By Kevin Harris
Democrats are right to celebrate historic midterm election victories. Alongside flipping both chambers of Congress, Democrats also broke barriers in electing women, African Americans and Latinos at the state and federal level.
Yet in doing so, the party also demonstrated it has not learned important lessons about investing in the South and supporting diverse candidates. For another cycle, Black voters and Black women in particular carried the party on Election Night.
However, Black candidates struggled to get the resources they needed to run effective campaigns. The same was true for Latino candidates.
Several white “electable” candidates including Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, North Carolina Senator-elect Roy Cooper, South Carolina Senator-elect Dr. Annie Andrews and Texas Senator-elect James Talarico received all the resources they needed. Yet Black and Brown candidates were not given the same electability consideration, even when they were running competitively on the same ticket.
Consider Georgia, where former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor in American history. She was heavily outspent by an opponent who invested more than $200 million of his personal fortune. Despite being competitive in polling and having dominated her primary rivals, Lance Bottoms was largely left to fend for herself.
In Texas, Gina Hinojosa struggled to gain statewide recognition and compete with incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s enormous financial advantage. National Democrats only invested in her campaign after being publicly shamed by Latino leaders. Hinojosa was ultimately outspent by Abbot.
Yet she won anyway.
In Mississippi, Scott Colom mounted a remarkable challenge to Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Yet Mississippi was initially excluded from a $40 million Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee investment covering ten battleground states. National spending arrived later in the campaign despite the party having plowed millions into contests backing white moderates. Colom was not given the same consideration or benefit of the doubt that he could pull off a victory. Yet he too won anyway.
Even the campaigns where Southern Democrats fell short produced results significant enough to wonder what could’ve been had Democrats made a meaningful investment.
In Florida, State Representative Angie Nixon challenged Republican Senator Ashley Moody and lost by fewer than three percentage points. This was a state where Republicans had dominated statewide elections just four years earlier.
Nixon raised millions from individual donors and attracted support from progressive organizations and outside groups. But the major national Democratic Senate campaign organizations did not make comparable investments in her race.
Yet Nixon’s campaign drove the turnout that helped Democrats secure victories in gerrymandered Congressional districts and end the Republican supermajority in the legislature.
Then there is Louisiana.
Jamie Davis, a Black farmer from Tensas Parish who entered the Senate race without a major statewide political profile, came within two percentage points of defeating Republican Julia Letlow.
Louisiana had voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2024. Yet Davis built a competitive campaign and came remarkably close to winning.
According to Davis’ campaign and Louisiana Democratic Party leadership, neither the Democratic National Committee nor the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee contributed to his campaign.
When candidates lose by narrow margins after receiving limited national institutional support, it is reasonable to examine whether earlier investment might have changed the outcome. It’s also reasonable to question why Black and Brown candidates who beat the odds were not given comparable consideration as their white counterparts running in similarly tough headwinds.
And when that pattern appears across multiple Southern states where Democrats need Black and Brown voters to win the question becomes that much more important.
There is a difference between relying on communities of color to deliver electoral victories and investing in the political infrastructure that allows those communities to build lasting governing power and occasionally elect candidates who come from their own community.
Yet Southern political leaders have repeatedly raised concerns that their states receive too little sustained investment from national Democratic institutions alongside overall chronic underfunding for minority candidates.
A serious post-election review should examine how early funding decisions were made, whether Southern organizing was adequately supported, and how candidates of color were evaluated for resource allocations.
A review should also recognize that electoral investment in the South cannot begin and end with a single campaign cycle.
Democrats should focus on building durable political infrastructure in the South through year-round engagement that extends beyond a wave election.
Lance Bottoms made history in Georgia. Hinojosa broke a three-decade Democratic drought in Texas. Colom flipped deep red Mississippi. Nixon drove turnout that began to crack Republican dominance in Florida. Davis brought Louisiana within reach of a Democratic upset.
All with relatively meager support from the Democratic establishment.
So the most important question coming out of 2026 is not how the Democrats won. It is why would Democrats underestimate and underinvest in the candidates that look like the actual voters the party relied on to win the majority. That is a question Democrats should answer quickly if they want to maintain and expand the current majority.
Kevin Harris is a Democratic strategist who has advised over 100 campaigns and ballot measures, including the past five presidential elections, served in the Obama Administration, as a cabinet member for two big city mayors and Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus
