First midterm primaries show incumbents may be on shaky political ground
The first round of primary elections is showing how this year’s midterms will be taking place on shifting political ground for incumbents.
That was particularly true in Texas — the first state to redraw its congressional districts last year — where two incumbent members of Congress have been pushed to a runoff and another has been scuttled from the House altogether.
Democratic Rep. Al Green, an outspoken liberal who has twice been ejected from President Donald Trump’s State of the Union addresses for protesting, and newly elected Rep. Christian Menefee will compete in the May 26 runoff for a Houston-area district.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican and former Navy SEAL with an independent streak, faced attacks from the party’s hard right that he was not in lockstep with Trump, and was the state’s only House Republican not to win the president’s endorsement. He lost to Steve Toth, a Republican state lawmaker who received late backing from Sen. Ted Cruz.
Incumbents also are in close races in Texas and North Carolina that were too early to call early Wednesday.
A look at where things stand after Tuesday’s primaries:
Green and Menefee in a Texas runoff
The unusual primary between two sitting Democratic congressmen in Texas was the result of redrawn voting maps that Trump ordered ahead of November’s midterm elections. Green, 78, switched to run in the newly redrawn 18th Congressional District after his current district was redrawn to favor Republicans.
Menefee, 37, was sworn in to Congress only a month ago after winning a special election to fill the remaining term of Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died last year. For some Houston voters, Tuesday’s primary was their third time casting ballots in a congressional race in four months, sowing confusion.
Green, who was first elected to the U.S. House in 2004, is one of his party’s most outspoken Trump critics and filed articles of impeachment during the president’s first term.
The primary is one of the generational competitions among Democrats this year, as younger candidates argue it’s time for a new crop of party leaders. Green has faced concerns from within the party, which is increasingly unwilling to defer to seniority.
Crenshaw ousted by Toth
Crenshaw, seeking his fifth term in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, was the state’s only House Republican whom Trump didn’t endorse heading into the nation’s first big primary of 2026.
The former Navy SEAL, whose independent streak sometimes clashed with fellow Republicans, spent the primary trying to fend off attacks from the party’s hard right that he wasn’t in step with Trump’s agenda.
Toth, a state representative and member of the GOP’s hard-right caucus in the Legislature, picked up a big endorsement late in the primary from Cruz.
“This campaign has been a referendum on representatives who campaign one way and govern another, and the people have spoken,” Toth said in a statement after his victory.
Crenshaw, who lost his right eye when he was hit with an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2012, had clashed with Cruz over the senator’s support of Trump’s unfounded claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.
He was one of the few Texas Republican candidates for Congress in 2022 who acknowledged that President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was legitimate, a position that occasionally found him at odds with fellow Republicans.
Crenshaw also drew the ire of conservatives when a video clip went viral of him criticizing some Republican politicians as “grifters” and “performance artists” who simply tell conservative voters what they want to hear.