Chris O'Meara/AP Photo
Whitney Fox, Democratic candidate for Florida’s 13th Congressional District, right, talks to former St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman during her primary night election watch party, August 20, 2024, in Dunedin, Florida.
Like pretty much everybody reading this, I refresh the polling averages to see what the big brains think about the presidential election. But I don’t feel a lot of agency around the outcome. Each side has more than enough money to display their message, maybe a hundred times over. And in races with universal name ID, money doesn’t travel that far. The question of turnout, and whether Kamala Harris’s focused effort (I was told that the campaign made 4.5 million phone calls to the battleground states just over last weekend) will outpace the Elon Musk–led fraud-riddled approach, seems important to me. But we’re talking about a coin flip at this point.
By contrast, there are several races far outside the national spotlight that are looking very interesting heading into Election Day. These are races where your money and effort actually can make a difference. Here are a few:
NE-Sen: We’re going to have more on this race soon, but yet another poll shows independent Dan Osborn leading incumbent Republican Sen. Deb Fischer in Nebraska. We first profiled Osborn six months ago, believing that it was an important test of populist messaging in deep-red states. Because he has not committed to joining any party caucus in Congress, Osborn is not benefiting from any party’s support. Meanwhile, the Republican Senate campaign arm is pouring millions of dollars into the state. Given the situation in Montana and tight races elsewhere, there’s no bigger paradigm-shifting race out there than this one, even if there’s no guarantee that it will determine Senate control.
FL-13: Two independent polls, one from late August and another from last week, show Democrat Whitney Fox either tied or slightly ahead of incumbent GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, despite a respondent base that was fairly strongly Republican and largely older. Luna, a kind of MAGA influencer in her first term in Congress, has been trying to dodge the big issue on Florida’s ballot, a constitutional amendment restoring reproductive rights. She has refused to say how she’ll vote on the ballot measure. The district is based in St. Petersburg, which was near the touchdown site of Hurricane Milton earlier this month. So modeling the electorate is a challenge. Neither party campaign arm has spent a dime here.
AZ-02: Another shock poll showed Jonathan Nez, former president of the Navajo Nation, tied with first-term Freedom Caucus Republican Eli Crane, who was one of the votes that removed Kevin McCarthy as Speaker last year. This race has also not drawn any interest from the national parties. It’s a big rural district with a large Native American population, and Nez has been outraising Crane in campaign donations. His latest ad goes hyperlocal, focusing on water access to the area (and touting his work with Donald Trump on the issue as Navajo Nation president).
CA-49: Three-term Democratic incumbent Rep. Mike Levin has historically won comfortably in this suburban San Diego district, but by a little bit less each time. Quietly, House Majority PAC (the main PAC for national House Democrats) made a $460,000 ad buy earlier this month, all of it opposing Republican Matt Gunderson. When I went to Orange County last week, I saw Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) at a canvass launch, and in her litany of California races she mentioned Levin. He wasn’t always on that list. Apparently, there’s some slippage here. National Republicans released an internal poll showing Levin up by just a point, though independent polling has showed a wider spread.
These obscure races could determine the balance of power in Washington, and whether Democrats or Republicans have a good night.
