On the morning of November 18, New York City police reported that a man fatally stabbed three people in a seemingly random spree in Midtown Manhattan. The victims included a construction worker in Chelsea, a man fishing along the East River, and a woman sitting on a bench near the United Nations headquarters. A cab driver witnessed the third attack and alerted police, who arrested Ramon Rivera and recovered two large kitchen knives. Rivera was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. 

In the days following, a picture of Rivera emerged in the press: a 51-year-old homeless man who had cycled in and out of the criminal justice system. He had been arrested at least eight times in the last two years, mostly for minor charges, and had recently spent several months in Rikers Island jail for burglary and attempted assault. Rivera’s record also showed a history of serious mental health issues—he spent some of his previous sentence in a psychiatric ward and in 2023 had told police that he was feeling suicidal and homicidal, according to the New York Times.

“That’s a wake-up call for our criminal justice system and our psychiatric system,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference shortly after the attacks. “We have three New Yorkers who were murdered in our city by a person who was betrayed by the health care system, and that should trouble us all.” 

Faced with an uneasy public, Adams seized the opportunity to defend his controversial 2022 directive that expanded standards for when someone can be involuntarily removed from the street to be evaluated for psychiatric treatment. At that same press conference, Adams described this as a humanitarian measure that had successfully prevented violence and once again called for the passage of the Supportive Interventions Act, which would codify those expanded standards into state law. But legal advocates and disability rights groups say this is a misguided response to rare, though undeniably horrific, acts of violence. They worry that these incidents will be used to justify what they say often is the traumatic and unnecessary removal of New Yorkers who are simply experiencing homelessness. 

“These are isolated instances,” said Ruth Lowenkron, director of the disability justice program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. “It doesn’t mean that we should decide that everybody with mental health diagnoses are scary and that we have to ensure that they are off the streets.” 

November’s attacks were consistent with the profile of other widely covered killings in New York: an alleged assailant who spent years cycling between homelessness and jail, punctuated by stints in an underfunded and overburdened mental health system. In retrospect, the moments when tragedy could have been averted—if only the system had worked as it should—may appear to be obvious, but they rarely are. New York is not alone in attempting to address these challenges. For decades, lawmakers throughout the country have grappled with how to balance the civil rights of those with mental illness with protecting the public. 

The involuntary commitment process may begin with an encounter like the hypothetical Adams posed in the 2022 press conference announcing the removal directive. He described a person “talking to themselves” on the street, “unkempt” and without shoes, perhaps “shadowboxing” with someone who isn’t there. Under New York law, a police officer or medical professional can determine whether the person poses a “substantial risk” to themselves or others. If they do, a police officer can arrange for that person to be transported by emergency services, even against their will, to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Once at the hospital, doctors have 72 hours to assess whether the person meets a similar standard of risk and should be treated involuntarily. 

Involuntary commitment has long been a controversial measure. There are broad concerns that it infringes on an individual’s civil liberties and can be a distressing and traumatic experience—potentially discouraging further mental health care. Advocates argue that there are more effective, less traumatic ways of engaging people through community-based services, though they are fragmented and have suffered from a lack of investment. Studies tracking the impact of involuntary treatment have found mixed results for patient well-being, and some report links to a higher risk of suicide. 

Proponents like the Treatment Advocacy Center, which has pushed for stronger commitment laws around the country and has been criticized by patient advocacy groups, argue that involuntary treatment can save lives and prevent people with serious mental illness from deteriorating even more. Lisa Dailey, the group’s executive director, claims that this can also avert future run-ins with law enforcement because “failing to get somebody admitted for care really just makes criminalization more likely.”

Dominic Sisti, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said the effectiveness of involuntary treatment depends greatly on the specific circumstances of the patient and the quality of care. Involuntary treatment is intended to be a last resort, after voluntary pathways have been exhausted, but each state has its own criteria.

There have been efforts to revisit these standards around the country. Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law expanding the standards for forced treatment to include severe substance use disorder and an inability to provide for one’s personal safety or medical care. Earlier this year, Florida legislators approved a bill that eased the commitment process and widened the pool of medical professionals authorized to order involuntary treatment.

“The problem with legislating treatment of people with mental illness in order to prevent crimes is that you have to identify them.”

But the question of whether involuntary commitment can prevent violence is a complicated one. Dr. Dinah Miller, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a co-author of Committed: The Battle over Involuntary Psychiatric Care, said, “The problem with legislating treatment of people with mental illness in order to prevent crimes is that you have to identify them.” Almost inevitably, Miller said, this will result in the commitment of some people with no risk of violence. 

In New York, the turn to involuntary psychiatric treatment in the wake of a shocking act of violence stretches back to at least a 1999 subway killing. Kendra Webdale, a 32-year-old journalist, was pushed in front of an oncoming subway in Lower Manhattan by a man with a history of serious mental illness. Webdale’s death led Brian Stettin, a young lawyer at the New York state attorney general’s office, to draft Kendra’s Law, which allows court-ordered outpatient psychiatric treatment when there is a risk of violence. 

But 20 years later, another subway shoving was evidence to many that the state had not done enough. In January 2022, Michelle Go, a 40-year-old business consultant, died after being pushed in front of an oncoming subway in Times Square by a homeless man who had cycled through hospitals and jails. It was mere weeks into Adams’ first term. Stettin, who had become the Treatment Advocacy Center’s policy director, penned an op-ed describing the incident as “depressingly similar” to Webdale’s death and calling for New York to “broadly interpret” civil commitment laws. That July, Stettin was named the mayor’s senior adviser for severe mental illness.

The appointment was an early sign that involuntary commitment would be the center point of Adams’ approach to mental illness. In November 2022, the mayor ordered police, EMS, and mobile crisis teams to follow expanded standards for involuntary removal and commitment. The new criteria were based on a memo released that February by the New York State Office of Mental Health, which sought to address what it described as a “misconception” that involuntary evaluation and treatment is allowed only when there is a threat of violence. It said existing case law supported involuntarily removing people “who display an inability to meet basic living needs, even when there is no recent dangerous act.”

In an interview with The City shortly after Adams’ announcement, Stettin said the directive was not “operationally” different from current practices. All it was doing, he said, was informing service providers and police officers that “you have more ability to help people than you may have realized.”

Criticism was swift. Beth Haroules, a senior staff attorney at New York Civil Liberties Union, argued that the directive effectively lowers the standard for involuntary removal. Advocates worried that the “basic needs” criteria would apply to people who were simply experiencing homelessness, leading to the removal of those who may be sleeping on a park bench or in a subway car. Yung-Mi Lee, legal director at Brooklyn Defender Services, said the measure could lead to significant numbers of people who don’t need hospitalization becoming mired in the psychiatric system. “It blurs the line between just being unhoused versus somebody who’s truly mentally ill,” Lee told me.

Some worried the measure would lead to more encounters between law enforcement and people experiencing homelessness, which could rapidly escalate. “Police are not mental health crisis interventionists,” Haroules said.

City hall spokesperson William Fowler underscored that the directive was a matter of providing humanitarian services, saying in a statement: “Denying a person life-saving psychiatric care because their mental illness prevents them from seeing their desperate need for it is an unacceptable abdication of our moral responsibility.”

There are significant concerns about what inpatient psychiatric care currently looks like in New York, as hospitals face critical staffing shortages. (Staffing has been a major obstacle to reinstating psychiatric beds that were removed during the pandemic.) 

Advocates also have pointed out that involuntary treatment is a temporary measure—an emergency involuntary admission lasts 15 days, though it can be extended—and that after they are discharged, people receive little support. Community-based mental health services have long been underfunded, and a lack of coordination has resulted in some people falling through the cracks. This is not news to the mayor, and Adams has recognized that resources are needed throughout the system. Stettin told The City, “When people tell us that the city has a long way to go to kind of build that continuum of care that meets all levels of need and ensures that people receive care in the least restrictive, appropriate environment, they’re preaching to the choir.”

Two years later, advocates have acknowledged that there does not seem to be an influx of people being involuntarily committed. According to the mayor’s office, an average of 126 people per week were involuntarily removed between January and October of this year, but the city was not systemically tracking removals before the 2022 directive. In March 2023, a police official reported to the New York City Council that in the first few months following the removal directive, Black people made up 47 percent of those who had been involuntarily transported while only being 23 percent of the city’s total population. (This roughly resembles the demographics of those experiencing homelessness.)

Last year, the NYCLU sued the New York Police Department for the release of its policies and procedures around involuntary removals, which is still pending. The city council also passed a law requiring annual reports outlining who is being involuntarily removed and whether they are ultimately admitted to a hospital. The first set of data is expected in January.

Haroules, the NYCLU lawyer, said the lack of transparency makes it difficult to evaluate whether the measure is as effective as the mayor insists—or as harmful as advocates worry. She suggested that the measure may have been a “smoke and mirrors” effort to signal to commuters and tourists alike: “Come to New York. It’s safe. You’re not going to run into people in the subways.” 

Following November’s attacks, Adams gave a full-throated defense of the removal directive. “Everybody said I was inhumane, that we just want to institutionalize people. Well, this is the result of that,” Adams said at a press conference. “Too many people were afraid to step up and say people who are dealing with severe mental health illness need to get the care they deserve, even if it means involuntary removals. I was not willing to sit back and allow this to continue to happen, and the thousands we removed off the streets prevented incidents like this.” 

Come January, the state legislature will be considering two involuntary commitment measures. One is the Supportive Interventions Act, which Adams has repeatedly championed, even though it has not gained momentum since being introduced in the state Assembly in 2023. In addition to codifying “basic needs” standards into state law, it would widen the pool of medical professionals who can authorize involuntary treatment and would allow some shelter staff to initiate removals. There is also the HELP Act, announced after November’s attacks, which seeks to expand who can evaluate a patient for involuntary treatment without changing the standards. But advocates are still concerned about this proposal, setting up a difficult path forward for both bills. 

In the meantime, the humanitarian problem will only worsen as temperatures drop in New York. Advocates agree with Adams on one crucial point: We should not walk past someone who is clearly in need of help. But they fear that extreme weather will justify more involuntary removals, which they say ultimately does little to address why people are on the streets in the first place. 

“I don’t want to see people who are homeless either,” Lowenkron, the NYPLI lawyer, told me. “But my answer isn’t to sweep them off the street.”

