Texas money: Senate Majority Leader John Thune is encouraging Trump and his aligned group MAGA Inc. to spend in Texas, where GOP nominee Ken Paxton is facing a tough race against Democrat James Talarico. The South Dakota Republican’s appeal comes after The Texas Tribune reported last week that Sen. John Cornyn, whom Paxton defeated in the primary, has been fundraising for GOP Senate candidates in several states, but not Texas. 

#MISEN: Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, apologized for a comment he made in March about an attack on a synagogue near Detroit, telling members of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus that he made a “mistake,” when he said “hurt people hurt people” after a man drove a truck into a synagogue. Some Jewish Democrats have been skeptical of El-Sayed’s candidacy in the key swing state.

Country roads, take him home? Politico reports that freshman Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia is pondering a return to the governor’s office. The Republican is considering launching a primary challenge to Gov. Patrick Morrisey, with whom he’s been feuding in recent days. 

A family affair: A new ad for GOP Rep. Thomas H. Kean Jr.’s reelection campaign features his 91-year-old namesake father, a popular former Garden State governor, who says the 7th District congressman “worked to protect Medicare and Medicaid for every New Jersey senior, child, disabled person.” Kean is in a tight reelection fight with Democratic Navy veteran Rebecca Bennett. 

#GirlDad: Candidate ads featuring daughters were a micro-trend in 2024 and the theme appears to be making a comeback this year. A new ad by Ohio Democrat Brian Poindexter features his three daughters talking about his work ethic, while Nebraska Republican Brinker Harding spotlights his wife and two daughters in his ad.

Last Frontier funny business: The fall lineups are set in Alaska but only after a cascade of candidate withdrawals before the Monday deadline to finalize the top four November ballot. The Senate contest pits Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola against two Dan Sullivans, including the incumbent GOP senator, and another Republican. In the House race, GOP Rep. Nick Begich will take on independent Bill Hill, who is backed by Democrats, Democrat Eric Hafner, who currently resides in a federal prison in New York, and Libertarian Jim McDermott, who finished eighth but moved up after other candidates withdrew. And in the governor’s race, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins will be the only Democrat on the ballot after Tom Begich (uncle to the current congressman) dropped out. Republicans took the other three spots, but not before a last-minute shakeup that landed a disqualified candidate’s wife on the ballot.   

Guv roundup: Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination Tuesday, will face Republican former medical tech executive Mike Minogue in her bid for a second term. In Florida, outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis finally endorsed GOP Rep. Byron Donalds’ campaign for governor. Donalds, who faces Democrat David Jolly in November, picked state Sen. Bryan Avila as his running mate last week. And in Nebraska, former state Sen. Brett Lindstrom, whose independent gubernatorial bid fell through this summer, has filed to challenge GOP Gov. Jim Pillen under the America First Party banner. Lindstrom lost to Pillen in the 2022 Republican primary.

Nathan’s notes

Roll Call elections analyst Nathan L. Gonzales of Inside Elections sees potential parallels between this year’s elections and the 2006 midterms, when Democrats flipped both chambers of Congress.

Republicans are still in the hunt to hold both the Senate and House this fall, Nathan writes, but another high-profile scandal and the cycle could snowball out of control for them. 

What we’re reading

J-E-T-S Jets! Jets! Jets!: The New York Times looks at the race for the open seat in Arizona’s 1st District, where a former member of the New York Jets organization is on track for a victory. The question is whether it’ll be former kicker Jay Feely, the Republican nominee, or Democrat Amish Shah, the team’s former sideline doctor.

Cruz 2028: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was back in Iowa over the weekend, and as The Wall Street Journal reports, the onetime Republican presidential hopeful is making no secret about his ambitions.

Ocean State wave: Incumbents in Rhode Island face a potentially extinction-level event in next week’s Democratic primaries, according to The Boston Globe. Losses next week by Gov. Dan McKee, Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos and Providence Mayor Brett Smiley “would amount to an unprecedented upending of Rhode Island’s political establishment, and a massive rebuke that could signal a significant shift in the state’s political landscape,’’ the paper wrote. 

