Jake Johnson featured in Axios on the "growing frustration with both political parties"

Today, Axios featured Jake Johnson in a national story on the Democratic candidates who are running this year on taking on corruption in both parties. Jake, a first-time candidate and 20-year math teacher and the only Minnesota candidate quoted in the piece, told Axios what he has heard "pretty loud and clear" at his 21 public town halls and on parade routes across southern Minnesota: "there's just a growing frustration with both political parties." He also pointed to Minnesota's fraud scandal as "a huge issue" that "really erodes peoples' trust" in government.

That message is nothing new for Jake. His second TV ad, "Farmland," leads with the message that "both parties couldn't care less about corruption," and his Taxpayer Protection Pledge calls for mandatory prison time for everyone who broke the law in the fraud cases and for getting taxpayers' money back.

Axios' analysis found 47 ads from Democrats in the last 30 days calling out their own party or both parties, up from 19 in 2024. As one strategist told Axios, "Republicans defending a broken status quo should be very nervous." That includes Rep. Brad Finstad, who has taken nearly half a million dollars from corporate PACs and has never held a single in-person town hall in his 4+ years in Congress.

Read the key takeaways:

Axios: Democrats running for office turn sharply against their own party

Democrats are adopting a drastically more negative tone toward their own party in the 2026 midterm elections, swapping promises of bipartisan collaboration with vows to ‘take on corruption in both parties.
“We have heard pretty loud and clear, whether it's at our town halls or on parade routes, that ... there's just a growing frustration with both political parties” said Jake Johnson, a Democratic candidate in Minnesota.”
Johnson pointed to Minnesota's sprawling fraud scandal as “a huge issue” that “really erodes peoples' trust” in the state's Democratic-led government.
An Axios analysis of more than 350 ads in federal and statewide elections since 2018 found a huge uptick in Democratic ads mentioning either the Democratic Party or both parties in a negative context.
Axios identified 47 ads run by Democrats or independents running as the de facto Democratic nominee in the last 30 days with that type of negative messaging, up from 19 in 2024 and 2022, 15 in 2020, and 14 in 2018.
“Republicans defending a broken status quo should be very nervous,” said Eric Koch, a Democratic operative working on House races.

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