Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said the Republican Mayors Association, a group he launched after he switched from being a Democrat, could help the GOP make gains in the 2026 midterms by attracting urban voters.
“For a long time, the Republican Party has basically conceded that Democrats are going to be dominant in our major cities and use them more as foils to talk about,” Johnson said in a CNBC interview that aired Monday. “But what we’re realizing now is that there are a lot of votes in these cities, and they actually impact the statewide races, and particularly swing states. It becomes very important in presidential years.”
This comes nearly a week after the city of Miami elected Eileen Higgins, a Democrat, as its first female mayor. No Democrat had held the position in decades, and Higgins beat a candidate backed by President Donald Trump in Florida, a red state.
Johnson said he wanted his association and the Republican National Committee to get involved early in scores of mayoral races in the top 300 cities where there may be an overlap in a key congressional race. “In Miami, the Democrats were really early involved in that race, and it paid off for them, and they outspent us 19 to one in that race,” he said.
Political Points
“We can’t let that happen,” he continued.
Next year, the city of Los Angeles will be the largest U.S. city to have mayoral elections. It’s a nonpartisan race, as is the case in Dallas. Still, Mayor Karen Bass won as a progressive candidate in 2022, beating Rick Caruso, a former Republican, by nearly 10 percentage points.
The next three cities in line include Oklahoma City, where Republican David Holt is up for reelection in a nonpartisan seat; Louisville, Kentucky, which has Democrat Craig Greenberg as mayor. Next year’s election will be the first time the Louisville race will be nonpartisan. The state traditionally votes Republican in national and state elections but has a Democrat as the state’s elected official in Gov. Andy Beshear.
Raleigh, North Carolina, will also see mayoral elections in 2026. The southeastern state became a potential swing state after former President Barack Obama carried the state in 2008. Raleigh is currently led by Janet Cowell, a Democrat.
A month ago, voters in New York City also elevated a younger, more progressive candidate, signaling electoral headwinds for the GOP, which had cut into a democratic stronghold and moved voters to the right.
The midterms next year have the potential to shift the levers of power, and Johnson, who has typically cast himself as opposed to policies that call for more government regulation, said affordability would remain relevant to the GOP.
“To a certain degree, people are forgetting that we do live in a free market economy, at least ostensibly, and prices of things are determined by the market,” he said, adding that supply and demand determine prices, and there was a growing feeling that the government can play a greater role in setting prices.
“That, to me, is a little bit concerning,” he said.
Republicans, he said, will have to be careful about how they respond to it. “If we go down that road, I think that we’re sort of playing to the socialist game here, and if we don’t, we appear not to be sensitive to the issue,” he said.
His answer to the conundrum? Talk more about the ways officials can reduce the price of housing by increasing the supply of housing and making the processing of permits more efficient.