Which way will the Senate battlegrounds go?

**Kusha Navadar** (0:05)
This is Brian Lehrer's Daily Politics Podcast from WNYC Studios.
It's Wednesday, July 29th.
I'm Kusha Navadar filling in for Brian today. As we near the end of primary season and start looking towards the November midterms, Democrats are zeroing in on their efforts to take back the Senate. They need to flip four seats to take and regain control of the chamber. And you've probably heard about some of the higher-profile battleground races. In Maine, the progressive challenger and political outsider Graham Plattner stepped down this month amid rape allegations, and the popular Democratic state Senator Troy Jackson was appointed as the new nominee this past weekend. He's running against longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins, and that race is looking like a toss-up. In Texas, where Democrats have been vying to win an election for many cycles, the Democratic nominee James Talarico is facing off against the Trump-backed GOP nominee Ken Paxton, though the race there is leaning red. In Michigan, an upcoming primary faceoff between the centrist pick Representative Hailey Stevens and a progressive party outsider Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. The list goes on. There's North Carolina, there's Ohio, Iowa, let's just name a few. According to the Cook Political Report, there are four true toss-up races, two that are leaning Republican and three that are leaning Democrat, and one state, North Carolina, that pundits say is likely to flip from red to blue. That is a lot to digest. There's 10 races out there, at least four now in play, and let's dive into them. So to kick things off today, we're going to get a temperature check on the state of these Senate midterm races. And my guest is Jessica Taylor, Senate and Governor's Editor for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, and she's been covering the Senate midterms. Jessica, thanks so much for joining us.

**Jessica Taylor** (2:06)
Thank you for having me.

**Kusha Navadar** (2:07)
So I want to start off with one of the last states where the primaries are still going on in Michigan. This has been one of the more high profile races this midterm season because it feels kind of emblematic, I would say, of the identity crisis within the Democratic Party right now. It's a race between a progressive outsider with a strong grassroots base versus an establishment back to Democrat. Can you just give me a landscape of that race, please?

**Jessica Taylor** (2:33)
I think you're exactly right. This really does feel like the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party and which way the direction the party is going to take. You know, with Democrats being out of power, there's a massive fight around, you know, should they, you know, hew more to the centrist lane to try to win over independence and disaffected Republicans? Or do they need more progressive candidates to energize their base and take the party in a different direction in the way that Donald Trump took the Republican Party in a different, more populous direction? So this really, this fight is really emblematic of that. I think that, again, Haley Stevens is the safer pick because that's how Democrats have run races before. That in a state like Michigan, which went for Donald Trump twice in 2016 and in 2024, you know, again, sort of the conventional wisdom is that, and we've seen polling even this week, she runs stronger against the Republican opponent, the Republican nominee, Mike Rogers, who very narrowly lost the race in 2024 But Abdul Al Sayed has a lot of progressive energy behind him, younger voters. To me, this comes down to black voters. Stevens is really appealing to those black voters in and around the Detroit area and suburbs.
Those are more reliable primary voters. So I think that's one reason she's very much in the fight. This also has become a referendum on money for Israel.
She's being supported heavily by AIPAC, and Abdul Al Sayed has hit her for that in their debate this week, which was the final of the primary ahead of next Tuesday. She's casting herself as sort of, I'm fighting for Michigan. Now Stevens is sort of awkward on the trail. She's not the best, most natural campaigner in the way that Abdul Al Sayed is, but she's hitting Abdul Al Sayed for sort of, trying to become a national figure within the party. And in the debate that they had on Monday night, repeatedly hit him saying he would just try to be another Democratic celebrity that she's from Michigan and he wants to be a national figure within the party.

**Kusha Navadar** (4:38)
Can we dive into that idea of Haley Stevens being a safer pick? Because Republicans have been pretty candid about how they're hoping for Dr. El-Sayed to win because it'll be easier in the general to run against a candidate that they see as a radical, though he wouldn't call himself a socialist. But what does the polling tell us? You had hinted at some of the data coming through there. Is there any info there?