House Democrats on Tuesday rolled out an initial list of 35 Republican-held seats they are targeting next year as the party looks to win control of the chamber.
I think Jeff Crank in CO-5 (around Colorado Springs) should be a target too. Trump only won it by 9 points, and the trends there look way better than some of the districts on this list like FL-27.
It's still by far the reddest at the presidential level (58-40 Trump). When we start winning Douglas county by double digits that one may come into play. The 5th has the best trend of the 4 R seats but Crank is the least offensive of the four I would say. The 3rd is kinda static and the 8th remains a tossup.
Relatively speaking. I'd be much more bullish on CO-05 if Dave Williams had Won the GOP primary in 2024 he would likely would have underperformed like Bobert.
If there were three tiers i'd say the 8th is in the first. The 3rd and 5th are in the second tier and the 4th is in it's own tier. Still think we should run solid candidates in all four. Dems could once again put up a really strong statewide performance that helps downballot.
I grew up there. The politics are similar to eastern Iowa where we've seen the two big special election overperformances. Plus Finstad has very loose levels of familiarity and seems like he'd be easy to define as an out of touch creature of Washington given his background. The district was a nailbiter as recently as 2018 and 2020 so I think it's at least worth being on the preliminary wish list along with IA-02.
I'm really hoping that Schweikert's seat finally falls—I'd love nothing more than for my millionaire Republican cousin in Scottsdale to have Democratic representation. (I gave to Marlene Galán-Woods last cycle, but was disappointed in her showing.)
Nice to see all four of the swing/light-red Pennsylvania districts on the list, too. I think the 8th is the most likely to fall, followed by the 10th, 7th, and 1st.
Sadly, I don't see any of the Ohio seats falling. Max Miller represents the town in which I attended college. (Back then it was represented by Dennis Kucinich, and I still remember the townies' yards being full of "DENNIS!" signs.)
And with a redraw of Wisconsin's map looking much more likely, Van Orden and Steil gotta go!
Colon or Taylor would be awesome, but I'd expect Taylor, who has a strong progressive and solid fundraising background, to be able to clear the field if she decides to get in.
He saw sense in the end. A nationalized race in an extremely anti-Trump midterm would have been the worst possible climate for him. All eyes are now going to be on Scott Brown & Lily Tang Williams on the Republican side and they'd be way weaker in comparison.
The public option was blocked by Lieberman. ACA would presumably not be much, if any, different if Coakley had won. What would be different in that timeline is that other major legislation would have passed after the ACA. The next big push was something with the environment. They wanted to do cap and trade. Likely it would have been whittled down a bit into something lesser, but we probably would have gotten something decent. It's a bit hazier after that but I think immigration reform was the third priority.
All that might have helped us with 2010, might not have. Could argue that we didn't have much room to energize republican voters more, back in that era, but we did have a lot of room to energize our base to turn out. Could also argue that republicans could absolutely have been more motivated and that it would be a net neutral change or even made things worse. Although there weren't all that many important races left that were close that year to add to our L pile. NV-Sen and CO-Sen. MN-Gov, IL-Gov, OR-Gov.
I’m still not sure why Obama and senate Democrats didn’t pass a larger stimulus in early 2009 using budget reconciliation where they would only need 50 senate votes. Democrats would have likely done at least a bit better in 2010 with even a slightly better economy.
And don’t get me started on Lieberman and the public option. Harry Reid should have told him that if he didn’t vote for the bill with the public option, his chairmanship would be gone and any money going to things that he wanted would be shut off.
You could be. Georgia is more Republican than New Hampshire, and Kemp established that he doesn't take orders from Trump, so he would be a strong candidate.
But that could be Kemp’s catch-22. It helped him secure his nomination in the primary in 2022 because Georgia has open primaries and he won the general election with crossover voters. Kemp/Warnock voters were a real thing. But at the same time, Kemp and Trump have supposedly kissed and made up. I know Georgia only entered Purple territory recently but it’s all about turnout of course and Kemp would have to decide if he thinks the MAGA base is big enough for a Senate run in 2026 and risk alienating the crossover appeal. Or he’ll have to do some fair amount of distancing from Trump but risk depressing the MAGA base. With Ossoff raising a record $11 million and coming out of the bar swinging at Trump in his campaign kickoff, I’d rather be Ossoff than Kemp in that scenario. Neither one has an easy road ahead but at least Ossoff has a lot of fuel.
