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The November Battleground Races and the Numbers to Watch: Jim Pfaff on The Alec Lace Show | Sep 8, 2026

Published: September 8, 2026
Network: The Alec Lace Show (YouTube)
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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Jim Pfaff joined The Alec Lace Show on September 8, 2026 from Dallas, the night before the first-ever RNC Midterm Convention opened, with The Conservative Caucus set up in a premier media suite on Media Row. Lace wanted one thing above all: which contests to watch on election night. Pfaff named them — Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire and Texas — and then added the number he thinks tells the most about the November battleground races, which is not a poll at all but campaign spending. Along the way the two worked through mail-in ballots and the Post Office, what President Trump has to say from the Dallas stage, whether JD Vance’s Thursday keynote is a 2028 audition, and a pledge Pfaff wants House Republicans to make about the Democrat Socialists of America.

Topics Covered

• From the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas: TCC on Media Row
• The Last Chance to Vote for Donald Trump — and Why Candidates Still Have to Run
• Mail-In Ballots, the Post Office, and an 80% Issue
• The November Battleground Races: Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire, Texas
• JD Vance, the Thursday Keynote, and the 2028 Audition
• A Pledge on the DSA, 25 Years After 9/11
• Key Takeaways

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From the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas: TCC on Media Row

Lace opened by noting the obvious: this is historic, the first time there has been an RNC midterm convention, and Pfaff was on the scene. Pfaff could not show the hall on camera before the event started, but he described where he was sitting — a premier media suite right at Media Row, behind him, on the same row as ABC, NBC, CBS, Real America’s Voice and NTD News.

The Caucus plan for the two days was a working newsroom, not a booth. Pfaff said guests would be coming through the suite, naming Mike Collins, who is running in Georgia, and Jack Posobiec among them. TCC would run recorded interviews, live coverage and Q&A, including chats and super chats so viewers could talk back. Our fuller preview of what the Caucus is doing in Texas is in our coverage of the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas.

Pfaff was blunt about the purpose. The goal, he said, is to talk about what is going on at the event and then about the real opportunities Republicans have to still pull this out after — as he and Lace have discussed many times — working really hard to try to lose this thing. With almost 60 days left until November, he called this the critical time. Right now is it, and the November battleground races are where he expects the convention’s energy to land or not land.

The Last Chance to Vote for Donald Trump — and Why Candidates Still Have to Run

Pfaff had made the argument on Newsmax days earlier and repeated it here: this is essentially the last time Americans get a chance to vote for President Donald Trump. Yes, Trump will endorse somebody to run in 2028, and people will say it is still Trump’s agenda — but it is not. It will be a totally different person and a new administration. This is Trump’s presidency. This is his administration. If Republicans do not hold Congress, Pfaff said, the president will be handcuffed with impeachments, a lame duck riding out two years with nothing much to speak of.

That is the stakes argument. What Pfaff refused to let it become is an excuse for candidates to coast.

“The reality is every one of these congressional candidates is running in their election. They cannot sit back and say Donald Trump’s going to bring me over the finish line.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Their campaigns have to do the work, Pfaff said — getting out the voters in their districts, and in their states for senators — and carry a message about why Republican governance right now is the only way to keep the country on a path to reestablishing its greatness in the world. Trump has done a tremendous job of that, but the candidates have to run hard and make it happen themselves.

He laid out the record he thinks they should be running on. The border is tightened up. There is less crime and less murder than the country has had in 70 years. Inflation is at a plateau after rising more than 20% during the Biden administration, and even with oil prices moving because of Iran, Pfaff said the foundations are good enough to support a massive wave of economic growth over the next two to four years. He added that Americans without a college degree are doing better now than they ever have, because a degree is no longer necessary for most of the great jobs in this country — a point Lace tied back to a conversation with Mike Rowe about six-figure blue-collar and manufacturing jobs coming back with nobody to fill them.

Mail-In Ballots, the Post Office, and an 80% Issue

Lace asked whether the president’s late effort at the Supreme Court to limit mail-in ballots could still produce relief, given that the SAVE Act had failed in the Senate, or whether it was simply too late.

