Democrats Work For America

Democrats Work for America proudly endorses Peggy Flanagan for the United States Senate from Minnesota.

Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate election in Minnesota since 2002.

Flanagan brings unusually strong statewide credentials. She has served as Minnesota's Lieutenant Governor since 2019, after a decade of progressive political work that included four years in the Minnesota House, leadership of the Children's Defense Fund–Minnesota, and service on the Minneapolis School Board — where she was the youngest member ever at age 25.

Her biography gives the campaign a strong working-family foundation. She was raised by a single mother in St. Louis Park, and her family relied on Section 8 housing, SNAP, childcare assistance, and Medicaid. She struggled with severe asthma as a child and was herself a Medicaid recipient. She is also Ojibwe — a member of the White Earth Nation — and has emphasized federal treaty and trust responsibilities to Tribal Nations as part of her agenda.

Her campaign is built around lowering costs and an economy that works for working families, protecting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and retirement security, defending reproductive freedom nationwide, strengthening paid family and medical leave, expanding access to affordable healthcare, protecting workers against corporate special interests, banning congressional stock trading, defending voting rights, and protecting Minnesotans from federal overreach and abuses of power.

Tafoya is a more credible Republican opponent than the field initially appeared likely to produce. She brings significant preexisting name recognition, television experience, strong communication skills, national Republican backing, and credible fundraising. Her self-description as a pro-choice Republican also complicates the typical Democratic attack lines.

But Tafoya has also moved from Trump critic to Trump supporter and has adopted much of the contemporary MAGA agenda. In a state Trump has lost three times, that is a real problem. Her ability to sound moderate is consequently somewhat greater than her ability to actually run as one.

There are real vulnerabilities for Flanagan. The fraud uncovered in Minnesota programs during the Walz administration gives Republicans a legitimate line of attack on government competence and oversight. As Lt. Governor, Flanagan cannot completely separate herself from an administration whose accomplishments she has shared. We believe she will need to address that issue directly and demonstrate that accountability and effective government are part of her agenda.

But we treat the endorsement as a question about the entire path to victory — not the absence of vulnerabilities. And the most important post-primary fact is that the same fraud attack that Flanagan faces today did not prevent her from winning the Democratic nomination by 20 points. Democratic voters have heard the argument and are not especially conflicted about defending her. The first post-primary general-election poll still has her +5.

The Trump administration's Operation Metro Surge — and the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti during federal immigration enforcement — generated extraordinary backlash in Minnesota and materially strengthened Flanagan during the primary. That event now complicates Tafoya's strongest strategy: it gives Flanagan a frame that Trump-aligned Republicans cannot easily answer, namely Minnesota versus Trump and federal overreach.

Flanagan begins the general election with significant institutional advantages. She secured the official DFL endorsement along with support from Tina Smith, Keith Ellison, Al Franken, the majority of DFL legislators, eight sitting U.S. senators, labor unions, End Citizens United, MoveOn, Faith in Minnesota, and Minnesota 50501. Senate Majority PAC embraced her immediately following the primary — a clear signal that national Democratic resources will be available if Minnesota becomes genuinely threatened.

For Tafoya to win, Republicans must dramatically improve their performance in the suburbs, maintain overwhelming margins across rural Minnesota, limit Democratic advantages among women and younger voters, and overcome the backlash created by the Trump administration's actions in Minnesota. Flanagan does not require that kind of political overperformance. She needs to assemble a coalition Minnesota Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated they can build.

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DWFA proudly endorses Christina Hines for Congress in Michigan's 10th District.

MI-10 is a tough open-seat target for Democrats — Trump carried it by about six points in 2024 and Republicans have long held the seat. Still, Hines meets our general-election standard on her own merits and leads narrowly in head-to-head polling.

Hines is a former special-victims prosecutor who handled sexual assault, child abuse, human trafficking, hate crimes, homicide, and cold-case cases, and helped launch restorative justice programs. A lifelong Macomb County resident, she attended Warren Woods public schools, graduated from the University of Michigan, earned her law degree at Wayne State, and is raising three young children in the district.

As a prosecutor, Hines is an A-tier archetype for working-class, Republican-leaning districts: she brings public-safety credibility without centering her campaign on crime. As a working mother, she can credibly address family economics, schools, healthcare, reproductive freedom, and the rising costs facing Michigan families.

Her Republican opponent, Mike Bouchard, is an Army veteran and the son of longtime Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, with Trump’s endorsement and a commanding primary win. Neither candidate has a clear biography advantage, which makes the matchup unusually balanced and constrains GOP messaging about crime.

