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. A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday brought bleak news for congressional Democrats: Just 21 percent of voters approve of the way they are doing their jobs. Democratic lawmakers are underwater even with their own base, notching a 49 percent disapproval rating among registered partisans. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are enjoying a honeymoon of sorts, the Quinnipiac survey found. In the early days of President Donald Trump's return to the White House and the GOP governing trifecta, 40 percent of voters give Republicans in Congress positive marks. Among Republicans, that number shoots up to 79 percent. Democrats in Congress have been here before. They endured a shellacking in the 2010 midterms and saw Republicans win full control of Washington in 2016. But since March 2009, when Quinnipiac first asked this question, their job approval rating has never dipped this low. “It's a sobering slap down of historic proportions for the Democrats in Congress,’’ Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a news release announcing the results. “Their Republican counterparts take a victory lap as the Democrats try to get their footing," That’s what recently elected Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin is seeking to do. The former leader of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party released a blueprint this week for fighting Trump and regaining momentum. The plan relies heavily on winning back working-class voters by painting the president as an out-of-touch advocate for the ultra-rich. “Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and Trump’s unpopular, unelected co-president, has shown the frightening realities of Donald Trump’s anti-worker assaults,’’ the document states. Such a strategy could prove successful for Democrats: According to the Quinnipiac poll, 55 percent of voters think Musk has too much power. Starting gate Birthday news dump: Sen. Mitch McConnell used his 83rd birthday Thursday to announce that he won’t seek an eighth term next year. The race to succeed the Kentucky Republican, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, is quickly taking shape. Daniel Cameron, the former state attorney general and a onetime McConnell aide, posted on social media that he’s running, while GOP Rep. Andy Barr said he would make a final decision “soon.” #MNSEN: Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig said she’s seriously considering running to succeed Sen. Tina Smith, a fellow Democrat who announced her retirement last week. GOP Rep. Pete Stauber, meanwhile, said he plans to stay in the House, rather than seek the Senate seat. One Republican who is considering getting into the race is former Sunday Night Football reporter Michele Tafoya, now a conservative podcast host. She told WDAY that she’s spoken to several people about a campaign, including Sen. Tim Scott, the chair of the Senate Republican campaign arm. Caffeine time: Senate watchers are bracing for a long night, as Republicans plan to move forward with a so-called vote-a-rama to advance their budget resolution, despite Trump’s endorsement of the House GOP blueprint on Wednesday, our esteemed budget team colleagues report. The vote-a-rama, which allows Democrats to essentially offer amendments until senators drop, could force lawmakers to take votes the opposing party hopes to flag in a future campaign. About that House resolution: Several House Republicans, including at least three who are expected to face tough races in 2026, signed on to a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson pushing back on spending cuts required by the chamber’s budget resolution, our colleague Caitlin Reilly reports. The members write that potential cuts to programs such as Medicaid, Pell Grants and food stamps could hurt Hispanic Americans, a key demographic for Republicans in last year’s elections. United we vote: House Republican cohesion ticked up just slightly last year on votes that split the parties, according to the second iteration of CQ Roll Call’s annual vote studies, after a historically bad 2023. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats, who narrowly held the majority in the chamber last year, saw record success on such votes. ‘Stop making cents’: Stopping the production of the penny may be one of Trump’s most popular proposals to date, according to Economist/YouGov polling, but as our colleague Mike Magner reports, implementing the president’s directive may not be that easy. ICYMI #MISEN: Rep. Haley Stevens is moving closer to a bid for Michigan’s open Senate seat. The four-term Democrat has hired additional staff that could help make up a campaign team, Politico reports. New (and old) challengers: Democratic county legislator Beth Davidson announced a challenge to Rep. Mike Lawler in New York’s 17th District, one of three GOP-held House seats won by Kamala Harris last year. Across the country in California, Democrat Christina Gagnier, a former school board member in the Chino Valley, launched a campaign against GOP Rep. Young Kim in the 40th District. Meanwhile in Iowa, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks faces a rematch with fellow Republican David Pautsch, who lost a closer-than-expected primary to her last year. And in Michigan, Democrat Alex Hawkins, an Army veteran, launched a campaign for Republican Rep. John James’ 10th District seat. Drama in NYC: Freshman Rep. Laura Gillen, D-N.Y., joined calls for Gov. Kathy Hochul to remove New York Mayor Eric Adams from office, though The Associated Press reported Thursday that the governor has decided against the move but will push for more oversight of City Hall. Adams appeared in federal court Wednesday as a judge weighed whether to drop corruption charges against the Democrat, as the Trump administration has sought. Ad wars starting early: While Barr hasn’t officially entered the race for the Senate seat McConnell is vacating, the Club for Growth Action already ran an ad opposing the seven-term House Republican as a “career political insider.” Texas turnaround: Politico reports that the county executive of Laredo-anchored Webb