Daniel Penny, a former Marine who fatally choked a man on a New York City subway in May 2023, has been found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide. The trial, which began in late October, lasted seven weeks and featured more than 40 witnesses.

The death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man who had a history of serious mental illness, immediately became a political flashpoint. It happened amid growing fears about public safety in the subways—which New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams pledged to address with increased police presence. To some, Penny’s actions were an admirable intervention in an all-too-common public mental health episode that threatened to endanger bystanders. Republican Arizona Rep. Eli Crane recently said that he plans to nominate Penny for the Congressional Gold Medal, telling Fox News, “Mr. Penny bravely stood in the gap to defy this corrupt system and protect his fellow Americans.”

But for many advocates, Neely’s death exemplified the city’s inability to protect its most vulnerable citizens. Neely, who was homeless, had spent years cycling through the mental health and criminal justice systems. Jawanza Williams, director of organizing at the social justice organization VOCAL-NY, said that Neely had not just been failed by the city’s social services, but also by the recent political rhetoric around homelessness.

“What happened to Jordan Neely was an indirect consequence of the way that people—in particular, Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul—were talking about people experiencing homelessness,” Williams said while the trial was still ongoing. “Creating this atmosphere of fear around people on the subway, especially those with mental health conditions, dehumanized them, and it made it more likely for people to engage in violence against them.”

On May 1, 2023, Neely entered a crowded uptown F train in Lower Manhattan, declaring that he was hungry, thirsty, and ready to go to jail or die. Penny, an architecture student who served four years in the Marine Corps, was already on the train, heading to the gym. His defense lawyers would later argue that when Penny approached Neely from behind and put him into a chokehold, it was to protect others.

A freelance journalist captured a video of the several-minute-long encounter, which eventually went viral. In it, Penny can be seen lying on the train floor with his arm around Neely’s neck. Penny continued his hold until well after the subway arrived at the next station and another man grabbed Neely’s arms. A bystander can be heard urging Penny to let go, saying, “You’re gonna kill him now.” Neely became unconscious during the encounter and was later pronounced dead.  

The incident sparked subway protests calling for Penny’s arrest, with some describing it as a racist act of vigilante justice. Yusef Salaam, a New York City Council member who was wrongly convicted as a teenager of the 1989 rape of a woman in Central Park, called it a “lynching in the public square.”

Penny was eventually charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. It led some prominent Republicans to rally around Penny, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis calling him a “Good Samaritan.” His legal defense fund raised millions. 

Neely was once a Michael Jackson impersonator, dancing in costume on the subways. His early life was marked by tragedy—his mother was murdered when he was 14—and he was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. Reporting from New York magazine tracked Neely’s descent into drug use and homelessness. Outreach workers became familiar with Neely, who was at one point on the city’s list of homeless people in the most dire need of services. Along with a series of minor charges, Neely had also been accused of assault—including an instance when he punched a woman on the subway. 

At the trial, prosecutors laid out a narrow path toward conviction. Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said in her closing statement that it was “laudable” for Penny to intervene initially, describing Neely as behaving in an “extremely threatening manner.” But, prosecutors argued, Penny’s actions became unlawful when he continued the chokehold after Neely was subdued and passengers had exited the train.

Defense attorneys have emphasized Penny’s character—his platoon sergeant agreed during testimony that he was “calm and peaceful”—and argued that he did not mean to kill Neely. Penny’s lawyer Steven Raiser said that Penny had applied the chokehold in a “less aggressive” way because he did not intend for Neely to lose consciousness. They have also tried to cast doubt on findings from the city’s medical examiner, who determined that Penny’s hold had killed Neely. The defense’s forensic pathologist testified that a genetic condition and the use of synthetic marijuana contributed to Neely’s death.   

“The government is scapegoating the one man who was willing to stand up at the moment he was needed,” Raiser said during his closing statement.

After nearly three days of deliberation, the jury was unable to come to a consensus on the most serious charge of manslaughter. On Friday, the judge dismissed the manslaughter charge to allow them to move to deliberate the charge of criminally negligent homicide. The acquittal came just hours after the jury reconvened on Monday. 

Last week, while the criminal trial was ongoing, Neely’s father, Andre Zachary, filed a wrongful death suit against Penny. “It really, really hurts,” Zachary told reporters outside of the courthouse after the verdict was announced, according to the Associated Press. “I had enough of this. The system is rigged.”

Update, November 21: Sen. Bob Casey conceded the Pennsylvania Senate race to Republican Dave McCormick.

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a stalwart moderate who rose to power on the heels of his late father’s political legacy, seems likely to lose his reelection bid. Shortly after Election Day, the Associated Press called the race for his opponent, former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick, who had a narrow lead in returns. Even though McCormick has declared victory and was invited by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to the US Senate orientation, Casey has not conceded, citing thousands of uncounted ballots. 

The two candidates are engaged in ongoing legal battles over how counties are handling certain ballots, with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently ruling that undated or misdated mail-in ballots are not valid. There are still thousands of provisional ballots pending, some of which are subject to legal challenges, but it seems unlikely that enough will break for Casey. A recount is currently underway and should be completed by November 26—though this too is unlikely to significantly alter vote counts. On Thursday morning, McCormick was leading by just over 16,000 votes. 

After unsuccessful efforts by hardline MAGA Republicans like Dr. Mehmet Oz in the 2022 election, McCormick was a return to a more traditional Republican candidate. But he still managed to win over GOP voters and ride President-elect Donald Trump’s coattails. Casey’s campaign emphasized his moderate sensibilities and long-standing ties to the state—his father, Bob Casey Sr., was a popular two-term governor—but he ultimately underperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in crucial Democratic strongholds. 

In a cycle where Democrats lost up and down the ballot in Pennsylvania, 2024 was “like no race Casey had run before,” said Berwood Yost, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College. Casey was last up for reelection during a presidential cycle in 2012, when Barack Obama won Pennsylvania by five points.

“He needed Democrats to turn out to vote for him, and clearly, some people who voted for the top of the ticket abandoned him.”

“Casey had a difficult needle to thread because he had to distance himself from the policies of an unpopular president to be viable,” Yost said. “But at the same time, he needed Democrats to turn out to vote for him, and clearly, some people who voted for the top of the ticket abandoned him.”

On the day before Election Day, I watched Casey make his final appeal to voters in Bucks County, one of the closely watched suburban “collar counties” surrounding Philadelphia. Around 60 supporters—mostly white and almost all of them appearing to be of retirement age—gathered in the small town of Warrington. The mood was cautiously optimistic, despite polls showing a virtual tie. It seemed difficult to imagine that Casey, who had become an institution in Pennsylvania, was subject to the same shifting political waters that would decide the presidency for Trump.

In the summer, polls showed Casey with around a five-point lead over McCormick, but that gap narrowed as Election Day approached. When I asked rallygoers why it was so close, one man rubbed his fingers together—money. Around $283 million was spent on the race in total, according to a PennLive analysis, making the matchup among the most expensive Senate contests—likely second only to Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s unsuccessful reelection bid. McCormick lagged behind Casey in fundraising and sunk at least $4 million of his own wealth into the race. But spending in support of McCormick mostly came from super-PACs and far outpaced Casey: The Senate Leadership Fund and Keystone Renewal PAC, whose largest donor is the CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, each spent about $50 million on McCormick’s behalf. WinSenate, a Democratic-aligned PAC, spent about $54 million on Casey’s behalf.

Casey first was elected to the US Senate in 2006, winning by 15 points and ousting tea party star Rick Santorum. Since then, Casey has enjoyed comfortable reelection margins, winning by 9 points in 2012 and 13 points in 2018. The senator grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Scranton and has an enduring homegrown appeal. At the Warrington rally, voters repeatedly told me that Casey was a “good man” and described him as a familiar presence—though they were vague on the particulars of his congressional accomplishments.  

Casey has a reputation for being understated—Pennsylvania’s junior senator, John Fetterman, calls Casey “Mild Thing”—which often has been considered an asset. He is seen as principled and dependable. But Casey has shown that he can move on issues when the political moment arises. He shifted his position on gun control after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting and became an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s family separation policies in 2017.

But the most notable change came regarding abortion. Casey has described himself as a “pro-life Democrat,” and his father was, at one time, a national face of the anti-abortion movement. As governor, Casey Sr. signed laws requiring a 24-hour waiting period for abortion and parental consent for minors. The legislation led to the 1992 Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Casey Jr. voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act and has attacked Republicans for their extreme restrictions on abortion care.

Republicans used this evolution to create the narrative that Casey had become dangerously progressive. Even though his moderate image had won him crossover support in previous elections, he struggled this year with an association with the Biden administration—particularly on inflation and border security. He made fentanyl smuggling across the southern border a key issue and ran an ad claiming he had sided with Trump on fracking and trade. But as a longtime friend of President Joe Biden, a fellow Catholic, and a Scranton native, it was difficult to create any credible distance from his administration. 

McCormick was Casey’s strongest political challenger. A West Point graduate and Gulf War veteran, McCormick earned a PhD in international relations at Princeton. After a stint in George W. Bush’s administration, McCormick rose in the ranks at Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based hedge fund giant, to become CEO. In 2022, he left Bridgewater to compete in the Republican primary to represent Pennsylvania in the US Senate. He was ultimately no match for Oz, the controversial physician and television personality, whose Pennsylvania residency was widely questioned (and whom President-elect Trump has recently named the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). After McCormick refused to say that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump all but sank his candidacy by endorsing Oz and dubbing McCormick “not MAGA.” Oz won the nomination by fewer than 1,000 votes, then lost to Fetterman by almost five points. 

During the 2024 campaign, McCormick leaned heavily into the more ruggedly patriotic aspects of his biography. His website is peppered with photos of him in military uniform, and the campaign’s most frequently used headshot features McCormick standing in front of a pastoral barn backdrop wearing a chore coat and a denim button-up. But Bridgewater is also presented as a point of pride, with his website describing it as “one of the largest, most successful investment firms in the world” that manages the pensions of “teachers, firefighters and law enforcement.” 

