A Unitarian Universalist Reflection on the 2026 Midterm Elections by Curtis Smith
On the night of November 3, I watched the returns the way many of us did: braced for disappointment and half-afraid to hope. By morning, voters in red states and blue, in cities and small towns, had spoken with a breadth and diversity that I believe Unitarian Universalists should take time to understand before we celebrate it. This is not an essay about a party. Our faith does not belong to one. It is a reflection on what the election revealed about our capacity to come together across generations, races, ethnicities, cultures, and faiths, and on what our shared values ask of us now.
What We Witnessed
Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate (BBC), flipping Senate seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas (CNN). Kansas elected its first Democratic senator since 1932 (NPR), and Texas its first since 1988 (NPR).
More moving to me than the totals were the faces. Georgia elected Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first Black woman ever elected governor of any state (AP). New Mexico elected Deb Haaland of Laguna Pueblo, the first Indigenous woman governor. Minnesota sent Peggy Flanagan of the White Earth Nation to the Senate, Michigan elected Dr. Abdul El-Sayed as the first Muslim senator, and New Hampshire elected Chris Pappas, the first openly gay man in the Senate (ABC News). Here at home, Illinois elected Juliana Stratton, the second Black woman our state has sent to the Senate (CBS Chicago).
Built Community by Community
It would be easy to explain this election with one word: backlash. But anger alone does not knock on a door or drive a neighbor to the polls. People do that. Democratic-aligned campaigns and groups knocked on more than 217 million doors and held more than 65,000 volunteer-hosted events this cycle (NGP VAN and Mobilize). In Alaska, where most communities cannot be reached by road, volunteers traveled by ATV, boat, and plane to reach voters (MS NOW). In Georgia, an Asian American advocacy group knocked on 45,000 doors in immigrant neighborhoods and helped voters in 13 languages, and its leaders said the result "didn't happen overnight" but came from "years of organizing" (Advancing Justice-Atlanta). In South Texas, LUPE Votes credited years of grassroots work and high Latino turnout (KRGV). The AFL-CIO said its volunteers reached more than 16 million union voters in its largest-ever midterm effort (AFL-CIO). About 124 million Americans voted, the second-highest midterm turnout rate since 1914 (University of Florida Election Lab).
Money proved less decisive than many feared. In Georgia, a Republican who spent more than $200 million of his own fortune still lost, and Bottoms answered him in words I hope we remember: "He may have the money, but the people still have the power" (ABC News). Turnout is not a weather event. It is a relationship.
Our Own Tradition of Organizing
None of this is new to Second Unitarian. For half a century, 2U has learned that faith becomes power when a congregation organizes with its neighbors rather than for them.
In 1976, together with other North Side congregations, 2U helped found the Night Ministry, which serves young people experiencing homelessness. In the late 1980s, working with the Lakeview Action Coalition, now ONE Northside, we helped bring supportive housing for women to the North Side through Deborah's Place. In the 1990s, when LGBTQ+ neighbors were being attacked along the lakefront, 2U and the coalition pressed the Chicago Police Department to establish lakefront bike patrols for their protection.
From the early 2000s through 2011, again with the Lakeview Action Coalition, 2U members worked for the Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO), Chicago's inclusionary housing law, which requires certain new residential developments to include affordable units or pay into an affordable housing fund. The City Council enacted it in 2003 and strengthened it in 2007 (Chicago Office of Inspector General), the result of a multi-year push by a broad coalition of community organizations (Wellesley Institute). Through the Lakeview Action Coalition, 2U members also worked for hospital charity care reform. A 2012 amendment to the Illinois Hospital Uninsured Patient Discount Act established "presumptive eligibility," under which patients who meet certain criteria, such as being homeless or enrolled in Medicaid, are deemed eligible for hospital financial assistance "without further scrutiny" (Hilltop Institute). Illinois hospitals were required to have presumptive eligibility policies in place by January 1, 2014 (Illinois Health and Hospital Association).
