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. There’s a new Republican-led effort on Capitol Hill this week to put an end to ranked-choice voting. Republican Reps. Abe Hamadeh of Arizona and Nick Begich of Alaska unveiled legislation Monday that would ban ranked-choice voting in federal elections. Begich has both won and lost elections for Alaska’s at-large House seat through the ranked-choice process. Alaska voters implemented ranked-choice voting through a 2020 ballot initiative and narrowly reaffirmed it in 2024. The system is generally viewed as benefiting candidates like Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican with crossover support. Advocates for repealing the current law quickly restarted the effort to get it on the ballot again in 2026. Maine is the other state that uses ranked-choice voting in federal elections. Meanwhile, voters in Arizona and other Western states have rejected efforts to implement such a system of conducting elections. Meanwhile, also on the voting front, the House has already passed a bill, known as the SAVE Act, intended to require stringent voter ID requirements across the country. But its prospects in the Senate are murky, with Democrats vowing to block the bill. “I will do whatever it takes to kill this bill, to stop it from passing, to keep it from even coming up if we can,” Senate Rules and Administration ranking member Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said on the floor Wednesday. “Because we owe it to our constituents to fight every executive order that undermines our democracy, and to keep demanding answers on the firing of federal workers entrusted with safeguarding our elections.” Speaking of California, there’s also a proposal led by Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., to try to force states like his to speed up their ballot counting and potentially stop ballots that don’t arrive until after Election Day from being counted. At a House Administration hearing Tuesday focused on California’s vote counting process, Democratic Rep. Norma J. Torres spoke against the entire premise of the hearing. You can read more about that here. An aide to Padilla, a former California secretary of state, said the senator would work to block the Obernolte bill if it were to reach the Senate. Starting gate Waltz moving: President Donald Trump on Thursday removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser and instead intends to nominate him as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, our colleague John T. Bennett reports. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as interim national security adviser, the president also announced. Trump 100 days tour: Trump this week referred to his time so far back in office as the best “100-day start of any president in American history,” John reported. That’s despite poll numbers showing him with a historically low job approval rating for a newly sworn-in president and clear signs that the economy is slowing. (Trump, for his part, has decried polls as fake and sought to blame economic conditions on his predecessor, Joe Biden.) John also joined Roll Call Editor-in-Chief Jason Dick to talk about Trump’s first 100 days on the latest “Political Theater” podcast. Senate won’t stop tariffs: Olivia M. Bridges reports for Roll Call on the Senate killing a resolution designed to reassert congressional authority over tariff policy. By a 50-49 procedural vote, with Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie, the Senate dispensed with the move to effectively stop Trump’s 10 percent and reciprocal tariffs. Craig runs for Senate: Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig announced this week that she is entering the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Sen. Tina Smith. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and former Minnesota Senate Minority Leader Melisa López Franzen are the other prominent Democrats already in the field. Craig’s decision also opens up her competitive 2nd District seat, south of the Twin Cities. Connolly not running: Virginia Rep. Gerald E. Connolly won’t seek a 10th term next year, announcing this week that his cancer had returned. He also plans to step down as the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee but didn’t specify when. The jockeying to replace him on the panel has already begun. Battle of the exes: Roll Call’s Jim Saksa looks at former Capitol Hill staffers who are now running for Congress themselves. The field includes Democrat Jake Rakov, who is seeking to unseat his former boss, California Rep. Brad Sherman. Take Five: Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, from New York’s swingy 3rd District, spoke with Jim about his return to Congress, his party’s path forward and why he supports bipartisanship. ICYMI From the left: Progressive group Justice Democrats this week backed their first Democratic primary challenger of the cycle, with an endorsement of Michigan state Rep. Donavan McKinney to take on Rep. Shri Thanedar in the Detroit-area 13th District. Previous successful challengers backed by Justice Democrats have included New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts’ Ayanna S. Pressley. Thanedar himself made headlines this week for introducing seven articles of impeachment against Trump. Return of O’Rourke? He lost a high-profile Senate race in 2018, but Democratic former Rep. Beto O’Rourke signaled that he’s open to a 2026 run for the state’s other Senate seat if Texans want him to. South Dakota independent: Brian Bengs, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who made an unsuccessful run for Senate as a Democrat in 2022, has launched a new bid —but this time he’s running as an independent. “South Dakotans deserve a senator who isn’t a gutless robot for some political party and Big Money,” Bengs said in his campaign announcement. The current occupant of the seat, Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, has not publicly said whether he intends to seek