McCormick had the difficult task of triangulating within today’s Republican Party, where Trump remains the gravitational center of power. Though Trump acolytes have previously succeeded in Republican primaries in Pennsylvania’s statewide races, like Oz, they tended to fail in the general election. In the 2022 gubernatorial race, Trump loyalist and election denier Doug Mastriano also lost badly. McCormick distanced himself from the party on some issues: He is against a national abortion ban, for instance, and in favor of exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. 

But there was no path to victory without Trump, and, this time around, McCormick did his best to remain in the former president’s good graces. He spoke at Trump’s rally in Butler shortly before the attempted assassination, and he has amplified some of Trump’s favorite culture-war talking points. In early November, McCormick told a group of veterans that the country needs “a military that’s not woke and focusing on millions of hours of DEI training.”

“He just doesn’t draw the same type of animosity that more traditional Republicans receive from the populist element within the ranks.”

Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, called McCormick the “Goldilocks Republican”—occupying a comfortable middle in the party. “He just doesn’t draw the same type of animosity that more traditional Republicans receive from the populist element within the ranks,” Borick said. 

Casey’s campaign strove to paint McCormick as an out-of-touch “Connecticut mega-millionaire.” (McCormick grew up in Pennsylvania. He lived for many years in Connecticut and still has a home there.) Casey also tried to drive a wedge between McCormick and working-class voters by highlighting Bridgewater’s extensive investments in China and the fund’s bets against American-owned steel companies. But McCormick’s high-finance background ultimately didn’t alienate as many voters as Casey might have hoped. 

At the rally in Warrington, Casey’s remarks were narrowly focused on what he’s “delivered for the people of this county”: funding for public education and infrastructure. Wearing a navy gingham button-up and blue jeans, he was even-keeled and self-assured. In a political landscape dominated by whoever can shout the loudest, Casey wasn’t a remarkable orator or a natural showman—and he’d never had to be. After all, he was Pennsylvania’s native son. 

But that doesn’t seem to have been enough to put him over the top. Casey ended up winning fewer votes than Harris—current vote counts show him with about a 40,000 vote deficit—and the dropoff was particularly notable in traditionally Democratic areas like Philadelphia and its surrounding counties. Yost said that early analysis shows that Casey lagged four and a half points behind Harris in Philadelphia. In such a narrow race, those Harris-only voters could have made the difference not only for the incumbent but also for the balance of the Senate.

It looks as if Casey also lost many of the split-ticket voters who, in 2012, punched their ballots for both him and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In comparison, Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Ohio Sen. Brown both ran significantly ahead of Harris in states where Trump won by wide margins. (They both lost.) Tester and Brown are Democrats who were elected to the Senate the same year as Casey and similarly leaned on reputations as salt-of-the-earth moderates. 

Despite his familiarity with the state, it seems like Casey was unable to break out of the mold of a “generic Democrat,” as Brian Rosenwald, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, explained. “If anything, I think it was less about a moderating campaign,” he said, “and more about a lackluster campaign in general.”

It looks as if McCormick, with the help of Trump, had seized onto a more compelling narrative. In October, he went on Fox Business and described his “blessed” ascension from a small-town upbringing to West Point and through the ranks of the world’s largest hedge fund. “I’ve really lived the American dream,” McCormick said, “and I think that dream is slipping away.”

Pennsylvania voters appeared to agree.

Update, November 21: Sen. Bob Casey conceded the Pennsylvania Senate race to Republican Dave McCormick.

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a stalwart moderate who rose to power on the heels of his late father’s political legacy, seems likely to lose his reelection bid. Shortly after Election Day, the Associated Press called the race for his opponent, former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick, who had a narrow lead in returns. Even though McCormick has declared victory and was invited by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to the US Senate orientation, Casey has not conceded, citing thousands of uncounted ballots. 

The two candidates are engaged in ongoing legal battles over how counties are handling certain ballots, with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently ruling that undated or misdated mail-in ballots are not valid. There are still thousands of provisional ballots pending, some of which are subject to legal challenges, but it seems unlikely that enough will break for Casey. A recount is currently underway and should be completed by November 26—though this too is unlikely to significantly alter vote counts. On Thursday morning, McCormick was leading by just over 16,000 votes. 

After unsuccessful efforts by hardline MAGA Republicans like Dr. Mehmet Oz in the 2022 election, McCormick was a return to a more traditional Republican candidate. But he still managed to win over GOP voters and ride President-elect Donald Trump’s coattails. Casey’s campaign emphasized his moderate sensibilities and long-standing ties to the state—his father, Bob Casey Sr., was a popular two-term governor—but he ultimately underperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in crucial Democratic strongholds. 

In a cycle where Democrats lost up and down the ballot in Pennsylvania, 2024 was “like no race Casey had run before,” said Berwood Yost, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College. Casey was last up for reelection during a presidential cycle in 2012, when Barack Obama won Pennsylvania by five points.

“He needed Democrats to turn out to vote for him, and clearly, some people who voted for the top of the ticket abandoned him.”

“Casey had a difficult needle to thread because he had to distance himself from the policies of an unpopular president to be viable,” Yost said. “But at the same time, he needed Democrats to turn out to vote for him, and clearly, some people who voted for the top of the ticket abandoned him.”

On the day before Election Day, I watched Casey make his final appeal to voters in Bucks County, one of the closely watched suburban “collar counties” surrounding Philadelphia. Around 60 supporters—mostly white and almost all of them appearing to be of retirement age—gathered in the small town of Warrington. The mood was cautiously optimistic, despite polls showing a virtual tie. It seemed difficult to imagine that Casey, who had become an institution in Pennsylvania, was subject to the same shifting political waters that would decide the presidency for Trump.

In the summer, polls showed Casey with around a five-point lead over McCormick, but that gap narrowed as Election Day approached. When I asked rallygoers why it was so close, one man rubbed his fingers together—money. Around $283 million was spent on the race in total, according to a PennLive analysis, making the matchup among the most expensive Senate contests—likely second only to Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s unsuccessful reelection bid. McCormick lagged behind Casey in fundraising and sunk at least $4 million of his own wealth into the race. But spending in support of McCormick mostly came from super-PACs and far outpaced Casey: The Senate Leadership Fund and Keystone Renewal PAC, whose largest donor is the CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, each spent about $50 million on McCormick’s behalf. WinSenate, a Democratic-aligned PAC, spent about $54 million on Casey’s behalf.

Casey first was elected to the US Senate in 2006, winning by 15 points and ousting tea party star Rick Santorum. Since then, Casey has enjoyed comfortable reelection margins, winning by 9 points in 2012 and 13 points in 2018. The senator grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Scranton and has an enduring homegrown appeal. At the Warrington rally, voters repeatedly told me that Casey was a “good man” and described him as a familiar presence—though they were vague on the particulars of his congressional accomplishments.  

Casey has a reputation for being understated—Pennsylvania’s junior senator, John Fetterman, calls Casey “Mild Thing”—which often has been considered an asset. He is seen as principled and dependable. But Casey has shown that he can move on issues when the political moment arises. He shifted his position on gun control after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting and became an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s family separation policies in 2017.

But the most notable change came regarding abortion. Casey has described himself as a “pro-life Democrat,” and his father was, at one time, a national face of the anti-abortion movement. As governor, Casey Sr. signed laws requiring a 24-hour waiting period for abortion and parental consent for minors. The legislation led to the 1992 Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Casey Jr. voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act and has attacked Republicans for their extreme restrictions on abortion care.

Republicans used this evolution to create the narrative that Casey had become dangerously progressive. Even though his moderate image had won him crossover support in previous elections, he struggled this year with an association with the Biden administration—particularly on inflation and border security. He made fentanyl smuggling across the southern border a key issue and ran an ad claiming he had sided with Trump on fracking and trade. But as a longtime friend of President Joe Biden, a fellow Catholic, and a Scranton native, it was difficult to create any credible distance from his administration. 

McCormick was Casey’s strongest political challenger. A West Point graduate and Gulf War veteran, McCormick earned a PhD in international relations at Princeton. After a stint in George W. Bush’s administration, McCormick rose in the ranks at Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based hedge fund giant, to become CEO. In 2022, he left Bridgewater to compete in the Republican primary to represent Pennsylvania in the US Senate. He was ultimately no match for Oz, the controversial physician and television personality, whose Pennsylvania residency was widely questioned (and whom President-elect Trump has recently named the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). After McCormick refused to say that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump all but sank his candidacy by endorsing Oz and dubbing McCormick “not MAGA.” Oz won the nomination by fewer than 1,000 votes, then lost to Fetterman by almost five points. 

During the 2024 campaign, McCormick leaned heavily into the more ruggedly patriotic aspects of his biography. His website is peppered with photos of him in military uniform, and the campaign’s most frequently used headshot features McCormick standing in front of a pastoral barn backdrop wearing a chore coat and a denim button-up. But Bridgewater is also presented as a point of pride, with his website describing it as “one of the largest, most successful investment firms in the world” that manages the pensions of “teachers, firefighters and law enforcement.” 

McCormick had the difficult task of triangulating within today’s Republican Party, where Trump remains the gravitational center of power. Though Trump acolytes have previously succeeded in Republican primaries in Pennsylvania’s statewide races, like Oz, they tended to fail in the general election. In the 2022 gubernatorial race, Trump loyalist and election denier Doug Mastriano also lost badly. McCormick distanced himself from the party on some issues: He is against a national abortion ban, for instance, and in favor of exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. 

But there was no path to victory without Trump, and, this time around, McCormick did his best to remain in the former president’s good graces. He spoke at Trump’s rally in Butler shortly before the attempted assassination, and he has amplified some of Trump’s favorite culture-war talking points. In early November, McCormick told a group of veterans that the country needs “a military that’s not woke and focusing on millions of hours of DEI training.”

“He just doesn’t draw the same type of animosity that more traditional Republicans receive from the populist element within the ranks.”

Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, called McCormick the “Goldilocks Republican”—occupying a comfortable middle in the party. “He just doesn’t draw the same type of animosity that more traditional Republicans receive from the populist element within the ranks,” Borick said. 

Casey’s campaign strove to paint McCormick as an out-of-touch “Connecticut mega-millionaire.” (McCormick grew up in Pennsylvania. He lived for many years in Connecticut and still has a home there.) Casey also tried to drive a wedge between McCormick and working-class voters by highlighting Bridgewater’s extensive investments in China and the fund’s bets against American-owned steel companies. But McCormick’s high-finance background ultimately didn’t alienate as many voters as Casey might have hoped. 

