Anti-Trump Republicans who bolted from their party and reinvented themselves as Democratic candidates are discovering an awkward truth: the voters they now court don't want them, either. In race after race during the 2026 primary season, these political converts are finishing far behind lifelong Democrats, often by staggering margins, raising hard questions about whether the "Never Trump" brand has any electoral value left at all.
The pattern is clear and growing. Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who broke with Donald Trump over the 2020 election and campaigned alongside Democrats in 2024, finished a distant fourth in the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial primary last month, nearly 50 points behind winner Keisha Lance Bottoms. In a Pennsylvania battleground House race, Marine veteran and former federal prosecutor Ryan Crosswell lost by 20 points to a state firefighters union head who had the backing of national Democrats and Gov. Josh Shapiro.
And more tests are coming. George Conway, the now ex-husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, is running in a deep Democratic primary field for an open House seat in Manhattan's 12th District this month. An Emerson College survey released last month put him in fourth place with just 9 percent support.
For years, these former Republicans commanded outsized media attention. Cable news bookings flowed freely. Small-dollar fundraising was strong. The president himself kept up a running commentary on their defections. But translating anti-Trump celebrity into actual Democratic votes has proved to be a different matter entirely.
Andrew Mamo, a spokesperson for The Bench, a group that backed Brooks in the Pennsylvania race, framed the shift bluntly in remarks to NBC News:
"Welcome to the tent, absolutely. Every former Republican is fantastic to have, but I think there is a real change from 2018 and the early years of Trump resistance in the Democratic Party. It is much more about authenticity and who have you always been, and what have your fights looked like."
Mamo added that many of these candidates carried a particular liability: government credentials. "Being like, 'hello, I'm from the federal bureaucracy, and I'm here to help,' the base is not exactly fired up for those types of people," he said.
That line should resonate with anyone who remembers Ronald Reagan's famous quip about the nine most terrifying words in the English language. Apparently even Democratic primary voters have their limits when it comes to Washington insiders parachuting into their races.
One episode in particular seems to haunt Democratic strategists as they assess the value of former Republican allies. In the closing weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, then-Vice President Kamala Harris barnstormed the country with former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, hoping the pairing would peel off Republican voters skeptical of Trump.
It didn't work. And the lesson has sunk in. Democratic strategist Eric Stern, who counts Pennsylvania winner Bob Brooks as a client, told NBC News the calculus has changed entirely.
"Based on what we know now, I would be surprised if you had Kamala Harris out there campaigning with Liz Cheney. That was a strategic choice the party made that, based on the results, we absolutely would not make now. Why would we hand over the keys to the people that drove us off the cliff in the first place?"
That last question is worth sitting with. Democrats are now openly asking why they should trust the political instincts of people whose party affiliation record is, at best, inconsistent. It's a fair question, and one conservatives have been asking for years.
Meanwhile, Trump has continued to push back on critics from a position of political strength, making the "Never Trump" lane look even narrower than it did in 2024.
George Conway's race in New York's 12th District offers the next high-profile test case. He faces state Assemblymen Micah Lasher and Alex Bores, as well as Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg, in a crowded field. Internal and unaffiliated polling shows Conway trailing.
Conway himself insists the Democratic Party has been welcoming. "Whether or not I win or lose, I've received a lot of support from Democrats to run against a strong field of many candidates who have worked in the district as politicians longer than I have," he said. "I think that the strength of the party is its diversity."
His pitch to voters leans heavily on opposition to the president. Conway told NBC News he sees fighting Trump and promoting an economic agenda as inseparable, but that fighting Trump must come first.
"The thing that has to come first is addressing Trumpism and fighting it tooth and nail by having a Congress that actually is going to hold the executive to account both by investigations and by impeachment proceedings against the president and his Cabinet officers, including the vice president."
Conway also argued that Democrats lost in 2024 because "they weren't tough enough on Trump" and "didn't do enough to provoke him and show the American public how unfit he was for public office." He called the current government "the most corrupt... in American history."
That kind of rhetoric may play well on cable news panels. Whether it moves voters in a Democratic primary where the field includes candidates with deep local roots is another question, and the early polling suggests the answer is no.
