From New York City to Colorado, Democratic candidates who have run on socialist affordability messages and anti-establishment platforms have had success in the 2026 primary races, handing more centrist, career politicians losses they haven’t seen in decades.
The socialists’ success has divided the Democratic Party, with members debating whether to embrace the socialist rise within the party in this midterm cycle or stick to more established anti-Trump messaging.
But one Texas Democrat has attempted to cut through this noise and chart his own path within the party. Texas Democrat Nathan Johnson, running for state Attorney General, believes he will see success by running on a platform that prioritizes the rule of law and democracy, saying cost-of-living issues are inherently tied to those two main points.
“While around the country people are running on affordability, sure, I’m running on affordability, but it is a subheading. It is under the rule of law,” Johnson said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
Johnson’s campaign is based on his argument that without the rule of law in place, the government is only “accountable to private interests,” as American voters feel left out of the conversation and turned into “price takers,” he explained.
“While that concentrated power is jacking up prices and reducing quality and reducing options and being abusive of customers and government is stripping away consumer protections, people feel like the rule of law is being used against them,” Johnson said.
He explained that he is not running on an anti-Trump agenda nor a leftist, anti-establishment platform, telling the Washington Examiner, “It’s not really about Trump so much as it is about having a government that is not brazenly corrupt and that we’re not having a pigs-at-the-trough festival of kleptocracy.”
Johnson is the Democratic nominee running for Texas Attorney General against Republican Mayes Middleton. The two State Senators are vying to replace current Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton, who put the Texas attorney general’s office in the national spotlight as he took on the Biden administration with over 100 lawsuits.
Paxton, who is taking on blue State Rep. James Talarico in the state’s general U.S. Senate race, has been criticized by Democrats for various past scandals, including his 2023 impeachment trial on charges alleging he abused his office. Paxton was acquitted of all the articles of impeachment and slammed the charges as politically motivated.
Nevertheless, Paxton’s legacy as attorney general has shaped the race to fill his seat, with Johnson running on a rule-of-law message in the wake of the Paxton office and Middleton running on preserving conservative values, such as securing the border and protecting the unborn, as an ally of the Trump administration, similar to Paxton’s messaging. As State Senators, both Johnson and Middleton served as jurors in Paxton’s impeachment trial, with the former voting to convict and the latter voting to acquit.
With Texas being such a unique state politically and Paxton being such a high-profile attorney general to succeed, the race is set up to be a general election different from various federal legislative races around the country.
Johnson called his home state a “political island” and pinned it as different from states where other Democratic primaries have played out, when asked about where he sees his platform amid the national trends between Socialist and anti-Trump Democratic candidates.
“I hear these arguments: you’re not liberal enough, or you’re not conservative enough. I’m running on competence and integrity and upholding the systems that allow us to have the luxury of disagreeing and arguing about it in a democratic context,” Johnson said.
Despite the Socialist-platform wins around the country, Johnson says he thinks his anti-corruption, pro-democracy platform will have success because he thinks, to voters, the rule of law “looks like it’s in jeopardy.”
“I think pundits and analysts and press underestimate how important the rule of law is to people, ultimately, when they’re presented with the possibility of losing it. Honestly, we take it for granted,” Johnson said.
Johnson also won the Democratic nomination for the race against a more progressive, leftist challenger, former Galveston mayor Joe Jaworski, defeating him by 18.8 points in the primary runoff.
In a state where a Democrat has not won a statewide election since 1994 and which Trump won by 13.6 points in 2024, GOP Middleton is largely expected to win the general election match-up.
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Middleton led Johnson 41% to 36% in a late June University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll.
Middleton, who beat out Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) in the GOP primary runoff by a 10-point margin, has emphasized his tough-on-crime and anti-woke platform throughout the election cycle.