Hines won the Democratic primary decisively — 47% to Eric Chung’s 29.7% and Tim Greimel’s 23.3% — showing her appeal was not just a fragmented plurality. Her coalition was built from local validation: a Macomb government bench of sheriffs, mayors, county officials, and state legislators, and 71% of fourth-quarter itemized individual contributions came from inside Michigan rather than from national money.

Polling is limited but encouraging. PPP’s January 2026 survey had Hines ahead 44%–42% (14% undecided) in a Trump +6 district; after biographical prompts she led 45%–43%. Later polling showed a tie. In short, Democrats would lose MI-10 because of the district’s partisan lean, not because of Hines’s profile.

Her agenda aligns with her background: lowering grocery, childcare, housing, healthcare, and energy costs; protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; supporting small business, Michigan manufacturing, and union jobs; strengthening workers’ rights and the PRO Act; improving education and career-technical programs; combating fentanyl with treatment and enforcement; protecting reproductive freedom and the Great Lakes; banning congressional stock trading; and restoring DOJ independence.

The path to victory is clear but demanding: consolidate Democrats (Chung and Greimel combined for 53% of the primary), maximize turnout in Macomb County, win independents and soft Republicans in a Trump +6 environment, and benefit from a favorable national climate. She doesn’t need a miracle — she needs her coalition to hold and enough room from the national environment.

MI-10 remains difficult, but Christina Hines gives Democrats a credible path to compete.

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Democrats Work for America proudly endorses William Lawrence for Congress in Michigan’s 7th District.

MI-07 is a true battleground: Trump narrowly carried it in 2024 and the open House seat went to Tom Barrett. Winning requires more than base turnout — Democrats must keep Lansing and the college coalition while winning independents, working-class voters, and some Trump-leaning or Republican voters.

Lawrence wasn’t the lowest-risk nominee, but he was the voters’ choice. Elections are fought with the candidate voters pick, and Lawrence enters the general with three assets that make MI-07 winnable.

1) Deep local roots. Raised in East Lansing, an East Lansing High grad, and now living in Lansing, Lawrence’s connection is organic — important where voters distrust manufactured authenticity.

2) A unified Democratic coalition. He won the primary with 43.7%; Brink and Maasdam took 28.8% and 27.6%. Both opponents quickly rallied to him and the state party committed infrastructure. If veterans, labor, moderate Democrats, suburban women, foreign-policy voters, and Slotkin-aligned constituencies transfer their support, his base expands beyond a 43.7% plurality.

3) A cross-partisan issue: data-center development. Lawrence frames it as an anti-corporate, local-control fight — opposing projects that raise utility bills, consume water and land, and skirt community consent. Reporting shows anger over data centers crosses party lines; Lawrence says voters raised it to him organically. He only needs a modest number of Trump-leaning voters to agree on this one issue.

Early post-primary polling shows Lawrence ahead 49% to 47% vs. Barrett — provisional but encouraging against claims his progressive background makes him unelectable.

His agenda: lower housing, healthcare, and energy costs; protect Social Security; crack down on corporate landlord price-gouging; protect Michigan’s water, farmland, and resources; a federal moratorium on new data centers while communities assess impacts; ban congressional stock trading; and restore accountability.

Biggest risk: Barrett defines him by his progressive organizing history (Sunrise, DSA) instead of local issues. The strategy shouldn’t erase his past but reframe it: he’s a local fighter against powerful interests for Mid-Michigan communities. If voters see him as an ideological activist, Barrett likely wins; if they see him as the local candidate defending communities, the race becomes far tougher for Republicans.

Barrett has resources — about $2.2M cash on hand at year-end 2025 — and PAC ties to Oracle, DTE, and Consumers Energy, which Lawrence’s anti-corporate message can exploit.

Our task is not to relitigate the primary, but to help William Lawrence build the broad coalition needed to win the general.

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DWFA proudly endorses David Crowley for Governor of Wisconsin.

Democrats have held the governorship since 2019. Tony Evers is retiring after two terms, and Democrats are now defending an open seat in one of the country's most consequential gubernatorial races. But the stakes extend well beyond retaining the office.

The post-redistricting environment creates a possibility Wisconsin Democrats have not had in years: a plausible path to legislative control alongside a Democratic governor. That would move Wisconsin from Democratic veto power — the capacity to prevent a Republican legislative agenda — to Democratic governing power — the capacity to enact one. It is the difference between stopping the opposition and delivering for Wisconsin families.

David Crowley is well positioned to lead that effort.

