Zack Stanton
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Deputy managing editor of news @MSNOWnews. Former editor of @playbookdc at @politico. Macomb County native. Signal: zstanton.01
Articles by Zack Stanton
Florida governor’s race may come down to a sliver of undecided Black voters
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — In Florida’s race for governor, the Democrat is a former Republican congressman, and the Republican would be the state’s first Black governor. That has left Democrats in an unfamiliar position: fighting to hold on to Black voters, one of their most reliable constituencies. The Democrat, David Jolly, made that fight the clear focus of an interfaith event this week at the Koinonia Worship Center in Pembroke Park.
In Ohio’s final stretch, a controversial ad featuring Amy Acton’s mother has Republicans divided
Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign has made Amy Acton’s estranged mother — whom Acton has accused of childhood neglect — the face of its latest attack on the Democrat in the Ohio governor’s race. Even some of Ramaswamy’s fellow Republicans are condemning it. A top official in Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration said that “exploiting someone’s childhood trauma is wrong.” Ohio’s Republican secretary of state distanced himself from the ad, saying his office is reviewing complaints about it.
Abdul El-Sayed’s answer to Trump’s attacks: Hit back harder
MARQUETTE, Mich. — Abdul El-Sayed likes to say that President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance “can’t seem to keep my name out of their mouth.” And the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan is more than happy to return the favor. Rolling through the Upper Peninsula last week on his “It shouldn’t be this hard” bus tour alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., El-Sayed carried his progressive message into traditionally conservative territory.
Weeks before Election Day, Sen. Roger Marshall’s campaign still had no one on payroll
Sen. Roger Marshall’s re-election campaign spent $5 million from July through September as his once-safe Kansas seat turned competitive. None of it went to payroll. The Kansas Republican’s latest Federal Election Commission filing showed no outgoing payments for payroll or salary over that stretch, even as his spending jumped from just under $50,000 the previous quarter and his Democratic challenger, Adam Hamilton, began picking up steam. Running a campaign without paid staff is not illegal.
‘There’s a lot of worry’: GOP sounds the alarm about Darline Graham as Trump swoops in — again
For the second time in two months, President Donald Trump is heading to South Carolina to try to save a Senate seat Republicans considered safe until recently. The reliably red bastion hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1998. But Republican Sen. Darline Graham is locked in an unexpectedly close race with Democrat Annie Andrews, and the GOP is pouring money and manpower into South Carolina in the campaign’s final stretch. They have their work cut out.
Warnock says Democrats are doing ‘barely enough’ in the South. He wants more.
“Anger” isn’t a strong enough term for what Sen. Raphael Warnock said he’s seeing as he campaigns across four states in five days, mostly for Democratic Senate candidates in the South. On Saturday, the tour brought Warnock to South Carolina to stump for Annie Andrews, the state’s Democratic Senate nominee. Flanked by Andrews and Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., he gave his signature sermon-style remarks to a crowd that included many of the state’s faith and Democratic leaders.
‘Wildly unacceptable’: Trump’s moves on Russia are testing GOP patience
Republican lawmakers are frustrated that President Donald Trump has paused new sanctions on Russia’s economy, all but ignoring a measure he signed into law just a month ago. What’s less clear is what exactly they plan to do about it. Trump paused the sanctions by executive order Friday, and the backlash grew as lawmakers questioned why Ukraine’s access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service was disrupted. Few Republicans have been as forceful, or as specific, as Rep.
‘He’s got a jawline’: In the midterm fight over masculinity, Trump keeps grading men on their looks
Sen. Roger Marshall is a great man, a great senator and “one of the finest people in government,” according to President Trump. But the Kansas Republican failed to score Trump’s new favorite endorsement at a rally Monday night: a compliment about his looks. For weeks, Trump has been promoting embattled Republican candidates not for their policies, but for their supposed handsomeness.
Two Epstein survivors enter the battle for Congress with ads against GOP senators
For six years, Marina Lacerda was known publicly only as “Minor Victim 1,” the name federal prosecutors gave her in their 2019 sex-trafficking indictment of Jeffrey Epstein. Last year, she stepped out from behind it on Capitol Hill, joining fellow survivors in demanding that the government release the Epstein files. Now, just over a year later, Lacerda is the central figure in a new political ad against Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan, who once voted against forcing the files into public view.
