A beacon of hope as Trump’s dark age descends

If you listen, you can hear a a signal through the Trump noise showing that the Democratic Party still has a pulse.

By Jeff Nesbit

Something’s happening in the American hinterlands. A small, insistent beacon of hope is emerging in a Democratic Party that has been dragged mercilessly through the GOP propaganda mud and counted out by nearly every cable television pundit and national political columnist since Donald Trump swept into power for a second time.

Yes, Trump, Elon Musk and the DOGE troops are still storming through federal agencies, intent on randomly and irrationally sowing chaos and distrust among Americans about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and a host of Great Society anti-poverty programs that protect and sustain millions of Americans.

Yes, Trump’s GOP still controls anything and everything in Washington, D.C.—the presidency, the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. They are still marching inexorably toward authoritarian rule by threatening to ignore the federal judiciary all the way through the Supreme Court and beyond and flaunting congressional authority on spending.

Yes, Trump’s GOP is still firing National Park Service rangers, U.S. Forest Service firefighters, and federal health care workers whose only mission is to save American lives and preserve the things we love and cherish. They are still dismantling the greatest biomedical research system the world has ever known by attempting to destroy the National Institutes of Health.

And, yes, they are still waging weird but real wars against Iran proxies—pushing the world closer to global conflagrations that might be impossible to contain once they erupt—while chit-chatting about those war plans on an unclassified app with the editor in chief of The Atlantic.

But something is happening off stage. You can see it in the tens of thousands of people who are showing up at the “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). The rallies are a signal through the Trump noise that the Democratic Party still has a pulse—and might, in fact, be on the cusp of a new mass movement.

On Tuesday, a Democrat won a special election for the Pennsylvania State Senate in a district Trump won by 15 points in November. And in a separate special election, a Democrat secured victory in a state House race, giving the party a one-seat majority.

Meanwhile, a potentially brighter beacon of hope is shining right now in deep-red Florida – in two House special elections in a Trump +30 race and a Trump +37 district.

In these two special elections (where Trump’s GOP candidates will almost certainly win), the Democratic candidates have two things going for them that the bedraggled party has not seen in a very long time. Both are running not as career politicians but as fighters. One is a teacher. The other is a gun-safety leader who lost her husband and son to terminal illnesses.

And both have outraised their Trump GOP opponents by a massive, unexpected amount of money—something that Trump’s political machine didn’t see coming and something that the Democratic Party was not expecting. Millions in small donations from Democrats across the country are pouring in to these two special elections.

The two Democratic candidates—Josh Weil and Gay Valimont—have raised nearly $16 million combined in just two months for the two April 1 special elections, according to their recent Federal Election Commission filings.

Weil, a teacher, raised $9.3 million for his special election race in Florida’s 6^th Congressional District (where Trump won in 2025 by 30 points), according to his FEC filing. That’s 16 times larger than his opponent, Republican state Sen. Randy Fine.

Valimont, running in Florida’s 1^st Congressional District (which Trump won by 37 points in 2024), has raised $6.4 million, according to her FEC filing. That’s five times more than her GOP opponent, Florida’s chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis. She’s a resilient wife and mother who knows why she’s running—from lowering insurance costs to bringing a full-service VA hospital to her district, protecting voting rights, and tackling the opioid crisis. She began her political career after she lost her husband to ALS and her son to a brain tumor.

Both have massively outraised their GOP opponents for their special elections that are in incredibly safe GOP districts. What’s more, roughly 75% of the donations to Weil and Valimont were $200 or less.

This means a few things for the Democratic Party. First, it’s alive and well. If House candidates in 2026 look like these two—and small-dollar donations continue to flood House races - the GOP could be on its heels everywhere for the midterm elections. Second, both special elections should be a loud, raucous clarion call to the political consulting class that Democratic voters want their party’s leaders to stand and fight for what they believe in.

And third, much of the public angst surrounding Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s messaging and decision-making on the recent continuing resolution that kept the federal government open might be misplaced and irrelevant. The political game is the House in 2026, and the focus should be on House Democrats closest to the emerging mass movement.

The massive fundraising hauls for Democrats fighting to win April 1 special elections in Trump +30 and +37 districts in deep-red Florida are, in fact, a roadmap for what it will take for Democrats to find their mojo again – to stand and fight for what matters to both working-class and highly educated voters.

The huge fundraising gaps are a clear sign that “the American people are not buying what the Republicans are selling,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters. “These districts are so Republican there would ordinarily be no reason to believe that the races will be close, but what I can say almost guaranteed is that the Democratic candidate in both of these Florida special elections will significantly overperform.”

Trump’s White House has now noticed, belatedly. Neither race had attracted attention or money from either national political party until this week. But the Florida GOP just dropped nearly $1 million on ads for Fine (who had to contribute $600,000 of his own money because he was being so badly outspent). And a GOP super PAC dropped $1 million on ads. The late rush of national Trump GOP machine money will likely allow the two GOP candidates to win two races that should have been cakewalks.

“I haven’t heard real concerns that either of them are going to lose,” a GOP strategist told NBC News. “But there are certainly concerns that they’re underperforming and whether it’s a harbinger of something this cycle.”

What’s more, Trump on Thursday pulled the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to be U.N. Ambassador, likely because some Republicans fear they could lose her seat in a special election.

Nevertheless, the signs are ominous for Trump in 2026. A beacon of unexpected hope is shining in these two April 1 special elections. A mass movement is forming offstage as Trump’s dark age descends on Washington, D.C., and House Democrats might very well create the roadmap, and help the party find its way back from political oblivion in 2026.

Jeff Nesbit was the public affairs chief for five Cabinet departments or agencies under four presidents.

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