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By Eli Okun
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Presented by
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THE CATCH-UP |
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Rep.-elect Paul Barringer (D-N.C.) said he figured a moderate Democrat like him could flip a gerrymandered House seat. | Matt Ramey/AP
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The blue wave took North Carolina with such force that some of its new Democratic members of Congress have been called accidental winners, yanked across the finish line to their own surprise by President Donald Trump’s unpopularity and Roy Cooper’s Senate strength.
Not so, says Rep.-elect Paul Barringer: The long shots were pounding the pavement, shaking hands and holding myriad events for months believing Republicans’ map could collapse.
“The structural factors definitely made it an uphill climb,” he told Playbook. But, he thought, “maybe the best place for a moderate” was a gerrymandered district. A health care consultant, lawyer and southern yellow pine tree farmer, Barringer campaigned with a message focused on affordability, health care and corruption — and narrowly unseated GOP Rep. Brad Knott.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans in the state think Dems can rest on their laurels and expect to continue winning. Much like the rest of the country, the state now seems to have a larger, elastic pool of persuadable voters who will punish a government that doesn’t deliver results.
“There was no ideological shift in North Carolina voting. North Carolina is still a right-of-center state,” said longtime GOP consultant/strategist Paul Shumaker, who predicted Democrats’ vague affordability pledges will go the way of Republicans’ hollow 2010 plans to replace Obamacare. “It means that neither party has ownership of this state moving forward.”
The new Democrats heading to Congress say they know they need to be productive, not only on the cost of living but on corruption, which surged as a voter concern toward the end of the campaign.
Barringer’s compatriots in the new class camouflaged political muscle in races far off the national radar. Rep.-elect LaKesha Womack had zero paid staff and raised just $56,000, but the consultant and minister had gone through the Campaign School at Yale and Emerge America’s candidate training program. Rep.-elect Cyril Jefferson had to pare back his team after fundraising fell short of his initial hopes, but he leveraged his reputation and connections as a precocious city council member and then mayor of High Point.
They join Jamie Ager, Richard Ojeda and possibly Chuck Hubbard (whose lead in the 5th District is razor-thin) in sweeping Republicans out of a bevy of seats in a textbook dummymander: With GOP voters spread too thin, even the four Republican members who may hang onto their seats are likely to win by no more than a point or two.
The results also reflect a changing North Carolina, which has seen a rising share of unaffiliated voters in tandem with a population explosion. It has the third-highest population growth in the country and is No. 1 in domestic migration. Another GOP Senate seat is up in 2028. Its perennial Electoral College focus will return. And the state now looks like one of the nation’s most critical battlegrounds in the House too.
The crop of new Democrats reflects the party’s ideological diversity. For Womack, the affordability fight feels personal: A type 1 diabetic who’s struggled at times with medical bills, she was housing-insecure and living in a hotel with her young son just a decade ago. Whereas Barringer calls himself a moderate, Womack says Democrats need to work toward Medicare for All. (She also has a court date tomorrow over a felony charge for allegedly not returning a rental car in 2019, which she says was politically weaponized.)
“This was a change election,” she said. “They want to try something different.”
And Jefferson, a 34-year-old who cites Tip O’Neill and Barack Obama as political idols, says he never supported defunding the police and thinks a public option — and transforming the fee-for-service model — is the right path forward on health care.
He also sees the backlash to Republicans’ gerrymander itself as evidence of voter hunger for broader government reforms, from stock trading to Citizens United. “Voters do not appreciate when they get disenfranchised,” he said. “You do away with gerrymandering — and make sure every seat is in play.”
Good Monday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at eokun@politico.com.
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A message from bp:
A long-term commitment to American energy
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Explore bp’s 2026 US Impact Report
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9 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW |
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1. IMMIGRATION FILES: In more than 110 cases, immigrants who’ve been given court-ordered protections against being returned to their home countries have in fact ended up back there, after being sent first to third countries, NYT’s Megha Rajagopalan and colleagues report in a big investigation. And in multiple cases, the Trump administration has known this would happen — but kept deporting people, which human rights groups call “a bank-shot way of evading court orders and international law.” Some of the immigrants have been abused or disappeared. Is this illegal “refoulement by proxy”? The State Department wouldn’t say.
On the flip side: Trump has encouraged Markwayne Mullin to work with Democrats on immigration, the DHS secretary told reporters today. But, he cautioned, that doesn’t mean a change in enforcement policy. Mullin said he’s open to a deal on DACA — but not amnesty, POLITICO’s Sophia Cai and Myah Ward report for Pros.
2. THE DOJ SHAKEUPS CONTINUE: Brett Shumate, the assistant AG who leads the Justice Department’s civil division, is the latest top official to head for the exits, AG Todd Blanche announced. And T. Elliot Gaiser, who leads the powerful Office of Legal Counsel, appears to have been nominated for a federal judgeship in Texas.