“I don’t think it’s too late. I think that the Post Office has got a lot in place already.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The Post Office has been working on this for a long time, Pfaff said, and if they can do this, he said, it will go a long way. On the legislative side he was more cautious: the Save America Act may or may not actually be dead, and even passage now might be a pyrrhic victory, because implementing everything before November would be hard. But JD Vance has been talking more seriously about what the White House has been thinking through regarding his powers as president of the Senate — worth forcing, Pfaff argued, even if the calendar limits what can be implemented.

The obstacle is his own party’s senators, and he did not soften it.

“A bunch of politicians that don’t want to win on an 80% issue.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Americans genuinely care about people proving they are a citizen in order to vote, Pfaff said — not only families here for generations, but first- and second-generation Hispanic voters and voters from other groups, with whom the issue resonates a whole lot. His conclusion was about the vice president’s seat: the majority leader traditionally runs the Senate, but the vice president is the president of the Senate, and Vance should assert that authority. Getting 51 Republicans to agree would be a legislative victory that shows people Republicans might possibly be serious if voters give them a chance in November.

The November Battleground Races: Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire, Texas

When Lace asked for the top races that will tell viewers early on election night how the evening is going, Pfaff said the ones he would name have different aspects of what has to happen. The November battleground races he watches are not all the same kind of test.

Michigan is first and it is critical. Pfaff volunteered that he is no fan of Mike Rogers and really does not like the guy in many ways — Lace told him he is not alone — but Abdul El-Sayed is a disaster if he gets in there. The deeper question is whether a state with a large Muslim population inclined to support El-Sayed can be overcome by voters motivated to go against what Pfaff called a fire taking place. He drew the New York City parallel: Zohran Mamdani won there with people who are not New Yorkers, and Andrew Cuomo would have won if it were up to New Yorkers. Pfaff thinks Michigan is possible even though the polls show differently at this moment, and that Rogers could win fairly handily, somewhere between two and five percentage points — stakes we laid out in our analysis of Michigan as the DSA’s next test case.

Georgia is the second bellwether. Pfaff called Jon Ossoff the odds-on favorite and then said the quiet part anyway.

“Listen, Ossoff is vulnerable there more than people think about.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

If Mike Collins can bring the activist and establishment coalitions together in Georgia — two camps Pfaff said are always fighting with one another in that state’s GOP — and pull off a victory over Ossoff, that would signal something really huge nationally. New Hampshire is third, where Pfaff said he believed Sununu had taken the nomination the night before; if Sununu pulls that off, the race is actually looking like a potentially competitive one. Georgia and New Hampshire, Pfaff added, are the two nobody is talking about and the two he thinks are really important. And in Texas, where he was sitting, Ken Paxton has to have the money behind him; if Paxton takes the same path Ted Cruz did against Beto O’Rourke, that is a good indicator too.

Then Pfaff gave the number he had seen that day, which is about money rather than polling.

“If you go to 2010, ’14, ’18, and ’22, the party that spent the most money kept the Congress.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Lace said that was useful to him precisely because the prediction markets still have Democrats as a heavy favorite for the House, although the line has shortened from where it started, and because the Senate has to be held. Pfaff’s answer was to watch the spending flow alongside the November battleground races state by state.

JD Vance, the Thursday Keynote, and the 2028 Audition

Lace also asked what President Trump needs to deliver from the Dallas stage. Pfaff said Trump obviously has to talk about what he has done — there are fewer government employees now than at any point going as far back as 1966, about 2.5 million federal employees today, of whom nearly a million, if not a little over a million, are military service personnel, plus the change to the regulatory regime and prescription drug prices. But accomplishments alone are not quite enough. Trump has to tie them to the one big, beautiful bill and lay out a legislative agenda he believes he can get done if Republicans are reelected, because the voters who turn out this time are concerned about what Congress is going to do. Make that connection, Pfaff said, and the event can be a home run.

Lace pushed back on one point: the Democrats’ motivation is a get-Trump platform, and as much as this is the last chance to vote for Trump, it is their last chance to vote against him. Then he turned to the vice president, who was scheduled to keynote on Thursday, and asked how much of it is an audition for 2028.

