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Abdul El-Sayed, the newly elected senator for Michigan, wants to tax billionaire wealth, bring in universal healthcare and dismantle ICE.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, the new congresswoman for New York, once advocated abolishing the police, prisons and borders as well as seizing the means of production.

Politicians like these have garnered a lot of attention in recent weeks, with US President Donald Trump warning of “radical left communists” and calling El-Sayed a jihadist. But they are outliers. Most of the Democratic lawmakers who were swept to power in the blue wave of this week’s midterms are moderates.

The temper of the newcomers is exemplified by Roy Cooper, the first Democrat elected to the US Senate from North Carolina in 18 years. He is a mainstream Democratic politician who prides himself on his ability to reach across the aisle.

“I’m not a socialist and I’m not a rightwing Republican, OK,” Cooper, a former two-term governor of the “Tar Heel State”, told tobacco farmers at one campaign stop last month. “But I’ll work with anybody to try to make stuff cost less.”

Seasoned Democrats say they have always been a big-tent party: the tent is simply a lot bigger now. “The more seats they win, the more debate they’ll have internally,” said Justin Goodman, former communications director for Chuck Schumer when he was Senate majority leader. “But ultimately . . . they will all coalesce around getting things done.”

The progressives

·        Abdul El-Sayed | Michigan

  • A trained doctor and former public health official, 42-year-old El-Sayed campaigned on a message of “money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all”. His populist agenda includes taxing billionaires, strengthening trade unions, guaranteeing universal healthcare for all Americans and imposing an immediate arms embargo on Israel.

·        Donavan McKinney | Michigan

  • A 34-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), McKinney will represent Michigan’s 13th congressional district. The former union organiser grew up in poverty in Detroit but became the first person in his family to graduate from university. He campaigned on introducing Medicare for all, universal childcare and higher taxes on billionaires.

·        Darializa Avila Chevalier | New York

  • The daughter of Dominican immigrants, 32-year-old Chevalier won New York’s 13th congressional district, with the backing of the city’s popular mayor Zohran Mamdani. A DSA member and former community organiser, she campaigned on a promise to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), expand affordable housing, tackle childhood poverty and restrict US arms sales to Israel.

·        Peggy Flanagan | Minnesota

  • A 47-year-old lieutenant governor and citizen of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, Flanagan is the first Native American woman elected to the Senate. A longtime progressive organiser endorsed by Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, she campaigned on universal healthcare, higher wages and overhauling ICE, while rejecting the democratic socialist label.

·        Chris Rabb | Pennsylvania

  • A 56-year-old Democratic Socialist and veteran Pennsylvania state legislator who calls himself a “troublemaker in troubled times”, Rabb won a Philadelphia congressional seat on a platform of Medicare for all, universal basic income, free public transport, government-run grocery stores and reparations for slavery.

·        Melat Kiros | Colorado

  • Kiros, an Ethiopian-born Democratic Socialist who will represent Colorado’s 1st congressional district, is the first Gen Z woman to be elected to Congress. The 29-year-old former corporate lawyer, whose family has roots in Tigray, campaigned on instituting Medicare for all, universal childcare, reforming campaign finance and abolishing ICE.

·        Claire Valdez | New York

  • A Native American trade union organiser and DSA member, Valdez won a New York congressional seat on a platform of universal healthcare, expanding public housing and strengthening workers’ rights. The 37-year-old has often talked of her difficult start in life, “scraping by” working a “lot of bad jobs” at places such as Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Trader Joe’s.

Washington has had its fair share of unconventional lawmakers. The 118th Congress, from 2023 to 2025, will be remembered for Maga provocateurs such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert as well as for George Santos, the Republican expelled for faking his CV.

Then there were the hardline “Tea Party” Republicans who swept into Congress in the midterms of 2010 and injected a new spirit of ultra-partisan antagonism into US politics.

The 120th Congress marks an equally striking break with the past. Both chambers are now set for their highest turnover in decades after huge numbers of incumbents either did not seek re-election or lost their primaries or their actual election races.

That high churn rate has delivered a flurry of firsts. The Senate will have its first-ever Muslim person in El-Sayed, its first Native American woman in Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota and its first openly gay man in Chris Pappas of New Hampshire.

Democrats will also be a younger cohort than their Republican colleagues, a difference personified by Melat Kiros of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who was born in Ethiopia and is the first Gen Z woman to be elected to Congress.

Kiros was one of a clutch of leftist candidates from Minnesota to Michigan to Maine leading insurgent campaigns based on populist rallying cries like “Medicare for all”, more affordable housing and cutting all military aid to Israel.

But the progressives were largely running in states that were reliably Democratic. The big story of this year’s elections was the middle-of-the-road Democrats winning in red states that Trump won in 2024 — politicians with much more moderate policy prescriptions than their firebrand compadres.

Lucas Holtz, senior political adviser at centrist Democratic think-tank Third Way, said some 34 moderate Democrats won House districts previously held by Republicans this year — a huge haul.

“The majority-makers were mainstream and centre-left Democrats,” he said. “And they overperformed and flipped red and purple blue, especially in seats that have been moving further and further away from the Democrats over the past decade.”

