Primary School 1/20
Our top story is the third court-ordered Voting Rights Act-mandated congressional redistricting of the 2024 election cycle, this time in Louisiana. But first, we have a bunch of fourth-quarter fundraising numbers from candidates in races we’re watching across the country.
Q4 Fundraising
AL-02: Shomari Figures - $250k “in nine weeks,” which Daily Kos Elections notes may not actually line up with the end of the fourth quarter
AZ-03: Yassamin Ansari - $300k
CA-Sen: Adam Schiff - $6.3 million, $35m on hand
MD-Sen: Angela Alsobrooks - $1.78m
MD-03: Clarence Lam - “about $350k”; Sarah Elfreth - $402k
MD-06: April McClain Delaney - “about $530,000” with “close to $500,000” on hand
MI-13: Adam Hollier - $443k raised, $409k on hand
MN-05: Ilhan Omar - $1.6 million
NJ-08: Ravi Bhalla - $1 million
NJ-Gov: Steve Sweeney - $200k (in three weeks); Steven Fulop (super PAC) - $770k (in second half of 2023), $7.3m on hand
PA-12: Bhavini Patel - $310k
WA-06: Hilary Franz - “more than $400,000”
Louisiana
Louisiana Republicans have admitted defeat in the state’s Voting Rights Act redistricting saga, and have passed a map which adds a second Black-majority district to the state’s congressional map in time for the 2024 elections. Both Republican proposals which were considered chose to eliminate the district of Republican Rep. Garret Graves (because he’s pissed off most of the state’s political class in the last few years), who currently represents a Baton Rouge-based gerrymander that carefully loops around most of Black Baton Rouge. The redistricting plaintiffs, and Democrats in the legislature, preferred a more compact version that turns Letlow’s district into a Black-majority seat rather than Graves’s, but either party’s proposed route is pretty likely to win the approval of a court to our eye, so Republicans’ version unsurprisingly won out.
State Sen. Glen Womack’s proposal, the one which was eventually adopted, is…ugly on a map. But it is a majority-minority district that should satisfy the court, and it would reliably give Black Louisianans a second seat in Congress, which is the purpose of the lawsuit and the VRA provision underlying it. LA-06 starts in Baton Rouge and spans west to Opelousas and the Black neighborhoods of Lafayette; the district also includes a tendril northwest along the Red River through Alexandria to Natchitoches and Shreveport all the way in the state’s northwestern corner, carving a deep gash into Speaker Mike Johnson’s district. Womack’s proposal had a higher Black population share in LA-06 than the alternative plan, and Landry’s support, so it quickly passed the state Senate with bipartisan support. The state House passed it with amendments to make it much uglier, mostly in the Baton Rouge area, in order to please a Lake Charles-area state rep and New Orleans Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter. After backlash to the amendments, the state House removed them, reverting to Womack’s original proposal, and passed it. Long story short: Louisiana will be sending a second Democrat to Congress in 2025.
The leading candidate for either form of the district is state Sen. Cleo Fields—who, as a young man, represented an earlier version of Louisiana’s second Black-majority district in Congress in the 1990s. Just 61, Fields has cycled in and out of the Louisiana Senate representing the Baton Rouge area since he was in law school, including one stint before being elected to Congress in 1992 at the age of 29; once his congressional district was ruled an unconstitutional racial gerrymander ahead of the 1996 elections, he went right back to the state Senate, beginning his second term in December 1997. Term-limited out in 2007, he made a return in 2019, when the woman who had succeeded him, Yvonne Dorsey-Colomb, was term-limited herself. Fields also ran for governor in 1995, losing handily but comfortably winning Black voters statewide, eliminating future U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu in the jungle primary. Other candidates could run, such as former Senate and LA-02 candidate Gary Chambers and Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, but Fields would start out with a wide advantage in name recognition and established connections in DC, where many he served with in the 90s are still clinging to office (though they’re not anywhere near as young as him.)
In the special session, Landry also wanted to eliminate the state’s jungle primary—the system in which all candidates from all parties run on one ballot, with a runoff between the top two if nobody clears 50%. The intent is to drive moderate Republicans to extinction in Louisiana, to catch up with the rest of the South. A side effect would be more liberal Democrats in blue districts, as Republican and independent voters are no longer worth chasing and Democrats who rely on them now have to convince Democratic voters to back them. (For example, Troy Carter was elected to Congress in a 2021 runoff with another Democrat thanks to rural and suburban Republican voters, despite losing Black and Democratic voters, narrowly prevailing over more liberal Democrat Karen Carter Peterson.) Landry got…part of what he wanted, with the legislature sending him a bill to establish closed primaries for federal offices, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Louisiana Supreme Court, and the Louisiana Public Service Commission—but not for statewide executive offices, state legislature, or local office. Landry had wanted to end the jungle primary, but the legislature only agreed to limit its use. If he signs the bill, the affected offices will be elected by closed partisan primaries and partisan general elections starting in 2026.
