Anti-Trump ex-Republicans are running in Democratic primaries. They’re off to a rocky start.

Anti-Trump Republicans have carved out a huge niche on the political left since President Donald Trump’s first campaign — generating large fundraising hauls, seemingly endless cable news bookings and persistent, public sniping from the president himself.

Some of these one-time Republicans have taken their political journey one step further: running for office as full-fledged Democrats. But so far in 2026, their new party’s primary voters haven’t shown much appetite for their candidacies.

Last month, former Georgia Lt. Gov Geoff Duncan, who broke with Trump over his claims of a stolen election in that state in 2020 and campaigned with Democrats in 2024, finished a distant fourth in the Democratic primary for governor — nearly 50 points behind the winner, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. In Pennsylvania, Ryan Crosswell, a Marine veteran and former federal prosecutor who left the Justice Department last year over an order to drop a corruption case against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, fell by 20 points in a battleground House primary to state firefighters union head Bob Brooks, who coalesced support from national Democrats and Gov. Josh Shapiro.

More tests of anti-Trump GOP-turned-Democratic candidacies are coming. This month, George Conway, the now ex-husband of Trump adviser and ally Kellyanne Conway, is seeking to continue his transformation from longtime conservative lawyer to one of Trump’s most prominent critics as part of a deep field of Democratic candidates for an open House seat in Manhattan.

“Welcome to the tent, absolutely,” said Andrew Mamo, a spokesperson for The Bench, a group that worked with Brooks and is seeking to boost Democrats in contested primaries. “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,” he continued, adding, “And frankly, a lot of these folks have either worked in D.C. or worked in government, which I think is in a lot of cases a con, not a pro. And 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.”

Internal and unaffiliated polling of the upcoming race for New York’s 12th District, which also features state Assemblymen Micah Lasher and Alex Bores and Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg, shows Conway trailing. An Emerson College survey released last month found Conway in fourth place with 9% support.

“I don’t view the Democratic Party as unwelcoming,” Conway said in an interview. “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. I don’t view it as being a question of welcoming or unwelcome. I think that the strength of the party is its diversity.”

The elections come as the Democratic Party wrestles with its brand and the perception that it is strictly positioned as anti-Trump. Democratic strategists who spoke with NBC News said the races highlight a shifting mindset of primary voters, who no longer think so-called “Never Trump” Republicans are best positioned to fight for them.

One episode has stuck in some Democrats’ minds after their party sought to integrate “never Trump” Republicans in recent years, hoping their inclusion would open the door for broader Republican defections from rank-and-file voters skeptical of Trump. In the closing weeks of the 2024 campaign, then-Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., across the country.

“I do think it’s a shift,” said Eric Stern, a Democratic strategist who counts Brooks as a client, reflecting on how Democratic primary voters are approaching former Republicans who have turned against Trump. “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?”

But anti-Trump former Republicans say national Democrats have painted them as too one-dimensional and as a monolith, while potentially missing the lessons of 2024.

“I think that the Democratic Party needs to look at people as individuals and understand their politics a little better than a broad brushstroke on people who are former Republicans or anti-Trump or things like that,” said Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence who left the White House in 2020 and became a vocal Trump critic. “Because I think that while we do all fall under that umbrella, everyone is different in where they stand.”

Troye announced in April that she would run for Congress in Virginia’s newly drawn 7th Congressional District as “a proud Democrat,” but she has decided to end her campaign after the state Supreme Court threw out the map voters narrowly passed in April. She began her career in GOP politics working for the Republican National Committee and then in President George W. Bush’s administration.

After leaving the White House, Troye — who said she voted for 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — pledged to vote for then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden and appeared in an ad on his behalf. The Trump White House claimed she was fired, which she disputed.

“If you put George Conway, me and Geoff Duncan in a room, we probably differ on a lot of things,” Troye said. “And I think that is the problem that I’m worried about for the Democratic Party. 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 to the fact that these are very individual types of people.”

The candidate in this group that appears most likely to win a Democratic primary is former Republican Rep. David Jolly, a vocal critic of the president dating back to his first term in office. He is now running for governor of Florida as a Democrat, and surveys have shown him with a primary lead.

Prominent anti-Trump Republicans are still having success raising money from small-dollar donors. In Pennsylvania’s 7th District, Crosswell actually outraised Brooks, though he said his campaign was doomed because of outside spending on Brooks’ behalf.

In an interview, Crosswell said some of the staunchest Democrats he met in the district were former Republicans like him, adding that his past party affiliation was used as an attack by his rivals. Given the party’s low approval ratings, Crosswell said Democrats “would be mistaken to not be thinking long and hard about how we’re going to change those numbers, how we’re going to message in a way that brings independents and Republicans.”

“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. “And I think that it’s become particularly toxic since Donald Trump came on the scene. But we’ll say both parties have some responsibility, and really have some responsibility for bridging that gap again.”

In his race, Crosswell emphasized what he described as “a real No Kings” moment, pointing to the anti-Trump protest movement and framing the president as a unique threat, while Brooks focused more on his working-class background and the need for class-based representation to best fight for constituents in Washington.

Anti-Trump former Republicans who spoke with NBC News argued that, sincemany of them were directly targeted by the president and his allies, they had the best experience in actually fighting him. Echoing some others, Conway said he doesn’t see fighting Trump and promoting an economic agenda as separate things. He does think, though, that fighting Trump has to be step one.

“My pitch to [voters] is that we all oppose Trump, and we all support initiatives to make life for New Yorkers and Americans generally more affordable,” Conway said, adding: “My view is that the two are much more inextricably intertwined than” others portray.

“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,” he continued.

And Conway said he disagrees with those who believe the Democratic Party is “purely anti-Trump.”

“It stands for a lot more than being anti-Trump,” he said. “But I think the problem in 2024 is they weren’t tough enough on Trump. … They didn’t do enough to provoke him and show the American public how unfit he was for public office.”

“This isn’t just a battle about policy points,” he continued, adding, “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.”

Troye, the former Pence adviser, said she believes there is a lane for candidates who can both prosecute a case against Trump and demand accountability while also taking on thorny issues, including those related to immigration and the economy.

“The thing is that people are looking for people who are going to stand up and fight for them,” she said. “That’s the fundamental line. … They are looking for fighters who are going to tell them, what are you for? Are you going to fight for the fact that I don’t know if I’m going to pay for food today, or if I’m going to pay my insurance bill or if I’m going to pay for gas?”

“Is that what you’re going to fight for?” Troye continued. “Or are you just going to sit here and tell me that Trump sucks?’”

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