Beginning in the early 2000s, through the Jane Addams Senior Caucus, a multiracial grassroots organization of older Chicagoans, 2U members worked to hold nursing home owners accountable for equitable care in communities of color. JASC helped win the Illinois Nursing Home Safety Act in July 2010 (JASC), part of a reform effort that raised minimum staffing to 3.8 hours of care per resident per day (JASC). When the rules to enforce it stalled, JASC pressed a state panel in 2012 to adopt them. "Without rules for implementation, the legislation has done little if not nothing to improve conditions in nursing homes," said JASC chair Emily Byrd (Chicago Tribune). JASC also fought proposed eligibility changes to the state's Community Care Program that it said would leave 39,000 fewer seniors qualifying for in-home care, most of whom "would most likely be institutionalized in nursing homes" (JASC). In 2020, as COVID-19 swept through nursing homes, JASC joined more than 100 faith and community groups in an open letter urging owners to provide protective equipment, hazard pay, and sick time for their workers (SEIU Healthcare Illinois), and it marched in solidarity down Sheridan Road that August (JASC). Its work rests on a simple conviction: residents and the workers who care for them rise or fall together.
Also in the early 2000s, through our membership in the Community Renewal Society (CRS), we built relationships with Christian, Muslim, and Jewish congregations to expand employment, housing, and education for returning citizens, including the campaign to Ban the Box, and to pass legislative reforms that restore rights and create economic opportunity for people with records.
From 2016 to 2021, ONE Northside was part of the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability, the coalition that helped write the Empowering Communities for Public Safety ordinance. The City Council passed it in July 2021, creating a citywide Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability and elected councils in each of Chicago's 22 police districts (CCPSA). In Chicago, police accountability is built through ordinances like this one, passed by the City Council, rather than through a single law. That ordinance exists because ordinary residents, congregations among them, organized for years.
Today, through Chicago Community Jail Support, 2U members provide mutual aid to people released from Cook County Jail, their loved ones, and the surrounding community: phone calls, warm clothing, snacks and drinks, PPE, safe transportation home, and emergency housing.
We do not do this work alone, even among Unitarian Universalists. Through the Unitarian Universalist Advocacy Network of Illinois, 2U builds solidarity with UU congregations across the state, and two of our own members help lead it. Atena Danner serves as UUANI's Action Strategy Director, working with statewide teams on legislative advocacy, voter engagement, and resistance (UUANI), and Kristin Clowes serves on its board as treasurer. UUANI trains congregational leaders and organizes statewide advocacy "in solidarity with those most impacted by injustice" (UUANI). Its weekly Actions of the Week are carried out with partners such as Equality Illinois and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and in 2024 its UU the Vote Illinois campaign drew 906 volunteers (UUANI).
Our connection to the Unitarian Universalist Prison Ministry of Illinois runs deep as well. Before becoming our interim minister, the Rev. Allison Farnum served as its executive director and minister (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer). The Prison Ministry pairs people inside prisons and jails with UU pen pals, organizes reentry solidarity circles led by people returning home, and advocates for changes in state law (UUA). It counts Chicago Community Jail Support among its partners (UUPMI), so the welcome our members offer outside Cook County Jail is part of a statewide UU web of care. From Chicago to Carbondale, these networks turn separate congregations into one movement.
I name this history because it is the same lesson the election taught. Change comes community by community, relationship by relationship. Affordable housing and hospital bills are the same affordability concerns voters named this year. The work is multi-generational, as when our elders organize through the Senior Caucus. It is multiracial and multifaith, as when we stand with Muslim, Jewish, and Christian partners. The organizers who knocked on 217 million doors this fall were doing at national scale what congregations like ours have done block by block since 1976.
The Courts and Fairness
This election was fought on ground shaped by three Supreme Court decisions.
In April, Louisiana v. Callais narrowed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to cases with a "strong inference" of intentional discrimination, and some legislatures moved to eliminate majority-minority districts before November (Congressional Research Service). The NAACP Legal Defense Fund said the ruling "eviscerated" Section 2 (NAACP LDF). Republicans in seven states pursued mid-decade redistricting (Roll Call). Our own Unitarian Universalist martyrs, the Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, gave their lives in the Selma campaign that won the Voting Rights Act. When the rules are redrawn to dilute the voices of Black and brown communities, people of faith should say so plainly. This year voters turned out in numbers too large to draw around, but organizing is not a substitute for justice.
