Besides both starting with the letter “a,” the push for accountability with Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring and the top issue of the midterms — affordability — have little in common.
But as the 2026 midterm campaign season heats up, Democrats are increasingly tying the two issues together, using Epstein to erode voter trust in Republicans and pointing to inaction on affordability as evidence that the party is more focused on President Donald Trump’s personal crusades than on the costs facing ordinary Americans.
“You remember we were told that MAGA was for working class Americans?” Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., told a crowd Saturday in suburban Atlanta. “You remember that? But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class ruling our country. They are the elites they pretend to hate. So prices are up, jobs are going away, Medicaid and school lunches are slashed, nursing homes are getting defunded.”
It was a near-perfect distillation of the message that Democrats are testing with voters: That Trump and Republicans are supporting a system for the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of Americans who are struggling. And Democrats are hoping that frustration with how the president and his supporters in Congress have handled the Epstein files will resonate with swing voters — perhaps even the MAGA faithful — who are beginning to question what else Republicans may have misled them about.
“If you are a MAGA believer, if you are a true believer, and you believe that Trump was going to release the Epstein files in full and that he would be exonerated, the files do not show that,” Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., told MS NOW. “How can you continue in your belief in Trump as a freedom fighter when he’s completely complicit? And I think there are a number of people who are realizing it was all a lie. And that’s painful for anyone to realize.”
For months, Balint has been talking about how the Epstein files present Democrats with an opportunity — “not just to win elections, but an opportunity to have some healing as a country.”
“This is an opportunity if we can bring some people in who in the past have been completely trusting of this president, and say: ‘Hey, wait a minute. You ran on this. You promised this to us,’” Balint told MS NOW in July.
Democrats clearly see Epstein piercing the political veil for many Republicans, and they’re hoping it’s a chance to connect with some audiences who have previously been reluctant to listen to Democrats.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who many expect to become speaker if Democrats win the House in November, has repeatedly accused Republicans of working to uphold the “lifestyles of the rich and shameless,” on everything from GOP-passed tax cuts that favor the wealthiest, to the inability of Congress to extend the enhanced Obamacare subsidies that helped millions of Americans afford health care.
He also invoked the line while bashing the GOP over the rollout of the Epstein files.
“Why haven’t Republicans released the Epstein files to the American people?” Jeffries said at a press conference last July. “It’s reasonable to conclude that Republicans are continuing to protect the lifestyles of the rich and the shameless, even if that includes pedophiles.”
Back in Georgia, Ossoff’s recent speech brought the loudest megaphone so far for this kind of dual-pronged message.
When MS NOW asked a Georgia Democratic operative about Ossoff’s decision to invoke the “Epstein class” in his speech, this operative — granted anonymity to talk about the campaign dynamics — cited “discontent around Trump’s handling of the Epstein files in a state like Georgia, while he’s also failing to address issues that are impacting people’s lives.”
Polling as recently as last fall showed Georgia voters increasingly uneasy about the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein saga. An October poll from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed more than one-third of likely GOP primary voters were not content with the disclosures so far.
But Epstein doesn’t rank close to the top issues for voters. And this week, when Jeffries laid out his party’s three central pillars heading into the midterms – driving down the cost of living, fixing the health care system, and cleaning up corruption – Epstein wasn’t explicitly mentioned, though the files could certainly fit into the corruption pillar. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who runs the campaign arm for House Democrats, suggested the Epstein story is “part of a trend that you have seen from Republicans: focus on the wealthy and the well-connected and not focusing on the needs of working families.” Further down the ballot, Democrats challenging Republicans in some of the most purple districts on the map told MS NOW they’re focused on affordability — but that doesn’t mean voters don’t bring up Epstein. Brian Poindexter, a Democrat looking to unseat incumbent Republican Max Miller in Ohio’s 7th congressional district, told MS NOW he’s personally “not really bringing” up the Epstein affair, focusing instead on cost of living issues and health care. But asked about Epstein, he adopted a message framing similar to Ossoff’s, where he painted the corrupt elites as “the Epstein class.” “Most people, especially in our district, see the larger picture of two sets of rules: those that have money and those that don’t,” Poindexter said. In neighboring Pennsylvania, Bob Brooks, running in Pennsylvania’s 7th district against freshman GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, offered a similar refrain. He likened the Epstein conversation to “another facet of the game where the rich stay richer and the poor stay poor.” And in battleground Long Island, Rep. Laura Gillen, D-N.Y., said while she’s focusing primarily on cost of living issues, Epstein is an issue that people across party lines are “very concerned about.” She then invoked, unprompted, Ossoff’s framing of the issue, invoking “the Epstein class.” “That’s certainly something that I think is not going to go away anytime soon,” Gillen said.
Ali Vitali is MS NOW's senior congressional correspondent and the host of "Way Too Early." She is the author of "Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet."
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