At the rally in Warrington, Casey’s remarks were narrowly focused on what he’s “delivered for the people of this county”: funding for public education and infrastructure. Wearing a navy gingham button-up and blue jeans, he was even-keeled and self-assured. In a political landscape dominated by whoever can shout the loudest, Casey wasn’t a remarkable orator or a natural showman—and he’d never had to be. After all, he was Pennsylvania’s native son. 

But that doesn’t seem to have been enough to put him over the top. Casey ended up winning fewer votes than Harris—current vote counts show him with about a 40,000 vote deficit—and the dropoff was particularly notable in traditionally Democratic areas like Philadelphia and its surrounding counties. Yost said that early analysis shows that Casey lagged four and a half points behind Harris in Philadelphia. In such a narrow race, those Harris-only voters could have made the difference not only for the incumbent but also for the balance of the Senate.

It looks as if Casey also lost many of the split-ticket voters who, in 2012, punched their ballots for both him and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In comparison, Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Ohio Sen. Brown both ran significantly ahead of Harris in states where Trump won by wide margins. (They both lost.) Tester and Brown are Democrats who were elected to the Senate the same year as Casey and similarly leaned on reputations as salt-of-the-earth moderates. 

Despite his familiarity with the state, it seems like Casey was unable to break out of the mold of a “generic Democrat,” as Brian Rosenwald, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, explained. “If anything, I think it was less about a moderating campaign,” he said, “and more about a lackluster campaign in general.”

It looks as if McCormick, with the help of Trump, had seized onto a more compelling narrative. In October, he went on Fox Business and described his “blessed” ascension from a small-town upbringing to West Point and through the ranks of the world’s largest hedge fund. “I’ve really lived the American dream,” McCormick said, “and I think that dream is slipping away.”

Pennsylvania voters appeared to agree.

In early April, Trex Proffitt opened his mail-in primary ballot and saw that no Democrats were running for state senate in Pennsylvania’s 13th district.

It made sense: The district, which covers the city of Lancaster and its surrounding suburbs, has been represented by Republicans for over a century. The incumbent, Scott Martin, is vocally anti-abortion and the sponsor of a bill banning instruction around gender identity and sexual orientation in elementary schools. Martin won a decisive eleven-point victory against a well-funded challenger in 2020. The odds for Democrats have likely gotten slimmer after the district was redrawn in 2022 to include more rural areas.  

But Proffitt, a 56-year-old history teacher at a small Quaker school, still felt something could be done. He decided to run against Martin, winning a write-in campaign to become the Democratic nominee for state senate. After a personal tragedy, Proffitt wanted to center LGBTQ rights in his campaign—even in a reliably Republican district.

In 2019, Proffitt’s son George, who was transgender, died at the age of 20 from a drug overdose. George loved folk punk music and was active in the local LGBTQ community. He had struggled for years with depression and suicidality, but he seemed to be doing better before his death.

In the years since, Proffitt has watched anti-transgender rhetoric become increasingly visible in his community, as a national backlash towards trans people amplified and enabled sentiment that was already “endemic” to Lancaster, he said. As my colleague Kiera Butler has reported, Lancaster County is home to a burgeoning Christian nationalist movement. 

In his free time, Proffitt had been walking for long stretches around Lancaster as part of a fundraiser for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that supports LGBTQ rights. Though he had raised a good chunk of money, he said, “it didn’t feel like I had done enough.”

It was in the wake of the suicide of another trans young person in the area, that he saw no one running against Martin. At the time, he told me, the death left him “looking for something more to do in my life.”

Since then, he has campaigned fiercely on transgender rights, an unusual pitch against a conservative incumbent. But, Proffitt hopes, it will show Democrats they do not have to back away from talking about people like his son.

Transgender rights remain a “third rail” in politics, he told me. “Don’t talk about it. Everybody just—wink wink—somehow knows you’re pro-LGBT+,” Proffitt said. “I don’t think that’s working.”

When I drove out to Lancaster in late October, Pennsylvania was the center of the political universe and campaign signs dotted every intersection. Proffitt met me at a Whole Foods, having just come from a union event. Soft-spoken and a bit world-weary, he described his campaign as a “scrappy grassroots effort.” His wife, Beth, who works as an administrator at Franklin & Marshall College, was Proffitt’s campaign manager in the early days. Now, they have a small staff and “try really hard to get the word out with frugal means.” 

Campaign finance reports show that Proffitt has around $100,000 on hand while Martin has $790,000. There has been only marginal support from the state Democratic party, which has focused its resources on closer races. “This area has gone through periods of neglect from Democrats,” Proffitt told me. “People aren’t used to coming out because there is a tradition of always losing this race.” 

Though the 13th district includes the city of Lancaster, its population of 58,000 is outweighed by the suburban and rural areas. Proffitt’s team is the only Democratic presence in some of the deep-red portions of the county, going where the Harris campaign doesn’t seem to send volunteers. He told me that it can lead to outright hostility, particularly because some campaign memorabilia prominently features queer and trans pride flags.  

In Lancaster, as in many other places, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has become commonplace in local politics and public life. This March, bomb threats led to the cancellation of a drag queen story hour at the library. Several school districts in Lancaster County have signed contracts with Independence Law Center, a conservative Christian law firm associated with the Family Research Council. One district, Penn Manor, just passed two policies written with the help of the law firm: one mandates that students play sports aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth and the second says parents must approve changes to students’ names and pronouns. 

“The actions that are happening in many school districts and county governments have really created a sense of trauma amongst transgender people and, in particular, transgender youth,” Corinne Goodwin, the executive director of the Eastern PA Trans Equity Project, told me.

Advocates say that, over the course of the last year, a handful of transgender young people have died of suicide in Lancaster County. 

While some Democrats have decided that transgender rights are too complicated and controversial to focus on, Proffitt has decided to talk about them for precisely that reason. As a teacher, coach, and parent of a trans child, Proffitt says he is in a “good position” to tackle the misinformation and panic around transgender issues.

That misinformation is increasing. Former president Donald Trump and other national Republicans have honed in on anti-transgender rhetoric in the final weeks of the election. Between August and early October, Republicans spent over $65 million on anti-transgender ads in more than a dozen states according to a New York Times analysis. Though surveys have shown that transgender issues are not top-of-mind for many voters, Republican strategists say that it is a potent wedge issue, particularly among women—a group that the party has lost traction with over abortion. The messaging has even trickled down to the congressional race in Pennsylvania’s 10th district.  

Brandon Wolf, press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, told me that “this is a tired playbook,” and one that hasn’t worked in previous races.

Still, with some notable exceptions—vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently gave a full-throated defense of trans rights on Glennon Doyle’s podcast—Democrats have been reluctant to address anti-transgender rhetoric head-on.

This has been visible in the closely-watched senate races in Texas and Ohio, where Republicans are accusing Democrats of allowing boys to play girls’ sports. Texas Rep. Colin Allred and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown have both responded by insisting that they don’t support doing so, to the dismay of some advocates. The trans writer Erin Reed argued in her Substack that Allred and Brown’s messaging “risks reinforcing Republican framing” around the validity of transgender identity.  

Proffitt told me that he’s not particularly disappointed in how national Democrats have dealt with the issue—“you have to pick which thing you’re going to seize upon in the short run”—even though he’s made a markedly different decision.

Despite the narrow odds, Proffitt said that he’s hopeful they can close the gap and show that Martin’s stances are the extreme ones. He told me that he’s had productive conversations about LGBTQ issues while door-knocking, “because we don’t shy away from that.”

People might be taken aback initially, but Proffitt says they tend to appreciate the opportunity to ask questions. (A 2023 survey found that only 30 percent of likely voters personally know someone who is trans.) He said that he often tries to appeal to people’s “fundamental values”—framing transgender rights as a matter of civil liberties and privacy.  

When I followed along while Proffitt canvassed in Lancaster’s West End, a dense neighborhood of townhouses and alleyways, the opportunity didn’t always present itself. Except for some stray cats and kids on bikes, it was quiet around dusk on a Saturday. Our handful of conversations with voters were mostly in line with national surveys: most were worried about affordability and none brought up LGBT issues unless asked. Still, I could see that anti-trans rhetoric had filtered through. 

Latisha Butcher, a 36-year-old home health aide, told me that, despite the dire shortage of workers in her industry, her pay and benefits were “not great.” After I asked, she told me that she had heard anti-transgender rhetoric, particularly around trans youth. “Let them live their life—whatever makes them happy,” Butcher told me.

Afterward, Proffitt went to a team dinner with the campaign, and I started on my drive home. I was struck by the enormity of the task that Proffitt had given himself: not just to win the race, but also to change the conversation around transgender rights. It meant that, day in and day out, he had to rehash a difficult and deeply personal issue, often with complete strangers. When I spoke to Proffitt on the phone a few weeks after my visit, he told me that “it’s been tough every day since” George’s death in 2019.

“But I don’t mind talking about it,” Proffitt said, “because people need to know that trans kids experience adversity at higher rates, and adding to their existing difficulties is simply inhumane and unfair.”

The family dedicated a bench to George’s memory in 2022. He was a big fan of Les Misérables, and the plaque quotes Victor Hugo: “What more could one want? A little garden to wander, and infinite space to dream.” 

After Proffitt told me about George, he seemed worried that he hadn’t painted a full picture of his son. “Is that enough to work with?” he asked.

In early April, Trex Proffitt opened his mail-in primary ballot and saw that no Democrats were running for state senate in Pennsylvania’s 13th district.

It made sense: The district, which covers the city of Lancaster and its surrounding suburbs, has been represented by Republicans for over a century. The incumbent, Scott Martin, is vocally anti-abortion and the sponsor of a bill banning instruction around gender identity and sexual orientation in elementary schools. Martin won a decisive eleven-point victory against a well-funded challenger in 2020. The odds for Democrats have likely gotten slimmer after the district was redrawn in 2022 to include more rural areas.  

But Proffitt, a 56-year-old history teacher at a small Quaker school, still felt something could be done. He decided to run against Martin, winning a write-in campaign to become the Democratic nominee for state senate. After a personal tragedy, Proffitt wanted to center LGBTQ rights in his campaign—even in a reliably Republican district.

