Democrats Think They’ve Found Their 2026 Message — And Miami Just Backed It Up

MIAMI — For the first time in years, Democrats may have found an economic message that works across their fractured coalition — from the party’s loudest activists to its most buttoned-up centrists.

Eileen Higgins won Miami’s mayoral race on Tuesday with a technocratic, steady-governing pitch to stabilize a city straining under soaring costs. A detail-oriented mechanical engineer who nerds out on city planning, Higgins stood out among her peers for her pragmatism and calm demeanor even during dramatic debates. A few weeks earlier in New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won on a platform built around universal child care, free buses and a sweeping rent freeze, effectively harnessing his sharp retail-politics skills to get his message across.

The agendas and styles could hardly be more different — but the animating theme was identical: affordability. And their victories, alongside others in New Jersey and Virginia, show how the cost of everyday life has become the rare issue capable of uniting the party’s left and center. But the theme is also papering over deep divisions inside the party. Democrats may be winning on “affordability,” yet they have very different ideas about how to make life cheaper.

To party officials, the through line is unmistakable — and increasingly central to how Democrats want to frame the midterms.

“This is going to help the Democratic Party and continue to make our case that the middle-class and working-class people in this country are tired of having to struggle every day to make ends meet, to be able to pay their bills,” Democratic National Committee finance chair Chris Korge told POLITICO in an interview.

It’s a flip of the script, given that Donald Trump recognized the pain Americans were feeling in his presidential campaign and promised to lower the price of groceries, electricity and gas, and to cut taxes. Now, Democrats are acknowledging voters’ economic pain points — but coming up with different solutions to address them. Their ideas could give hopefuls multiple tracks to take on the issue for 2026, even as the party continues to face vast ideological differences.

In Miami — which became far more expensive in recent years following an influx of wealthy residents fleeing blue states due to previous changes in the federal tax law and Covid lockdowns — Higgins’ top promise was to quickly build more housing.

When asked for the key to her success in an interview Thursday on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” she didn’t hesitate: “affordability.” Higgins said she heard the same anxiety everywhere — from small businesses dealing with tariff-induced price hikes to hair salons where the cost of extensions has jumped by $20.

“Everybody's talking about it,” she said. “You can go into a hair salon and the price of extensions they used to buy has gone up by $20. Do they cut their profits, or do they charge their customers in Little Havana $20 more? Neither of those people can afford that. So affordability is all over the map.”

Her campaign adviser, Christian Ulvert, argued in a post-mortem that Higgins offered a model of “competent governance” and a “steady, technocratic approach” — often contrasting it with what he called the chaos and instability of the city’s current government. Higgins herself made the same case on the trail, saying in an interview with POLITICO that she kept a list of to-do items in a spreadsheet.

A fellow centrist Democrat, Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger stuck to an economic message to deliver a win against GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in November. Residents of her state who live in the D.C. suburbs were disproportionately hit by Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce and the prolonged government shutdown, during which many still had to report to work without pay.

The state also has a huge concentration of data centers, which store and process online information but use loads of energy, making power bills rise. In her “Affordable Virginia Plan,” Spanberger proposed increasing energy production, including wind and solar, while also making data centers “pay their fare share” of electricity costs.

While more modest in scale, Higgins’ and Spanberger’s focus on affordability echoed the New York City mayoral race, in which Mamdani mounted an unexpected and highly successful campaign by staying laser-focused on a handful of pocketbook issues.

Mamdani promised universal child care, free buses, increased affordable housing and a suite of new city-run, discount grocery stores. He also wants to freeze the rent for an estimated 2 million residents living in apartments regulated by a municipal board. While Mamdani himself has little power to realize his plans, he and his army of volunteers have won over the likes of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who wields tremendous power over the state budget and has pledged to work with the incoming mayor.

Over in New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill also relied heavily on a promise of lowering costs in her blowout win over Republican Jack Ciattarelli in November. One of her signature policy proposals was vowing to declare a state of emergency on her first day in office to freeze skyrocketing utility rates.

During the campaign, Sherrill and her allies also went on offense on the economy, labeling her opponent as “high tax Jack” in the closing stretch of the campaign. While surveys suggested a tight race between the two — she ended up winning by 14 points — polling toward the end of the campaign also showed that Sherrill had an edge when it came to issues Democrats have long struggled with, including the cost of living, taxes and energy costs.

Sherrill also made sure to tie economic struggles to Trump — including the impact of his administration’s tariffs on the state — and blamed him for not following through on his campaign promises, a strategy that helped her win over voters who cast a ballot for the president last year.

Trump in recent weeks has expressed frustration with Democrats’ messaging — and in an interview with POLITICO gave himself an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” grade on the economy. Earlier this week, he hit battleground Pennsylvania for a speech that was supposed to focus on easing anxieties over economic concerns but ended up veering off-script at points.

As for Higgins, she rarely talked about Trump, who endorsed her GOP opponent, unless asked by reporters. Even on immigration, she often pointed to Florida laws pushing cities to aggressively help the federal government with its policies. Asked in November by POLITICO whether she considered her opponent, Emilio González, to be “MAGA,” she paused before raising González’s own comments on the matter, in which he praised MAGA policies as common sense.

And the chief concern she raised about the Trump presidential library set to be built downtown wasn’t ideological, but about how it had been a missed opportunity to help the city’s finances.

“We gave away very valuable land to a billionaire for free,” she said during a debate on CBS Miami. “We could have sold that land, generated cash from that land, and paid for all the things they’ve cut,” she continued, citing examples like food aid, affordable housing, resiliency projects and transit. “How can our state be giving away money that we need to make our community better?”