And of course, Trump could easily turn on Kemp (especially if he shows any flash of independence whatsoever) and endorse someone awful like Empty Greene for the seat.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned about Ossoff's chances (I like the guy, but I'm unconvinced that he would have made it across the finish line without the Warnock-Loeffler race on the same ballot), but I won't be surprised if this is the fourth Senate election in a row that Georgia Republicans manage to blow.
His best chance at the seat was if a weaker democrat with little/no name recognition ran. If 2026 is a wave like we all hope, Sununu would need to be able to play up his name recognition to the max to have a chance.
Pappas jumping in took that path off the table. He's a strong candidate that would not allow Sununu to try that strategy. Not surprised by his decision in that context, especially with respect to the timing of announcements. Nobody wants to spend 18 months working nonstop to get a job that they probably will not get.
I think Rebecca Bradley is toast in Wisconsin come April 7, 2026 -- provided that her challenger is strong. There's still going to be strong anti-Trump sentiment by the end of the year (as well as lingering anti Walker sentiment) -- and her badmouthing her incoming coworker on the SCOWI before she's sworn in isn't helping.
It matters if Thune honors the tradition of lower federal court confirmations. But looking at how he and Johnson want to skirt the parliamentarian for their permanent tax scam reconciliation bill, it wouldn't surprise me if they eliminate the blue slip rule for all federal judicial nominees in the future. Especially if Dems flip any R-held seats next year.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Annette Ziegler, the vile Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, will likewise be up for reelection in 2027. Even though that's post midterms, something tells me that Trump and the GOP's unpopularity won't magically recover by that time. It will be interesting to see whether she chooses to retire or run for reelection. Since the terms for a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice are 10 years, she'd be around 64 at reelection and 74 at the end of that term assuming she gets reelected. Given the increasingly liberal tilt of the WI Supreme Court now and her frequent conflicts and feuds with her more left leaning colleagues, accusing them of staging a coup, I question whether she would want to stick around if the court, and state as a whole pending the 2026 governor race, become more left leaning.
I think Ziegler will probably try to get re-elected in 2027 and posit herself as a "conservative MAGA bulwark against the liberal activists in judges' robes". Ditto for her fellow Karen Bradley. I think chances are good both women get the boot in the next two years.
It'll be harder to get rid of Hagedorn in 2029 if he decides to run for re-election, considering Wisconsin Rs will be fired up if another Dem trifecta comes in at the federal level in 2028.
"Colorado lawmakers back new election requirements for officials appointed to vacant seats
Committee rejects other competing proposals aimed at reforming vacancy committee process
The high rate of turnover in the Capitol is partially driven by term limits, which prompt short-timer lawmakers to have one eye on the next job. It’s also spurred by the combination of the modest pay and long hours of legislative life, Sirota said.
Sirota and Pugliese’s bill would essentially require any lawmaker appointed through a vacancy committee to stand for election after serving during a maximum of one legislative session.
It would work like this: If a legislator were to resign before July 31 in an odd-numbered year (like this year), the replacement selected by a committee would be up in a special election in November. If a legislator resigned before July 31 in an even-numbered year, the replacement would run for election in the regularly scheduled November contest."
The Supreme Court and horrible Chief Justice Roberts, the worst Chief Justice since at least the 1930s, are continuing to boil the frog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcy4iTltj9Y. When legal residents can be deported to the countries they fled from in violation of court orders with impunity and demonstrators can be flown across the country to unfriendly courts in Louisiana, we don't really have civil liberties or real due process anymore.
Trump's had a number of SC Ws but when you look at them they're more technical off-ramps than the Court actually siding with the Government's position. Expect to see more of that going forward.
Decline to step in to stop something enough times and you de facto endorse that thing. Same goes for SCOTUS. If they find a dozen reasons in a row why doing something is OK but only "narrowly" under specific circumstances each time rather than broadly, they're piecemeal enabling that.
Reads like it was meant to push Underwood. Nothing wrong with that of course but only one of the other candidates (Krishnamoorthi) is listed by name and name recognition is only provided by her. The data to me reads like a decent, but soft, advantage for her.
I'm curious what her Q1 fundraising numbers are. Krishnamoorthi's was in one of the digests here. He raised $3m. Obviously preparing for a run.
MI-Gov: Please enlighten me, because I've honestly never understood what was so great about John James. It took him three tries to (barely) win office in the first place, and hitching your wagon to Trump in what's likely to be an anti-Trump midterm seems....unwise. I mean, at least try to cultivate a little bit of a personal brand!
