Today is one of the bigger primary days on the calendar so far in the 2026 midterms, with six states including the nation’s largest going to the polls. It’s hard to keep track of all the story lines, especially with the California governor’s race sucking up so much of the attention. So I wanted to look below the topline and across the country at the key story lines.
But first, a final word or two on that governor’s race. There are a couple of factors that you should have in mind as returns come in. First, there are 61 candidates, spread over two pages on the ballot. It looks daunting to low-information voters. It can be hard to find a preferred candidate, and hard to know where the gubernatorial candidates stop and where candidates for other offices start. I fully expect nontrivial ballot spoilation, where voters accidentally choose two candidates for governor, or just skip it altogether. That could matter if the race for second place is as tight as it looks.
Second, Democrats held their ballots to a significant degree while they assessed how to strategically affect the outcome, only to flood the vote over the weekend. Vote totals are now ranging above 2022 or 2018. But the late flurry of Democratic votes means that the early tallies on election night are likely to favor Steve Hilton. Every time there’s a California election, pundits make snap judgments about turnout and results even though millions of legal ballots will be uncounted by the time the night is through. Remember, nobody is actually “ahead” or “behind” as votes are being counted, the full result just isn’t in yet. Sit tight, we’re going to be here a while.
And now, on to a sampling of the rest of the races:
CA-07: The Matsui family has controlled this Sacramento-area seat since 1979, with Doris Matsui, an internment camp survivor, running for and winning the seat in 2005 after her husband Bob died in office. Matsui will be 82 in September, and this year she has an opponent half her age: Mai Vang, a daughter of Hmong refugees and a city councilor in Sacramento. This is a classic generational battle, but Vang is also more progressive, having been endorsed by the state Working Families Party, as well as just more active than the reliably liberal but relatively inert Matsui.
Matsui loaned her own campaign $1.4 million, a first for her. She’s also put in a “red box” on her campaign website information about Zachariah Wooden, whom she calls the leading Republican in the race but who has raised no money. Matsui’s campaign says this is intended to draw a contrast, but it’s clearly a tactic to get super PACs to elevate Wooden so she can avoid a race against Vang in the fall. Sure enough, Wooden has received about $120,000 in outside spending from something called “Inclusion PAC,” about which little information is available, as well as $200,000 in “opposition” spending from another relatively unknown PAC, Rising Tide Collective.
This is a common tactic in California primaries, where embattled Democrats with primary challenges on their left elevate the Republican to box that opposition out. The seat got a bit redder in the Prop 50 gerrymander, so it may even work. Vang has also accused Matsui of running to Fox News with claims that she “turned her back on the flag” during a Memorial Day ceremony.
A May poll showed Vang and Matsui statistically tied with Wooden back a bit.
CA-11: I wrote about this race to replace Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi recently, but there have been several developments. Connie Chan, the San Francisco supervisor with the lowest profile and fundraising support, got a major endorsement from Pelosi, and polls showed Chan and former Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti virtually tied for second, which would get one of them to the general election against state Sen. Scott Wiener.
A controversy then erupted with Chan receiving super PAC support from something called EDW Action Fund, which separately had received transfers of money from AIPAC’s super PAC United Democracy Project and like-minded PAC Democratic Majority for Israel. This PAC has actually run ads in two other California House races (see below) as well as others across the country. The transfers so far from pro-Israel PACs total around $287,000, but EDW has spent close to $500,000 on Chan.
EDW adviser Lenny Young said it was a “lie” to suggest that any money from pro-Israel PACs was earmarked for particular races, but when asked what the money was earmarked for, he did not respond.
Chan would be an unusual choice for any pro-Israel support, as she pledged to not take AIPAC money, voted for a Gaza cease-fire resolution in 2024, vowed to deny arms to Israel, and has consistently called the situation a genocide. But it’s plausible that AIPAC fears Chakrabarti, who has been much more outspoken about Israel than Chan, and is trying to push her into the top two.
CA-14: Another recipient of EDW super PAC funding is Melissa Hernandez, the former mayor of the Bay Area city of Dublin who is running in the crowded primary for Eric Swalwell’s old seat. State Sen. Aisha Wahab has led in the only public poll in the race, a Working Families Party–sponsored survey from back in April.
CA-22: This is a real battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. The 22nd District is a swing seat made a little more winnable after Prop 50; Republican incumbent David Valadao will make the top two. He will face either populist Randy Villegas or conservative Democrat Jasmeet Bains. The knee-jerk pundit theory is that the more moderate choice should run in a swing seat, but this is an unusual swing seat: It’s one of the poorest in the country, with one of the highest concentrations of Medicaid enrollees. (Valadao vowed to vote against cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill and then voted for them; he’s in a lot of trouble here.) It’s also 73 percent Hispanic, and Villegas would be the first Hispanic candidate Democrats have ever run against Valadao. Bains, a state assemblymember, received PAC money during her state legislative career from 53 of the same corporations that Valadao has.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put Bains on their “Red to Blue” list, without consulting local Democrats, triggering anger from inside the district and from national Hispanic Democrats. The lid blew off on super PAC expenditures as well, with about $8 million spent in all. Bains is getting EDW support, but also direct support from Democratic Majority for Israel and 314 Action Fund, which in the past has been a cutout for pro-Israel PACs. Villegas has gotten help from American Priorities, set up as a counterweight to AIPAC, as well as the Working Families Party. Villegas supporters say that some of the nastier ads take out of context sexual abuse settlements at the school district where Villegas served as a trustee.
