Democrats running in red and purple states this cycle have a new pitch: cross-party endorsements, Republican staffers on the payroll, and talk of a bigger tent. It's a nice story. We've heard it before. Barack Obama sold himself as a uniter who'd work across the aisle. Joe Biden ran the same play in 2020, promising bipartisanship. Both then governed as reliably to the left as any Democrat Party administration in memory. So why do Democrats think that 2026 voters will fall for the same trick twice?
The strategy is playing out in Texas, Alaska, Georgia, and Arizona, states where the GOP holds a strong registration edge or thin margins have decided recent races. In other words, states where a Democrat running there needs Republican-leaning voters to have a prayer of winning.
"Every Democrat says we need a bigger tent, but it's up to each candidate to show that they actually mean it," said Andrew Mamo, spokesperson for The Bench, a group backing center-left Democrats.
In Texas, Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico hired a little-known former staffer from Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) office as his deputy policy director. Did it really mean anything? No, but he gets the swooning media coverage, making him sound like a reasonable Democrat as a result.
"My message to Texans across the political spectrum is clear: no matter which party you belong to, which part of the state you're from, or which candidate you supported in the primary — you have a place in this campaign," Talarico said in a statement explaining the hire.
It’s an amusing strategy, but Talarico's chances run into a rather big problem that trivial campaign hires won’t fix: he's wildly out of step with the mainstream on transgender issues, and no amount of Cornyn alumni on his payroll changes that. This is the same guy who “loves trans kids” and says “God is nonbinary.” Trump won Texas by 14 points in 2024; if anyone thinks Talarico has a prayer, they’re deluding themselves.
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Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), facing Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), rolled out endorsements this month from three Republicans, including former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Calling Flake a real Republican is generous. He’s just another anti-Trumper who didn’t fit in the GOP and went on to endorse Biden in 2020. "Endorsements overall are overrated," Flake told NOTUS. "But cross-party endorsements can help and have helped in the past. I think it's a smart strategy."
In Arizona, Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-Ariz.) tapped John Giles, a Republican former Mesa mayor who endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024, as her running mate for lieutenant governor. Democrat strategist Steve Schale, who isn’t involved in that race, thinks it's a smart bet. "The one thing you hear in swing voter focus groups over and over again is exhaustion with politics," Schale said. "Her math problem is similar to [Talarico's], and it really doesn't lose her much."
"Hobbs is making a bet — that appears to be working — that voters are just over it and want grown a** adults to get things done," Schale added. "I love it — and I wish more Dems in lean red states running for governor would do it." Hobbs literally vetoes everything the GOP-controlled legislature does, but okay, go with that.
This is all happening in a party that is ready to boot Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) for only voting with his party 95% of the time, by the way.
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre isn't buying the makeover. "Democrats trying to appeal to Republican voters is like a career criminal suddenly running for sheriff," she said. "All of these far-left extremists support open borders, higher taxes and endless government control. Democrats should get their own house in order before they come looking for new voters."
The ironic thing is that, in the end, no one is voting for one candidate over another based on a campaign hire or a meaningless endorsement. Democrats can hire all the Republican staffers they want, and dredge up washed up pseudo Republicans for endorsements all they want. They're still asking voters to believe they're something they've never been.