CA-Sen
The LA Times has endorsed Adam Schiff, because what California needs is a former Blue Dog senator who sleeps in an MSNBC green room hanging upside down from the ceiling like a bat. California’s McClatchy papers, which include the Sacramento Bee, the Modesto Bee, and several other mid-sized regional papers in central and northern California, have endorsed Barbara Lee. A Jan. 12 poll from UC Berkeley IGS shows Schiff leading 21% to Katie Porter’s 17%, Republican Steve Garvey at 13%, and Lee at 9%; in the election for the partial Senate term of Dianne Feinstein ending January 2025, there are fewer Republicans on the ballot, benefiting Garvey, who leaps to 17%, while Schiff stays flat at 21%, Porter increases to just 18%, Lee jumps to 13%, and Eric Early, the only other Republican on the ballot, gets 11%. Schiff’s support in the poll skews older, which is a double-edged sword: older people are likelier to vote, but they’re also likelier to have made up their minds. A much larger share of people under 50 remain undecided, and Porter leads with every age group under 50.
CA-Gov
State Senate President Toni Atkins announced her campaign for governor this week, joining a field that already includes Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Superintendent of Public Education Tony Thurmond, and state Treasurer Betty Yee. As we said when the other three announced, we’re not going to be covering the 2026 elections before the 2024 elections even happen.
CA-16
Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian and former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo each rolled out endorsements from major South Bay figures as they fight to advance beyond March’s top-two primary. Simitian won the endorsement of retiring Rep. Anna Eshoo, while Liccardo announced the endorsement of his successor as mayor of San Jose, Matt Mahan.
CA-30
The LA Times also endorsed Assemb. Laura Friedman, a leading contender for Adam Schiff’s open seat. Friedman is up against a stacked field of well-funded, well-known area politicians, including LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin, state Sen. Anthony Portantino, and former LA City Attorney Mike Feuer, as well as some longer shots like West Hollywood Mayor Sepi Shyne, Neighborhood Councilor and third-time candidate Maebe A. Girl, and former Boy Meets World actor Ben Savage. Of the first four, seen as the most likely winners, Friedman’s record is the most reliably liberal by far.
DE-Gov
A new poll from the campaign of Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long shows her ahead of New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer 30% to 23% in September’s Democratic primary to succeed termed-out Gov. John Carney. h/t Daily Kos Elections
GA-06
Rep. Lucy McBath is returning to Cobb County two years after redistricting led her to move across the Atlanta metro area into GA-07, after a new round of court-ordered redistricting eliminated her GA-07 and reformed GA-06 as a Black-majority district on the western side of the Atlanta metro area. She won’t have the primary to herself in the new district, however.
Republicans in the state legislature also gerrymandered the Cobb County Commission, and that left current Commissioner Jerica Richardson without a district to run in. Rather than move across the county, Richardson is asking voters for a promotion to Congress—noting that most of this district is new to McBath (though that didn’t stop McBath from crushing fellow Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in 2022 in a district that was mostly Bourdeaux’s already.)
IL-07
As the crowded March primary for IL-07 nears, all of Rep. Danny Davis’s challengers could use the spotlight—but maybe not like this. Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, the best-funded and best-known of Davis’s challengers, has been dogged by ethics charges since launching her campaign, and a newly-released report from the Chicago Inspector General won’t help matters. The report found that Conyears-Ervin—not named in the report, but the only “elected City official” under investigation for these facts—fired two whistleblowers after they raised concerns that Conyears-Ervin was violating Illinois and federal law by using government resources for religious events. Conyears-Ervin could face fines of up to $20,000 per violation from the Chicago Board of Ethics, and Davis (or progressive activist Kina Collins, Pritzker staffer Kouri Marshall, or teacher Nikhil Bhatia) can pounce.
MD-02
While Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger’s retirement has long been rumored, it hasn’t actually happened yet, and as of now the soon-to-be-78-year-old is still seeking reelection. So…why did Baltimore County state Del. Harry Bhandari randomly file a campaign committee with the FEC on January 10 without announcing anything?
