By Katie Gorka
There is no sugarcoating it: Tuesday was a bad night for us. Democrats took both the House and the Senate, flipping Senate seats in states as varied as Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. Susan Collins, a fixture of Maine politics for nearly three decades, conceded. In Texas, the party lost both John Cornyn’s Senate seat and the governorship, the first Democratic statewide wins there in decades. In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy fell to Amy Acton.
The House losses ran deep, too. Even districts that Republicans redrew in their own favor, in Texas and Florida, did not hold. Speaker Mike Johnson will not seek another term as leader, and the leadership scramble has already begun.
Republicans owe it to voters to study these results soberly rather than explain them away. But a party that only counts its losses learns only half the lesson. Beneath the headlines, Tuesday also delivered real wins for conservative ideas and introduced a strong new class of conservative leaders. Those deserve attention, because they point to where the comeback begins.
On a night when many voters punished Republican candidates, they kept voting for conservative policies. That gap is important.
Voter ID. Ohio passed Issue 3, writing voter ID into the state constitution so a future legislature cannot quietly repeal it. North Carolina went further, approving a constitutional amendment requiring photo ID for every voter, including those voting by mail or absentee, with about 60% of the vote. Nevada voters also approved a voter ID requirement, completing the second vote the state requires after their first approval in 2024. That is a swing state saying, twice, that showing ID to vote is common sense. Arizona’s measure pairing voter ID with citizenship verification was still being counted at last report.
Not every ID measure succeeded: voters in California and Colorado rejected theirs. But in states that span the political map, election integrity remains a majority position.
Property taxes. Florida’s Amendment 3, championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican legislature, won about 62% of the vote, clearing the state’s 60% supermajority bar. It is one of the largest property tax cuts in Florida history. The homestead exemption on non-school taxes rises from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, and the annual cap on assessment increases for rentals, second homes and commercial property drops from 10% to 5%.
In Tennessee, voters approved Amendment 2, which prohibits a state property tax, by roughly two to one. Even in California, an early count showed Proposition 42, banning new personal property taxes, leading with about 54% of the vote.
The message is consistent. Families squeezed by rising assessments want relief, and they trust conservative solutions to deliver it.
The other bright spot from yesterday is the people. Several conservatives won last night who will shape the party for years to come.
Harriet Hageman, U.S. Senate, Wyoming. Hageman first made her name in 2022 by unseating Liz Cheney. Last night she moved up to the Senate, defeating Democrat James Byrd with roughly 65% of the vote to succeed the retiring Cynthia Lummis. A natural-resources attorney who has spent her career fighting federal overreach on land, water and energy, she now carries that fight to the upper chamber. Her promise to voters was simple: Wyoming hired her for a new job, and she will not let them down. She is a joyful but fierce warrior and it will be great to have her in the Senate.
Marsha Blackburn, Governor of Tennessee. Blackburn, who has served Tennessee in the state senate, the House and the U.S. Senate, won the governor’s race over Memphis City Council member Jerri Green. The race was closer than Tennessee Republicans are used to, with an independent candidate drawing about 9%. That makes her win all the more significant in a wave year. She also gets to name her own replacement in the Senate, keeping that seat in conservative hands. And I love that Marsha Blackburn shows us the power of grandmothers!
Michael Alfonso, U.S. House, Wisconsin’s 7th District. At 26, Alfonso will be the youngest member of Congress. The son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who once held the seat, he beat former state lawmaker Fred Clark by about 56% to 44%. He ran on affordability, help for farmers, a firm pro-life stance and building the new Line 5 pipeline segment for northern Wisconsin jobs. On a night when Wisconsin Democrats flipped two House seats, he held this one. Critics called him too young and too connected; voters judged otherwise.
Chris Stigall, U.S. House, Missouri’s 6th District. Many conservatives know Stigall from years behind the microphone, most recently on Salem Radio Network. He left the show to run for the seat Sam Graves held for 25 years and won it with about 59% of the vote. He has pledged to win Missouri a seat on the House Agriculture Committee, push a new Farm Bill and cut red tape for rural hospitals. Stigall has spent his career explaining conservative ideas to ordinary Americans. Now he gets to legislate them. It will also be helpful to have another strong voice in Congress who can articulate the conservative vision.
These four are different in age, background and style. What they share is a willingness to fight for conservative principles and the ability to win doing it.
Tuesday’s lesson is not that conservative ideas lost. Voters in Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada chose election integrity. Voters in Florida and Tennessee chose lower property taxes. Those are our ideas, and they won on their own merits.
What voters rejected was something else, and Republicans need the humility to find out exactly what. Gas prices, a foreign war and the cost of living all weighed on this election, and no amount of spin changes that.
But the rebuilding has a foundation. It rests on popular policies, on newly elected leaders like Hageman, Blackburn, Alfonso and Stigall, and on the volunteers in every county who knocked doors in a tough year. Two years from now, the party that listened hardest will be the one that wins.