So far as what I've been able to gather, John James has charisma and is a confident public speaker by comparison to the previous GOP candidates running in MI-SEN races against Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters. I can't comment on anything internally he did in his campaign but he managed to remain relevant with Trump in office in his first term as POTUS and when Biden was in office in his term as POTUS.
James has said he agrees with Trump on policy but not the crazy things he says. For whatever reason somehow, he has been able to make inroads in MI where Trump has not been able to, even during 2018 when Trump was a liability on the GOP in MI.
True although he made his Senate race in 2018 closer than what Gretchen Whitmer got percentage wise in her open gubernatorial race that year. I don't think going by crazies alone though would have been enough to have kept his margins the way he did in 2018 and 2020.
James also not only served in the Army but also has an MBA at University of Michigan, which serves one of the top 10 MBA programs in the world. Plenty of Ross School of Business graduates end up becoming CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. James himself ended up being in the supply chain business for years before he first ran for the Senate.
On the other hand, James has served in the House for two terms and seems to be more intent on rising up the political ladder quickly. Also, he's going to give Democrats plenty of ammunition here with pulling a Trump in 2020 over not conceding and concerns of vote counting. Being in the House, James has also not shown much if any independence from Trump.
After Republican U.S. Senate hopeful John James lost a tight race to incumbent U.S. Sen Gary Peters, an attorney representing his campaign told Wayne County elections officials he had “serious concerns” with how ballot-counting played out there.
During public comment at a Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting Thursday morning, Charlie Spies, counsel for the James campaign, claimed Republican poll challengers were intimidated and “were not allowed to do their job, or actually meaningfully participate in the poll-watching process.”
As an aside, Rep. Wesley Hunt also had ads during the NCAA Championship game, so it seems he's trying to boost his profile.
I think a Paxton win offers Democrats their best chance. His last 2 elections, he's run behind every other statewide Republican. He won by 3.6% in 2018 and 9.76% in 2022.
I knew Abbott wouldn’t schedule the special election until November. If it had been a Republican seat, the election would be taking place on May 3.
It's very possible the Republican nominee will be seated no matter who wins given the Republican Party of Texas's recent track record.
House Democrats on Tuesday rolled out an initial list of 35 Republican-held seats they are targeting next year as the party looks to win control of the chamber.
Nick Begich of Alaska’s at-large district
David Schweikert of Arizona’s 1st District
Eli Crane of Arizona’s 2nd
Juan Ciscomani of Arizona’s 6th
David Valadao of California’s 22nd
Young Kim of California’s 40th
Ken Calvert of California’s 41st
Gabe Evans of Colorado’s 8th
Cory Mills of Florida’s 7th
Anna Paulina Luna of Florida’s 13th
María Elvira Salazar of Florida’s 27th
Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa’s 1st
Ashley Hinson of Iowa’s 2nd
Zach Nunn of Iowa’s 3rd
Andy Barr of Kentucky’s 6th
Bill Huizenga of Michigan’s 4th
Tom Barrett of Michigan’s 7th
Open; Michigan’s 10th District
Ann Wagner of Missouri’s 2nd
Don Bacon of Nebraska’s 2nd
Thomas H. Kean Jr. of New Jersey’s 7th
Mike Lawler of New York’s 17th
Max Miller of Ohio’s 7th
Michael R. Turner of Ohio’s 10th https://rollcall.com/2025/04/08/house-democrats-targets-2026-midterm-elections/
Mike Carey of Ohio’s 15th
Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania’s 1st
Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania’s 7th
Rob Bresnahan Jr. of Pennsylvania’s 8th
Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th
Andy Ogles of Tennessee’s 5th
Monica De La Cruz of Texas’ 15th
Rob Wittman of Virginia’s 1st
Jen Kiggans of Virginia’s 2nd
Bryan Steil of Wisconsin’s 1st
Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin’s 3rd
https://rollcall.com/2025/04/08/house-democrats-targets-2026-midterm-elections/
Paleo, thank you!
Note: You accidentally repeated the link in the middle of your list.
I think Jeff Crank in CO-5 (around Colorado Springs) should be a target too. Trump only won it by 9 points, and the trends there look way better than some of the districts on this list like FL-27.
Speaking of Colorado how about Lauren Boebert? Her seat was closer than Crank’s at the congressional level.