The moderates

·        Roy Cooper | North Carolina

  • The 69-year-old former governor became the first Democrat elected to the Senate from North Carolina in 18 years, defeating his Trump-backed Republican rival by nearly 20 percentage points. A veteran of seven successful statewide campaigns, Cooper has built a reputation for working across party lines, notably for negotiating an expansion of Medicaid with Republican lawmakers.

·        Adam Hamilton | Kansas

  • A 62-year-old pastor at a Methodist megachurch, Hamilton became the first Democrat to be elected senator for Kansas in 94 years. A political newcomer who built one of America’s largest churches, he campaigned on lowering living costs, reversing healthcare cuts and restoring civility to Washington, promising to lead “from the centre”.

·        James Talarico | Texas

  • The 37-year-old state representative became the first Democrat to win a Senate election in Texas since 1988. A Presbyterian seminarian who campaigned on an affordability and anti-corruption platform, he is now considered one of the rising stars of the Democratic party and a prominent voice of the moderate left.

·        Chris Pappas | New Hampshire

  • A 46-year-old former restaurant owner, Pappas became the first openly gay man elected to the Senate after defeating a Republican former senator in New Hampshire. A member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, he campaigned on lowering living costs, protecting abortion rights and tackling corporate influence in Washington.

·        Annie Andrews | South Carolina

  • A 46-year-old paediatrician and political newcomer, Andrews became the first woman elected to the Senate from South Carolina, ending a 28-year Democratic losing streak. A supporter of abortion rights and gun-control measures, she campaigned on protecting healthcare and lowering living costs while promising to work across party lines.

·        Paige Cognetti | Pennsylvania

  • The 46-year-old reform-minded mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania unseated a Republican congressman in a district Trump won in 2024. A former Obama administration official, she first won office as an independent. In this election, she campaigned on tackling corruption in Washington, banning congressional stock trading and lowering living costs.

·        Cait Conley | New York

  • A decorated Army combat veteran, Conley unseated a Republican congressman in New York’s Hudson Valley. A political newcomer in her forties, she campaigned on lowering living costs, protecting healthcare and cleaning up Washington. She has acknowledged “firm disagreements” with the DSA while discussing Israel and antisemitism and declined campaign help from leading progressives such as Mamdani.

It was the same in the Senate: six of the seven Democrats who won Senate seats previously occupied by Republicans were from the centre-left of the party, people like Adam Hamilton, a prominent United Methodist pastor who won in traditionally Republican Kansas as an “independent-minded Democrat dedicated to leading from the centre”.

Or James Talarico, the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988, who promised to secure the US border, backed an all-of-the-above energy policy and came out against transgender athletes playing in girls’ sports.

Asked last month if he wanted to turn Texas blue, he said he wanted to represent all 31mn Texans, regardless of party, adding: “I think the best colour for Texas is purple.”

There was an important message there, said Holtz. “You can run as inspirational, authentic candidates against the status quo of the party and you can overperform by huge margins,” he said. “And you don’t have to run to the left in order to get there.”

The flipside of the strong showing by moderates in red states is the relative underperformance of progressives in traditionally blue ones. Leftist Senate candidates in Minnesota, Maine and Michigan did not win as many votes as more moderate Democrats in the same states.

El-Sayed, for example, won his Senate race by 7 percentage points but trailed the Democratic candidate for Michigan governor, Jocelyn Benson, by about two points. Similarly, progressives Troy Jackson in Maine and Flanagan in Minnesota did not do as well as the two Democratic gubernatorial candidates in their respective states.

Keith Stern, a veteran Democratic strategist who served as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s director of floor operations, said Democratic caucuses in both the House and Senate will run the full gamut from moderate to ultraliberal, “but the majorities are going from the centre”.

Stern, now a Washington-based lobbyist, said he also expected the more radical freshmen to moderate their views once they are installed in Washington.

“Congress works different than the campaign trail,” he said. “When they come in, they will be legislators and not just candidates, and they’re going to have to work across the aisle.”

The big Democratic majority in the House is a relief for Hakeem Jeffries, now poised to become the first Black Speaker in US history. If it had been much smaller, he would have been beholden to lawmakers like Chevalier and other members of the DSA.

But with the Democrats now projected to have a majority of 77 seats in the House, he is unlikely to become a hostage to the Democratic Socialists.

It is a similar situation in the Senate, where the Democrats now hold 54 of the chamber’s 100 seats, with two races still undecided. By way of contrast, in the first two years of Joe Biden’s administration the party only controlled an evenly divided Senate thanks to vice-president Kamala Harris’s casting vote.

Yet many expect Democrats to maintain a high degree of internal cohesion despite their ideological differences.

Goodman, who now works at Washington-based public affairs and crisis communications firm SKDK, said there would be plenty of internal debate and DSA lawmakers would occasionally “vote against things that they deem too moderate”.

But he insisted that all the newly elected Democrats agree on certain key issues, chief among them the need to end the war on Iran, investigate alleged corruption in Trump’s entourage and reverse cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance programme for low-income Americans.

“Ultimately they’re all there because they believe government can be a force for good,” he said. “They see why they were elected and what happened. And they know what they need to do.”

Link To FT.com: https://www.ft.com/content/c8692ed7-f32b-487f-9efa-3ccd3d144f42

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