预告候选、奶酪蛋糕工厂与手足之争：细数2026年末中期选举的诸多旁枝末节

Spoiler candidate, Cheesecake Factory and sibling rivalry: Recounting the many late 2026 midterm sideshows

2026-11-01T11:30:15.827Z / CNN

The 2026 midterm elections mostly revolve around deeply serious business. There’s a war going on. Polls show Americans are worried about the economy and affordability, like they’ve rarely ever been. And the results will determine whether and how much Democrats can provide a check on President Donald Trump’s attempted consolidation of power.

But as is often the case, the final stages of the campaign have been chock full of things that have nothing to do with all of that — and some of it has been rather silly and even corrosive.

One of the most substantial is, of course, a New York Times report on Democratic Alaska Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign’s role in recruiting the other Dan Sullivan to apparently try to confuse Alaska voters intending to vote for Sen. Dan Sullivan.

Peltola maintains that she “knew nothing about any other candidates on the ballot” and that she is “not interested in tricking voters.” She also labeled the story “another distraction” and “another diversion” from real issues like affordability.

“Every day it’s some new, you know, ‘Look over here’ moment,” Peltola said.

Unfortunately for Peltola, it appears that her own campaign gave people good reason to look over there. While Democrats will point to other political dirty tricks in both the distant and recent past, it’s rare that such a trick is tied so directly to a candidate’s campaign.

But what’s perhaps most remarkable about all of it is how silly the gambit appears to have been in the first place. There is very little chance that that other Dan Sullivan will actually make the difference in the race.

And this is only the latest sideshow.

The Ohio governor’s race was already known as somewhat nasty, but then GOP nominee Vivek Ramaswamy decided to up the ante when he featured Democrat Amy Acton’s mother criticizing her in an ad. This despite Acton having said she has had no contact with her mother since she was 12-years-old, around the time the man her mother married was indicted for allegedly sexually abusing Acton.

The ad seemed desperate, at best. And despite initially defending his decision to run it, Ramaswamy’s campaign has discontinued it after reportedly spending only a fraction of what was initially announced.

Meanwhile, Republicans have strained to make a culture-war issue of a quip from former President Barack Obama that Trump has “got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” It’s their new attempted “cling to guns and religion.”

Republicans have suggested this amounts to Obama talking down to people who enjoy the chain restaurant. Never mind that the Cheesecake Factory’s decor is intentionally over-the-top (or the whole Saddam Hussein aspect). And never mind the Trump is out there talking about how his supporters probably can’t afford to eat at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump also continues to mention candidates’ physiques, mostly repeating references to the quality of GOP Ohio Sen. Jon Husted’s “ass.” This is, of course, after Trump repeatedly insulted Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton’s appearance for unknown reasons.

When Vice President JD Vance got a serious question about affordability during a Fox News town hall on Thursday night, he quipped that he was surprised more people weren’t asking him about Husted’s derriere — before proceeding to answer the question.

On an uglier level, the GOP’s Islamophobic attacks on Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed took a downright bizarre turn this week. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. espoused a bunch of untrue claims about the lack of achievements by the world’s 500 million Arabs.

Then there’s a whole other category of sideshows: intra-party and intra-family squabbling.

In the South Carolina Senate race, GOP Rep. Ralph Norman can’t seem to let go of his loss to appointed GOP Sen. Darline Graham, repeatedly saying that voters “deserve better” and feeding into Graham’s major liability: her lack of experience.

In the New Hampshire Senate race, we’ve had some Sununu-on-Sununu rhetorical violence. Amid some questions about whether voters know that it’s former GOP Sen. John E. Sununu running rather than his brother, the popular recent former Gov. Chris Sununu, Chris Sununu joked that if voters thought it was him, Republicans would be “up by 30 points.”

John E. Sununu didn’t seem to appreciate that idea, responding: “I love my brother, but he’s totally wrong.”

And in the Michigan Senate race, Rep. Haley Stevens’ fiancé — Jewish Democrat Jason Turkish — publicly backed Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers over El-Sayed. Stevens has assured voters that she still backs El-Sayed and soon planned an event with him, but she’s made pretty clear that she’s lukewarm. And on Friday she even urged El-Sayed to more forcefully condemn an outside group’s ad that criticizes US aid to Israel.

By late Friday, El-Sayed’s campaign told Stevens to stay away from its campaign events.

The person Stevens’ fiancé is voting for probably doesn’t matter much to your average voter. But it does point to potential problems that El-Sayed seems to have with Jewish Democrats. And there are clearly hard feelings here that aren’t going away — even at a time when the party wants to project unity.

Still, it’s unlikely that most or any of these things will actually make a difference in the end. Many people have already voted, and the vast majority of Americans are likely set in their opinions.

But people tend to get quite squirrely and desperate towards the end of campaigns. And 2026 is surely no exception。