It's still by far the reddest at the presidential level (58-40 Trump). When we start winning Douglas county by double digits that one may come into play. The 5th has the best trend of the 4 R seats but Crank is the least offensive of the four I would say. The 3rd is kinda static and the 8th remains a tossup.
They're all offensive, though.
Relatively speaking. I'd be much more bullish on CO-05 if Dave Williams had Won the GOP primary in 2024 he would likely would have underperformed like Bobert.
If there were three tiers i'd say the 8th is in the first. The 3rd and 5th are in the second tier and the 4th is in it's own tier. Still think we should run solid candidates in all four. Dems could once again put up a really strong statewide performance that helps downballot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Williams_(Colorado_politician)
I admire the ambition of some of these seats!
Makes me wonder if they have confidence they can get a strong candidate in Alaska. FL-07, KY-06, MI-04, MO-02, TX-15 also stick out to me.
Supposedly Trudy Busch Valentine has been eyeing MO-02.
That's a very ambitious list, and I like seeing that!
I think Brad Finstad of MN-01 should be on there.
Interesting… not a take I expected from you considering the profile of that part of MN!
I grew up there. The politics are similar to eastern Iowa where we've seen the two big special election overperformances. Plus Finstad has very loose levels of familiarity and seems like he'd be easy to define as an out of touch creature of Washington given his background. The district was a nailbiter as recently as 2018 and 2020 so I think it's at least worth being on the preliminary wish list along with IA-02.
Never say never. We'd probably need a very strong candidate.
Fair enough
I'm really hoping that Schweikert's seat finally falls—I'd love nothing more than for my millionaire Republican cousin in Scottsdale to have Democratic representation. (I gave to Marlene Galán-Woods last cycle, but was disappointed in her showing.)
Nice to see all four of the swing/light-red Pennsylvania districts on the list, too. I think the 8th is the most likely to fall, followed by the 10th, 7th, and 1st.
Sadly, I don't see any of the Ohio seats falling. Max Miller represents the town in which I attended college. (Back then it was represented by Dennis Kucinich, and I still remember the townies' yards being full of "DENNIS!" signs.)
And with a redraw of Wisconsin's map looking much more likely, Van Orden and Steil gotta go!
Colon or Taylor would be awesome, but I'd expect Taylor, who has a strong progressive and solid fundraising background, to be able to clear the field if she decides to get in.
Which election are you talking about?
Wi SC 2026.
Sununu out for NH-Sen https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/08/metro/nh-chris-sununu-says-he-will-not-run-us-senate-shaheen-pappas/
He saw sense in the end. A nationalized race in an extremely anti-Trump midterm would have been the worst possible climate for him. All eyes are now going to be on Scott Brown & Lily Tang Williams on the Republican side and they'd be way weaker in comparison.
Move it to Likely D stat!! 💙🇺🇲⭐️😃
Scott Brown won only because of extreme negligence and campaign malpractice by the Democratic candidate at the time. That’s not going to happen again.
That and the fact that the ACA was quite unpopular back then.
Anyways it turned out fine in the end, we got ACA passed through senate maneuvers and we got Elizabeth Warren.
Would the Aca have a public option is Scott Brown lost?
The public option was blocked by Lieberman. ACA would presumably not be much, if any, different if Coakley had won. What would be different in that timeline is that other major legislation would have passed after the ACA. The next big push was something with the environment. They wanted to do cap and trade. Likely it would have been whittled down a bit into something lesser, but we probably would have gotten something decent. It's a bit hazier after that but I think immigration reform was the third priority.
All that might have helped us with 2010, might not have. Could argue that we didn't have much room to energize republican voters more, back in that era, but we did have a lot of room to energize our base to turn out. Could also argue that republicans could absolutely have been more motivated and that it would be a net neutral change or even made things worse. Although there weren't all that many important races left that were close that year to add to our L pile. NV-Sen and CO-Sen. MN-Gov, IL-Gov, OR-Gov.
I’m still not sure why Obama and senate Democrats didn’t pass a larger stimulus in early 2009 using budget reconciliation where they would only need 50 senate votes. Democrats would have likely done at least a bit better in 2010 with even a slightly better economy.
And don’t get me started on Lieberman and the public option. Harry Reid should have told him that if he didn’t vote for the bill with the public option, his chairmanship would be gone and any money going to things that he wanted would be shut off.