In 2019, Proffitt’s son George, who was transgender, died at the age of 20 from a drug overdose. George loved folk punk music and was active in the local LGBTQ community. He had struggled for years with depression and suicidality, but he seemed to be doing better before his death.

In the years since, Proffitt has watched anti-transgender rhetoric become increasingly visible in his community, as a national backlash towards trans people amplified and enabled sentiment that was already “endemic” to Lancaster, he said. As my colleague Kiera Butler has reported, Lancaster County is home to a burgeoning Christian nationalist movement. 

In his free time, Proffitt had been walking for long stretches around Lancaster as part of a fundraiser for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that supports LGBTQ rights. Though he had raised a good chunk of money, he said, “it didn’t feel like I had done enough.”

It was in the wake of the suicide of another trans young person in the area, that he saw no one running against Martin. At the time, he told me, the death left him “looking for something more to do in my life.”

Since then, he has campaigned fiercely on transgender rights, an unusual pitch against a conservative incumbent. But, Proffitt hopes, it will show Democrats they do not have to back away from talking about people like his son.

Transgender rights remain a “third rail” in politics, he told me. “Don’t talk about it. Everybody just—wink wink—somehow knows you’re pro-LGBT+,” Proffitt said. “I don’t think that’s working.”

When I drove out to Lancaster in late October, Pennsylvania was the center of the political universe and campaign signs dotted every intersection. Proffitt met me at a Whole Foods, having just come from a union event. Soft-spoken and a bit world-weary, he described his campaign as a “scrappy grassroots effort.” His wife, Beth, who works as an administrator at Franklin & Marshall College, was Proffitt’s campaign manager in the early days. Now, they have a small staff and “try really hard to get the word out with frugal means.” 

Campaign finance reports show that Proffitt has around $100,000 on hand while Martin has $790,000. There has been only marginal support from the state Democratic party, which has focused its resources on closer races. “This area has gone through periods of neglect from Democrats,” Proffitt told me. “People aren’t used to coming out because there is a tradition of always losing this race.” 

Though the 13th district includes the city of Lancaster, its population of 58,000 is outweighed by the suburban and rural areas. Proffitt’s team is the only Democratic presence in some of the deep-red portions of the county, going where the Harris campaign doesn’t seem to send volunteers. He told me that it can lead to outright hostility, particularly because some campaign memorabilia prominently features queer and trans pride flags.  

In Lancaster, as in many other places, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has become commonplace in local politics and public life. This March, bomb threats led to the cancellation of a drag queen story hour at the library. Several school districts in Lancaster County have signed contracts with Independence Law Center, a conservative Christian law firm associated with the Family Research Council. One district, Penn Manor, just passed two policies written with the help of the law firm: one mandates that students play sports aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth and the second says parents must approve changes to students’ names and pronouns. 

“The actions that are happening in many school districts and county governments have really created a sense of trauma amongst transgender people and, in particular, transgender youth,” Corinne Goodwin, the executive director of the Eastern PA Trans Equity Project, told me.

Advocates say that, over the course of the last year, a handful of transgender young people have died of suicide in Lancaster County. 

While some Democrats have decided that transgender rights are too complicated and controversial to focus on, Proffitt has decided to talk about them for precisely that reason. As a teacher, coach, and parent of a trans child, Proffitt says he is in a “good position” to tackle the misinformation and panic around transgender issues.

That misinformation is increasing. Former president Donald Trump and other national Republicans have honed in on anti-transgender rhetoric in the final weeks of the election. Between August and early October, Republicans spent over $65 million on anti-transgender ads in more than a dozen states according to a New York Times analysis. Though surveys have shown that transgender issues are not top-of-mind for many voters, Republican strategists say that it is a potent wedge issue, particularly among women—a group that the party has lost traction with over abortion. The messaging has even trickled down to the congressional race in Pennsylvania’s 10th district.  

Brandon Wolf, press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, told me that “this is a tired playbook,” and one that hasn’t worked in previous races.

Still, with some notable exceptions—vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently gave a full-throated defense of trans rights on Glennon Doyle’s podcast—Democrats have been reluctant to address anti-transgender rhetoric head-on.

This has been visible in the closely-watched senate races in Texas and Ohio, where Republicans are accusing Democrats of allowing boys to play girls’ sports. Texas Rep. Colin Allred and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown have both responded by insisting that they don’t support doing so, to the dismay of some advocates. The trans writer Erin Reed argued in her Substack that Allred and Brown’s messaging “risks reinforcing Republican framing” around the validity of transgender identity.  

Proffitt told me that he’s not particularly disappointed in how national Democrats have dealt with the issue—“you have to pick which thing you’re going to seize upon in the short run”—even though he’s made a markedly different decision.

Despite the narrow odds, Proffitt said that he’s hopeful they can close the gap and show that Martin’s stances are the extreme ones. He told me that he’s had productive conversations about LGBTQ issues while door-knocking, “because we don’t shy away from that.”

People might be taken aback initially, but Proffitt says they tend to appreciate the opportunity to ask questions. (A 2023 survey found that only 30 percent of likely voters personally know someone who is trans.) He said that he often tries to appeal to people’s “fundamental values”—framing transgender rights as a matter of civil liberties and privacy.  

When I followed along while Proffitt canvassed in Lancaster’s West End, a dense neighborhood of townhouses and alleyways, the opportunity didn’t always present itself. Except for some stray cats and kids on bikes, it was quiet around dusk on a Saturday. Our handful of conversations with voters were mostly in line with national surveys: most were worried about affordability and none brought up LGBT issues unless asked. Still, I could see that anti-trans rhetoric had filtered through. 

Latisha Butcher, a 36-year-old home health aide, told me that, despite the dire shortage of workers in her industry, her pay and benefits were “not great.” After I asked, she told me that she had heard anti-transgender rhetoric, particularly around trans youth. “Let them live their life—whatever makes them happy,” Butcher told me.

Afterward, Proffitt went to a team dinner with the campaign, and I started on my drive home. I was struck by the enormity of the task that Proffitt had given himself: not just to win the race, but also to change the conversation around transgender rights. It meant that, day in and day out, he had to rehash a difficult and deeply personal issue, often with complete strangers. When I spoke to Proffitt on the phone a few weeks after my visit, he told me that “it’s been tough every day since” George’s death in 2019.

“But I don’t mind talking about it,” Proffitt said, “because people need to know that trans kids experience adversity at higher rates, and adding to their existing difficulties is simply inhumane and unfair.”

The family dedicated a bench to George’s memory in 2022. He was a big fan of Les Misérables, and the plaque quotes Victor Hugo: “What more could one want? A little garden to wander, and infinite space to dream.” 

After Proffitt told me about George, he seemed worried that he hadn’t painted a full picture of his son. “Is that enough to work with?” he asked.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in late October, Janelle Stelson, the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District, entered Broad Street Market, a historic food hall in Harrisburg. “If I seem a little off,” she explained to me and another reporter, she had just come from a funeral. But now, grasping campaign signs in one hand, she was looking for breakfast among the Caribbean food stalls and Amish bakeries—and some voters.  

Stelson made her way through the market with relentless friendliness, calling out “hey sister!” with her free hand outstretched. After a decades-long career as a local television anchor, she was a familiar face to many. As Stelson greeted passersby, Richard Utley, a retired government employee, told me that he’s “known Janelle a long time,” both from the evening news and from politics. “She’s got the best chance to beat Scott Perry,” he said.

Stelson has tried to make this race a referendum on Scott Perry, the firebrand conservative and six-term incumbent. She argues that Perry has lost sight of his constituents’ needs and come to exemplify the dysfunction in Congress. “The fact that Washington is broken resonates with everyone,” Stelson told me. “They want somebody who’s going to attend to their basic needs.”

In the market, she talked to voters about issues ranging from the rising cost of living to the shortage of reproductive healthcare providers. As Stelson nimbly navigated conversations, I could see how television journalism could provide transferable skills for electoral politics. As an anchor, she reported on these same issues dozens of times. Stelson had also covered this story before: the story of a political challenger making a case for ousting the incumbent. In her black funeral wear, Stelson was warm and effusive, doling out good sound bites. She expertly framed shots for the news photographer, pivoting so her campaign signs always faced the camera as she cooed over babies, hugged the elderly, and examined cookies.  

Pennsylvania has emerged as the center of the political universe, as both presidential campaigns identified it as crucial to their Electoral College math. Doors are brimming with campaign literature, highways are crowded with competing billboards, and voters inundated with automated texts. In the state’s 10th district, Perry is facing his most difficult race yet, and one that may help to determine whether the GOP can hold onto its slim majority in Congress. 

A retired Pennsylvania Army National Guard brigadier general, Perry made a name for himself as a Trump loyalist and former chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. As my colleague David Corn wrote in 2021, a Senate Judiciary Committee report revealed that Perry played a crucial role in former president Donald Trump’s effort to recruit Justice Department officials to investigate and overturn 2020 election results. Though the FBI briefly seized his cell phone, Perry has maintained his innocence and insisted that he was never under investigation. Still, his involvement has been costly—FEC reports show that Perry has spent at least $300,000 from his campaign donations on legal fees. Undeterred, Perry has continued to sow doubts about the 2020 election, and, during his only debate with Stelson, repeated false claims that the post office had illegally shredded mail-in ballots. In response, Stelson reiterated that mail-in voting is a “tried and true method.” 

Perry also made national headlines as the Freedom Caucus made it increasingly difficult for the GOP to govern, threatening government shutdowns over spending bills and forcing Kevin McCarthy through 15 rounds of voting to become Speaker of the House—an ultimately short-lived tenure.    

Perry was initially elected in 2013 to the solidly Republican 4th Congressional District. In 2018, Pennsylvania’s congressional districts were completely redrawn by the state Supreme Court, making Perry’s new 10th district much more competitive, and he was reelected by less than three points. In 2022, the district lines were redrawn once again, though much less dramatically, condensing the district around Harrisburg and York. Perry fended off Democratic challengers in 2020 and 2022, both by around seven points. 

The district is fairly emblematic of the state at large: it is 70 percent white, with a median household income of $75,000 and about 35 percent of residents have at least a bachelor’s degree. Democrats say that the population is shifting in their favor. Cumberland and York counties, which are partially included in the district, are among the fastest growing counties in the state. “We’ve seen a lot of farmland convert to housing,” Matt Roan, chair of the Cumberland County Democratic Committee, said. “These people tend to be younger families with higher levels of education.”