“Oh, it’s totally an audition for that. There’s no doubt about it, at least in this environment.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

It will not carry Vance to the nomination or to the presidency on its own, Pfaff said, but what he can and must do is lay the groundwork: here is what I am about, here is what I stand for, here is how I will continue the pro-Trump agenda. That requires a whole lot more than he has been doing lately — expanding the message beyond current events and casting the vision out further. Done the right way it will not sound crass, and Vance can do both things at once: set himself up for 2028 and help get good things done in November.

Pfaff’s reasoning is coalition arithmetic. An effective strategy for people who run for president is to build coalitions with people running for Congress. If Vance helps candidates get over the line this year, there is always that sense of “he helped me get through this, I’m going to take him through the rest of the way” — and that becomes very important in 2028.

A Pledge on the DSA, 25 Years After 9/11

Lace, who is in New Jersey, said the country was days from the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and the pain is still fresh. Pfaff said Lace is right in the heart of it there, and that Americans generally feel the visceral weight of it but it really hits home in the New York area. He pointed at something he found genuinely powerful: more than 100,000 family members of those who perished that day have signed a petition saying they do not want Zohran Mamdani anywhere near it. There is something in that, he said, that shows the American people still know exactly what is at stake.

His view of the anniversary was that what America is — a constitutional republic that provides a light for the world in how it organizes things — needs to be emphasized and remembered on Friday, and set against what he called the Islamofascist movement that the Democrat Socialists of America represents. Anyone who supports Islamic terror, or groups like CAIR that support it, is illegitimate and should be shamed for it unless they denounce that terror and work against it in real actions. Lace compared it to the loyalty oaths required of Southern soldiers after the Civil War and said he expects to see something similar now. Pfaff took the idea somewhere concrete and legislative.

“I think that Republicans who are running for Congress, particularly in the House, need to make a pledge.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The pledge Pfaff wants is this: anybody who has claimed to stand with the principles of the Democrat Socialists of America should not be allowed to be sworn into their seat if elected, whether in New York City or anywhere else. His grounding is the text of the oath itself. It requires the officeholder to defend and protect the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic, and to take that obligation without any purpose of evasion — and Pfaff does not think anyone who is a DSA member can say they are not evading support for the Constitution.

Pfaff closed by pointing viewers to theconservativecaucus.com, where a banner runs when the Caucus is live and links to the social feeds carrying the coverage, with recorded interviews posted there as well. Lace said he would be tuning in and would have Pfaff back after the convention to assess whether it produced any momentum.

Key Takeaways

1. TCC broadcast the convention from Media Row – On the eve of the first RNC midterm convention, The Conservative Caucus had a premier media suite on Media Row in Dallas alongside ABC, NBC, CBS, Real America’s Voice and NTD News, running interviews, live coverage and viewer Q&A across both days.
2. Candidates cannot ride Trump across the line – Pfaff says this is the last chance Americans get to vote for Donald Trump, but every congressional candidate is running in their own election and has to get out the voters in their district or state on a Republican governance message.
3. It is not too late on mail-in ballots – Pfaff says the Post Office already has a lot in place and has been working on it a long time. He wants JD Vance to assert his authority as president of the Senate on the Save America Act, and calls Senate Republicans who will not fight for it politicians who do not want to win on an 80% issue.
4. Four bellwethers, four different tests – Michigan (Mike Rogers by two to five points over Abdul El-Sayed would be a big win), Georgia (Jon Ossoff is more vulnerable than people think if Mike Collins unites the activist and establishment wings), New Hampshire (Pfaff believed Sununu had just taken the nomination, which would make the race potentially competitive), and Texas (Ken Paxton has to have the money behind him).
5. Watch the money, not just the polls – In 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 the party that spent the most kept the Congress. There is a lot of money on the table that has not gone out yet, and Pfaff treats that as a key indicator for the November battleground races.
6. A pledge against seating DSA members – Pfaff wants House Republicans to pledge that anyone who has claimed to stand with the principles of the Democrat Socialists of America should not be sworn in, because the oath of office must be taken without any purpose of evasion.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Sep 8, 2026 on The Alec Lace Show, from The Conservative Caucus media suite on Media Row at the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas.