Lawmakers in both parties face a reckoning from within their own ranks this year — and the first major primary day of the midterm elections puts all of those pressures on full display.
Three high-profile Texas Republicans face spirited primary challenges from their right flanks, with challengers questioning their conservative bona fides and their commitment to President Donald Trump’s cause, while a Democratic incumbent in North Carolina’s Research Triangle faces a significant challenge backed by key progressive groups who argue this pivotal political moment needs new faces.
And the March 3 primaries are just the start of a flurry of pivotal primaries set to run through the summer. It remains overwhelmingly difficult to oust sitting members of Congress, who benefit from many trappings of incumbency. But these races typify the pressure incumbents in both parties may face this year — as MAGA purity tests roil the right while the left debates whether to turn over leadership to a new generation and whether their current leaders are rising to the political moment.
“This race is about what so many races are about across the country — an affordability crisis and an anger toward establishment politicians who are continuing politics as usual when it’s time to fight back and reject corporate greed. And it’s time to meet the moment,” Maya Handa, a senior adviser for Democratic congressional challenger Nida Allam in North Carolina, told NBC News.
The big prize on the ballot for insurgent Republicans is the Senate primary in Texas, where Sen. John Cornyn is in the fight of his political life against state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. Both challengers frame Cornyn as a creature of Washington and not conservative enough to represent Texas. Cornyn has pushed back furiously, unleashing a massive ad campaign casting himself as being in lockstep with Trump — who has, so far, refused repeated entreaties to endorse anyone in the race.
Cornyn’s opponents have also seized on past immigration and gun votes that have long frustrated conservatives in the state, while Paxton continues to be dogged by personal vulnerabilities and allegations of misuse of office that led to his 2023 impeachment — even though the state Senate acquitted him. Hunt has faced criticism in the raucous three-way race, too, about skipping votes in the House.
But while other issues in state Republican politics play a role, attacks on Cornyn over his past criticism of Trump are at the center of the race. That dynamic is also shaping two House races in which Texas Republican incumbents face primary challenges in a preview of things to come in other races later on this year.
Rep. Tony Gonzales, who represents a sprawling district that spans San Antonio all the way west to El Paso, is set for a rematch against Brandon Herrera, a hard-right gun activist who fell just a few hundred votes short of upsetting him in 2024. Herrera continues to hammer Gonzales for his vote in favor of a bipartisan gun bill Cornyn championed in 2022, a month after the deadly shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, in Gonzales’ district. Gonzales’ votes on border security, privacy and creating a bipartisan committee to investigate the 2021 Capitol riot have also been at the center of Herrera’s challenge.
Herrera said in an interview that it is “a totally different race” now after his narrow defeat in 2024, when Herrera was running as a first-time candidate.
“We need somebody that’s not going to lead from the pockets of special interest, somebody who’s actually going to vote with the Constitution, with what the voters want — you know, the actual conservative that Republicans of West Texas have been looking for,” he said.
And he argued that the campaign against Cornyn, an establishment-backed incumbent being challenged from the right, could be “synergistic” for downballot Republican challengers like him.
But this time, Gonzales has Trump’s support, having won his endorsement a few weeks ago. Gonzales told NBC News he worked “really hard for the president’s endorsement.” He also noted his recent tele-town hall with administration border czar Tom Homan, arguing that he has “been a big part of helping codify President Trump’s agenda into law.”
Gonzales said Herrera “considers himself a libertarian. So for those who like to throw rocks at the House and blame others, that’s appealing, but for everyone else, the realities are: How do we govern in a conservative lens?”
Then there’s GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who faces a primary challenge from conservative state Rep. Steve Toth. Toth is touting Trump’s support in his past elections, though Trump has not weighed in on the primary on either side.
Toth has hit Crenshaw particularly on foreign policy, arguing that his more establishment conservative portfolio and support for Ukraine do not fit in the new “America First” GOP. Toth is leaning on his time working on red-meat issues in the Legislature to bolster his case, with some help from key conservative influencers like Tucker Carlson, who had Toth on his podcast last year and has sparred with Crenshaw himself.
Crenshaw’s campaign has responded by questioning Toth’s own conservative credentials, calling him a “liberal” for having sided against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s agenda at times.
On the Democratic side, in another March 3 primary, Allam’s bid against Rep. Valerie Foushee of North Carolina previews key dynamics threatening blue-district incumbents across the country, too.
Allam, a member of the Durham Board of County Commissioners, is one of a spate of Democratic primary challengers backed by progressive groups and politicians who seek to channel frustration in the party base, calling for a generational or strategic break — or sometimes both — from the Democratic establishment and lawmakers to meet the challenge of Trump’s second term in the White House.