In 2025, Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo allowed immigration stops in Los Angeles to continue even when agents considered apparent ethnicity, language, location, or type of work. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that apparent ethnicity "can be a 'relevant factor'" (Cornell Legal Information Institute), and Stanford Law scholars wrote that the Court had "signaled its support for ICE's continued use of racial profiling" (Stanford Law School). Chicago lived what followed.
And since Dobbs overturned Roe in 2022, abortion rights have been decided state by state. This year Nevada and Virginia enshrined abortion rights, and Missouri voters refused to repeal theirs (KFF). When rights were narrowed from the bench, people answered at the ballot box.
Who Came Out
The coalition looked more like a Unitarian Universalist vision of pluralism than any in years, and it also showed where that vision is unfinished.
Multi-generational: voters under 30 backed Democrats about 72 to 25 percent (Reuters), though they were only about 11 percent of the electorate (NPR). Voters 65 and older leaned slightly Republican (BBC).
Multi-racial: about nine in ten Black voters supported Democrats (AP), with Black women at 92 percent (DW). Latino voters swung 22 points toward Democrats (Reuters), and Asian American voters moved substantially as well (NPR). White voters still leaned slightly Republican, and women backed Democrats 58 to 40 percent (BBC).
Socio-economic and regional: college graduates voted Democratic, while voters without a degree leaned Republican (BBC). Democrats still lost small-town and rural voters, but by 16 points rather than 32 in 2024 (NPR). The heartland moved most, with Democrats winning governorships and Senate seats in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio (CNN).
The Issues That Moved Us
Affordability, inflation, and wages came first. About nine in ten voters called the cost of living a major factor (AP via ABC4), and candidates who ran on working people, from Sherrod Brown in Ohio to Josh Turek in Iowa, did well. The defeat of a $200 million self-funded campaign was its own commentary on the wealth gap.
Data centers were the surprise issue. Voters backed restrictions or rejected development in 40 of 41 local ballot measures (Fox Business), often because of rising electric bills (Fortune).
Corruption and fairness mattered as much as prices: 90 percent called government corruption a major factor (NBC News). On immigration, 57 percent said enforcement had gone too far (NBC News), and nearly 85 percent of Chicago voters backed a referendum seeking compensation for the harm of last year's "Midway Blitz" (NBC Chicago). Most voters said tariffs hurt the economy (CBS News), and most said the war with Iran was the wrong decision (CBS News).
Faith in the Public Square
This election challenged the assumption that religious voice in politics belongs to one side. In Texas, James Talarico, a former teacher and Presbyterian seminarian, campaigned on love of neighbor (Newsweek). In Kansas, the Rev. Adam Hamilton won on a promise to restore decency (NPR). Catholics split almost evenly, and the white evangelical share of the electorate fell from 23 to 17 percent (RNS). The religiously unaffiliated grew to 27 percent of voters (RNS).
Two communities carried a harder story. El-Sayed won after a campaign in which the president called him a "jihadist" and mocked his middle name, Mohamed (USA Today), and Dearborn recorded the highest turnout in its history (ClickOnDetroit). Many Jewish voters, meanwhile, went to the polls carrying fear. Sixty-two percent of Jewish adults say they feel less safe than before October 7 (Vox), and many Michigan Jewish Democrats who did not support El-Sayed cited concerns about antisemitism and Israel (Jerusalem Post).
I name these stories side by side on purpose. Unitarian Universalists reject antisemitism, and we reject Islamophobia. We do not get to choose one. A Muslim family in Dearborn and a Jewish family in Skokie are both our neighbors, and each may carry fears the other does not fully see. We have long said, in words often attributed to Francis David, that we need not think alike to love alike. This may be where that phrase is tested most. Congregations like ours can host the conversations that are hard to have anywhere else, and 2U already has relationships with Muslim and Jewish congregations through the Community Renewal Society to build on. Healing will not come from an election. It may come from rooms like ours.
Faces of a Pluralist Democracy
Women governors: Fifteen women won governor's races, with Kansas still uncalled (Washington Post). With two elected in 2025, at least 17 women will lead states, the most ever (RepresentWomen). They come from both parties.
