You want to help make a difference for Democrats in the 2026 elections, but you have a limited donation budget. At the same time, dozens and dozens of seemingly worthy candidates and organizations keep asking you for money. If you gave money to all of them, you would be broke. What do you do about this?
One thing you can do—and I think you should do—is to demand from the candidates who are asking you for money to demonstrate they are proven electoral overperformers who do better at the ballot box than the average Democrat.
This is what you already demand from any business you buy something from. You don’t keep buying coffee from a coffeeshop that serves you bad coffee. You don’t keep buying cars from a dealer that sells you a bad car. Who would do that?
It can be all too easy to blame “the Democrats” for not doing well on Election Day. However, not all Democrats are the same. Some perform much better at the ballot box than others. And I am not talking about candidates who win safe, deep blue seats where Republicans basically don’t exist. I am talking about candidates who perform better than an average Democrat would perform if an average Democrat were running in exactly the same race.
In 2026, looking at the crucial races that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate, there are three Democratic candidates whose record clearly demonstrates they are overperformers compared to the average Democrat:
Sherrod Brown in Ohio. In his four races for Senate, Sherrod Brown outperformed the average Democratic vote share by four points points in 2006, three points in 2012, ten in 2018, and seven and a half points in 2024. For decades, Brown has outperformed the Democratic nominee for governor and President of the United States in Ohio, proving that his populist, down-to-earth, working class style is more effective than the average Democrat.
Mary Peltola in Alaska. In both of her runs for Congress in Alaska—she won comfortably in 2022 and narrowly lost in 2024—Pelolta outperformed the national Democratic ticket by double digits (in fact, she outperformed the average Democrat by more than 20 points in 2022, although she was up against Sarah Palin, lol). Peltola, an indigenous Alaskan whose motto is “fish, family, freedom,” appeals to Alaskans in a way that few—if any—other Democrats could ever hope to match.
Josh Turek in Iowa. Turek, who survived 21 surgeries by the age of 12 to win two gold medals in wheelchair basketball for Team USA, represents the reddest seat in Iowa currently held by a Democrat. This seat, the Iowa 20th House of Representatives district, hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1968. However, with his inspiring story and hopeful attitude, Turek won it twice—and in bad years for Democrats at that (2022 and 2024).
Brown, Peltola and Turek have all repeatedly proven they can get people to vote for Democrats that very few others can. When you donate to them, you know that your donation is going to an effective campaign instead of being wasted on a faulty product. That is what you would demand of everything else that you buy, and you should demand it from the Democrats who are asking you for money.
The amounts you give to each entity can be adjusted. Bowers Kerbel Media is the two-person, reader-supported, pro-democracy organization which runs Wolves and Sheep and the Bowers News Media news and activism email list.
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