This has been said by The Downballot and others before, but wasn’t it harebrained of Curtis Johnson to run for office without having his residency in order? Even so, shouldn’t Minnesota Republicans have been required to challenge his eligibility *before* the election – instead of after Johnson won?
The whole thing seemed to be that he was previously a local elected official and recent redistricting put him just out of the district. Everyone assumed he’d do the things bc he should know how. He did the bare minimum of renting an apartment but per the evidence, never actually lived there. The DFL state house leader said they all knew he didn’t live in the district but they aren’t going to babysit candidates.
Seems to be a good lesson all around. Everyone knew what was what and assumed the process wouldn’t be so strict. My guess is every Dem/GOP state party has watched this play out and will ensure it never happens to them. What a shit show. The GOP were assholes but it’s hard to blame them. This might’ve been their only chance to have any sort of power in MN for who knows how long.
Not sure but if he isn’t I’d guess he could be persuaded to be.
Can we have a moment though to give the man some praise for defeating one of the most staunchly conservative Republicans, at that time, in a district that was still voting Republican at the top of the ticket. There, moment over. :)
Do you remember when downstate NY politicians were pissed that upstate NY Rep. Gillibrand was picked to fill Clinton’s Senate seat bc she was too moderate? Lol
If they're changing their tune based on his performance in the debate, it's not inherently a dick move IMO. I forgot what the quote was but someone (Paleo?) had a summary from it a few days ago and I remember thinking Gottheimer was sounding more and more like someone who wishes they could be a republican and less like someone who is moderate.
Could be they feel similarly afterwards. Or they were really impressed with Sherrill.
Regarding CA-41, it may be for now Lean GOP per the Cook Political Report.
However, considering Calvert’s margin of re-election wins since 2022 have become more small (2024 was slightly worse for Calvert than 2022 with the same Democratic challenger Will Rollins running), I wouldn’t be surprised if CPR rates this race later on in the 2026 cycle as tossup.
There's plenty of individual ratings we can quibble over; I think CA-40 as Likely R is too generous to Kim, from what people here who are "in the know" about local politics say. But we'd of course need to nominate the right type of candidate, whoever that is.
VA-01 is rated Likely R, but that's the first time in forever it's been anything but Safe R. And pending VA elections this year, which could alter our priors on the state, I think VA-10 would be well classified as Safe D and thus not listed here.
I actually agree with the initial rating the Cook Political Report has given CA-41. The election results averaged of 2022 and 2024 are very much in Lean GOP turf. My argument on the race rating mainly will be reflected in polls and other factors into the race over time.
The rating of Likely Republican for the CA-40 race may have to do with the margins that Young Kim won the election by in 2022 and 2024. I can't comment on what is happening locally in CA-40 but I don't believe Kim will be an easy incumbent to unseat.
Yeah, it's possible Kim may end up winning re-election in 2026 although it might be with a smaller margin.
CA-40 was barely won by Trump last time around and had a R+2 rating at the time of him winning the district. However, Young Kim won the district in both 2022 and 2024 by good margins, suggesting she's got more appeal to the district than Trump. That explains why she's got crossover appeal in CA-40. White population here is a tad less than 50%.
My guess is that Cook Political Report took Trump and Kim's margin of victory in CA-40 into account when making this rating.
given the fact that Kim won by almost 11 and that garvey carried the district by around 8 I would say it will be quite difficult for a Dem to unseat Kim who is rapidly becoming an entrenched incumbent. trump's #s just show how un-popular he is in CA
I'm pretty confident Virginia is going to be a bloodbath for the GOP. The federal worker/military community is MAD about the Musk clowncar that's disrupted/threatened their lives and families.
I hate that they have off-year elections bc voter turnout puts us at a disadvantage. But, the kind of backlash to everything Trump is doing will likely create a media narrative of how the GOP is losing and people don’t like them that hits right as we get into the 2026 elections.
Agreed bc we crush it when it comes to special elections and the dumb elections in April WI wants to put out*. But, the NJ and VA elections are always worse for Dems. Just take 5% right off the top, at least.
*Donating $20 to WI Supreme Court. Stupid time for an election but it’s winter and I live in MN. Why hibernate with my paychecks when I can spend it?
Too rosy for the GOP to start. I don't think you can realistically say James, Kean, Nunn, Kiggans, Calvert, and Van Orden are favored to win right now. Also, missing quite a few that should probably be in the Likely GOP column like MO02, SC1, TN5, NY1, etc...) Basically, these are the ratings I would've given if we were headed into another presidential cycle. Not a DEM midterm.
The big prognosticators all lean towards a least-change caution the earlier in the cycle we are. If I remember right they had WV-Sen 2024 as a tossup for longer than justified too, based on that least-change caution.
