Texas Reps. Menefee, Green advance to runoff as first midterm primaries show incumbents on shaky ground

The first round of primary elections is showing how this year’s midterms will be taking place on shifting political ground for incumbents.

That was particularly true in Texas — the first state to redraw its congressional districts last year — where incumbent members of Congress have been pushed to runoffs and another has been scuttled from the House altogether.

Former Rep. Colin Allred, who abandoned his initial U.S. Senate run to pursue Texas’ 33rd Congressional District, is headed to a runoff with Rep. Julie Johnson, who holds the U.S. House seat that used to be his.

Democratic Rep. Al Green, an outspoken liberal who has twice been ejected from President Donald Trump’s State of the Union addresses for protesting, and newly elected Rep. Christian Menefee will compete in the May 26 runoff for a Houston-area district.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican and former Navy SEAL with an independent streak, faced attacks from the party’s hard right that he was not in lockstep with Trump, and was the state’s only House Republican not to win the president’s endorsement. He lost to Steve Toth, a Republican state lawmaker who received late backing from Sen. Ted Cruz.

An incumbent is also in a close race in North Carolina that was too early to call early Wednesday.

A look at where things stand after Tuesday’s primaries:

In a North Carolina primary rematch from four years ago, two-term U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee is angling to hold off a primary challenge from county official Nida Allam in a race testing the heft of Democrats’ progressive and establishment wings.

Foushee, a former local elected official and state legislator, represents the 4th Congressional District, which includes liberal strongholds of Durham, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, as well as about half of Cary. In the primary, she boasts backing from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, his predecessor and current U.S. Senate nominee Roy Cooper, and more than 100 current or retired elected officials and activist groups.

Allam, a Durham County commissioner backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, is aiming to tap into discontent among liberals that Democratic Party leaders and elected officials haven’t been forceful enough in resisting the agenda of Trump and fellow Republicans. The daughter of Indian and Pakistani immigrants, she said she was driven to politics by the shooting deaths of three of her friends — Muslim university students — in 2015.

Political action committees spent more than $1 million combined supporting Allam or opposing Foushee, according to campaign finance reports. But Foushee also received a late boost of outside support from a PAC that backs what it calls “sensible” regulation on artificial intelligence.

Whoever wins the Democratic contest should be a heavy favorite in November over Republican and Libertarian candidates. Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election in the district by a 2-to-1 margin.

A former House member in Texas’ 32nd District, Allred launched a congressional comeback after ditching a second run for the U.S. Senate in December, making the switch after Rep. Jasmine Crockett jumped into the Texas Senate race.

Johnson, an attorney, served six years in the Texas House before winning Allred’s former seat in 2024.

Whoever wins their coming runoff will be the favorite in November to represent a redrawn Dallas-area district that heavily leans Democrat.

Allred was an NFL linebacker for Tennessee Titans before becoming a civil rights lawyer and serving in Congress.

The unusual primary between two sitting Democratic congressmen in Texas was the result of redrawn voting maps that Trump ordered ahead of November’s midterm elections. Green, 78, switched to run in the newly redrawn 18th Congressional District after his current district was redrawn to favor Republicans.

Menefee, 37, was sworn in to Congress only a month ago after winning a special election to fill the remaining term of Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died last year. For some Houston voters, Tuesday’s primary was their third time casting ballots in a congressional race in four months, sowing confusion.

Green, who was first elected to the U.S. House in 2004, is one of his party’s most outspoken Trump critics and filed articles of impeachment during the president’s first term.

The primary is one of the generational competitions among Democrats this year, as younger candidates argue it’s time for a new crop of party leaders. Green has faced concerns from within the party, which is increasingly unwilling to defer to seniority.

Crenshaw, seeking his fifth term in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, was the state’s only House Republican whom Trump didn’t endorse heading into the nation’s first big primary of 2026.

The former Navy SEAL, whose independent streak sometimes clashed with fellow Republicans, spent the primary trying to fend off attacks from the party’s hard right that he wasn’t in step with Trump’s agenda.

Toth, a state representative and member of the GOP’s hard-right caucus in the Legislature, picked up a big endorsement late in the primary from Cruz.

“This campaign has been a referendum on representatives who campaign one way and govern another, and the people have spoken,” Toth said in a statement after his victory.

Crenshaw, who lost his right eye when he was hit with an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2012, had clashed with Cruz over the senator’s support of Trump’s unfounded claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.

He was one of the few Texas Republican candidates for Congress in 2022 who acknowledged that President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was legitimate, a position that occasionally found him at odds with fellow Republicans.

Crenshaw also drew the ire of conservatives when a video clip went viral of him criticizing some Republican politicians as “grifters” and “performance artists” who simply tell conservative voters what they want to hear.