Figured he's pass. I'm laso still leaning towards Brian Kemp passing on taking on Jon Ossoff next year but I could be wrong.
You could be. Georgia is more Republican than New Hampshire, and Kemp established that he doesn't take orders from Trump, so he would be a strong candidate.
But that could be Kemp’s catch-22. It helped him secure his nomination in the primary in 2022 because Georgia has open primaries and he won the general election with crossover voters. Kemp/Warnock voters were a real thing. But at the same time, Kemp and Trump have supposedly kissed and made up. I know Georgia only entered Purple territory recently but it’s all about turnout of course and Kemp would have to decide if he thinks the MAGA base is big enough for a Senate run in 2026 and risk alienating the crossover appeal. Or he’ll have to do some fair amount of distancing from Trump but risk depressing the MAGA base. With Ossoff raising a record $11 million and coming out of the bar swinging at Trump in his campaign kickoff, I’d rather be Ossoff than Kemp in that scenario. Neither one has an easy road ahead but at least Ossoff has a lot of fuel.
And of course, Trump could easily turn on Kemp (especially if he shows any flash of independence whatsoever) and endorse someone awful like Empty Greene for the seat.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned about Ossoff's chances (I like the guy, but I'm unconvinced that he would have made it across the finish line without the Warnock-Loeffler race on the same ballot), but I won't be surprised if this is the fourth Senate election in a row that Georgia Republicans manage to blow.
Pappas will have a much easier race to run now that Sununu is out.
His best chance at the seat was if a weaker democrat with little/no name recognition ran. If 2026 is a wave like we all hope, Sununu would need to be able to play up his name recognition to the max to have a chance.
Pappas jumping in took that path off the table. He's a strong candidate that would not allow Sununu to try that strategy. Not surprised by his decision in that context, especially with respect to the timing of announcements. Nobody wants to spend 18 months working nonstop to get a job that they probably will not get.
Likely Dem. Sununu was the only Republican who could've made this a real race, especially since Dems got their best possible candidate in Pappas.
I think Rebecca Bradley is toast in Wisconsin come April 7, 2026 -- provided that her challenger is strong. There's still going to be strong anti-Trump sentiment by the end of the year (as well as lingering anti Walker sentiment) -- and her badmouthing her incoming coworker on the SCOWI before she's sworn in isn't helping.
She seems to be campaigning for a federal court appointment.
Tammy Baldwin isn't going to turn over a blue slip to confirm Bradley.
Will that matter?
It matters if Thune honors the tradition of lower federal court confirmations. But looking at how he and Johnson want to skirt the parliamentarian for their permanent tax scam reconciliation bill, it wouldn't surprise me if they eliminate the blue slip rule for all federal judicial nominees in the future. Especially if Dems flip any R-held seats next year.
That could be Bradley's consolation prize if she does (hopefully) lose her re-election bid next April
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Annette Ziegler, the vile Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, will likewise be up for reelection in 2027. Even though that's post midterms, something tells me that Trump and the GOP's unpopularity won't magically recover by that time. It will be interesting to see whether she chooses to retire or run for reelection. Since the terms for a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice are 10 years, she'd be around 64 at reelection and 74 at the end of that term assuming she gets reelected. Given the increasingly liberal tilt of the WI Supreme Court now and her frequent conflicts and feuds with her more left leaning colleagues, accusing them of staging a coup, I question whether she would want to stick around if the court, and state as a whole pending the 2026 governor race, become more left leaning.
I think Ziegler will probably try to get re-elected in 2027 and posit herself as a "conservative MAGA bulwark against the liberal activists in judges' robes". Ditto for her fellow Karen Bradley. I think chances are good both women get the boot in the next two years.
It'll be harder to get rid of Hagedorn in 2029 if he decides to run for re-election, considering Wisconsin Rs will be fired up if another Dem trifecta comes in at the federal level in 2028.
"Colorado lawmakers back new election requirements for officials appointed to vacant seats
Committee rejects other competing proposals aimed at reforming vacancy committee process
The high rate of turnover in the Capitol is partially driven by term limits, which prompt short-timer lawmakers to have one eye on the next job. It’s also spurred by the combination of the modest pay and long hours of legislative life, Sirota said.
Sirota and Pugliese’s bill would essentially require any lawmaker appointed through a vacancy committee to stand for election after serving during a maximum of one legislative session.