Assuming the environment shapes up how we want and expect it to do so, there will be some large shifts in those individual ratings before election day 2026.
Wow, MN-2 is now Safe Dem. Harris won here by 6%, a decrease from Biden, while Rep. Craig won by 13.5%, a huge increase from her 5% win in 2022. Craig’s win in 2024 more closely mirrors Sen Klobuchar’s 17% win in MN-2 and Klobuchar is the gold standard of winning MN. No one can do it like Klobuchar.
Rep Craig is now the minority ranking member on the Agriculture committee which is a big deal. Her district is majority Twin Cities suburbs but also a lot of rural areas that are much more Republican than the suburbs are DFL. Evens out to be lean/likely our way but there is a lot of MAGA farmland. Her last performance shows she’s insulating herself and getting that ranking member spot is going to be huge for her. The Ag committee putting out a Farm Bill is always huge and makes everyone look good. Now MN has the House and Senate ranking spots.
Also interesting are two local tidbits. I went to an annual state DFL fundraiser last October and she did a speech and said something like, “I’m so glad to be here but also, this is hard because you all know I will not leave my direct during election season.” She works hard. Second, I read somewhere she moved to a new house. She used to live in Eagan which is some, I dunno, 65-35% Dem big box second ring suburb that used to be Republican but never again. Now, she lives in Prior Lake which is like the last frontier of suburbs in the most Republican part of her district. She knows where she should be campaigning.
Very smart because MN is bound to lose a Congressional seat in the next reapportionment and I think any likely map would expand her seat to take in more rural MAGA areas. She’s getting out in front of that. Should be likely bc population distribution of the state indicates 4 Twin Cities seats and 3 Greater MN seats that are easy to divide up regionally. Her district could very well get redder and more rural to get more population. If the DFL has a trifecta for redistricting, then we can do a lot with MN-2 and it’d be fine.
Democrats really need to try and get independent redistricting implemented in Minnesota for 2031. Yeah, many people here are going to say we’d be “unilaterally disarming” here like in Virginia, but hear me out: Mark will agree with me that there is a greater chance of Republicans getting a trifecta here after 2030 than Democrats getting one since it will likely be a midterm of a Democratic President and the state senate is going to be very difficult for Democrats to hold given the outstate seats they still hold and rely on for a tiny majority. The risk of having Republicans in control of redistricting here if 2030 is a bad year is too high a risk to take. That’s why they should work to get independent redistricting implemented here (they should have done this in many states in 2009 when they still had the chance).
Some of us deleted X in November, and I have no intention of ever creating a new account there. So whenever information is posted to an X link, I can’t read it.
I have never been a member of Twitter/X. The Cook Political tweet I got from Nitter (which I first of learned of from DKE commenters). XCancelled performs the same function of showing X feeds for those who don't or won't use that site.
Whether we're talking about Twitter or after Musk's takeover of it, it's always been a cesspool.
I get why it's important for raising awareness but frankly, I found it to be filled with a lot of BS. Many commenters who I had interactions with I found to write as if thinking was not in their DNA or randomly jumped in without even taking the time to show they were reading anything I said.
Besides, Jack Dorsey as a founder and former CEO of Twitter has never been the sharpest tool in the shed. Making Twitter a publicly-traded company was a dumb idea, not to mention Dorsey resigning so he could remain as CEO of Square.
Not sure what their battleground-party rating means, but I struggle to agree with Iowa and Nevada having the same ranking for governor's races. Even in a great year we're going to struggle to win Iowa. Nevada is far more tenable for us than Iowa.
This has been said by The Downballot and others before, but wasn’t it harebrained of Curtis Johnson to run for office without having his residency in order? Even so, shouldn’t Minnesota Republicans have been required to challenge his eligibility *before* the election – instead of after Johnson won?
The whole thing seemed to be that he was previously a local elected official and recent redistricting put him just out of the district. Everyone assumed he’d do the things bc he should know how. He did the bare minimum of renting an apartment but per the evidence, never actually lived there. The DFL state house leader said they all knew he didn’t live in the district but they aren’t going to babysit candidates.
Seems to be a good lesson all around. Everyone knew what was what and assumed the process wouldn’t be so strict. My guess is every Dem/GOP state party has watched this play out and will ensure it never happens to them. What a shit show. The GOP were assholes but it’s hard to blame them. This might’ve been their only chance to have any sort of power in MN for who knows how long.
Glad to see the switch from Gottheimer, who’s unsurprisingly is running furthest to the right.
Dude doesn’t have very good political skills imo
He's OK for a swingy House seat, but we can do better statewide.
Isn’t Gottheimer one of the crypto-currency cheerleaders?
Not sure but if he isn’t I’d guess he could be persuaded to be.