Iowa’s independent Trump voters are mad as hell — but still probably won’t vote Democratic
For the third installment of MS NOW’s “The Voter Files,” we went to West Des Moines to hear from two groups of reluctant Trump voters — one group from the city’s suburbs and another from small towns and rural areas. Most have split their tickets in past elections. Of the three states we’ve visited so far, Iowa offers Democrats the clearest and most hopeful picture. In Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ standing as a long-tenured institution may help her withstand Democratic momentum.
‘The dog has caught the car’: Why AOC is campaigning in Michigan’s Trump country
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., is heading into deep-red territory on Thursday, campaigning in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for Abdul El-Sayed in a Senate race that could determine control of the chamber. It could also shape her own political future. El-Sayed, a progressive, is running neck and neck with former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers. He won the Democratic nomination in August after narrowly defeating Rep.
Democrats’ ‘blue wave’ hopes vs. MAGA’s ‘red wall’ map
The last time voters had their say, Donald Trump won the congressional district home to the University of Kentucky by 15 points, and the area’s Republican congressman coasted to an even larger victory than the once and future president. Almost two years later, Kentucky’s 6th District is a possible, if difficult, pickup opportunity for Democrats in a midterm campaign that has warning signs of a blue wave. Their House playing field is expanding deeper into Trump country.
Democrats see an opening in Florida. They’re sending Bill Clinton.
Former President Bill Clinton will make his first public campaign appearance of the 2026 midterms next week, traveling to Florida to stump for Democrat David Jolly in the state’s closely watched governor’s race. Clinton is scheduled to join Jolly at an evening interfaith event in Hollywood, Florida, on Tuesday, Oct. 20, two weeks before Election Day and just as early voting gets underway in parts of the state.
Democrats are pushing into Trump country. Are they going far enough?
An unpopular war. An unpopular president. And widespread economic anxiety. With the 2026 midterms less than three weeks away, the comparisons to 2006 are everywhere. That year, midway through President George W. Bush’s second term, Democrats netted 31 House seats — more than enough to take control of the chamber.
A data center backlash is upending Ohio’s Senate race
WILLIAMSBURG, Ohio — Jessica Baker sifted through an overflowing pile of political mailers she has received over the past month. Lowering costs? “That’s common sense,” she said. Reducing gas prices and utility bills? “We need that.” Party division, culture wars — it’s all there. But none of it touched the issue she wants to hear about before she votes: data centers. “My home’s under attack,” Baker, a lead organizer for the grassroots advocacy group Conserve Ohio, told MS NOW in her living room.
Senate ratings change: Kansas and Minnesota tighten
With three weeks to go until Election Day, the Senate battlefield is getting bigger. MS NOW is moving Kansas to “lean Republican” and Minnesota to “lean Democratic,” pulling two seats that once looked more secure into competitive territory. Kansas joined our list of races to watch last month, when we categorized it as “likely Republican.” While we still give the GOP the edge in defending this seat, several factors have moved it into a more competitive category: lean Republican.
Trump backlash gives Democrats chances in major red-state governor’s races
Democrats are leading or within striking distance in five Republican-held governor’s races this fall as President Donald Trump’s second term puts Republicans in a defensive position. Heading into the final weeks before Election Day on Nov. 3, polling averages compiled by the website FiftyPlusOne show Democrats ahead in Iowa and Ohio, places where the party hasn’t won a governor’s race since 2006. Races in Georgia, Nevada and Texas are close, with Republicans narrowly ahead in close contests.
The red state route to a Senate Democratic majority
To win back the Senate, Democrats need to hold every seat they have and flip four held by Republicans. Less than a month before Election Day, polls have them ahead in enough states. Polling averages compiled by the website FiftyPlusOne show Democratic candidates ahead in Texas, Alaska, Ohio and North Carolina, as well as neck and neck with Republicans in Maine, Iowa and Kansas. Democrats also lead in three competitive seats the party is defending: Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire.
El-Sayed and Rogers debate tonight, each squeezed from both sides
DETROIT — Mike Rogers needs to show some independence from President Donald Trump without alienating Trump’s voters. Abdul El-Sayed needs to bring moderates into the fold without losing the progressives who powered his campaign. Both will be tested Thursday night, when the former Republican congressman and the former Democratic public health official meet for the first debate of Michigan’s marquee Senate race.
