Democrats redefine political toughness as Trump-era masculinity spills into key Senate races
Sana Mayers I SCN NEWS
WASHINGTON — The 2026 midterm elections are being fought over inflation, tariffs, immigration, health care and the Iran war, but beneath those conventional issues another contest is emerging in some of America's most consequential Senate races: candidates are increasingly arguing over what it means to be a man. After more than a decade in which Donald Trump made personal dominance, ridicule and displays of toughness central elements of his political identity, Democratic men are no longer uniformly avoiding that terrain. Some are confronting Republican attacks directly, while others are trying to redefine masculinity around responsibility, family and public service.
The clearest examples are unfolding in Michigan and Texas, two contests with implications for control of the Senate. Michigan Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers have exchanged taunts over their high-school athletic careers, with El-Sayed accusing Rogers of having “beta energy” and emphasizing that he had captained football, wrestling and lacrosse teams. Rogers fired back that boasting about high-school popularity at age 41 hardly demonstrated “alpha” credentials. El-Sayed has also appeared in campaign material lifting weights, but argues that manhood should ultimately be measured by how someone treats family and community rather than gym performance.
Texas offers a different version of the same political fight. Republicans have branded Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico “Low T Talarico,” a reference to testosterone, while Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has publicly questioned whether “masculine” could reasonably describe him. A political action committee supporting Republican nominee Ken Paxton has gone further, juxtaposing images of a muscular, bearded construction worker with footage of Talarico discussing biological sex, effectively connecting masculinity with the broader conservative campaign over gender and transgender issues.
Talarico has largely declined to answer those attacks on Republicans' terms. Instead, he has told voters about his adoptive father quietly mowing an elderly neighbor's lawn every Saturday, using the story to argue that a “real man” accepts responsibility and serves other people. He then turns that definition against Paxton, contrasting service with self-interest while alluding to controversies surrounding the Republican candidate, allegations Paxton has denied. The approach illustrates an important shift: Democrats are not necessarily rejecting the language of masculinity but attempting to attach a different set of characteristics to it.
Trump helped make that contest politically relevant. His campaigns repeatedly used personal dominance as political communication, from derisive nicknames for Republican rivals to carefully cultivated images of physical resilience. After surviving the 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump rose with blood on his face, raised his fist and urged supporters to “fight,” producing one of the defining images of that campaign. When he entered the Republican National Convention days later, the arena played James Brown's “It's a Man's Man's Man's World.”
There was an electoral backdrop to that imagery. AP VoteCast found Trump won 55% of male voters in 2024, compared with 51% when he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. That does not establish that masculinity messaging caused the shift — voters make decisions for many economic, cultural and partisan reasons — but it helps explain why neither party can easily dismiss the politics surrounding male identity. Democrats seeking congressional power in 2026 are operating in an electorate where their performance among men has become part of a broader strategic debate.
Gender scholars say the phenomenon also represents something unusual in American campaigning. Female candidates have historically faced intense scrutiny over whether they appear sufficiently strong without violating expectations of femininity. In 2026, some male candidates are being subjected to their own explicit tests of gender presentation. Emory University political scientist Beth Reingold told AP that Democratic voters increasingly want candidates willing to fight Trump and Republicans, creating pressure for Democratic politicians to demonstrate a more assertive style traditionally coded as masculine.
Republicans, meanwhile, are using masculinity as more than a judgment about individual personality. Joshua Blank of the Texas Politics Project argues that describing an opponent as insufficiently masculine can act as shorthand for a much broader cultural message about gender roles and social values. That helps explain why campaign advertising can move quickly from testosterone jokes to transgender policy: the candidate's appearance or personality becomes a vehicle for communicating ideological differences that extend far beyond the individual man.
The political risk for both parties is that such messaging can become detached from the problems voters say they want government to address. Talarico has responded to attacks on his masculinity by pointing to grocery, insurance and gasoline costs, while the broader midterm campaign is dominated by economic pressures, war, immigration and health care. Yet the persistence of gendered attacks suggests campaigns believe cultural identity can shape how voters interpret those substantive issues — particularly whether a candidate appears strong enough to fight for them.
The emerging 2026 divide is therefore not simply between masculine Republicans and Democrats trying to imitate them. It is increasingly a contest between competing definitions of strength. Trump-era Republican politics has often rewarded confrontation, dominance and resistance to perceived weakness; Democrats such as Talarico are trying to pair strength with responsibility and service, while candidates such as El-Sayed show that some Democrats are also willing to fight opponents using the vocabulary of “alpha” and “beta” politics itself. Whether either approach moves significant numbers of voters remains unproven. What is already clear is that masculinity, once largely an implicit quality in presidential imagery, has become explicit campaign language in races that could help determine who controls Congress.