Even Republican PACs are getting involved, trying to boost Villegas because they see him as the less formidable candidate in November.
The money distorts what could have been a real test of competing theories about the party, and how to fit the candidate to the district. But it’s still unclear who will win today amid the immense shifting tides of money.
CA-48: This is the most dangerous race for Democrats, who might squander a seat that is winnable because of their own recent gerrymander.
The problem is too numerous Democratic candidates, who are also campaigning poorly. The district is mostly based in San Diego. But to make it more favorable to Democrats, mapmakers added the Democratic vote sink of Palm Springs to the district, giving it enough of a Democratic lean to nudge incumbent Republican Darrell Issa out of the race. However, the two major candidates, Ammar Campa-Najjar and Marni von Wilpert, both come from the San Diego side. (A third, businessman Brandon Riker, is from Palm Springs, but he has no ties to the district; the one race he ever ran for was lieutenant governor of Vermont.)
Democrats were spooked after seeing a poll showing that the two Republicans in the race, San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond and tech CEO Kevin O’Neil, were leading the large Democratic field, raising the possibility of a Democratic lockout. I live part-time in the district, and I believe it could happen. I was there all last week and saw almost no evidence that Campa-Najjar and von Wilpert had a campaign, outside of a couple of YouTube ads. The whole point of adding a blue city to the district is to make it easy for party candidates to rack up lots of votes easily, but that means putting in some campaign work to build enthusiasm and awareness. Both candidates were absent at multiple community events that any minimally smart candidate chasing votes in the most ideologically friendly part of the district would attend. The San Diego bias to the district could really hurt Democrats.
The candidates have also done themselves no favors. Campa-Najjar is Rep. Sara Jacobs’s boyfriend—her family, the heirs to the Qualcomm fortune, have spent big money on the race. But he has flip-flopped in multiple losing races, going from a progressive to a conservative, leaving nobody knowing his true beliefs.
The main ad attacking Campa-Najjar, a Palestinian American, for his ideological flexibility comes from DMFI PAC, which has endorsed von Wilpert. Despite this, von Wilpert couldn’t secure the state party endorsement. Reporters have found her campaign style wooden. And the Progressive Caucus then endorsed Campa-Najjar (not for nothing, Jacobs is a member).
Democrats are going to sweat this one out on election night.
California insurance commissioner: I’ve written about this unheralded but very important race. Jane Kim, a former Bernie Sanders ally, has some very interesting ideas about home insurance and how to add a public option on top of private coverage. Ben Allen, a Santa Monica–based state senator, has also garnered support, including from Consumer Watchdog, which invented this position with Prop 103 in 1988.
Los Angeles mayor: The candidate who has probably drawn the most attention of anyone on the ballot today is Spencer Pratt, the reality-show star whose house burned down in the Pacific Palisades fires last year, which led him to run for mayor amid what he termed Karen Bass’s indifference. This is a tight three-person race, with Pratt, Bass, and former DSA endorsee city councilmember Nithya Raman all vying for a top-two slot. Pratt is up against a demographic reality in heavily liberal L.A., but Bass has been accused of trying to help him, intimating that he would be easier to beat in November than Raman.
Democrats who just want Pratt off the radar could vote for Raman in the primary and defer their favorite choice to the general election; Bass, given her incumbency, is likely to get in there on her own.
Other states: Iowa has a contested Democratic Senate primary where several senators have defied Chuck Schumer’s choice of state Rep. Josh Turek in favor of state Sen. Zach Wahls. But Turek got nearly $10 million in support from VoteVets, which is closely aligned with the Democratic leadership. (Turek is not a veteran, but his father’s exposure to Agent Orange led to him having a birth defect and being confined to a wheelchair.) The level of spending is largely unprecedented in Iowa politics, and most think it will lead Turek to victory today.
There are a couple of contested House primaries in New Jersey; one of the most interesting is a 12-person race for an open blue seat vacated by retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman. Adam Hamawy, a combat surgeon who spent time in Gaza, outraised the field and has outside support. But he has been hit on a somewhat dubious 35-year-old connection to the sheikh who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. Meanwhile, Sue Altman, the head of the state Working Families Party who ran in a different district unsuccessfully last year, got a last-minute funding boost.
Finally, the national narrative has highlighted Sam Forstag, a “smokejumper” (a firefighter who parachutes into wildfires) and union leader running in a swingy House seat in western Montana that’s on the edge of competitive. AOC came in to campaign for him last week. But the name recognition is all with Ryan Busse, who unsuccessfully ran for governor last year. Busse is leading in polls and favorability, and locals questioned the value of the AOC speech, held after many votes were already cast.
