The Briefing, Vol. XIV, Issue 35
Sept. 8, 2026
This week:
- Will the Republican mini-convention succeed?
- Iowa Republicans face their toughest challenge since 2012
- Talarico may regret his speech on dismantling capitalism
Outlook
Republican mini-convention: This week, Republicans are celebrating the putative Labor Day start of the campaign season by staging a midterm national convention.
If that sentence sounds odd or unfamiliar, it is probably because you have never seen anything like it in your lifetime. Republicans have never held a midterm convention in the modern history of their party. And although this is not a first for U.S. national political parties, it has been quite some time since Democrats did it, too. They held such gatherings in the midterm years of 1974 and 1978, but they were actually post-election, in December of those years. They held a June mini-convention in 1982.
Although that year’s election went well for Democrats, they stopped doing the events because they just devolved into a forum for Democrats with presidential ambitions to showboat. The 1978 event may have helped fatally weaken President Jimmy Carter, as the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) used the occasion to attack him from the stage and set himself to run a primary against him in 1980.
The Dallas event this week is unlikely to feature such feuding — no one will be challenging Trump, since he won’t be running again. But that doesn’t mean the convention is going to accomplish its goal of saving Republicans from the extremely difficult conditions they currently face in races around the country.
The saving grace for them is that many of the closest U.S. Senate races — in Maine, Texas, Michigan, Alaska, New Hampshire, Iowa, Ohio — are close enough that they still a chance, despite an overall national environment that points toward losses. They have also put forth solid candidates in most of these races. As we noted last week, the Senate election is the most important component of this year’s races.
Republicans are, however, counting on this little mini-convention to spread the word that there is an election — a message that far too few voters take to heart in midterm years. The Republicans want to keep front and center that Democrats are just a few seats away from reverting to the open-borders, crime-tolerant vision of the Biden administration and the policy agenda that is making life unaffordable in some states, driving emigration from New York and the West Coast states.
A convention is perhaps one little-used way to make more low-propensity MAGA voters aware that it’s an even-numbered year and there’s an election on. Perhaps if it goes well, they will try it again in the future. Then again, there may be a reason this hasn’t ever been done before.
Supreme Court: Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has issued one ruling likely to help the Republicans’ cause. Eight of the nine justices agreed to pause a ruling that would have prevented party committees from getting preferential rates for over-the-air political ads. Republicans wanted this because their party committees have vastly more money. Although this probably won’t be as big an issue, it will also make the financial disadvantage even more acute for Democrats running as independent Senate candidates in Montana, Nebraska and Idaho. In fact, if upheld over the long run, this will create a lot of problems for that strategy of running away from the party.
The Supreme Court will also have to decide an important case on the Missouri Congressional map. The state Supreme Court there has thrown things into chaos by invalidating the map altogether while it is being challenged in a ballot referendum. Their ruling forces that referendum to occur — and that probably won’t change — but it also invalidates the current map. This would theoretically force a reversion to the old map, but no one has been nominated to run in the House districts that existed before the legislature adopted the new map. The U.S. Supreme Court is usually loath to allow last-minute changes in elections due to the confusion it causes voters.
Senate 2026
Iowa: A recent Emerson poll finds Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) leading Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek (D), 50 percent to 45 percent. Democrats want very much to put this race into contention, but the fundamentals of the state have been very much against them since 2014, when now-retiring Sen. Joni Ernst (R) easily picked up the first open Senate seat in the state since 1974.
Iowa has lately been the Florida of the Midwest. In what was supposed to be a very close race, Ernst crushed ten-Rep. Bruce Braley (D) by more than eight points in 2014. This was the first time the Iowa Republican Party showed just how far above its weight it could punch in delivering early votes and maximizing its resources. Democrats in the Hawkeye State have gone on to lose again and again, failing to recover even in the 2018 Democratic wave election.
Yet even so, the same poll shows the Democratic nominee for governor, state Auditor Rob Sand (D), leading Republican nominee Zach Lahn (R) 49 to 46 percent. This could hint that the result for Senate is even more significant. But it could also just point to an environment that is going to be uncomfortably close for Republicans.
New Hampshire: Today’s Democratic primary will at least settle the issue of just how far the DSA has reached its tentacles within the Democratic Party. Although Rep. Chris Pappas (D) is heavily favored to win his primary, there have been indications that socialist Karishma Manzur (D) is closing the gap. The winner will almost certainly face former Sen. John Sununu (R), who leads in at least some polls of the general election contest. Sununu faces his own primary against former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.).
Texas: The drip-drip of opposition research continues against Democratic nominee James Talarico (D) in one of the closest and most expensive Senate races in America. Although the material already public is quite robust, the newly resurfaced Zoom footage of him connecting the oil industry to white supremacy and calling for the dismantling of capitalism will surely be put to good use in advertising as well.
The model to follow here is the Trump campaign’s “Kamala is for they/them” ads of 2024. Those worked not just because of the hot-button issue at hand or Kamala Harris’s extreme stance on it, but because she was actually captured on video taking the extreme stances on taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners. Video of Talarico condemning capitalism and the oil industry will probably be used in a similar way — liberally and during football games. The state’s Republicans should be working especially hard to turn out (mostly male) college and pro football fans, in much the same way the late Charlie Kirk successfully worked to do in 2024, simply because that is a good demographic for Republicans.
There is also currently a PAC ad running against Talarico (it ran repeatedly during the Texas-Texas State game on Saturday) for voting against a measure barring China from buying up land in Texas. This will probably be less effective, but it pays to attack one’s opponent from every possible angle.
Talarico, meanwhile, is attacking Paxton for “taking bribes.” The accusation is not unusual (especially for Paxton), but the ad is because because it features Talarico himself making the accusations out loud in a speech. This is usually not done — intermediaries or ad announcers are usually used to make the attacks, since attacking opponents tends to drive down one’s ratings. But Talarico’s team might feel that Paxton is so ethically challenged they can get away with it in this instance.
Senate 2030
West Virginia: Some people just don’t like serving in the U.S. Senate — especially former governors. They are used to having real power, not to being one of 100 people arguing in a large room. Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) has only just dropped his bags off in the Senate, and he’s already talking about running against his successor, Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R), in a primary for governor in 2028. This would have obvious implications for the governor race. But if Justice does run and is successful, it would also result in a gubernatorial Senate appointment for someone after the 2028 general election and a rescrambled 2030 Senate race.