Farmers are upset about fuel costs, but some are sticking with Republicans anyway
It’s harvest season in Dooly County, Georgia, and Lee Davis is having a tough year. His farm is burning through 3,000 gallons of diesel a week, and diesel prices in Georgia hit a record high last month, according to AAA. Even excluding gas, Davis estimates his costs are up 37 percent from last year. Davis, a proud independent, blames President Donald Trump for much of that — especially the war in Iran, the primary driver of high fuel prices.
In Michigan, Muslim and Jewish voters are divided on Abdul El-Sayed. They share the same fear.
For the second installment of MS NOW’s “The Voter Files,” we convened four groups of Detroit-area voters in Dearborn, Michigan, to hear how they plan to vote in the state’s open Senate race between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. In Maine, the subject of our first installment, Sen. Susan Collins’ long tenure has kept the Senate race local. Michigan’s Senate race is fully nationalized.
Alabama Democrats see Trump’s Mobile rally as a sign of GOP nerves
When President Donald Trump announced plans to campaign in Mobile for Alabama’s Republican statewide and congressional candidates, former Sen. Doug Jones figured the president was “trolling him.” “We were coming to Mobile regardless of the fact that Donald Trump announced he was coming,” Jones, the Democratic nominee for governor, told a crowded room of students at an Auburn University voting event organized by the Alabama NAACP.
A Kansas Democrat’s red-state pitch: A two-term limit and no Trump trials
WICHITA, Kan. — Adam Hamilton doesn’t plan to stay in Washington long if he gets there, and he doesn’t plan to spend his time investigating President Donald Trump. The 62-year-old megachurch pastor, running a surprisingly competitive Senate campaign as a Democrat in Kansas, told MS NOW he would serve no more than two terms in the chamber if elected.
Democrats make a play for farmers squeezed by Trump’s economy
Abdul El-Sayed on Tuesday unveiled a plan to help Michigan’s struggling small farms, making him the latest Democratic Senate hopeful to court farmers as rising costs weaken Republicans’ grip on rural America. Farmers are under serious financial strain. Diesel prices, pushed up by the war in Iran, hit a record national average of about $6.52 a gallon last week, according to AAA.
What Trump’s super PAC spending says about the GOP’s Senate map
After sitting out much of the summer, President Donald Trump’s political operation has started spending big. With less than six weeks until Election Day, where that money is going, and where it isn’t, suggests a Senate map that is narrowing for Republicans. In Texas, where Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in more than three decades, Trump’s MAGA Inc.
Measles is spreading through Pennsylvania’s Amish country. Doctors are scrambling to keep up.
BELLEVILLE, Pa. — In the parking lot of the Central Pennsylvania Clinic, horse-drawn buggies are hitched to posts. On the front door, a taped-up sign tells anyone with measles symptoms to return to their car and call the office. Many people here don’t have a car or a cellphone. For them, the sign has a different request: put on a mask, ring the bell and step back from the door. The clinic serves many Amish families in and around Belleville.
‘The same thing over and over’: Collins camp shrugs off new corruption allegations
PORTLAND, Maine — Troy Jackson spent part of this week in New York City asking donors to help him unseat Sen. Susan Collins. But the biggest gift his campaign received didn’t come from a donor or political actor at all. It came from a ProPublica investigation published Tuesday alleging a pay-to-play scheme involving Collins, her staff and a Hawaii-based military contractor.
‘Gun-shy’ after 2024: Angie Nixon says Democratic leaders are wary of backing Black women candidates
When Angie Nixon got Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the phone recently, the Florida Democrat made the ask every candidate puts to their party’s leader: Help me fund this race. His answer, by her account, was noncommittal. “When I did speak with Senator Schumer on the phone, it was basically a ‘we will see,’” Nixon said in the latest episode of “Clock It with Symone & Eugene.” “He’s gonna look into it.
‘It’s time to move on’: At-risk Republicans want Trump’s Iran war to end
Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska has a blunt message for President Donald Trump: The price of diesel is “too damn high.” He’s not the only Republican sounding the alarm. Nearly seven months into the war with Iran, the conflict has driven diesel prices to record highs and squeezed the global oil market. Now, with the midterm elections rapidly approaching, GOP candidates in competitive races are backtracking their support and increasingly calling for it to end. Those candidates include Sen.