Donor defection: Several longtime contributors to Democratic candidates and causes in the Detroit area are shifting their spending to an unlikely beneficiary: Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers, who is running against El-Sayed, Crane’s Detroit Business reports. 

The mayor and the influencers: Columbia Journalism Review examines the new eco-system of social media creators promoting the policies of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 

Holding the center: New York magazine profiles former Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden aide Neera Tanden, whose return as CEO and president of the Center for American Progress has been marked by battles with the Democratic Party’s left flank.

The count: 20

That’s how many states have unified congressional delegations in the 119th Congress, with senators and representatives from the same party caucuses. 

It’s the highest total since the start of 1953, when a two-decade stretch of at least that many unified delegations came to an end.

Thanks to mid-decade redistricting, some shuffling is expected to come out of this year’s midterm elections. 

Utah will almost surely remove itself from the unified group by electing Democrat Ben McAdams to the 1st District, newly redrawn to encompass deep-blue Salt Lake City and its suburbs. 

Tennessee is expected to join the list after state Republicans dismantled the majority-Black seat of longtime Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen and divided Memphis between three GOP-leaning districts. Cohen later announced his retirement. 

Inside Elections ratings suggest all-Republican delegations are highly imperiled in two more states. Nebraska could send a split delegation to Washington, with Democrats favored to slip the Omaha-area seat of retiring Rep. Don Bacon. Democrats could also make gains in Iowa, where two House seats are rated Toss-ups and the open Senate seat could be trending in that direction as well.

Beyond that, there are more distant possibilities of unified delegations breaking up in four states — two Republican (Alaska and Montana) and two Democratic (New Mexico and New Hampshire). An extreme wave election for Democrats could also help them solidify control in the currently split Maine and Nevada.

– by Roll Call’s Ryan Kelly

Key race: #FL13

Candidates: GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who’s running for a third term, faces a challenge from Democratic Army veteran Leela Gray.

Why it matters: Democrats are targeting the 13th District and view Gray as a strong challenger to Luna, an Air Force veteran. The pro-Democratic House Majority PAC released polling this week that showed Gray leading Luna, 51 percent to 46 percent. Luna dismissed the findings, noting on social media that a May 2024 survey had showed her Democratic opponent ahead. (Luna ended up winning reelection by 10 points.) The congresswoman also said that Gray was “down over 8 points” but did not elaborate.

Cash dash: Luna led the fundraising race as of late July, when candidates filed their most recent federal fundraising reports. She raised $3.2 million and had $1.5 million banked as of July 29. Gray raised $1.2 million and had $683,000 on hand. Outside groups haven’t yet started spending in the district this year. 

Backers: Luna touts Trump’s endorsement on her website and is backed by the conservative Club for Growth PAC. Gray has endorsements from Democratic military veterans in Congress, including Reps. Jason Crow and Pat Ryan and Sen. Mark Kelly. 

What they’re saying: Since winning the nomination last month, Gray has released an anticorruption agenda and accused Luna of “rubber-stamping” the “reckless” Iran war. Luna, for her part, has been advocating for a bipartisan proposal to require influencers to disclose if they receive payments from foreign governments.

Terrain: The 13th District sits on Florida’s western coast and includes Clearwater and parts of St. Petersburg. The district grew a shade redder under the state’s new GOP-crafted congressional map, shifting from one that backed Trump by 12 points in 2024 to one he would have carried it by 13 points, according to calculations by Inside Elections, which rates the race Likely Republican. 

Wild card: Luna has made headlines this year over her efforts to block activity on the House floor to help advance her legislative priorities.

Coming up

Primary season is quickly drawing to a close, with New Hampshire the last battleground state to hold its intraparty contests. Granite State voters will pick their nominees for key Senate and House races on Tuesday. 

Photo finish

Subscribe now using this link so you don’t miss out on the best news and analysis from our team.