Still, Republicans lead Democrats by almost 6 points in party registration, while 14 percent of registered voters are not affiliated with a political party. Trump won the district by 4 points in 2020, but Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro won the newly redrawn district by 12 points in 2022. That was likely in part because Shapiro’s opponent, Doug Mastriano, ran a chaotic and poorly funded campaign and, despite being a Trump stalwart, was largely abandoned by the national party. “I would not underestimate Scott Perry,” Berwood Yost, director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy Analysis at Franklin & Marshall College, told me. “He is a polished political operator. He knows his district and knows how to talk to voters here.” 

“I would not underestimate Scott Perry. He is a polished political operator. He knows his district and knows how to talk to voters here.” 

Stelson has run a commanding race against Perry, having significantly outspent and outraised him. Campaign finance reports show that Stelson has raised almost $2.5 million this year to Perry’s $800,000. The Cook Political Report just shifted the race towards Democrats, calling it a “toss up,” and one recent poll had Stelson leading by nine points. National Republicans seem to be concerned. Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared in the district to campaign on Perry’s behalf. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Johnson-sponsored super-PAC, has spent more than $2 million on advertising for Perry ahead of Election Day, according to AdImpact. One of the group’s ads frames Stelson’s immigration stance as extreme, citing a candidate Q&A in which Stelson calls for fixing the asylum system and ensuring pathways to citizenship for Dreamers and “those who have been paying taxes for decades.” The ad’s voiceover declares, “Illegals get the invite, we foot the bill. That’s liberal Janelle Stelson.” 

Perry is the only Freedom Caucus member from the Northeast, and he is among the most vulnerable of the hardline Republicans up for reelection this year. Despite this, Perry has largely doubled down on his positions. “Should I just go along with Washington, DC, as most of my other colleagues did, just to moderate myself?” Perry said to the Associated Press for a recent story on the race. “No, I’m going to do the right thing every single time I have the opportunity.”

If Perry can be beat, Democrats are convinced they finally have the right candidate to do so. Stelson spent 26 years as a broadcast journalist at WGAL, an NBC affiliate based in Lancaster, where she became a mainstay on televisions across the Susquehanna Valley. Throughout the campaign, Stelson has leaned on her journalism experience, arguing that it has given her a unique vantage point on the problems afflicting the region. It also gave her a big boost in recognition: voters knew her name and face long before she announced her candidacy. Stelson won a crowded Democratic primary by twenty points, beating a former US Marine and the Democrats’ 2022 candidate, despite concerns that she lives a few miles outside of district lines. (She has promised to move if she wins the election.)

Stelson has attributed her decision to enter politics to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which she covered as the evening news anchor. “I had to look out into the camera and tell every woman watching that her rights have been rolled back 50 years,” Stelson told me as we sat at a picnic bench outside of the market. She ended up buying some cookies and a berry smoothie, which she periodically sipped while we spoke. She described Perry’s reaction to the Dobbs decision as “ecstatic”—he called it a “monumental victory for the unborn” on X—and pointed out that he has co-sponsored a restrictive abortion measure.

“I just realized at some point that I needed to move from the public service of telling about all our issues and concerns,” Stelson said, “to actually trying to do something about them.”

Stelson seems to relish coming off the sidelines and into the political arena. In an interview with Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett, Stelson said that, as a television anchor, she had moderated two of Perry’s previous debates. “I know where his soft underbelly is,” Stelson told Lovett, laughing. “Imma get him.” 

Stelson was a registered Republican until early 2023 and described her voting history to me as “independent”—she told the Washington Post that she had supported both John McCain and Mitt Romney’s presidential bids. This biographical detail has been helpful in convincing voters that she is a moderate Democrat. When I asked where she differed from the Biden administration, she said to me, “I think even in a really good marriage, you’re never going to agree with the other person all the time.” Stelson critiqued the president’s handling of the southern border, telling me that “we have to secure the border” and increase funding for law enforcement agents. 

As surveys show that Americans are increasingly exhausted by and skeptical about the federal government, both candidates have presented themselves as political outsiders. Stelson’s campaign website calls for fewer “career politicians,” and she says there are few better examples of this particular creature of Washington than her opponent, whom she argues has become more interested in “grandstanding” than addressing the needs of his district. She has pointed out that Perry voted against bills funding healthcare for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and housing homeless veterans—he was the only member of the Pennsylvania delegation to vote against the housing bill. When asked about it during their debate, Perry noted that he had been deployed in Iraq and argued that the bills would have bankrupted the VA, saying, “If everybody’s going to jump off a cliff, are you going to jump off a cliff?”

Perry has long presented himself as a maverick, telling voters in a recent ad that he “didn’t go to Congress to make friends.” He has argued that he is willing to vote his conscience even when it means angering other Republicans. During their debate, Perry defended his history of voting against spending bills, arguing that uncurbed government spending is contributing to inflation. Perry recently told the Atlantic, “When the stuff that is unaffordable, unnecessary, unwanted, outweighs the stuff that we need, I’m going to vote the way I need to.” 

“When the public sees you as this firebrand, controversial figure, making a pitch that ultimately you are constituent-driven becomes challenging,”.

But when your political brand is built on opposition and obstruction, it’s not easy to point to concrete accomplishments. “When the public sees you as this firebrand, controversial figure, making a pitch that ultimately you are constituent-driven becomes challenging,” Christopher Borick, Director of Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, told me. And Perry has alienated at least some of his Republican base, according to Craig Snyder, a Philadelphia-based consultant who is the director of Republicans Against Perry. The group is funded by the Welcome PAC, which supports moderate Democratic candidates. Snyder said that crossover Republicans will be motivated by a range of issues, from Perry’s election denialism and anti-abortion stance to his “constant support for shutting down the federal government.” 

In addition to appealing to independents, Stelson will need a number of these Republican voters to win. In the time we spent together in Harrisburg, a Democratic stronghold, Stelson encountered no Republican supporters. She likes to say that, “I’m a Republican, and I’m voting for you” are her “favorite words in the English language.” But I did get a sense of how the encounter would go when, outside of the food hall, Stelson met several older women in a tour group from Alabama. “I am running as a Democrat, but I used to be a Republican. So really I’m an American, is what I say,” Stelson told them. “I wish we’d stop this nonsense and work together and get something done.”

In a Southern drawl, one of the women said, “Amen.”

When J. Vasquez was incarcerated at Salinas Valley State Prison in California, he worked as a porter—sweeping, mopping, and taking out the trash. It paid less than 15 cents per hour and, as the “third watch” porter, he worked from 2 to 9 p.m. The timing of his shift often coincided with prison programming, which was a source of continual frustration for Vasquez. He had entered prison at 19 and was looking to “take accountability for [his] life.” But he was not allowed to take time off his job to attend classes. When a group of crime survivors came to the prison to speak with incarcerated people, Vasquez told me, “I thought about just putting down that broom and going anyways.” But he feared that if he refused to work, it could result in a disciplinary violation, which would eventually appear on his parole application. 

California’s penal code requires that most incarcerated people work while they are in prison, and if they refuse to do so, they can be disciplined—ranging from losing access to phone calls to being placed in solitary confinement. This is because California’s state constitution has one caveat to its ban on involuntary servitude: It is allowed “to punish crime.” Proposition 6 will give California voters an opportunity to decide whether to remove this exception from the constitution. 

For advocates of Prop 6, the exception in the state constitution is a clear, and troubling, remnant of slavery. “The practice of involuntary servitude is just another name for slavery in our California prisons and jails,” Carmen-Nicole Cox, an attorney at ACLU California Action, told Mother Jones.

“The practice of involuntary servitude is just another name for slavery in our California prisons and jails.”

But the movement to abolish involuntary servitude has not been as straightforward as one might imagine in California, and advocates face an uphill battle. A statewide poll conducted in early September found that 50 percent of voters said they would vote against the proposition, while 46 percent would vote for it.

Of the 95,600 people incarcerated in state prisons in California, around 65,000 work. This reflects the national trend: A 2022 ACLU report estimated that two out of every three people incarcerated in state and federal prisons work. In California, the majority of jobs involve the day-to-day operations of prisons: preparing food, doing laundry, or completing janitorial duties. Some jobs are unpaid, but most pay between 8 and 37 cents per hour.

Around 7,000 incarcerated people work manufacturing and service jobs—such as making license plates, processing eggs, and fabricating dentures—through the California Prison Industry Authority. Those jobs are coveted because they pay more—their range is between 35 cents and $1 per hour. Around 1,600 people work in conservation camps, where they respond to fires and other natural disasters. They’re paid between $1.45 to $3.90 per day and paid an extra $1 per hour for emergency firefighting. 

Currently, at least 15 states have constitutions that allow involuntary servitude as punishment for crime. Lawmakers around the country have moved to ban forced prison labor by amending their state constitutions. In 2022, voters approved amendments in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont—joining Colorado, Utah, and Nebraska. 

In 2020, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, then a California Assembly member, introduced an early version of a ban on forced prison labor. But it failed to pass the state Senate after the California Department of Finance opposed it, writing in a report that given the broad language of the amendment, its financial impacts were largely unknown. The report warned that it would cost taxpayers around $1.6 billion to pay incarcerated workers California’s minimum wage, which was $15.50 in 2023. Plus, the report said, the measure could make the state vulnerable to potential litigation from incarcerated people. In Colorado, for instance, incarcerated people sued in 2022 because they still were forced to work despite a constitutional amendment banning involuntary servitude in prisons.

The report also pointed out the broad definition of involuntary servitude. Judges can sentence someone to community service instead of a fine or jail time—because that work is unpaid, it might also be considered involuntary servitude. 

Democratic state Sen. Steve Glazer voted alongside five Republicans against the measure. After it failed, Glazer said in a statement that the issue of forced prison labor was better suited for the legislature to take up. He argued that unilaterally banning the work requirement would “undermine our rehabilitation programs” and “make prisons more difficult to manage safely.” 

This time around, a companion bill—intended to address concerns about prisoner pay—would allow the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to set wages for incarcerated workers if a constitutional amendment passes. 

