This week marks 60 days until the midterms, and right now, it’s easy to feel good about local Democrats. Just one in three Americans approve of Trump. Among likely voters, Democrats are up 6 points (51%) in the generic ballot. Victory is there for the taking.
We’re not here to rain on the parade. But we want you to cast your mind back two years to November 6th, 2024. Trump completed his comeback with his biggest haul of Electoral College votes to date. He swept all seven swing states. And Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
Back then, the Dems were a dying breed, who, after nearly a decade, hadn’t figured out how to talk to Trump voters. Even then, though, some Democrats managed to score a victory in the same places that wanted four more years of President Trump.
You’ve heard of a few of them – this is not another column about Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, though we appreciate her service! – but today, we’re introducing you to five more you might not have met before.
Remember these candidates on election night. We’ll be tracking them too. Did they fare worse with progressive voters for their moderate stances? Or will they prove again that being a boring centrist is exactly what some voters are looking for?
Programming note: Raging Perspective is back on Wednesday. Join Jessica and Aaron Parnas live at 12PM for an unscripted, unfiltered, unedited conversation about the issues defining this era. And as always, we’re also taking your questions! Ask away in the comments section below.
Rep. Don Davis
North Carolina’s 1st District
Life in politics is tough for Don Davis. The North Carolina congressman won his first race in the northeast part of the state in 2022, then had his district boundaries chopped up to make them more favorable for Republicans the very next year. He won anyway. Then the GOP did it again, drawing new boundaries in October last year that made it even harder to win.
Despite all of that, he still has a real chance of winning this year. Nate Silver puts his odds of a win at 63%, Fox News’ ratings say it’s a toss-up.
Davis is an Air Force veteran and a maverick: he’s fourth among Democrats for voting against his own party. His most high-profile dissent came in 2024, when he voted with the GOP on a bill condemning Kamala Harris’ management of the border.
Rep. Nellie Pou
New Jersey’s 9th District
A lifelong New Jerseyan, and the first Latina from the state elected to the U.S. House, Nellie Pou has a split personality. She’s in the New Democrat Coalition, known for its pro-capitalist, centrist ideas. She’s also in the Progressive Caucus, chaired by Rep. Greg Casar… which has a different view of the world.
How does she manage both? In her view, it’s simple: “I take every issue individually.” That has meant voting against GOP budgets that raise healthcare costs, while writing bipartisan legislation with New Jersey Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew that mandated better training for DHS staff.
Pou won her general election by five points in 2024, despite Trump’s 1-point win in the same territory, which includes several heavily Hispanic suburban areas. If you’re looking for a candidate who can speak to the kind of voters who have shied away from the Democratic Party, Pou is your woman.
Rep. Susie Lee
Nevada’s 3rd District
Susie Lee was one of the 93 female Democratic candidates who won a congressional race in 2018. She has been undefeated in south Las Vegas ever since. That includes 2024, when Trump pulled out a GOP win in Nevada for the first time in two decades.
Lee isn’t afraid to call out her side when it makes sense. She is ranked the seventh-most bipartisan member of Congress and has stayed true to that course even as Democratic primary voters march to the left. She was one of the few dozen Democrats to vote for the Laken Riley Act in 2025, and a year later, signed the Promise to America, a pro-capitalist letter organized by Democratic moderates.
She also has expertise in winning close races around the country: after the last midterms, she created a new leadership position for battleground candidates, then won the job herself after a vote two years later.
Rep. Adam Gray
California’s 13th District
Five hundred and sixty-four votes separated Adam Gray from a win in 2022, the first time he ran for this district in the heart of California. That was despite Gray facing a majority-Hispanic electorate, one that had shifted six points away from the Democrats over the last two years.
Gray won over voters two years later in an even tougher environment by focusing on his record as a pro-farm Democrat. He’d spent years fighting his state over a push to divert water away from rural communities and told voters that working across the aisle was the most important tool he had to protect his constituents.
It took a month to decide the race thanks to California’s slow counting, but it was enough for him to win the race by an even thinner 187 votes.
Gray continues bucking his party in important moments. He was one of just six House Democrats who voted with the GOP to end the government shutdown, saying “I am not here to win an argument. I am here to actually help fix problems with people in my community.”
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez
Texas’ 34th District
As we’ve talked about before, you can define “moderate” in a million different ways. It doesn’t have to mean that you abide by the old rules of politics, as Vicente Gonzalez proved in 2022.
When Gonzalez ran for election that year, he faced a crowded field of candidates in his primary, but still refused to take money from corporate PACs. In the end, he came away from the race with two-thirds of the primary vote, and scored a 20-point win in November.
Since then, he’s been one of the most bipartisan members of Congress, and currently serves as the co-chair of the center-left Blue Dog Coalition.
He’s also outspoken on social issues. Take ‘defund the police.’ Most Democrats took years to call out that movement for its extreme ideas on crime and safety. Gonzalez did it in 2020, telling the New York Times: “Defund police, open borders, socialism – it’s killing us.”
Nobody here gets any headlines for unseating a longtime incumbent or calling for a political revolution. They just get the job done: advancing Democratic causes, calling out the party when they need to, and winning elections. However well the Democratic Party does this November, we think you can count on them.