Crowley is Milwaukee County Executive, a former state legislator, and a lifelong Wisconsin public servant. He grew up in Milwaukee in a family that knew what it meant to struggle. His father worked as an electrician; his mother worked in the service industry while both battled addiction and mental health challenges. As a child, he experienced housing instability, utility shutoffs, and food insecurity firsthand.

Those experiences shaped both his politics and his approach to leadership. He began his career as a community organizer, served in the Wisconsin State Assembly on housing, criminal justice reform, and reproductive freedom, and now leads one of the largest local governments in Wisconsin — serving roughly one-sixth of the state's population.

His executive record is unusually substantive for an open-seat gubernatorial candidate. As County Executive, Crowley has expanded affordable housing, strengthened public health, invested in public safety, delivered tax relief, modernized county government, and helped secure a historic bipartisan agreement that stabilized Milwaukee's finances while increasing resources for communities across Wisconsin. He has demonstrated he can govern and he can deliver results.
His general-election case is strengthened by the matchup. Republican Tom Tiffany is closely associated with Donald Trump and national Republican politics. That gives Crowley a natural contrast — Wisconsin-focused executive leadership versus Washington MAGA politics — and helps explain his early polling advantage.

His favorable image is substantially stronger than Tiffany's: 43% favorable / 26% unfavorable, compared with Tiffany's 38% favorable / 43% unfavorable. That gives Crowley breathing room to introduce himself further while Tiffany remains relatively defined and already underwater.

Crowley's agenda is built around "Badger Basics" — Affordability, Care, and Opportunity. It includes building and preserving more affordable housing across rural, suburban, and urban Wisconsin; lowering energy costs and ensuring large corporate energy users pay their fair share; expanding BadgerCare and strengthening rural healthcare; making childcare more affordable and accessible; investing in public schools and closing the special-education funding gap; expanding apprenticeships and earn-and-learn pathways; raising wages and restoring workers' collective-bargaining rights; supporting small businesses; protecting reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights; and investing in roads, broadband, transit, and services for seniors and people with disabilities.

This is a substantive economic agenda directly tied to the basic challenges working Wisconsin families face.

The most immediate coalition task is consolidating the Hong voters — the progressive Madison-area electorate that came extraordinarily close to winning the Democratic nomination. Crowley cannot assume progressive enthusiasm automatically transfers. Bringing that coalition fully back together is essential.
But the broader case is straightforward. Crowley does not need a wave, a Republican collapse, or an unprecedented coalition. He needs to replicate the Tony Evers winning formula — Milwaukee, Dane, the suburbs, and reasonable rural damage control — and he has early evidence suggesting he can.

The trifecta opportunity makes this race strategically connected to the entire Wisconsin legislative battlefield. His 54–35 lead in competitive Assembly districts is therefore not merely a curiosity — it suggests his campaign could help create the legislative environment Democrats need to govern.

Wisconsin doesn't need to choose between defending the governorship and competing for legislative control. It can pursue both. David Crowley is the candidate who makes that possible.

Help elect David Crowley:

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DWFA proudly endorses Mitchell Berman for Congress in !

WI-01 is one of the most competitive House races in the country. Republicans have held the seat for more than three decades, and Bryan Steil — who succeeded Paul Ryan in 2019 — has built a durable incumbent advantage through strong fundraising, repeated electoral success, and consistent overperformance of the district's underlying partisan baseline. In 2024, Inside Elections calculated that Steil ran 3.5 points better than the district's presidential baseline.

But the district itself is plainly competitive. In March, a Republican-aligned pollster found a generic Democrat beating a generic Republican 44–42 even as Steil led Berman 50–41. The latest survey now shows the race essentially tied: Steil 49, Berman 48.

That movement is candidate-specific. Mitchell Berman has substantially closed what was previously a personal-incumbent lead.

Berman's biography is unusually well suited to this district. He grew up in a one-stoplight town in rural Wisconsin. His father built a small roofing business; his mother worked in a foundry. He became the first person in his family to graduate from college — working three jobs and taking on student loans to do it.

He has spent more than 23 years in healthcare. For over a decade, he cared for veterans, active-duty servicemembers, and their families at the VA, and he continues to work as a board-certified emergency nurse. He is also a longtime union member, including with Teamsters Local 344 (his first union job in college), the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, and National Nurses United.

His campaign is anchored in the issues that biographical credibility makes unusually persuasive: lowering healthcare and prescription-drug costs; protecting Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security; keeping manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin and strengthening unions and apprenticeships; protecting rural hospitals, maternity care, and family farms; supporting veterans and strengthening VA healthcare; defending reproductive freedom; investing in public education and vocational training; banning congressional stock trading and reducing the influence of corporate money in politics; and protecting Wisconsin's clean water and natural resources.