In January, Assembly Member Lori Wilson brought back the measure, which was included in a package of bills recommended by the California Legislative Black Caucus as part of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Americans.

Although the current version of the ballot measure easily moved through both the state Assembly and Senate—with the support of Glazer—many of the same concerns persisted. Glazer recently told Capital Public Radio that he is still worried about “unintended consequences” for prisons. There has been speculation that if incarcerated people refuse to work in laundry and kitchen positions, prisons will find it difficult to function. Glazer told the radio station that he had been assured that the state could still compel people to do “chores.” 

In particular, financial concerns linger. Even if incarcerated people are not paid minimum wage, the amendment may still result in higher prison operation costs. A summary prepared by the attorney general’s office cautioned that prisons might have to find “other ways of encouraging working” if incarcerated people are not disciplined for refusing to do so. This might include raising pay or offering “time credits” off a prison sentence. 

Advocates say these concerns reflect a misunderstanding of life inside prison. Vasquez, who is now a policy and legal services manager at Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, said incarcerated people frequently want to work, even if only to get out of their cells. There also are some “fringe benefits” to working, he explained. As a porter, Vasquez was able to get some spare cleaning supplies, and extra food might be available for those who work in the kitchen. And given that there are positions available for only about two-thirds of incarcerated people, there are sometimes waiting lists for jobs. 

Moreover, advocates say it is misguided to calculate the cost benefit of Prop 6 only in terms of the burden on taxpayers. Brandon Sturdivant, the campaign manager for Prop 6, says eliminating forced prison labor will give incarcerated people the opportunity to pursue rehabilitation and better prepare themselves to return to their communities. Sturdivant said his father spent 12 years in prison, where he spent time making license plates instead of “getting the tools he needed to come out and be a father and a pillar of his community.” 

Proponents of Prop 6 also point out that education and rehabilitation programs have been found to reduce recidivism. And this has its own economic benefit—it now costs $132,860 per year to incarcerate someone in California. To Sturdivant, the biggest hurdle in passing Prop 6 is reaching and educating voters, which the coalition of organizations supporting the ballot initiative has been attempting to address through phone banks. When talking to voters, they try to dispel misconceptions and frame the issue in personal, humanitarian terms. Esteban Núñez, a formerly incarcerated consultant and strategist, said that fundamentally, Prop 6 presents voters with a “moral issue” and a chance to “restore dignity to those inside.” 

The suburbs of North Dallas were once the headquarters of a very particular pre-MAGA version of the Republican Party: genteel, gun-toting, and churchgoing. The men wore beaver-fur cowboy hats, and the women were hairsprayed to the high heavens. As we reported in 2011, the 75205 zip code—some of which falls into the 32nd Congressional District of Texas—was the “most enthusiastically Republican enclave in the country.” But then, changing racial demographics made the district ripe for Democratic picking. In 2018, a 35-year-old Black civil rights lawyer named Colin Allred ousted Pete Sessions, an 11-term Republican congressman. Allred, a stocky former NFL linebacker, has been reelected to the seat twice since, campaigning on his moderate sensibilities and willingness to reach across the aisle. 

Now, Allred is running that same play against US Sen. Ted Cruz, a hard-line Republican, in an ever-tightening race. At the Texas Tribune Festival in September, Allred seemed to be nostalgic for that fading Republican archetype who once populated the district he now represents. He described growing up with the “real conservatives,” whom Cruz, he said emphatically, is not. Allred paints Cruz as a divisive extremist and has been courting Republicans who “don’t see themselves reflected in this version of the Republican Party.” 

And that strategy seems to be working—last week, the Cook Political Report shifted the race to “lean Republican.” Most polls show Allred within single digits of Cruz, and one has Allred leading by one point. With Democrats defending incumbents in Ohio and Montana, flipping Texas could make the difference in maintaining their governing majority in the Senate. After some Democrats pushed the party to invest more in Allred’s campaign, both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic National Committee announced investments in Texas.  

But Texas Democrats have not won a statewide election since 1994. The closest they have come was former El Paso Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s freewheeling 2018 campaign against Cruz. O’Rourke famously campaigned in all 254 counties, crisscrossing the state in his maroon Dodge Caravan. He livestreamed his every move on Facebook: chatting while getting a haircut, skateboarding in a Whataburger parking lot, and going on predawn jogs with supporters. O’Rourke ultimately lost by fewer than three points—which some Democrats count as a victory—and won a place as a mythic figure in the state party. He is the ghost haunting Allred’s campaign. Every dollar raised, poll conducted, and door knocked inspires comparisons to 2018’s high-water mark.

By most measures, Allred is a strong candidate and has assembled quite a war chest, having outraised Cruz this year. And the junior senator from Texas certainly appears concerned about the race—Cruz’s campaign has called the election the “fight of our lives.” And in a surprising twist, the hyperpartisan Cruz, who built his career as a culture warrior, has attempted to gain an advantage by arguing that he has a bipartisan record. 

Allred, who can come off as stiff and overly scripted, hasn’t inspired the kind of Democratic fervor that O’Rourke enjoyed. But he has been appealing to moderate Republicans and independents who may be alienated by Cruz’s MAGA approach, talking openly about Democratic failures to address the border crisis. The central question: Is running a middle-of-the-road campaign the strategy for winning a race that O’Rourke so narrowly lost? 

Campaigning for statewide office in Texas, which is slightly larger than France and has a population of 30 million, is comparable to running for president of some countries. Hispanics are now the largest population group in the state, and the numbers of Black and Asian residents are also growing. Texas contains four of the most populous cities in the US and some of the most expensive media markets. Allred’s robust campaign coffers have made it possible for him to blanket urban centers with television ads. But a more difficult challenge is what veteran journalist and editor of the website Quorum Report Scott Braddock called the “imagination gap”: Texans under the age of 30 have never seen a Democrat win a statewide election. 

The last Democrat to do so was Bob Bullock, who was reelected as lieutenant governor in 1994, the same year that former President George W. Bush first became governor. Since then, there have been a series of high-profile losses. From the “dream team” of statewide candidates in 2002 to popular Houston Mayor Bill White’s gubernatorial campaign in 2010, Democrats have routinely raised their hopes, only to be crushed by Republicans. In 2014, they thought they had a real shot at the governor’s mansion with Wendy Davis, the state senator who rose to national prominence when her marathon filibuster delayed a restrictive abortion bill. Bolstered by Battleground Texas, a new PAC launched by two Obama campaign alums, Davis ran on a compelling biography as a single mother who wound up at Harvard Law School. But her campaign struggled to stay on message and was outraised and outspent by Greg Abbott in his first gubernatorial campaign. She lost by 20 points. 

In 2018, Texas Democrats found a new standard-bearer in O’Rourke, the lanky, indefatigable 46-year-old US congressman from El Paso. He made a point of throwing out the Democratic playbook, initially pledging to go without pollsters and consultants and to refuse donations from corporations and super-PACs. O’Rourke was a kind of political Rorschach test. Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said, “O’Rourke was successfully able to be everything to everyone.” He had progressive bona fides, supporting universal health care, abortion rights, and an assault rifle ban. He capitalized on Democratic outrage around former President Donald Trump’s family separation policies, leading a Father’s Day protest outside a detention facility for immigrant children. But he could also be, as Jones put it, a “post-partisan pragmatist.” He had a centrist voting record in Congress and a long-standing friendship with Republican US Rep. Will Hurd—the two livestreamed their road trip from San Antonio to Washington, DC, in 2017. Ignored by Cruz for the first several months of the campaign, O’Rourke’s shifting and sometimes contradictory narratives went largely unchallenged. 

“O’Rourke was successfully able to be everything to everyone.”

With an army of volunteers and record-breaking fundraising from both inside and outside the state, O’Rourke came tantalizingly close to defeating Cruz, losing by 2.6 points. As Gus Bova wrote in the Texas Observer, O’Rourke “broke the mold” in 2018, defying political gravity and reinvigorating Texas Democrats. But after disappointing showings in the 2019 Democratic presidential primary and the 2022 gubernatorial race, some have wondered whether O’Rourke’s political career is over. O’Rourke now leads a voter registration PAC and recently joined second gentleman Doug Emhoff on a fundraising turn through Texas—including a stop at his beloved Whataburger. 

When it comes to the prospect of a blue Texas, one can’t blame Democrats for feeling like Charlie Brown winding up to kick the football again, despite knowing that Lucy is going to yank it away every time. And it might be hard to rustle up enthusiasm for a candidate who is decidedly less compelling than O’Rourke. 

For the last eight years, Democrats have harbored hopes that, eventually, Trump and his allies will become so extreme that they will alienate their own base. And for many, Cruz could be the perfect example of a Republican who should have been jettisoned by the GOP long ago. When he arrived in the Senate in 2013, fueled by the insurgent tea party, he made a name for himself as a far-right obstructionist with a penchant for showmanship. That year, his long-shot attempt to undercut the Affordable Care Act—involving a 21-hour Senate speech and a reading of “Green Eggs and Ham”—led to a two-week government shutdown and was harshly criticized by other Republicans. Then there was his ill-fated and embarrassing presidential primary bid in 2016, which culminated in a surprising speech at the Republican National Convention during which he urged delegates to vote their consciences and declined to endorse Trump. But Cruz walked back his condemnation of Trump when it became apparent that it would irreparably harm his political career. And, of course, there is Democrats’ favorite Cruz gaffe of them all: jetting off to Cancun, Mexico, during a deadly winter storm in 2021. (He apologized upon his return.) These days, Cruz also makes time to record his thrice-weekly podcast.

Nonetheless, polling finds that Cruz remains popular among Texas Republicans, and he may be bolstered by Trump’s appearance on the ticket. But a June poll found that only 25 percent of self-identified independents, a key voting group, approved of him. His recent attempts to rebrand as an effective legislator and unsung bipartisan hero may speak to that concern.   

Early in the race, Allred’s campaign was so lackluster that it inspired a great deal of grumbling from within the Texas Democratic Party. “Where is Colin Allred?” a prominent West Texas lawyer and Democrat asked on X in August. Allred had done few public events and made even fewer media appearances before the final night of the Democratic National Convention, when he gave a speech shortly before Vice President Kamala Harris. For most people outside Texas (and even some within it), this was likely the first time they heard that Cruz was facing a challenger. In the weeks since then, Allred’s campaign has picked up its pace. But Allred has mostly opted for smaller meetings over large rallies and town halls, and his campaign has organized mostly identity-focused coalition groups—including women, Asian Americans, and Black Texans. Last week, his campaign announced “Republicans for Allred,” chaired by former US Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a prominent anti-Trump Republican who also endorsed Harris.