It would work like this: If a legislator were to resign before July 31 in an odd-numbered year (like this year), the replacement selected by a committee would be up in a special election in November. If a legislator resigned before July 31 in an even-numbered year, the replacement would run for election in the regularly scheduled November contest."
https://www.denverpost.com/2025/04/08/colorado-legislature-vacancy-committees-special-elections-democracy/
The Supreme Court and horrible Chief Justice Roberts, the worst Chief Justice since at least the 1930s, are continuing to boil the frog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcy4iTltj9Y. When legal residents can be deported to the countries they fled from in violation of court orders with impunity and demonstrators can be flown across the country to unfriendly courts in Louisiana, we don't really have civil liberties or real due process anymore.
Trump's had a number of SC Ws but when you look at them they're more technical off-ramps than the Court actually siding with the Government's position. Expect to see more of that going forward.
Decline to step in to stop something enough times and you de facto endorse that thing. Same goes for SCOTUS. If they find a dozen reasons in a row why doing something is OK but only "narrowly" under specific circumstances each time rather than broadly, they're piecemeal enabling that.
The majority clearly wanted to get the cases out of the D.C. Circuit and into a “friendlier” circuit.
Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha endorsed Peggy Flanagan.
Lauren Underwood leads in new Democratic primary poll for Durbin’s Senate seat.
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000196-132e-d874-a5f7-bf7e9b480000&nname=illinois-playbook&nid=00000150-1596-d4ac-a1d4-179e288b0000&nrid=0000015f-9bed-d546-a7df-9fed14b60000
Reads like it was meant to push Underwood. Nothing wrong with that of course but only one of the other candidates (Krishnamoorthi) is listed by name and name recognition is only provided by her. The data to me reads like a decent, but soft, advantage for her.
I'm curious what her Q1 fundraising numbers are. Krishnamoorthi's was in one of the digests here. He raised $3m. Obviously preparing for a run.
MI-Gov: Please enlighten me, because I've honestly never understood what was so great about John James. It took him three tries to (barely) win office in the first place, and hitching your wagon to Trump in what's likely to be an anti-Trump midterm seems....unwise. I mean, at least try to cultivate a little bit of a personal brand!
So far as what I've been able to gather, John James has charisma and is a confident public speaker by comparison to the previous GOP candidates running in MI-SEN races against Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters. I can't comment on anything internally he did in his campaign but he managed to remain relevant with Trump in office in his first term as POTUS and when Biden was in office in his term as POTUS.
James has said he agrees with Trump on policy but not the crazy things he says. For whatever reason somehow, he has been able to make inroads in MI where Trump has not been able to, even during 2018 when Trump was a liability on the GOP in MI.
James can't pull the crazies out to vote and actually win michigan.
True although he made his Senate race in 2018 closer than what Gretchen Whitmer got percentage wise in her open gubernatorial race that year. I don't think going by crazies alone though would have been enough to have kept his margins the way he did in 2018 and 2020.
James also not only served in the Army but also has an MBA at University of Michigan, which serves one of the top 10 MBA programs in the world. Plenty of Ross School of Business graduates end up becoming CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. James himself ended up being in the supply chain business for years before he first ran for the Senate.
On the other hand, James has served in the House for two terms and seems to be more intent on rising up the political ladder quickly. Also, he's going to give Democrats plenty of ammunition here with pulling a Trump in 2020 over not conceding and concerns of vote counting. Being in the House, James has also not shown much if any independence from Trump.
https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/11/attorney-for-john-james-says-he-has-serious-concerns-with-wayne-county-election-process.html
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After Republican U.S. Senate hopeful John James lost a tight race to incumbent U.S. Sen Gary Peters, an attorney representing his campaign told Wayne County elections officials he had “serious concerns” with how ballot-counting played out there.
During public comment at a Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting Thursday morning, Charlie Spies, counsel for the James campaign, claimed Republican poll challengers were intimidated and “were not allowed to do their job, or actually meaningfully participate in the poll-watching process.”
TX-SEN: Paxton makes it official, he's running.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/08/ken-paxton-john-cornyn-us-senate-texas-republican-primary/
As an aside, Rep. Wesley Hunt also had ads during the NCAA Championship game, so it seems he's trying to boost his profile.
I think a Paxton win offers Democrats their best chance. His last 2 elections, he's run behind every other statewide Republican. He won by 3.6% in 2018 and 9.76% in 2022.
*grabs popcorn*
The Paxton vs Cornyn primary fight is going to be VICIOUS, and I'm all for it.