Democrats are hopeful that a laser focus on the economy — which helped deliver victories across the country in 2025 — will give them a boost in the midterms.
But in one of the first major races of 2026, some candidates are betting that affordable messaging lends itself to an issue that’s familiar — and one that Democrats have increasingly come to grips with in recent years: democracy.
Ahead of the February special election for New Jersey’s 11th District, former Rep. Tom Malinowski recently hosted a town hall with Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin about “Defending Our Democracy from Trump,” followed by a “Democracy Dialogue” with New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim. During the screening process for approval from county leaders, Passaic County Commissioner John Bartlett discussed his experience addressing affordability — after he argued that sending voting rights advocates to Congress was “necessary” to “protect American democracy.” and Lieut.
In the years since the 2021 capitol riots, Democrats have grappled with how to convey a message about democracy — an issue that has proven to galvanize their base but hasn’t been as effective with swing voters minded by rising costs. In 2024, some Democrats expressed concern about then-Vice President Kamala Harris’s focus on fascism criticisms while Donald Trump led on the economy. And further down the ballot, Democrats running against Republicans connected to the coup also said their message should be more than democracy.
Now, Democrats are feeling better about their affordability-focused message for the midterms — and show little appetite to redo what went wrong in 2024. The crowded Democratic primary in NJ-11 is the latest test of the party’s evolving message on democracy, an issue congressional hopefuls are talking about hand-in-hand.
“What we’re seeing is a correlation between rampant corruption and affordability,” said Malinowski, who is often at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and calls for Trump’s impeachment. “I would call the advisory class to suggest that we should just talk about egg prices and assume that voters don’t care about right and wrong. They care about both.”
A dozen Democrats are in the running to succeed Gov.-elect Mickey Sherrill, who vacated his seat after his landslide victory in November. The North Jersey district is leaning Democratic, and the primary winner will face Randolph Township Mayor Joe Hathaway in April, the only Republican to file in the race.
Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill, seen as one of the frontrunners for the Democratic primary, said democracy and affordability are not “mutually exclusive,” pointing to issues such as the Trump administration’s use of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and funding for infrastructure projects.
“I’ve been talking a lot about the fact that we need leadership that puts working families in this district first to make it more affordable, because economic insecurity is what makes it so easy for leaders like Trump to undermine basic democratic values, and by extension can divide our communities,” Gill said. “As this issue first emerged and you saw it in 2023 and 2024, even going back to 2021, it emerged as a more abstract existential issue. But I think, based on the general chaos coming out of Washington, people are connecting the dots.”
Recent polls show that a majority of voters don’t think democracy is working—though Democrats tend to be more pessimistic about that view. And with economic issues emerging as the top issue in polls, threats to democracy are not far behind. A recent Quinnipiac University poll, which showed the economy and protecting democracy tied for the top issue, also found that more than half of respondents thought Trump was going too far with his presidential powers.
Although the overwhelming takeaway from the November election was that Democrats won because of the affordability message, democracy was not entirely absent. In New Jersey, Sherrill warned that “democracy is under attack” and criticized what he called Trump’s “global extortion racket.” Across the country in California, Democrats won big with their redistricting ballot initiative, which was framed as a fight for democracy. Democrats have also aggressively approached the release of the Epstein files in an effort to paint Trump as corrupt.
“What we’ve seen in the Trump administration is not an abstract message about democracy that has failed to carry the day,” Norm Eisen, co-executive chairman of the nonpartisan Democracy Defense Fund, said at a recent news conference. “When you have corruption, which we know the American people don’t like, that’s not abstract. It’s very concrete. And when that corruption kills them in the affordability and health care pocketbooks, it’s gut wrenching for the American people. It makes the more abstract principles of democracy real.”
The upcoming special primary election will be an opportunity for Democrats to fine-tune that message — which cannot be accepted in many competitive seats — among a friendly electorate. With a deeply engaged grassroots base, the 11th district has the highest median household income in the country. And in the primaries, the core of voters who care most about what tariffs are doing to the cost of living “without regard to Congress and the courts” are “the people who go to the No Kings rally,” Malinowski said.
“We need to figure out as a party who can be a messenger to reach out to people proactively and make it clear that there is a connection between the bills and a functioning democracy,” said JL Cowin, a comedian and attorney who is running for the seat. “In a district like this you can say democracy – applause. In others, you’d have to say A+B=C in terms of those fees, it’s not constitutional.”
NJ-11 hopefuls suggest that in the second Trump administration, the democracy message is more concrete to voters than in his first term.
“The fact that the Trump administration not only insults the guardrails in our democracy, but actively seeks to tear them down gives people a very real and credible concern that its purpose is to make it more difficult for vulnerable voters to vote,” Bartlett said. “People are seeing what seemed to be barriers that protected us on a whole range of issues. I think there’s a real recognition that American democracy is at risk in 2026 and 2028, and people are deeply concerned about that.”
Part of that rationale includes the administration’s aggressive immigration policies. While Democrats primarily attributed affordability as the reason voters who supported Trump in 2024 would switch to Democrats in 2025, the administration’s high-profile deployment of immigration and customs enforcement was also a motivating factor.
And for some candidates, it’s personal.
Gil, whose wife is Colombian, said ICE’s “attack on the black and brown community” is “not abstract” as he raises his two children. Analilia Mejia, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy and former Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) staffer, another candidate in the race, pointed to her background as the daughter of immigrants raised in the working class: “We don’t have the privilege of ignoring the consequences of democracy,” she said. “When ICE agents are allowed to break windows on children or slam women to the ground without consequences, I do not have the privilege to ignore the loss of due process.”
Democracy is also a natural subject for Way, who has served as secretary of state since 2018. She claimed to be “the only candidate” sued by Trump and national Republicans over election administration and voter registration records, adding that she has also succeeded in reducing costs and expanding health care.
“We can all walk and chew bubblegum at the same time,” Way said. “To me, protecting our democracy has always been a vehicle for economic opportunity. It’s the foundation, because everything we value is at risk without a healthy democracy.”