County in South Texas is weighing a run against embattled Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar in his border district. County Judge Tano Tijerina was previously elected as a Democrat but switched to the Republican Party in late 2024. Cuellar and his wife were indicted on bribery charges last year. Guv update: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds hasn’t yet said if she will seek a third full term next year, but she’d face a contested primary if she does, with former state Rep. Brad Sherman announcing a challenge from her right this week. In California, Republican Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, launched a bid for the state’s open governorship – an office his party hasn’t won since 2006. Longtime Trump ally Richard Grenell, who was recently appointed interim executive director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, said he would weigh a run for California governor if former Vice President Kamala Harris enters the race. In Ohio, another top Trump ally (and onetime presidential rival) Vivek Ramaswamy has filed paperwork to run to succeed term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine, with a campaign kick-off expected Monday. And in Oklahoma, former state House Speaker Charles McCall is the latest Republican to announce for governor in next year’s open-seat race. Ranked-choice redo: Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom has OK'd a new push to repeal the state’s ranked-choice and open primary voting system, just four months after Alaskans narrowly rejected a ballot measure that would have repealed both. Dahlstrom approved the first step in the process to place the repeal on the 2026 ballot. Voting in Vermont: A county judge has rejected a lawsuit, filed by a conservative group, to block noncitizen voting in municipal elections in Burlington, Vt. The judge pointed to a ruling by the Vermont Supreme Court that held that the citizenship requirement did not apply to municipal elections. Nathan's notes Making the federal government more efficient has been a stated goal of the new Trump administration, with the words “waste, fraud and abuse” stitched together to validate the actions being taken by Elon Musk and others, Roll Call elections analyst Nathan L. Gonzales writes in a new opinion piece. There’s plenty of room to argue about spending priorities, efficiency and effectiveness, Nathan says, but a lot of the initial spending cuts are about differences in ideology, the size of government, the United States’ role in the world and partisanship. What we're reading Stu says: Some of the actions being pushed by Trump in his second term have echoes of the “New Right” of the early 1980s, Roll Call political analyst Stu Rothenberg writes. But on some positions, the president is light years apart from the conservatives of yore. #GASEN: Sen. Jon Ossoff, Georgia’s first Jewish senator who is up for reelection next year, has drawn some pushback at home for his stance on the war in Gaza and a vote to block certain weapons transfers to Israel. The New York Times reports that some fellow Jewish Democrats have signed on to a letter urging Brian Kemp, the state’s Republican governor, to challenge Ossoff in 2026. Reshaping coverage: The White House – which has barred The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One because the news service won’t use the term Gulf of America to refer to the Gulf of Mexico – has made a seat in the briefing room available for “reporters from outside the traditional formats of Washington coverage,’’ Columbia Journalism Review reports. Those who have held the seat so far include Natalie Winters, co-host of the “War Room” podcast with Steve Bannon, and former ESPN host-turned-conservative-podcaster Sage Steele, whom Republicans tried to recruit for a congressional run out of Connecticut in 2024. Also on the list is John Ashbrook of the “Ruthless” podcast, who has long been familiar to At the Races readers as a former spokesman and adviser to Mitch McConnell. Tears and credible death threats: Some Republican lawmakers have privately expressed concerns they will be subject to political violence if they impede Trump’s agenda, according to Vanity Fair. The count: 21.3 percent That's the share of “yea” or “nay” floor votes called in the House and Senate in 2024 that had every voting member of the Democratic Caucus voting one way and every voting Republican the other (182 of the 855 votes cast). In the House, members of the Republican majority voted unanimously on 175 of the 337 votes (52 percent) in the chamber that split the two parties. House Democrats stuck wholly together on 171 of them (51 percent). That share was their lowest in the Joe Biden era, while the Republican rate in 2024 — just months after a chaotic spell that saw them depose their own speaker — was their highest on record. In the Senate, members of last year’s Democratic majority — a 50-member mix of Democrats and independents not named Kyrsten Sinema, who didn’t officially caucus with them — voted unanimously on 194 of the 253 votes that split the two parties (77 percent). That's their third-highest rate on record, behind both of the first two years of the Biden presidency, when they voted unanimously on a remarkable 87 percent of party-unity votes. Senate Republicans voted entirely in lockstep on 108 of the 253 votes (43 percent). That was their fifth-highest rate, behind each of the four years of Trump’s first term, when they voted unanimously on around 70 percent of party-unity votes. – By Roll Call’s Ryan Kelly Coming up Capitol Hill will be back to near-full strength next week when House lawmakers return from their weeklong recess. House GOP leaders are under pressure to muster up support for their own budget resolution, while the Senate is expected to continue voting on Trump's nominees. Photo finish Former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, left, gets a high-five from West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice as they wheel past each other at the Senate subway elevator in the Capitol on Thursday. McConnell later announced his retirement in a floor speech. (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.