3. DEMOCRACY WATCH: After a week of relative quiet, Trump has returned to his typical baseless assertions of election fraud in the wake of his party’s midterm drubbing. “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest,” he posted on Truth Social. “How could the Polls be so wrong???” More from POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney
4. THE LATEST RACE CALL: Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) has won reelection, narrowly beating back a rematch with Democrat Jonathan Nez.
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Special Coverage of Milken’s Future of Health Summit
POLITICO’s Pulse will bring you special coverage from the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit, Nov. 11–13, in Washington, D.C. Follow reporting on the ideas, innovations and policy decisions shaping the future of health. Sign up for Pulseto follow the Summit.
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5. ON THE HILL: Both parties’ Senate leadership contests are facing some more skepticism around the edges. Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) formally joined Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) letter calling for a delay of tomorrow’s election, enough to trigger a conference meeting on the matter. Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) separately said the same. And Sen. Richard Blumenthal shied away from endorsing Chuck Schumer for majority leader yet, saying he expects Schumer will win but “we need a conversation about leadership.”
On less contested terrain, Senate GOP Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) launched his bid for another term, per POLITICO’s Jordain Carney.
The lame duck quacks: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said he thinks supporters of bipartisan permitting to reform have the votes for this afternoon’s motion to proceed. Meanwhile, the House Freedom Caucus rolled out their hopes for what Republicans can accomplish, including another reconciliation bill, a stock trading ban and a government funding package that doesn’t raise spending levels, per POLITICO’s Mia McCarthy.
6. THE NEXT TURN OF THE NVIDIA SCREW: The government’s probe of the Nvidia spy affair moved suddenly from the Commerce Department to the Justice Department last year, NYT’s Ana Swanson and Devlin Barrett report, after the company said top Commerce official Jeff Kessler had given them the green light to get in touch with investigators.
7. THE ART OF THE DEAL: Ahead of tomorrow’s return to negotiations with Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi, Jared Kushner said he and Steve Witkoff are meeting with European allies. But their exclusion from the talks — and the Trump administration’s call for including “a broader European security architecture” framework in a Ukraine deal — already amounts to another win for Russia, WaPo’s Catherine Belton reports. European officials view the phrase as a U.S. acceptance of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s false claims that he invaded Ukraine because of NATO aggression.
8. 2028 WATCH: A new group called Ready for AOC launched today to try to draft Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in the presidential race, NYT’s Kellen Browning reports. In San Francisco, AI safety advocates sat down this weekend with four possible Democratic candidates — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Rahm Emanuel, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and California Rep. Ro Khanna — to discuss the urgent need for regulation, POLITICO’s Calder McHugh scooped.
9. FED UP: “Trump talked with Fed chief, but there’s no record of it on Warsh’s calendar,” by WaPo’s Steve Thompson: “Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s most recent calendar, released Friday, shows no record of a conversation with President Donald Trump, even while Trump has said he spoke with Warsh about how to vote at a meeting in September.”
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TALK OF THE TOWN |
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BOOK CLUB — A spokesperson for Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new paperback edition of “Original Sin” ($20) defended the book to Playbook after a spokesperson for former President Joe Biden questioned the “character and credibility of the authors” this morning: “The people who covered up Biden’s inability to be a fully functioning president in 2023 and 2024 continue to confuse the issue. Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris have made it clear that those individuals bear their share of the blame for why Donald Trump is president right now. The authors have faith in their sources.”
OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at a celebration last night for Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ new book, “Unapologetic: Clarity and Conviction in a World Gone Crazy” ($30), hosted by Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) and Dina Powell McCormick at their home: Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), John Boozman (R-Ark.) and Katie Britt (R-Ala.), HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Kevin McCarthy, CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, Laura Ingraham, Nick Luna, Meghan Bauer, Johnny DeStefano, Jim Goyer, May Mailman, Alex Flemister, Olivia Wales, Judd Deere, Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer, Tony Sayegh, Marc Short, Raj Shah, Hogan Gidley, Mike and Shannon Dubke, Ninio Fetalvo, Alexa Henning, Josh Raffel, Justin Clark, Julia Hahn, Jim Schultz, Jessica Ditto Bossert, Derek and Liz Lyons, Hannah and Adam Stone, Lindsay Clifton, Clay Shoemaker, Kate Parnitzke, Katie Price, Sarah Flaherty, Tyler Ross, Will Russell and Chris Barron.
TRANSITIONS — Andrew Bailey will be VP of government affairs and public policy at the Animal Health Institute. He most recently was a consultant and is a Conagra Brands alum. … Megan Capiak is now manager of state regulatory and production policy at Netflix. She previously co-founded Foundry Ten and is an Uber and Salesforce alum.
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Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editors Giuseppe Macri, Garrett Ross and Kyler Alvord.
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Raphael Warnock predicts a blue Mississippi
In the latest episode of On the Road, Sen. Raphael Warnock sits down with Jonathan Martin in Atlanta to make his case for investing in Mississippi, South Carolina and other Southern states as Democrats look to build a lasting majority.
Watch now.
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