United States of America

A young, female 20-something is looking to upset how things are done in Washington D.C. by defeating a long-entrenched incumbent. She’s the youngest person running for Congress in 2018. She’s not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s not even a Democrat. Morgan Murtaugh is running as a Republican for Democrat Rep. Susan Davis’s seat in California’s 35th District. Davis has held the seat for 15 years.

PARSIPPANY, N.J. — Mikie Sherrill, Democratic candidate for Congress, had finished a radio interview and was heading toward the stage at the local library where a crowd waited for her to begin an event with the mayor and a native-son-turned-astronaut.

But first, there was a smudge of chocolate to be dealt with.

A flood of women, minorities and first-time candidates is poised to radically alter the composition of Congress next year after winning Democratic primaries in record numbers in 2018.

Ayanna Pressley pulled off an unexpected victory on Tuesday in the Democratic congressional primary in Massachusetts’s Seventh District, beating 10-term incumbent Rep. Michael Capuano with 59 percent of the vote. Barring a last-minute write-in campaign during the general election, Pressley will be unopposed in November and become the first black woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress.

On Tuesday, New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon made a request that seemed both trivial and audacious. For an upcoming Democratic primary debate with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, she wanted the thermostat set to 76 degrees.