Incumbents stumbled in the first round of major primary elections for the 2026 midterms, with Texas providing several examples of how redistricting and intraparty pressure can upend established politicians.
The Associated Press reported that Texas was especially telling because it was the first state to redraw its congressional districts last year, setting up contests in which incumbent members of Congress were pushed toward runoffs and, in one House race, pushed out altogether.
In the Democratic track in Texas’ newly drawn 33rd Congressional District, former Rep. Colin Allred—who abandoned an initial U.S. Senate run to pursue the House seat—advanced to a May 26 runoff against Rep. Julie Johnson, who holds the seat Allred sought.
The AP said Johnson is an attorney who served six years in the Texas House before winning Allred’s former seat in 2024. Allred, meanwhile, had previously been an NFL linebacker for the Tennessee Titans before he became a civil rights lawyer and served in Congress.
Another Democratic runoff is set for the Houston-area district after a primary between two sitting members of Congress produced a matchup between Rep. Al Green and newly elected Rep. Christian Menefee, according to the AP report.
Green and Menefee will compete on May 26 after the redrawn voting maps Trump ordered ahead of November’s midterm elections reshaped Green’s district and the other contest boundaries. For some Houston-area voters, the AP said Tuesday’s primary was their third time casting ballots for a congressional race in four months, creating confusion.
The AP said Green, 78, switched to run in the newly drawn 18th Congressional District after his current district was redrawn to favor Republicans. It also said Green is an outspoken Trump critic who was twice ejected from President Donald Trump’s State of the Union addresses for protesting, and that he filed articles of impeachment during Trump’s first term.
Menefee, 37, was sworn in only a month earlier after winning a special election to fill the remaining term of Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died last year, the AP reported. The report described Green and Menefee’s matchup as part of generational competition among Democrats, with younger candidates arguing it is time for a new crop of leaders.
On the Republican side in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, Rep. Dan Crenshaw faced pressure from the party’s hard right, including criticism that he was not aligned with Trump’s agenda, and the AP reported he was the state’s only House Republican who did not win Trump’s endorsement going into the early primary.
The AP said Crenshaw lost the primary to Steve Toth, a Republican state lawmaker who picked up late backing from Sen. Ted Cruz. The report said Toth is a member of the GOP’s hard-right caucus in the Legislature.
After his victory, Toth said the campaign was “a referendum on representatives who campaign one way and govern another, and the people have spoken,” according to the AP. The report added that Crenshaw has sometimes clashed with other Republicans, including during disagreements with Cruz over Cruz’s support of Trump’s unfounded claim that Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
In a contest where outside attention and internal party positioning played roles, the AP also described how Crenshaw drew ire from conservatives after a viral video clip in which he criticized some Republican politicians as “grifters” and “performance artists” who simply tell conservative voters what they want to hear.
The AP report also pointed to a close Democratic primary race in North Carolina, where the Democratic nominee is expected to be a heavy favorite in November, but where two Democratic wings were competing for momentum. It said Rep. Valerie Foushee, a two-term congresswoman, tried to hold off a primary challenge from Durham County commissioner Nida Allam.
The report said Foushee represents North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, which includes liberal strongholds of Durham, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, as well as about half of Cary. It said Foushee received backing from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, his predecessor and current U.S. Senate nominee Roy Cooper, and from more than 100 current or retired elected officials and activist groups.
Allam, the AP reported, is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and is aiming to tap into discontent among liberals that Democratic Party leaders and elected officials have not been forceful enough in resisting Trump’s agenda. The AP said Allam described her political motivation as driven by the 2015 shooting deaths of three friends who were Muslim university students.
The AP said political action committees spent more than $1 million combined supporting Allam or opposing Foushee, according to campaign finance reports, and that Foushee also received a late boost from a PAC that backs what it described as “sensible” regulation on artificial intelligence. It said Allam trailed Foushee by 1 percentage point, then conceded late Wednesday, though the AP said the race had not yet been called.
Allam’s concession included the warning that “the establishment should stay on watch,” which the AP said she added as part of her statement that “Our movement sounded the alarm for future Democratic primaries throughout this cycle.”