WASHINGTON — In the earliest days of this election cycle, the U.S. wasn't at war with Iran.
The East Wing of the White House was still standing and the Kennedy Center wasn't threatened with demolition. Artificial intelligence data centers weren't bipartisan shorthand for the tech sector's excess. Democratic socialists were largely confined to the outer edges of political discourse. Lake Ontario's name wasn't in question.
Since President Donald Trump entered politics more than a decade ago, he's had a knack for dominating the national conversation so thoroughly that it can be hard to keep up. But as the final midterm of his presidency rapidly approaches, the landscape is proving especially volatile, with Trump often stirring the tumult.
"Some of these things are out of our control," House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters last week when pressed on whether the frenzy will hurt his party's election prospects.
Even the map itself has been in flux, with Texas, California and Florida among the states that have redrawn congressional districts. Missouri's Republican attorney general is appealing a court ruling last week that blocked a Trump-backed map there.
The twists could keep coming. The economic fallout from Trump's tariffs on Canada may intensify as the election nears. His effort to limit mail ballots could add uncertainty to the voting process just as such ballots are being distributed in states like North Carolina, home to a critical U.S. Senate race.
The president is sitting on more than $400 million that could shape the election's trajectory. And Trump's gilded remake of Washington stands in contrast to the economic anxiety many Americans are expressing. The wealth he has amassed in office has little modern presidential precedent, with Trump taking in $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, according to a federal filing released this summer.
That’s threatening a bipartisan effort in the Senate to advance legislation to strengthen cryptocurrency regulation as soon as next week. Democrats are insisting the measure include a more robust ethics provision.
"We've watched this president enrich himself," said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, a key Democratic vote on the bill who said she wouldn't support it without tougher language.
Democrats and Republicans agree midterms are about Trump
With so many shifts underway, it is perhaps fitting that one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on is that Trump will again be a central player in the election's final stretch.
"No. 1, President Trump," Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary under Republican President George W. Bush, said when asked to rank the top issues this year.
Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said: “People are feeling the pain from Trump.”
She expects voters will elevate candidates who “want to stand up for the American people, the pain that’s been inflicted by this administration and Republicans in Congress.”
Midterm elections are historically challenging for a president's party as restive voters seek change. Democrats flipped 40 House seats during Trump's last midterm in 2018 and 31 seats during the final race of Bush's term in 2006. Republicans, meanwhile, gained 63 seats in 2010 under Democratic President Barack Obama but flipped fewer than 10 seats in 2022 under President Joe Biden.
Shifting dozens of seats this year could be challenging because partisan redistricting has reduced the number of genuinely competitive races. Still, just a third of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling the presidency, according to a July poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That's down slightly from 37% in June and well below the 42% who approved of his work when he took office.
Majorities also disapprove of his handling of the economy and immigration, issues that were central to Trump's election in 2024.
Democrats focus on winning in Washington and beyond
Democrats are confident they can win the handful of seats they need to regain control of the House. There may be a path to flipping the Senate if they can hold on in states like Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire while winning Republican-held seats in places like Maine, Texas, Iowa or Ohio.
But the party is also aiming to regain ground outside of Washington. Democrats are devoting resources, in particular, to the governors’ races in Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada, all currently held by Republicans.
"I'm excited about the map and I am bullish that we are going to pick up several seats," said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a potential 2028 presidential contender who has led the effort to win governors' races this year as chair of the Democratic Governors Association.
Democrats are especially enthusiastic about Iowa, which hasn't elected a Democratic governor in 20 years. Their governors association has spent $5 million to back Rob Sand, who has gained national attention for his campaign to connect with rural voters who have abandoned Democrats in recent elections.
But even in a seemingly favorable year, Democrats face challenges. Beshear acknowledged that Arizona, where incumbent Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is facing Republican challenger Andy Biggs, will be a "tough race."
The Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota, Lisa Demuth, suggested she would tap into the anti-incumbent mood that has coursed through both parties to target her Democratic rival, Amy Klobuchar, who has spent nearly 20 years in the Senate after working in local politics.
“She is a 30-year politician,” Demuth said of Klobuchar.
After democratic socialists won a string of primaries this summer, Republicans are eager to tie anyone in the party to the far left flank. Most of the candidates aligned with democratic socialists are in reliably Democratic seats.
Still, Fleischer said Democrats snatched “defeat out of the jaws of victory” by elevating such contenders in a handful of congressional primaries.
Democrats have dispatched democratic socialist candidates in governors' races. But Beshear, who has carved out a centrist lane before his potential presidential bid, rejected Republican efforts to label the broader party.
“The only person that I see engaged in socialism is Donald J. Trump, who is taking equity in private companies for the United States government,” he said. “That's the definition of socialism.”
Voting issues hang over the race
Hanging over many of these states is concern that the federal government under Trump will seek to influence elections, perhaps one of the biggest variables ahead and a prospect that some Republicans are warning against.
Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, a Republican, said recently that the behavior of Justice Department officials who monitored poll workers and observed voters was "a bit aggressive" and "irregular."
"I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns," he said at a meeting to confirm election results in August. "I don't like that. I don't like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either."
Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who supports a strict proof-of-citizenship voting bill that is stalled in the Senate, told The Associated Press in July that "I don't think that we should federalize the elections at all."
“I believe that is a state issue,” he said. “The states should control their own elections.”
Given the concerns, some Democrats, particularly in states that could be crucial to the next White House campaign, are framing their races in larger terms.
"2028 starts right now," said Aaron Ford, the attorney general in Nevada running for governor. "People across the nation need to understand that Nevada is a swing state, it needs a governor who is going to stand up for the electoral process."
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