MD-03
Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer who defended the building on January 6th and has since been outspoken in the media and to Congress about the seriousness of that day’s insurrection, has entered the crowded race for Maryland’s 3rd congressional district. Dunn lives in Montgomery County, outside the district, but says he’ll move if elected—probably not a dealbreaker in the 3rd, increasingly defined by DC sprawl in addition to Baltimore suburbs and Annapolis. However, this is a more parochial part of Maryland than the inner DC suburbs where Dunn lives, and there’s no shortage of local candidates already in: state Dels. Mike Rogers, Mark Chang, and Terri Hill, plus state Sens. Clarence Lam and Sarah Elfreth. Dunn will almost certainly be able to raise big bucks from small-dollar #Resistance donors, but it’s not clear what lane he’ll occupy, whether anyone locally supports him yet, or exactly how much he’s raised (though 21,000 donors in the first few hours suggests the answer is a lot.)
Additionally, labor lawyer John Morse threw his hat into the ring, with enthusiastic support from AFA-CWA president Sara Nelson and UAW president Shawn Fain. Morse was previously a lawyer for AFA-CWA, which represents flight attendants at several major airliners, and he announced his bid with BWI International Airport in the background.
MD-06
The Latino Victory Fund has endorsed centrist Del. Joe Vogel.
NJ-Sen
Nice College Dems career you have. Shame if something happened to it.
A youth coordinator for the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, whose chair has endorsed Tammy Murphy, made the frankly batshit decision to issue a series of ominous threats to leaders in the College Democrats of America and its New Jersey affiliate about their impending endorsement of Murphy’s primary opponent, Andy Kim. The decision was batshit for several reasons: one, College Democrats aren’t worth threatening. Two, New Jersey is a one-party consent state. And three, College Democrats are exactly the kind of people who will think to start recording you and send it to the press if you ever make Godfather-ass threats about what the wrong endorsement could do to a young Democrat’s career as a staffer in government and on campaigns. So there’s a tape of one of the calls, and the New York Times has it.
The staffer, 21-year-old Keely Magee, says she was never asked to do this by her boss, Dave Parano. (Uh-huh. By the way, Parano is a former staffer to Bob Menendez, and previously to Sens. Jon Corzine—later the ill-fated final CEO of collapsed financial firm MF Global—and Bob Torricelli—who left the Senate in shame after a formal admonishment by the Senate Ethics Committee.) When asked for comment, Tammy Murphy said Magee should receive the “grace, allowance, and forgiveness that we all deserve at that age.” 21 is young, but it’s not so young that Magee could have reasonably thought that threatening job prospects, DNC delegate selection chances, and the loss of $2,000 in funding was an innocent act. On the calls, she referenced the power of the Murphys repeatedly, warned about consequences for funding and job prospects, and even offered to set up a conversation between Tammy and the College Dems if it would dissuade them from endorsing Kim, asking, “Would a call from Tammy help?”
Kim’s campaign couldn’t believe their luck, and naturally helped connect the students with the press, Princeton student Nate Howard tells the Daily Princetonian. After the story had simmered for a few days, Kim finally spoke, naming the parallel that was already on the minds of everyone in New Jersey politics: isn’t this how Bob Menendez operates?
Kim also rolled out endorsements from the entire Philly-area House delegation, Allentown-area Rep. Susan Wild, and Sen. John Fetterman, who has been a vocal critic of Menendez since last fall’s corruption indictment. More importantly, he rolled out endorsements from a number of Ocean County Democratic committees and clubs, demonstrating that he’s the favorite to win Ocean County’s organizational line. Ocean County includes much of the Shore and the booming Orthodox Jewish city of Lakewood; the county is blood-red, but very populous, so the Ocean line is very much worth fighting for. Kim used to represent a large chunk of the county.
NJ-03
Former ACLU attorney Joe Cohn is running for New Jersey’s 3rd congressional district, open courtesy of Andy Kim’s Senate campaign. Cohn is now the Legislative and Policy Director for FIRE, the right-leaning “free speech” group. (Check out his FedSoc contributor page.) We doubt he’ll be able to seriously compete with Assembs. Herb Conaway and Carol Murphy.
NJ-08
Perhaps in response to Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla’s monster $1 million haul, Rep. Rob Menendez Jr. rolled out the endorsements of the Hudson County Assembly delegation (except for Hoboken Assemb. John Allen, a freshman closely aligned with Bhalla.)
NJ-09
Rumblings of a primary challenge to Bill Pascrell haven’t quieted down. Allies of Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh in the Paterson area’s large Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities want the mayor to run against Pascrell and take him to task on the issue of Gaza, and some of those allies have paid for a poll. The poll tests several messages, including one relating to Pascrell’s opposition to a ceasefire in the war-torn territory of 2 million, where famine is rapidly setting in and death tolls continue to mount, as well as an even more obvious line of attack: Pascrell’s age. While undeniably a spry, feisty, and active 86-year-old, the congressman is still 86, and will become the House’s oldest member in 2025 if he wins reelection. Interestingly, the poll also tests a three-way contest between Sayegh, Pascrell, and Assemb. Shavonda Sumter, who is often mentioned as a potential candidate for higher office but hasn’t shown any inclination to run against a sitting congressman, as far as we know.