reelection. Schatz for whip: Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz has formally joined the race to succeed retiring Sen. Richard J. Durbin as the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, and he’s already lining up support from colleagues. Looming battle in the Lehigh Valley: Carol Obando-Derstine, a onetime aide to Democratic former Sen. Bob Casey, launched her campaign for Pennsylvania’s 7th District on Thursday. Obando-Derstine joins Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure in the Democratic primary to unseat Republican freshman Ryan Mackenzie. Obando-Derstine has the backing of former Rep. Susan Wild, who lost the swing seat to Mackenzie last year. Virginia is not for quitters: Virginia Republican John Reid has rejected calls, including from GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, to step down as the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor after revelations that sexually explicit images were reposted to a Tumblr account that shared the same handle as Reid’s Instagram account. Reid has denied that the Tumblr account was his and has accused his opponent of targeting him for being openly gay. Guv watch: South Dakota House Speaker Jon Hansen announced last week that he’s running for governor. Incumbent Larry Rhoden, a fellow Republican who was elevated to the office after Kristi Noem resigned to become Homeland Security secretary, has not yet revealed his 2026 plans. In Georgia, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, has formed an exploratory committee ahead of a potential gubernatorial bid. And Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, last year’s Democratic vice presidential nominee, says he’s raising the resources needed to run for a third term. Nathan’s notes We could have another “Year of the Woman” on our hands, this time for Democratic primaries, Roll Call elections analyst Nathan L. Gonzales of Inside Elections writes. The aforementioned Minnesota primary is one of potentially four Senate contests with multiple Democratic women vying for the nomination. While this is a relatively new phenomenon in Senate primaries, the fact that it has happened to relatively little fanfare is a sign of how far female candidates have come, Democratic strategists tell Nathan. What we’re reading Stu says: For all the talk about Democrats’ lack of a coherent message, Trump’s developing weaknesses on taxes, tariffs and the economy is bad news for Republicans, Roll Call political analyst Stu Rothenberg writes. “Weaponizing” mental illness: Former aides to erstwhile Colorado Rep. Yadira Caraveo told The Colorado Sun that they were mistreated by the Democrat, who is running again for the battleground seat north of Denver that she lost in 2024. The former staffers, who spoke to the outlet anonymously, said they were traumatized by Caraveo’s behavior when her mental health struggles led to a pair of apparent suicide attempts. “It’s completely fine to struggle with mental illness,” one former staffer said. “But it is one thing to struggle with mental illness and it’s another thing to weaponize it.” Searching for Rep. Scott Perry: The Associated Press tried to track down the Pennsylvania Republican during the recent congressional recess but found the doors to one of his district offices locked. “Perry’s team did not share details about the Republican congressman’s public appearances until they were over. Even supporters who live in Perry’s central Pennsylvania district could not remember the last time he hosted an in-person town hall,” the AP reported. New clout: On the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, The Orange County Register takes stock of the rising political influence of Vietnamese Americans, including freshman Rep. Derek Tran, who represents Orange County’s Little Saigon and is the son of refugees from Vietnam. Aftermath of a scandal: The false signature scandal that derailed Rhode Island Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos’ run for Congress in 2023 almost caused her to “quit everything,’’ the Democrat told 12 News in Providence. “It got to a moment in which it was very overwhelming,” said Matos, who plans to run for reelection in 2026. A contractor and a campaign official have been criminally charged in the case. The count: 3 points That’s the campaign advantage a generic 2026 Democratic candidate holds over a generic Republican, according to a recent poll of registered voters conducted by Siena College for The New York Times. Democrats might be pleased to be polling ahead of Republicans on the generic ballot question, which asks: “If the 2026 general election for Congress were held today, which party’s candidate would you be more likely to vote for in your district?” Democrats also hold a substantial 18-point advantage among the college-educated voters who traditionally are more likely to participate in midterm elections. But their overall advantage is still within the poll’s margin of error. For context, heading into Trump’s first midterm election in 2018, Democrats had an average advantage on the generic ballot of 7 points and went on to flip the House that fall. — By Roll Call’s Ryan Kelly Coming up Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, who’s been the subject of retirement rumors, says she plans to announce on Monday whether she will seek a 15th term representing the Chicago area in Congress. Later in the week, Joe and Jill Biden are expected to appear on “The View” on Thursday for the former first couple’s first live interview since leaving the White House. Photo finish Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, left, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska represent states that decide their federal elections through ranked-choice voting. A House bill unveiled this week seeks to ban the voting system in federal races. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) Subscribe now using this link so you don’t miss out on the best news and analysis from our team.