Trump aides explore attaching president’s name to Ford’s Theatre
As President Donald Trump fights to rename the Kennedy Center after himself, administration officials are circulating a list of government sites that could have Trump’s name affixed to them in some way, according to people familiar with the effort. One landmark that has emerged in the discussions among administration officials has raised eyebrows: Ford’s Theatre, the playhouse where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
Can Kamala Harris repair Michigan’s 2024 fractures?
DETROIT — To hear Abdul El-Sayed tell it, the 2024 election left Michigan Democrats with several kinds of pain. There was the pain of a party divided over Gaza, with some voters feeling betrayed by the Democratic Party’s leadership. The pain of Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump. And the pain of the blame that followed. With 42 days until the midterms, El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate, is enlisting Harris herself to help the party heal, or at least move on.
What Trump’s new ‘ban on the free press’ is really about
Presidents who restrict the press have usually cited some other justification: security, space constraints, matters of decorum. President Donald Trump has stripped away any pretense. On Saturday, he expelled MS NOW, CNN and Politico journalists from the White House in what he himself referred to as a “ban on the free press.” His announcement on Truth Social on Friday left little doubt about the reason: He dislikes what journalists at those outlets report.
Republicans made Hasan Piker a villain. Democrats still can’t decide what to do about him.
Hasan Piker is an unlikely star for a negative ad campaign. He has never run for office and says he has no interest in doing so. He holds no leadership position in any political party. He has no PAC. Most of the country has no idea who he is: In April, 60 percent of likely voters told Echelon Insights they had never heard of him.
Kansas and South Carolina join MS NOW’s Senate races to watch
MS NOW is adding Kansas and South Carolina to its list of Senate races to watch, two states that looked safely Republican earlier this year and now look somewhat less so. Republicans are still favored to hold both seats, but recent signals show these races could be somewhat more competitive than observers thought just a few months ago. The Democratic candidates in both states have generated strong interest and shown they can raise money.
Why Trump keeps renovating: Reputations can be debated. Buildings are harder to remove.
The Kennedy Center’s presidentially appointed leadership says the institution is almost out of money. President Donald Trump has offered to raise what it needs. On Tuesday his appointees to the board will be asked to approve what a draft resolution says he requires in return: “appropriate recognition” of his role — which is to say, his name on the front of the building. Trustees have 10 inscriptions to choose from. He has spent a year and a half remaking the nation’s capital in his image.
Where is JD Vance 50 days from Election Day? Ruby-red Kansas.
Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932. But 50 days out from Election Day, Vice President JD Vance is spending Monday in a suburb of Kansas City campaigning for a Republican incumbent. “We’re excited to do a fraud task force event in the Kansas City area, and then a campaign [event] with my very dear friend ‘Doc’ Marshall, who’s one of the very best United States senators, and very important that we get him re-elected,” Vance told reporters earlier on Monday. Sen.
The 50 races defining the 2026 midterms
The last time Republicans faced voters with Trump as president without him also being on the ballot, they lost the House in a rout while gaining Senate seats from friendlier terrain. Eight years, two presidential elections and one mob assault on the Capitol later, Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is stronger than it was then.
What Trump has wrought on a Dallas convention floor
DALLAS — Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is near total, and for two days this week, it filled an arena. A decade in politics has let him redefine what it means to be a Republican and escape responsibility for an attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his own supporters, mounted after he tried to overturn an election he lost. What his party offers voters this fall is him.
‘The White House was watching’: Fired immigration judge alleges retaliation by DOJ
A former immigration judge filed a first-of-its-kind whistleblower complaint against the Justice Department on Thursday, alleging that she was fired two days after she reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “had unlawfully detained an unaccompanied minor who had just been in her courtroom,” according to a complaint filed in federal court Thursday.
Rhode Island governor loses primary amid backlash over stalled bridge project
Helena Foulkes defeated Gov. Dan McKee in Rhode Island’s Democratic gubernatorial primary on Wednesday, a rare rebuke of a sitting governor in a race dominated by the state’s troubled Washington Bridge. It was the second time the two have faced each other. McKee narrowly beat Foulkes in a five-candidate primary in 2022, his first run for the office after being elevated from lieutenant governor in 2021, when sitting Gov. Gina Raimondo resigned to join the Biden administration.