Can we have a moment though to give the man some praise for defeating one of the most staunchly conservative Republicans, at that time, in a district that was still voting Republican at the top of the ticket. There, moment over. :)
Agreed completely with this sentiment; I staunchly defended joe Manchin over the years here
Do you remember when downstate NY politicians were pissed that upstate NY Rep. Gillibrand was picked to fill Clinton’s Senate seat bc she was too moderate? Lol
Yup..I sure do..good point
Kind of a dick move to encourage him to run and then ditch him but yeah would rather have Sherrill take it.
If they're changing their tune based on his performance in the debate, it's not inherently a dick move IMO. I forgot what the quote was but someone (Paleo?) had a summary from it a few days ago and I remember thinking Gottheimer was sounding more and more like someone who wishes they could be a republican and less like someone who is moderate.
Could be they feel similarly afterwards. Or they were really impressed with Sherrill.
Which debate? Do you have a link to a video of it? I’m really curious.
There was a debate, I believe the first one, over the weekend. I didn't watch it but I found a video here. I assume it's the whole thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozkz_cJzNV0
That was very interesting. Many thanks!
Mikie Sherrill is so far a strong gubernatorial candidate so if this helps her benefit, even better.
That said, I am still open to seeing how other candidates like Steve Fulop fare in the coming weeks.
It appears that Sherrill is very good at the politics thing
Sherrill may have a good shot at winning the NJ-GOV race.
Also, she would be the first woman governor since Christine Todd Whitman to serve the Garden State should she be fortunate to get elected in November.
This is what the democrats in D. C. should do. Will they?
Sorry, what is?
Behold, the first Cook Political House ratings for 2026. They've already done governors, with Senate presumably soon to come.
https://x.com/ercovey/status/1887533806573306328
Regarding CA-41, it may be for now Lean GOP per the Cook Political Report.
However, considering Calvert’s margin of re-election wins since 2022 have become more small (2024 was slightly worse for Calvert than 2022 with the same Democratic challenger Will Rollins running), I wouldn’t be surprised if CPR rates this race later on in the 2026 cycle as tossup.
There's plenty of individual ratings we can quibble over; I think CA-40 as Likely R is too generous to Kim, from what people here who are "in the know" about local politics say. But we'd of course need to nominate the right type of candidate, whoever that is.
VA-01 is rated Likely R, but that's the first time in forever it's been anything but Safe R. And pending VA elections this year, which could alter our priors on the state, I think VA-10 would be well classified as Safe D and thus not listed here.
I actually agree with the initial rating the Cook Political Report has given CA-41. The election results averaged of 2022 and 2024 are very much in Lean GOP turf. My argument on the race rating mainly will be reflected in polls and other factors into the race over time.
The rating of Likely Republican for the CA-40 race may have to do with the margins that Young Kim won the election by in 2022 and 2024. I can't comment on what is happening locally in CA-40 but I don't believe Kim will be an easy incumbent to unseat.
CA-40 should definitely be Likely R...no way kim loses unless she is caught sex traffikking or something similar
Yeah, it's possible Kim may end up winning re-election in 2026 although it might be with a smaller margin.
CA-40 was barely won by Trump last time around and had a R+2 rating at the time of him winning the district. However, Young Kim won the district in both 2022 and 2024 by good margins, suggesting she's got more appeal to the district than Trump. That explains why she's got crossover appeal in CA-40. White population here is a tad less than 50%.
My guess is that Cook Political Report took Trump and Kim's margin of victory in CA-40 into account when making this rating.
given the fact that Kim won by almost 11 and that garvey carried the district by around 8 I would say it will be quite difficult for a Dem to unseat Kim who is rapidly becoming an entrenched incumbent. trump's #s just show how un-popular he is in CA
I'm pretty confident Virginia is going to be a bloodbath for the GOP. The federal worker/military community is MAD about the Musk clowncar that's disrupted/threatened their lives and families.
Abigail Spanberger has plenty to work with in the VA-GOV race given what Musk has been doing with his manic energy and agenda.
I hate that they have off-year elections bc voter turnout puts us at a disadvantage. But, the kind of backlash to everything Trump is doing will likely create a media narrative of how the GOP is losing and people don’t like them that hits right as we get into the 2026 elections.
To the contrary our new base of educated voters are the type that swing off-year elections hard.
Agreed bc we crush it when it comes to special elections and the dumb elections in April WI wants to put out*. But, the NJ and VA elections are always worse for Dems. Just take 5% right off the top, at least.
*Donating $20 to WI Supreme Court. Stupid time for an election but it’s winter and I live in MN. Why hibernate with my paychecks when I can spend it?
Too rosy for the GOP to start. I don't think you can realistically say James, Kean, Nunn, Kiggans, Calvert, and Van Orden are favored to win right now. Also, missing quite a few that should probably be in the Likely GOP column like MO02, SC1, TN5, NY1, etc...) Basically, these are the ratings I would've given if we were headed into another presidential cycle. Not a DEM midterm.
The big prognosticators all lean towards a least-change caution the earlier in the cycle we are. If I remember right they had WV-Sen 2024 as a tossup for longer than justified too, based on that least-change caution.
Assuming the environment shapes up how we want and expect it to do so, there will be some large shifts in those individual ratings before election day 2026.
given recent history it may not be too rosy
Way too early! But I guess they want to put out a baseline and then refine it.
Exactly. They’re basing it off of today. History says the GOP could be screwed but they aren’t as of yet.
Why post an X link when you could just link directly to Cook's site?
https://www.cookpolitical.com/ratings/house-race-ratings
I deleted X, formerly known as Twitter, last night.
Wow, MN-2 is now Safe Dem. Harris won here by 6%, a decrease from Biden, while Rep. Craig won by 13.5%, a huge increase from her 5% win in 2022. Craig’s win in 2024 more closely mirrors Sen Klobuchar’s 17% win in MN-2 and Klobuchar is the gold standard of winning MN. No one can do it like Klobuchar.
Rep Craig is now the minority ranking member on the Agriculture committee which is a big deal. Her district is majority Twin Cities suburbs but also a lot of rural areas that are much more Republican than the suburbs are DFL. Evens out to be lean/likely our way but there is a lot of MAGA farmland. Her last performance shows she’s insulating herself and getting that ranking member spot is going to be huge for her. The Ag committee putting out a Farm Bill is always huge and makes everyone look good. Now MN has the House and Senate ranking spots.
Also interesting are two local tidbits. I went to an annual state DFL fundraiser last October and she did a speech and said something like, “I’m so glad to be here but also, this is hard because you all know I will not leave my direct during election season.” She works hard. Second, I read somewhere she moved to a new house. She used to live in Eagan which is some, I dunno, 65-35% Dem big box second ring suburb that used to be Republican but never again. Now, she lives in Prior Lake which is like the last frontier of suburbs in the most Republican part of her district. She knows where she should be campaigning.
Very smart because MN is bound to lose a Congressional seat in the next reapportionment and I think any likely map would expand her seat to take in more rural MAGA areas. She’s getting out in front of that. Should be likely bc population distribution of the state indicates 4 Twin Cities seats and 3 Greater MN seats that are easy to divide up regionally. Her district could very well get redder and more rural to get more population. If the DFL has a trifecta for redistricting, then we can do a lot with MN-2 and it’d be fine.
Craig is like the Minnesota version of Budzinski in many ways: representing suburbs and farmland.
Democrats really need to try and get independent redistricting implemented in Minnesota for 2031. Yeah, many people here are going to say we’d be “unilaterally disarming” here like in Virginia, but hear me out: Mark will agree with me that there is a greater chance of Republicans getting a trifecta here after 2030 than Democrats getting one since it will likely be a midterm of a Democratic President and the state senate is going to be very difficult for Democrats to hold given the outstate seats they still hold and rely on for a tiny majority. The risk of having Republicans in control of redistricting here if 2030 is a bad year is too high a risk to take. That’s why they should work to get independent redistricting implemented here (they should have done this in many states in 2009 when they still had the chance).
Some of us deleted X in November, and I have no intention of ever creating a new account there. So whenever information is posted to an X link, I can’t read it.
I have never been a member of Twitter/X. The Cook Political tweet I got from Nitter (which I first of learned of from DKE commenters). XCancelled performs the same function of showing X feeds for those who don't or won't use that site.
Whether we're talking about Twitter or after Musk's takeover of it, it's always been a cesspool.
I get why it's important for raising awareness but frankly, I found it to be filled with a lot of BS. Many commenters who I had interactions with I found to write as if thinking was not in their DNA or randomly jumped in without even taking the time to show they were reading anything I said.
Besides, Jack Dorsey as a founder and former CEO of Twitter has never been the sharpest tool in the shed. Making Twitter a publicly-traded company was a dumb idea, not to mention Dorsey resigning so he could remain as CEO of Square.
While on the subject of race ratings, Inside Elections today issued its first gubernatorial ones:
https://insideelections.com/ratings/governor/2025-26-gubernatorial-ratings-february-6-2025
They already did the same for the Senate. Haven't done the House yet.
https://insideelections.com/ratings/senate/2026-senate-ratings-january-17-2025
Not sure what their battleground-party rating means, but I struggle to agree with Iowa and Nevada having the same ranking for governor's races. Even in a great year we're going to struggle to win Iowa. Nevada is far more tenable for us than Iowa.