His coalition reflects that positioning. Endorsements include the United Auto Workers, AFT Local 212, Defend the Vote, Nurses for America, Future Forum, and End Citizens United. Elected officials supporting him include Rep. Gwen Moore, Rep. Pat Ryan, State Sen. Mark Spreitzer, and State Reps. Ben DeSmidt, Clinton Anderson, Tip McGuire, Ann Roe, and Chris Sinicki, along with former WI-01 nominees Randy Bryce, Marge Krupp, and Lydia Spottswood. Geographic distribution is strong across Racine, Kenosha, Janesville, and Beloit. The DCCC has added Berman to Red to Blue.

Steil entered the general election with more than $5.5 million in cash on hand. Berman is still building his campaign, though DCCC targeting and outside spending can compensate for some — though not all — of the incumbent's direct cash advantage. Berman's own fundraising shows meaningful small-dollar breadth; one current election-market data feed reports nearly half of his contributions coming from donors giving $200 or less.

The candidate has financial capacity. The campaign has financial disadvantage. Those are different things.

The path to victory is straightforward and disciplined. Berman needs to run strongly in Racine and Kenosha (the population anchors and Democratic vote engines), compete effectively in Janesville and Rock County, limit losses among working-class and small-town voters, make healthcare unusually salient, and turn Steil into a Washington politician rather than allowing Steil to turn Berman into a generic Democrat.

He has a credible mechanism for all five.

The biggest risk is straightforward: Steil's financial resources allow him to define Berman before Berman can fully define himself. That is particularly dangerous because Berman's electoral strength depends heavily on voters understanding his biography. If voters see "ER nurse, union worker, rural Wisconsin roots, VA caregiver," he is extremely difficult to caricature. If Republican spending successfully reduces him to a generic national Democrat, his advantage disappears.

That makes outside investment unusually consequential here. The DCCC Red to Blue designation addresses the principal weakness directly: it provides the organizational and communications resources needed to ensure that voters meet Berman before they meet Steil's definition of him.

WI-01 is one of the most competitive House races in the country — and the kind of candidate it deserves: a working nurse, union member, and veteran caregiver from rural Wisconsin who can make Steil's incumbency a liability instead of an asset.

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Congratulations Chris Pappas on winning the Democratic primary for ! On to November!

Democrats Work for America proudly endorses David Jolly for .

is structurally difficult for Democrats. The party has not won a gubernatorial election since 1994, and the state has moved substantially rightward over the past several cycles. Republicans hold a registration advantage, and Democrats have repeatedly discovered that close Florida polling does not always translate into Election Day performance.

This race is different, because Jolly is different.

Jolly is a fifth-generation Floridian, raised in Clearwater and Pasco County, who represented the St. Petersburg area in Congress as a Republican. He left the GOP during the Trump era, spent roughly seven years as an independent working on political reform, and became a Democrat in 2025.

That political journey has shaped the kind of campaign he is running for governor: one focused on solving problems rather than fighting ideological battles.

Most Florida Democrats run essentially one strategy: maximize Democratic turnout, recover enough Latino and independent voters, and hope the Republican margin is small enough. That strategy has produced a series of close losses in recent cycles.

Jolly can run a different strategy.

He can credibly assemble Democratic consolidation, independent voters, and a meaningful bloc of anti-Trump, common-sense Republicans — voters who don't want to become progressive but have already decided the modern GOP isn't for them either.

The matchup with Byron Donalds is unusually favorable for that theory. Donalds isn't simply a generic Republican nominee; he is strongly identified with Trump and MAGA politics. That gives him an obvious advantage in consolidating Florida's Republican electorate. But it also gives Jolly exactly the contrast he needs. The race can become "Trump-aligned partisan Republican vs. former Republican who believes the party went too far" — rather than simply "Republican vs. Democrat."

That framing gives disaffected Republican voters permission to defect without feeling as though they're embracing the Democratic left.

The polling has been volatile, but the consistent signal is that Jolly can compete:

The July UNF poll is particularly revealing even though Jolly lost it overall. Donalds received only 2% of Democrats; Jolly received 7% of Republicans. Independents were tied 39-38 Donalds. And Jolly won Hispanic voters 53-35.

Jolly isn't running a national Democratic campaign. He's running a Florida-first one focused on the actual problems facing Florida families: a state catastrophic fund to address the property-insurance crisis; housing affordability; healthcare and Medicaid expansion; public schools and teacher pay; ethics and campaign-finance reform; reproductive freedom; gun-violence prevention; and protecting Florida's environment.