The Allred campaign declined to make the candidate available for an interview and instead suggested I speak to Olivia Julianna, a social media activist who is advising the campaign on youth voter turnout. When asked why larger rallies haven’t been a focus of his campaign, she replied, “This is a more strategic, targeted way of reaching people and bringing them in on these very issue-focused events that are about [what] they care about the most.” 

At the Texas Tribune Festival, Allred was asked about a note from O’Rourke, who said in an interview that he’d like to see more of Allred, particularly in “unscripted” moments. It’s difficult to campaign in such a large state, Allred said, a bit defensively, and pointed out that he had made 50 stops in 22 cities in the past month.

Allred’s restraint is underscored by comparisons with O’Rourke, who was endlessly available to voters. Even Cruz, perhaps relieved to know that he will not have to face O’Rourke again, has spoken with some admiration about O’Rourke and noted that he and Allred are “very different candidates.” In August, Cruz told the Texas Tribune: “Beto O’Rourke was charismatic. He was tireless. He campaigned all over the state, and he became a phenom.”

Matt Angle, a longtime Democratic political strategist in Texas, said Allred’s more traditional, buttoned-up campaign can still be successful, as having high message discipline is usually considered to be a good thing in a candidate. “Some people like the excitement of someone who is spontaneous, [and] there’s a lot to be said about leading a pep rally,” Angle told Mother Jones. “But I like candidates who are trying to figure out how to win.” 

“Democrats in Texas always face this a no-win situation: The more they appeal to moderate voters, the greater the risk they run that the base doesn’t turn out for them…The more they focus on the base, the more they alienate moderate voters and push them over to the Republicans. ”

Some Democrats have worried that Allred is taking the base for granted and focusing too much on moderates. Even though he endorsed Harris’ presidential bid, he’s largely kept her and other national Democrats at arm’s length. In fact, it sometimes seems as though Allred would rather voters not view him as a Democrat at all. In May, he told Texas Monthly that the race is “not about voting for Democrats. This race is about me versus Ted Cruz specifically.” 

Jones, the professor from Rice University, said the best strategy, which Allred seems to be employing, is relying on Harris to mobilize progressives while he targets moderate Republicans and independents. “Democrats in Texas always face this a no-win situation: The more they appeal to moderate voters, the greater the risk they run that the base doesn’t turn out for them,” Jones said. “However, the more they focus on the base, the more they alienate moderate voters and push them over to the Republicans. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Allred’s policies are generally consistent with those of the Democratic Party: He wants to expand Medicaid, codify Roe v. Wade, and reduce gun violence. But he has attempted to distance himself when it comes to immigration and border security, which have become the centerpieces of his campaign. A June poll found that 47 percent of Texans strongly disapproved of President Joe Biden’s approach to immigration and border security. Immigration has become a weak point for Democrats at large, as border crossings have risen to record levels and strained federal and local resources. To combat accusations of being weak on the border, Democrats have begun to support some immigration policies that they opposed under Trump, and, as many have pointed out, are sometimes indistinguishable from Republicans in their rhetoric of being “tough” on the border.

Allred is not an exception, and he has been willing to go further than other members of his party. In January, he voted alongside two other Texas Democrats in support of a Republican-led congressional resolution that condemned Biden’s border policies. On the campaign trail, he often cites his family connection to the Rio Grande Valley—his maternal grandfather was a customs agent at the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville—and he’s said current immigration policies have placed an undue “burden” on border communities.

But Allred’s rhetoric on border security was not always so tough. In 2018, when he was running for the House of Representatives, he called Trump’s border wall “racist” and pledged to tear it down. Yet last October, he commended Biden’s decision to continue border wall construction, describing it as a “necessary step.” In a recent TV spot reminiscent of a Ford F-150 ad, Allred emerges from a white pickup truck to survey the border wall. The law enforcement officials accompanying him declare that Cruz has been “all hat, no cattle” on border security, while Allred has been “tough” and “[stood] up to extremists in both parties.” 

Allred’s campaign declined to respond to specific questions from Mother Jones on border security. His campaign website says he supports “common-sense” immigration measures and pathways to citizenship for those who are “obeying the law, working hard, [and] paying taxes.”

I asked Joaquin Castro, the Democratic congressman from San Antonio, about Allred’s position on the border. He said his congressional colleague is trying to strike a “reasonable balance,” disagreeing “with the dehumanization of people” while pushing for more funding for border security.

Earlier this year, a bipartisan border security bill failed to pass because of pressure from Trump. Described by Biden as the “strongest border deal the country has ever seen,” the measure was the result of negotiations with some of the most conservative members of Congress, including Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford. It would have increased funding for enforcement, restricted asylum applications, and expanded the government’s authority to deport migrants. The bill’s failure presented a unique opportunity for Democrats to turn the border blame game back on Republicans. Allred has campaigned widely on Cruz’s opposition to the deal, saying Cruz voted against it only because, like the former president, “he wanted to have the issue to run on in November.”

A persistent Democratic mantra is that Texas is not so much a red state as a non-voting blue one. In 2020, Manny Garcia, who was then the state Democratic Party’s executive director, told Reuters, “Texas is in play because there are more of us than there are of them.” But organizers emphasize that electoral transformation takes time and investment. Michelle Tremillo, co-executive director of the Texas Organizing Project, said her group focuses on engaging Black and Latino first-time voters and “building that cycle of participation is long-term work.” Democrats already have made progress in county and district elections—such as with Lina Hidalgo, a 27-year-old Colombian immigrant who defeated a popular Republican incumbent to lead the Harris County Commissioners Court in 2018. “With each election cycle, we are chipping away at a statewide gap,” Tremillo said. 

Such voter mobilization efforts are relatively new in Texas, particularly on the statewide level. A decade or so ago, political infrastructure for Democrats in Texas was like “actual infrastructure in Afghanistan,” said Braddock, the journalist. There were Democrats concentrated in large urban counties, but there was “nothing to connect them,” he said. State-level campaigns were largely left to do everything on their own: fundraising, coordinating events, and organizing volunteers for phone banks and door-knocking. Angle, the political strategist, told Mother Jones that back then, “the resources to expand and coordinate to win a statewide race weren’t available.” 

The 2018 O’Rourke campaign showed Democrats that a statewide grassroots effort was both possible and effective. There are now more progressive voter groups in Texas—some run by O’Rourke campaign alums. Katherine Fischer, who worked on O’Rourke’s Senate campaign and now runs Texas Majority PAC, said, “There’s now a much stronger network performing organizing work, which lessens the campaign’s burden.”

“Success this year is not measured by who wins. It’s measured by watching how much closer they get.”

This past summer, Texas Democrats announced that Allred’s campaign would bundle its efforts with downballot Democratic candidates, coordinating volunteers and sharing data. Called the “Texas Offense,” the campaign described it as the “first statewide coordinated grassroots effort in 20 years.” A recent press release reported that the coalition had logged 600 events and 3,000 volunteer shifts. 

Democrats like to call Texas a “game-over” state—if they secure its 40 Electoral College votes, Republicans will find it very difficult to win the presidency. Although Jimmy Carter was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win in Texas in 1976, Democrats are quick to point out that the margins have progressively narrowed in the last decade. In 2012, Barack Obama lost Texas by 15.8 points. Hillary Clinton lost by nine, and Biden lost by 5.6. This year, Democrats are simply hoping to move the needle closer in the presidential race. “Success this year is not measured by who wins. It’s measured by watching how much closer they get,” said Tory Gavito, president of Way to Win, a Democratic advocacy group. 

However much Democrats may hope for an Allred victory, not many are expecting one. After 30 years of being proven wrong, Democrats are tempering their optimism—and their low expectations might prove to be a real liability for Allred. On a recent episode of the Bulwark Podcast, O’Rourke told journalist Tim Miller that politics is a “confidence game.” 

“Can [Allred] generate enough excitement to convince people that he can win?” O’Rourke asked. “If people believe this is possible, then they’ll act like it’s possible.” 

The Teamsters union has decided not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election—reflecting a growing political rift within one of the country’s most powerful labor organizations and delivering Trump a political victory.

The union announced its decision on Wednesday afternoon, shortly after releasing the results of a poll conducted of members after both parties’ conventions. Almost 60 percent of members supported Donald Trump while 34 percent supported Kamala Harris. (A sample size was not provided.) The results show a significant shift from the union’s straw polling earlier this summer, completed prior to President Joe Biden’s announcement that he would not seek reelection, in which 44 percent supported Biden and 36 percent supported Trump.  

“The union was left with few commitments on top Teamsters issues from either former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris—and found no definitive support among members for either party’s nominee,” the Teamsters union said in a press release. 

With 1.3 million members, the Teamsters are one of largest unions in the United States, and they have supported Democrats in the recent past—endorsing against Trump twice. But the union also has a history of being out-of-step with the labor movement’s embrace of Democrats: they were the only major union to back Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and George H.W. Bush in 1988. 

The Teamsters are an outlier among other influential labor unions, who have largely rallied behind Harris. The UAW, AFL-CIO, and NEA all endorsed Harris shortly after she stepped up as the Democratic nominee. 

Trump was quick to claim the poll results as a win. His campaign wrote in a press release that the “vast majority of rank-and-file working men and women in this important organization want President Donald Trump back in the White House.”

Labor unions are no longer the “behemoth” political forces they were in the 20th century, said David Macdonald, a political science professor at University of Florida. Still, their endorsement in the presidential race can influence undecided members in key swing states.

Teamster president O’Brien had spent several months courting Trump despite the former president’s staunch anti-labor record, a decision which drew public outcry from some members, including vice president at-large John Palmer. O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, praising Trump’s “backbone.” Though O’Brien said that he had requested a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention, he was conspicuously absent from the podium. 

Harris met with union leaders on Monday, an encounter which the New York Times reported was “sometimes tense.” Palmer told the Times that the vice president said, “I want your endorsement, but if I don’t get it, I will treat you exactly as if I had gotten your endorsement.”