Talarico holds a narrow Texas lead; Ossoff leads in many Georgia polls
The Wall Street Journal’s Oct. 28 Politics newsletter examined whether Democrats were about to make a major move in the South as the midterms approached. It said President Donald Trump was making repeated trips to Texas in an effort to prevent Democrat James Talarico from winning a long-held GOP Senate seat.
Trump and Talarico rallied voters in Texas just miles apart as both made their final push to win support with one week remaining before the midterm elections. Talarico had consistently maintained a narrow lead in the polls, and the Senate race was on track to become the most expensive Senate contest in history, the newsletter reported.
On Monday, Trump was in Mississippi, trying to help Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith fend off a Democratic challenger.
Trump was due back in South Carolina on Thursday to try to help GOP Sen. Darline Graham.
In Georgia’s governor’s race, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms was neck-and-neck with Republican candidate Rick Jackson, the newsletter said. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff was up big in many polls there. The newsletter grouped both Georgia contests with Democrats’ broader effort to break into Southern politics.
The newsletter placed the Southern contest against the recent history of the “Blue Wall,” the Democratic strongholds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that Trump won in 2016. It said those states appeared to be the biggest modern tug of war in American politics, while Democrats also sought gains in the Midwest.
The newsletter pointed to Democrats’ Southern history through Jimmy Carter of Plains, Ga., Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Texan, and Bill Clinton of Arkansas. But it said Democrats had lost a tremendous amount of ground in the South over the past decade, even though Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020, and raised the question of whether that result was a one-off or the beginning of something larger.
The newsletter said Democrats’ advance into the South during the midterm cycle could end up being the story of the year. It also said it would take another week to know more about whether the southern movement represented a lasting shift.
The newsletter’s calendar listed the Federal Reserve’s latest interest-rate decision for 2 p.m. ET. It said Trump would hold a series of policy meetings on Wednesday before an evening midterm rally in Ohio.
Other brief items said Melania Trump had brokered a ceasefire that took effect in a starving Ukrainian city. In Israel’s election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party moved into the lead position but remained short of a majority.
The Maine senator Susan Collins was described by the newsletter as being in the fight of her political life and facing the most difficult re-election campaign of her long career. Collins was contending with intense political headwinds and a report involving donations to a pro-Collins super PAC by a politically connected federal contractor.
The newsletter also said the country appeared to be split as the midterms approached, while conservatives and liberals agreed on some of the top policy ideas in its latest survey. A quiz invited readers to compare their views on several leading policy ideas with those of people in the survey.
Damian Paletta wrote the edition. He was The Wall Street Journal’s Washington coverage chief and said he had covered Washington for 22 years as a reporter and editor, including the White House, Congress, national security, the federal budget, economics and multiple market meltdowns. The edition was curated and edited in collaboration with Alistair Dawber and Alina Heineke.