This year's midterm elections will turn on many issues. The Iran war, tariffs, inflation. Immigration, taxes, health care.
But there is another, potentially potent undercurrent in several key races that could determine control of Congress — what makes a real man?
It's the latest example of tough-guy politics since Donald Trump brought his own version of masculinity to the trail more than a decade ago, belittling Republican rivals and defeating two Democratic
women in his White House campaigns. Now many Democrats are trying to project their own manhood — or at least more confidently deflect conservatives' attacks — as they try to return to power.
“Democratic voters want a candidate who will fight,” said Beth Reingold, an Emory University professor who specializes in gender and politics. “And that’s conceived as a sort of masculine demand, a more masculine approach, especially in response to Trump.”
In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed accused Republican rival Mike Rogers of “beta energy” as they argued over their high school football credentials.
Republicans in Texas, famous for its cowboy boots and swagger, have denigrated Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico as “Low T Talarico,” a reference to testosterone.
Talarico, who is 37 and running against 63-year-old Ken Paxton, brushed off the insult by saying, “I don’t think guys my age are really concerned about that kind of thing."
Reingold said the gender debate normally revolves around how women candidates present themselves.
“What’s different in this election,” she said, "is that there’s even more of an incentive for these male candidates to make their masculinity present in some way, shape or form.”
Projecting vigor and hiding weakness is not new in U.S. politics.
Franklin Roosevelt concealed his partial paralysis and his wheelchair from the public. John F. Kennedy, the youngest elected president, liked to be photographed sailing and playing football. He never disclosed debilitating back pain — an old war injury — and the medication he took to endure it. Ronald Reagan, at the time the oldest president ever to serve, was often photographed on horseback.
Trump offered a more bellicose take. He's wielded mocking nicknames against opponents, such as “Little Marco” Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state, and “Low Energy Jeb” Bush, now retired from politics. During a debate in 2016, Trump even defended the size of his genitals.
When he entered the Republican National Convention in 2024, the speakers blasted James Brown “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” He had just survived a would-be assassin's bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he stood on stage, his face bloodied, and pumped his fist while telling supporters to “fight! fight! fight!”
That November, Trump increased his support among male voters to 55%, compared with 51% in his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, according to AP VoteCast.
Rogers, a former Republican congressman, recently unveiled a campaign advertisement saying Democrats want to allow “men in women’s sports." He hit El-Sayed as too liberal for Michigan while recalling his own high school football days.
El-Sayed answered him on social media over the weekend. “Clearly your teammates didn’t vote you captain,” he wrote. “If they did, you would have said it in the ad. Probably had that beta energy back then, too. I (asterisk)was(asterisk) captain. Football. Wrestling. Lacrosse.”
In their social media exchange, Rogers didn’t want to let El-Sayed get in the last jab.
“Nothing screams ‘alpha’ quite like a 41-year-old desperately reminding everyone he was popular in high school,” Rogers wrote. “Looks like someone peaked in high school.”
El-Sayed often campaigns in tight black T-shirts and lifts weights on camera. But he's also released videos of himself singing and dancing, and he's mocked conservative ideals of masculinity.
“Being a man is not about how you show up in the gym," he said in an interview with Lever News, a progressive news site. "It's about how you show up for your family. It's about how you show up in your community."
Masculinity surfaced as a Texas topic soon after Talarico, a state representative, won Democrats' nomination for Senate.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who is not up for reelection this year, mused on Fox News that “if you were making a list of 1,000 adjectives to describe this guy, ‘masculine’ would not be one of them” and that “if a stiff breeze came by it would blow him over.”
More recently, a pro-Paxton political action committee aired an ad partly on transgender politics. It opens depicting a barrel-chested, thick-bearded man sporting a stern look and a scuffed hard hat.
“This is Texas,” a deep voice narrates.
“This is not,” the voice continues, before a reel plays of Talarico saying there are more than two biological sexes.
Paxton's team bets the personal jabs — and their political associations — will sway voters in a state with the slogan, "don't mess with Texas.”
“When one party or one group says that another candidate isn’t masculine, or isn’t masculine enough, they are not really just talking about that candidate,” said Joshua Blank, research director for the Texas Political Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
“It’s a way to say that this candidate is allied with groups and individuals who hold nontraditional views about the roles of men and women in society," Blank continued, “and even the definition of male and female.”
Talarico mostly shrugs off the insults, saying they “don’t meet the needs of Texans” who want to afford groceries, insurance and gas.
Yet he also flips the conversation “about what it means to be a real man” by recalling boyhood memories of his adoptive father, Mark Talarico, mowing lawns each Saturday — his own as well as the elderly widow’s next door.
“He never talked about it. He just did it — because that’s what a man does,” Talarico says on the campaign trail. “Call me old fashioned but a real man takes responsibility."
Then he uses the topic to allude to corruption allegations against Paxton, which he has denied.
“Real men serve others,” Talarico adds. “Weak men serve themselves.”
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Barrow reported from Atlanta. Bedayn reported from Austin.