Governors of color: At least eight. Five are Black: Bottoms, Byron Donalds, David Crowley, Aaron Ford, and Wes Moore, the first time five Black governors will serve at once (NBC News). Two are Latino, Gina Hinojosa of Texas and Xavier Becerra of California (NPR), and one is Native American, Deb Haaland. Pluralism is not partisan.
New senators: Many come from outside the usual pipelines. They include a teacher and seminarian (Talarico), a pastor (Hamilton), a physician (El-Sayed), and a pediatrician, Dr. Annie Andrews, South Carolina's first woman elected to the Senate (NPR). Also elected were a Paralympic gold medalist who uses a wheelchair, Turek (Des Moines Register), and a fifth-generation logger, Troy Jackson of Maine (KMBC). Most Republican newcomers came from the U.S. House (Roll Call).
Still being counted: In Alaska, Mary Peltola, who is Yup'ik, led Sen. Dan Sullivan by about 600 votes (USA Today). She would be the first Alaska Native senator (NBC Philadelphia/AP), and Sullivan's wife and children are Koyukon Athabascan (ICT). In Mississippi, Scott Colom, a Black district attorney, narrowly led Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (WDAM). He would be the state's first Black senator since Reconstruction, in the state with the largest Black share of voters (CNN).
The Beloved Community
The King Center describes Dr. King's Beloved Community as "a realistic, achievable goal," a society in which "poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated" and racism gives way to "an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood" (The King Center). Read against those words, this election carries real signs of it. Voters put affordability at the center of public life. A multiracial, multigenerational, multifaith coalition chose leaders who look more like the whole country.
But for King, the goal of every struggle was "reconciliation" (The King Center). The Beloved Community is not achieved when one coalition defeats another. It is achieved when those who lost are still treated as neighbors. Our own Justice value names this directly: "We work to be diverse multicultural Beloved Communities where all feel welcome and can thrive" (UUA).
How Should We Receive This?
With gratitude, but without triumphalism. Many in our congregation knocked doors and sat with immigrant families during last year's raids. That labor mattered. But gloating is not a spiritual practice.
With humility. Older voters, rural communities, and white voters without degrees still leaned the other way. Our Pluralism value asks us to "embrace our differences and commonalities with Love, curiosity, and respect" (UUA). If we cannot be curious about the farmer downstate, we are not practicing pluralism. We are practicing preference.
With love, civility, and dignity, as people of faith and as citizens. On election night, Talarico said Americans are hungry for "not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division, but a politics of love." He added, "Love is not passive. Love is not neutral. Love is not weak. Love requires that we stand between the bullies and the bullied," and "We didn't win this race by alienating our neighbors, or shaming our neighbors, or ridiculing our neighbors" (Rev transcript). He speaks as a Christian. We arrive by many paths at the same place: our Equity value declares that "every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion" (UUA). We carry those values into both the sanctuary and the polling place. Civility does not mean silence. It means we can disagree fiercely while refusing to deny anyone's humanity, and it means speaking for neighbors, including immigrants, who belong to our civic community even without a ballot.
With righteous anger, disciplined by love. We watched masked agents detain our neighbors on Chicago streets. On election night, Peggy Flanagan declared, "We will rip ICE apart!" (New York Magazine). Some of us heard a cry for justice, others felt discomfort, and I want to honor both. Anger at injustice is often the first sign that conscience is awake. But King taught that the aftermath of nonviolence is "the creation of the beloved community," while "the aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness" (The King Center). The question is not whether to be angry, but what our anger builds. Aim it at unjust systems, not at anyone's humanity.
With vigilance and with our feet. Majorities do not keep promises; people hold them to their promises. Congregations are among the last places where people of different ages and backgrounds still gather every week. That makes us infrastructure for democracy, if we choose to be. Second Unitarian has chosen it before, from the Night Ministry to the Cook County Jail. We can choose it again.
A Closing Reflection
I keep returning to Bottoms's sentence: the people still have the power. It is hopeful, but it is also demanding. Power that belongs to the people must be exercised by the people, between elections and not just during them. On November 3, millions of Americans who pray differently or not at all, who speak different first languages, who were born in different decades and different countries, found a way to act together. That is not yet the Beloved Community. But it may be a glimpse of the road that leads us there.
May we have the courage to keep walking it, together.