NY-16
State Sen. Shelley Mayer endorsed Westchester County Executive George Latimer over incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman. Mayer is a moderate Democrat who had to be badgered into supporting marijuana legalization after killing it in 2019, when Democrats first tried to pass it under then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and she’s also Latimer’s successor in the state Senate—so, you know, not the biggest shock that she wants a moderate in Congress. But it highlights the tough road ahead of Bowman: there is a large bloc of moderate, affluent, predominantly white primary voters in the Westchester County suburbs and outer Yonkers who do not like the second-term congressman and want him replaced.
PA-12
House Democratic leadership is honoring its policy of backing all incumbents, even for the Squad. House Democrats’ top three leaders—Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar—endorsed Summer Lee for reelection as she faces down an AIPAC-backed challenge from Edgewood Councilor Bhavini Patel. Patel, for her part, seems to have the conservative Allegheny County machine in her corner; a trio of building trades unions, which are an essential piece of the machine’s power base, endorsed Patel this week. Lee only narrowly won an open seat in 2022, defeating machine pick Steve Irwin (an attorney unrelated to the deceased TV personality and wildlife expert), and the machine isn’t quite ready to let it go. (The Allegheny County machine has had a rough few years, having lost Lee’s congressional seat, the Pittsburgh mayor’s office, the county executive’s office, and a scattering of other state and local elected offices to the disciplined progressive organization built by Lee and her allies since 2017.)
NYC Mayor
Finally, we have someone officially moving towards challenging Eric Adams! And it’s…former NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, whose 2021 mayoral campaign was derailed by late-breaking allegations of sexual misconduct, bullying, and intimidation.
[long, heavy sigh]
Bridgeport, CT
Bridgeport is holding its primary do-over this Tuesday, after a judge voided Mayor Joe Ganim’s questionable September Democratic primary win over former employee John Gomes amid credible allegations of fraud in absentee balloting, backed up by surveillance footage of a city employee literally stuffing a ballot box. Anyway, the state filed a complaint over even more absentee shenanigans in the do-over election.
Harris County DA
The Gulf Coast AFL-CIO has endorsed reform-oriented challenger Sean Teare over incumbent Harris County DA Kim Ogg, who was elected as a reformer herself in 2016 but turned out to be just another lock-em-up prosecutor. Ogg’s relationship with local Democrats has grown quite strained in recent months, even earning a censure from the Harris County Democrats for a variety of conservative policies, GOP-friendly political stunts, and alleged retaliation against political foes.
Cook County
The last week was a week of good news for one Cook County State’s Attorney candidate in particular. The Cook County Federation of Labor chose to stay out of the contest, a rare move, and one that followed the International Union of Operating Engineers (perhaps the most powerful building trades union) backing retired judge Eileen O’Neill Burke. Both are major blows to the campaign of Clayton Harris III, who could use some foot soldiers after being out-raised roughly $250,000 to $150,000. He did get some good news, as 26 Black Chicago and Cook County officials endorsed him, following the reports of O’Neill Burke wrongfully convicting a 10-year-old child.
The Cook County Federation of Labor did get involved in the other big countywide contest, endorsing Metropolitan Water Commissioner Mariyana Spyropoulos for Cook County Clerk of Courts. Spyropoulos is challenging conservative incumbent Iris Martinez, who made many enemies with her vocal support of losing conservative mayoral candidate Paul Vallas last year and her general antagonism towards the Northwest Side’s strong progressive faction.
Illinois Legislature
The Illinois AFL-CIO unveiled their endorsements for March’s primaries this week. Of note in the Senate SD-20, where they're backing machine-appointed incumbent Natalie Toro over progressive Graciela Guzman in a district where progressives generally perform strongly, and which a progressive held before Toro’s appointment. In the House, they made a somewhat interesting choice in HD-31 to back longshot challenger Michael Crawford over 40-year incumbent Mary Flowers, who is currently in the doghouse with house leadership after asking an aide to the Speaker why he “look[ed] like Hitler”. They're also supporting Lisa Davis in HD-32; Davis is running against Cyril Nichols, a Black freshman from the South Side who has spent his term seemingly trying to pick fights with other ethnic groups in the state, including a strange radio interview where he complained that Arabs own too many gas stations, as well as the shameful part he’s playing in the campaign against migrant shelters in Chicago. He was also the sole Democratic vote against mandating all-gender restrooms in the state’s large businesses. In the open seat house contests, they chose Rick Ryan in HD-36, but declined to take a side in HD-76.