Trump banned Canadian dairy. American farmers aren’t happy.
President Donald Trump’s ban on Canadian dairy imports is meant to force Ottawa to open its market to American milk. But Canada regulates its dairy industry in a way that shields its own farmers from foreign price shocks — which, industry groups say, leaves American farmers more exposed than Canadian ones. Trump signed the proclamation on Tuesday, banning all Canadian dairy products — along with Canadian alcohol and motorcycles — effective Sept. 29.
Trump got what he wanted in Texas. Now Republicans are living with it.
With the risk of losing the House for his final two years as president, Donald Trump wanted Texas Republicans last year to redraw the state’s congressional map and help get his party more seats. They did. Months later, he asked for something else: that primary voters deny a fifth term to Sen. John Cornyn and pick Ken Paxton, the state’s impeached and acquitted attorney general, as the Republican standard bearer instead. They did that, too.
Both parties are fighting for Black voters in Detroit. El-Sayed just got backup.
The Congressional Black Caucus PAC endorsed Abdul El-Sayed on Tuesday, giving Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee an institutional show of support six weeks before his general-election matchup with Republican Mike Rogers. The endorsement is an about-face for a group whose members largely lined up behind Rep. Haley Stevens in the state’s Democratic primary.
A rare thing in American politics may happen in Rhode Island on Wednesday
Sitting governors almost never lose primaries. Dan McKee is at risk of doing exactly that on Wednesday, when Rhode Island Democrats decide whether to give him another term. McKee became governor in 2021, elevated from lieutenant governor when Gina Raimondo left to join the Biden administration. He narrowly won the Democratic primary on his own in 2022 in a five-person race that also included challenger Helena Foulkes.
Inside ‘Trumpapalooza,’ the midterm convention some Republicans would rather skip
When President Donald Trump began floating a midterm convention — a way to rev up enthusiasm among shrinking-but-still-vital segments of his coalition — he had one place in mind: Las Vegas. House Speaker Mike Johnson, with his majority on the line after two years of holding together a fractious conference, wanted something more practical. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, he argued. Philadelphia, perhaps — somewhere that might stave off losses in some of the most competitive contests in the country.
Canada’s tariffs hit Tuesday — but their effect on the midterms is just beginning
Republicans across the country are campaigning on a promise to create good-paying jobs. On Tuesday, the American workers they are promising to help will take a hit from a trade war their party’s president started. Canada imposes sweeping dollar-for-dollar tariffs on roughly $20 billion in American goods on Tuesday, matching the 50% tariffs President Donald Trump placed on Canadian imports in August.
Trump sits on $850 million as Republicans wait
On the eve of a Trumpified midterm convention in Dallas, prominent Republican congressional members, allies and donors are now openly scrutinizing what President Donald Trump intends to do with the roughly $850 million his political operation has amassed but has yet to neaningfully spend, with Election Day now less than 60 days away.
Former RNC chair backs Democrat in coveted Montana district
A Montana Democrat running for Congress in the red state has picked up what once would have seemed like an unlikely backer: a former GOP governor who was once chairman of the Republican National Committee. Marc Racicot, who won two terms as Montana’s governor in the 1990s before leading the RNC during George W. Bush’s first term, is set to endorse Sam Forstag’s bid for the state’s 1st Congressional District, currently held by a Republican. “He cares about what he’s doing. He’s very well prepared.
Paxton blames GOP ‘enthusiasm gap’ on Republican success. Texas voters disagree.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton drew several hundred to the auditorium of Willow Park Baptist Church on Tuesday night and told them why he thinks so many Republicans have tuned out: Things are going too well. “We have an enthusiasm gap,” the GOP Senate nominee said.
Last House Democrat who voted against the ACA survives primary scare
Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., held off a well-funded primary challenger on Tuesday, extending a House career that began in 2001 and keeping in Congress the only remaining Democrat who voted against the Affordable Care Act. Lynch defeated challenger Patrick Roath, a lawyer and past aide to former Gov. Deval Patrick. Roath had outraised the incumbent, according to recent federal filings.
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