The broader political landscape has shifted considerably since the early days of anti-Trump resistance. As recent developments have vindicated several of Trump's positions, the "resistance" posture looks less like principled courage and more like a career pivot that didn't pan out.
One revealing detail from the Pennsylvania race: Crosswell actually outraised Brooks in the 7th District contest. He still lost by 20 points. Crosswell blamed outside spending on Brooks' behalf, but the gap between fundraising strength and vote share tells a deeper story. Anti-Trump media appeal generates donations. It does not generate Democratic primary wins.
Crosswell, for his part, argued that Democrats are making a strategic mistake by shutting out converts. "I think a message that resonates, whether you speak to a Republican, whether you speak to an independent or whether you speak to a Democrat, is people are tired of losing family and friends over politics," he said.
He also acknowledged something few in either party's activist class want to hear: "Both parties have some responsibility" for the toxic political climate, he said, "and really have some responsibility for bridging that gap again."
That kind of even-handedness might sound reasonable in a general election. In a Democratic primary, where the base wants fighters, not bridge-builders, it proved to be a losing message.
The dynamic mirrors what happened when Trump took actions that provoked sharp Democratic backlash but solidified his standing with his own voters. Both parties reward loyalty and punish perceived opportunism. Former Republicans are learning that lesson the hard way.
Not every former Republican convert is losing. Former Rep. David Jolly of Florida, who has been a vocal Trump critic since the president's first term, is running for governor as a Democrat and holds a primary lead in early surveys. He appears to be the exception that proves the rule, a candidate who built a longer track record of Democratic engagement before asking for Democratic votes.
Then there's Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence who left the White House in 2020 and became one of Trump's most visible critics. She announced in April that she would run for Congress in Virginia's newly drawn 7th District as "a proud Democrat." But she has already ended her campaign after the state Supreme Court threw out the congressional map voters narrowly approved.
Troye pushed back on the idea that former Republicans are interchangeable. "If you put George Conway, me and Geoff Duncan in a room, we probably differ on a lot of things," she said. "If they want to grow a bigger tent, because they seem to say that they want to be the bigger tent, they want to welcome people, but then when they try to bring people in, they don't actually want to listen."
She raised a fair point about the Democratic Party's internal contradictions. The party spent years advertising itself as a "big tent" and courting Republican defectors. Now that those defectors are showing up and asking for nominations, the tent appears to have a velvet rope.
This comes at a time when Trump's political position has only strengthened. Recent announcements from the White House have kept Democrats on defense, making the "Never Trump" pitch even harder to sell to primary voters who want results, not résumés.
Democratic strategists told NBC News that the races highlight a shifting mindset among primary voters, who no longer believe "Never Trump" Republicans are best positioned to fight for them. The party is wrestling with its own brand and the perception that it has become defined entirely by opposition to one man.
Conway himself seemed to acknowledge this tension, even as he leaned into it. "This isn't just a battle about policy points," he said. "We can't get to the policy papers the Democrats like so much until we deal with the fundamental fact that we have the most corrupt government in American history."
That framing, Trump first, policy second, is precisely what Democratic primary voters appear to be rejecting. They want candidates who can talk about kitchen-table issues from lived experience, not lawyers and political operatives whose primary credential is having publicly feuded with the president.
In Pennsylvania, Brooks won by running on his working-class background and promising class-based representation. In Georgia, Bottoms crushed Duncan with deep local roots and name recognition. The pattern is consistent: Democrats are choosing Democrats.
And Trump has shown a consistent ability to prevail over his political opponents, whether they sit across the aisle or within his own former party. The "Never Trump" converts are now learning they lack a natural home in either coalition.
The broader takeaway is one that conservatives have understood instinctively for years. Political identity isn't a costume you swap when the old one stops fitting. Voters, on both sides, can smell opportunism. They reward people who fought alongside them in the lean years, not latecomers who arrived after the cameras were already rolling.
Crosswell, Duncan, and Conway all generated headlines, fundraising, and media bookings. None of that translated into votes from the people they now claim to represent. The Democratic base, whatever its other faults, appears to grasp something the political class often misses: being against something isn't the same as being for the people in front of you.
Turns out the only thing harder than leaving your party is convincing the other one you belong.