He has also selected former Rep. Gwen Graham as his running mate. Graham built a bipartisan reputation in Congress and is the daughter of former Governor and Senator Bob Graham. She and Jolly worked across party lines on offshore drilling, veterans, and gun issues, and her presence reinforces the same proposition the campaign is built on: competence, Florida identity, and bipartisan governing credibility.

There are real risks. Republicans will attempt to destroy Jolly's crossover identity by defining him not as a former Republican moderate but as a partisan convert. Florida's Republican turnout machinery is genuine. Donalds has enormous financial resources and national GOP support. And Jolly's years of media commentary can be selectively mined for statements that sound more partisan than his current campaign.

But those risks have to be weighed against what Jolly has already accomplished. He has taken a race that should not be competitive on paper and repeatedly demonstrated that he can get within striking distance of a Republican nominee. He has built a campaign around Florida's actual affordability problems. And he offers Democrats a theory of the race that expands the coalition rather than simply maximizing the existing one.

That theory has national implications. If Democrats can combine their base with college-educated former Republicans, anti-MAGA independents, suburban moderates, and some center-right voters — without sacrificing Democratic turnout, they can win in places they have been losing.

David Jolly is testing that coalition in the most difficult place available.

Florida is not suddenly a toss-up. But a Democrat leading Byron Donalds in any credible post-primary statewide survey is a significant viability signal — and a candidacy worth investing in.

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Democrats Work for America proudly endorses Adam Hamilton for U.S. Senate in .

Kansas is a deeply Republican state. Donald Trump carried it by approximately 16 points in 2024, and any Democrat running statewide begins with a substantial structural disadvantage. Sen. Roger Marshall has held this seat since 2020 and begins his reelection as a clear favorite.

But Adam Hamilton has put a race that should not be competitive on paper within striking distance of an incumbent Republican — and he has done it by being a fundamentally different kind of Democratic candidate.

Hamilton is a fifth-generation Kansan who grew up in Prairie Village. He married his high school sweetheart LaVon shortly after graduation and spent the next 36 years building and leading the Church of the Resurrection, which grew from a small congregation meeting in a funeral-home chapel into the largest United Methodist church in the country.

In the process, he built something rare in American politics: a community that is roughly evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats, and independents — and that has functioned as one for decades. That is not a campaign construction. It is a 36-year practice of bringing together people who don't always agree and finding common ground where it exists.

Before launching his campaign, Hamilton traveled to 18 Kansas communities on a listening tour. He heard from farmers, ranchers, small-business owners, families, and community leaders about the rising cost of healthcare, groceries, fuel, housing, and the economic effects of tariffs and instability in Washington. Those conversations shaped a campaign focused on lowering costs, protecting Kansas farmers and small businesses, improving rural healthcare access, and restoring common sense and accountability to government.

Hamilton describes himself as an independent-minded Democrat. He does not need Kansas voters to become Democrats in order to vote for him. He needs them to trust him — to believe he will listen, find common ground where possible, and put Kansas ahead of partisan warfare.

The early evidence suggests that theory is working.

Public Policy Polling's August survey found Marshall leading Hamilton by just one point, 46% to 45%. A July poll put the race at Marshall 47%, Hamilton 43%. We would not ordinarily treat Democratic polling alone as sufficient evidence that a Republican incumbent in a deeply red state is genuinely endangered. But the most important number in these surveys is not Hamilton's — it is Marshall's. An incumbent Republican repeatedly polling below 50% in a state this Republican creates an opening worth taking seriously.

Hamilton has also demonstrated that he can build the campaign necessary to exploit it. In his first 62 days as a candidate, he raised approximately $3.66 million from approximately 16,000 donors. For a first-time candidate running in a state that was not expected to host a competitive Senate race, that is an extraordinary signal of both fundraising capacity and grassroots enthusiasm.

There are real risks. Hamilton's decades in public ministry give Republicans an enormous record to scrutinize, and they will attempt to use his positions on abortion, LGBTQ rights, and other cultural issues to separate him from religious and conservative voters who might otherwise be open to his candidacy. Kansas's underlying partisan lean also means that even a strong campaign could fall short.

But those risks have to be weighed against what Hamilton has already accomplished.

He has taken a race that should not be competitive on paper and put himself within striking distance of an incumbent Republican. He has built the financial capacity to run seriously statewide. And most importantly, his background and approach give him a credible theory for assembling the unusual coalition a Democrat actually needs to win Kansas.

We are putting Adam Hamilton on our map because he earned it — not because the partisan fundamentals made it easy.

In a year when control of the Senate could come down to finding opportunities beyond the conventional map, that is a candidacy worth investing in.

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