2022 General Election Preview Part I
Congress, CA & WA state legislatures
We are terribly sorry, we know this is already long as hell and this is just the first part of three. We also have to apologize for skipping ballot measures entirely this year; from abortion rights to marijuana legalization to Medicaid expansion to taxing the rich to affordable housing to living wages, a number of incredibly important up-or-down votes are happening in states, cities, and counties across the country. But there are only two of us, and we also know for your sake that this thing is already long enough. You can read the rest of our preview here, for local elections outside of California, and here, for local elections in California.
CA-15 (San Mateo County, parts of San Francisco)
David Canepa vs. Kevin Mullin
Round 1: Mullin 41% - Canepa 24%
When Jackie Speier announced her retirement, it took some time, but the Bay Area establishment eventually coalesced around Assemblymember Kevin Mullin. If you close your eyes and picture a Bay Area politician, you wouldn't be too far off from Mullin—he’s even got the Gavin Newsom hair gel. (Both candidates do, actually.) Mullin isn’t terrible, and may even be better than the average House Democrat, but it would be a strictly lateral move to go from Speier to him, and at 52 years old, Mullin could occupy this seat for decades. San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa has fashioned himself as the more progressive candidate, and though he seemed inexperienced with national policy at the beginning of the campaign, wasn’t known as a progressive firebrand in local office, and has his share of very suburban ideas about taxes, he does seem more poised to side with progressives in procedural matters, and conservatives clearly think he’d be the more progressive candidate, or else DMFI and crypto money wouldn’t be spending close to $700,000 between then to push Mullin through this runoff. They probably will succeed in that, considering how far ahead of Canepa Mullin finished in the primary round, and that the rest of the vote went to candidates ideologically closer to Mullin than Canepa.
CA-16 (Silicon Valley)
Anna Eshoo (i) vs. Rishi Kumar
Round 1: Eshoo 49% - Kumar 16%
Anna Eshoo, the definition of a forgettable backbencher, should theoretically be a good target for a primary challenge, but this is not the crew to do it. Saratoga City Council member Rishi Kumar ran against her in 2020 and even made the runoff, but lost it badly amidst a slew of controversies ranging from the funny (opt-out yard sign deliveries) to the troubling (support for India's far-right RSS).
We said “crew” because, at the time, there were three Democrats looking to take Eshoo in the runoff. The victor was Rishi Kumar, a problematic (to say the least) local official, who also ran against Eshoo in 2020, losing by a 63%-37% margin. Eshoo did demonstrate some weakness by just missing 50% in the first round, but Eshoo isn’t the kind of controversial figure where an opponent looking to consolidate all of the non-Eshoo vote against her in the runoff has even a head start. If Eshoo doesn’t totally put him away this year, he may be back again in 2024, or, if not him, than another one of the many colorful characters in Silicon Valley politics.
CA-29 (Eastern San Fernando Valley)
Tony Cárdenas (i) vs. Angélica Dueñas
Round 1: Cárdenas 57% - Dueñas 23%
Another dispatch from a previous primary preview, though this time from the 2020 general election issue.
Rep. Tony Cárdenas is both pretty centrist and pretty ambitious, making it doubly urgent that he be defeated. Angélica Dueñas, who ran for this seat as a Green in 2018, has done much better in her second campaign (this time running as a Democrat), advancing to the general after securing nearly a quarter of the vote in the March primary. Unfortunately, she’s received little attention from national progressives, despite her strong policy platform and respectable primary showing, and has thus struggled mightily with fundraising and other key aspects of a campaign. While she has the backing of some local Democratic clubs and progressive groups, she is very likely to lose; however, if she improves substantially on her 23% showing from March, it could be a warning sign for Cárdenas in 2022.
It’s remarkable how little has changed since then. Cárdenas won that runoff 57%-43%, and Dueñas launched a rematch sooner after, which has remained a primarily local race the entire time. The big change since last cycle is that Cárdenas knows he needs to be worried, and is spending accordingly. The race was shaken up in the last month with the release of the racist tape that led to LA politics melting down, something Dueñas has also been able to latch onto, given how little of a secret it is that Cárdenas is close with the city councilors who were on the tape—particularly his now-disgraced and resigned protégé, former City Council President Nury Martinez.
CA-30 (Hollywood area, Burbank, Glendale)
Adam Schiff (i) vs. G. “Maebe A. Girl” Pudlo
Round 1: Schiff 62% - Pudlo 13%
If you thought the Mullin-Canepa or Eshoo-Kumar races looked over, it has nothing on this one. In fact, this is the only runoff election from California we left off of our original primary preview. Adam Schiff, one of a handful of House Democrats catapulted to cable news celebrity status during the Trump years, is an ex-Blue Dog with hawkish foreign policy takes and distaste for the left. Beating him, however, will not be easy. Schiff has sky-high name recognition and, even if Burbank and Hollywood are pretty progressive as far as whiter, high income parts of the LA area go, they’re not the frontline of ideologically committed progressive voters. Maebe A. Girl, a Neighborhood Councilmember and nonbinary leftist, scraped past the top Republican and earned a spot on the general election ballot. This is her second time taking on Schiff, and we covered her 2020 campaign, which ended the primary with a 62%-13%-12% loss in the primary. As cool as she is, she’s still a message candidate and protest vote after a first primary round where Schiff took almost 50% of the vote more than she did.
CA-34 (Downtown LA, Koreatown)
Jimmy Gomez (i) vs. David Kim
Round 1: Gomez 51% - Kim 39%
While Xavier Becerra never had any trouble holding down this heavily Democratic district in the heart of Los Angeles, Rep. Jimmy Gomez has never had that luxury. While the Hispanic population of the electorate is larger than the Asian (primarily Korean) third of CA-34’s voters, the latter can form a powerful bloc if a candidate can unify them and peel off enough of the rest of the district. In 2020, political newcomer David Kim nearly did that on basically no budget, finishing just 6% behind Gomez in an election night (and week after) shocker. Kim is running again, and the initial results are either promising for Kim or worrying, depending on your perspective. On one hand, the margin here was 12%, more than the 6% Kim lost by. On the other hand, Gomez won the last primary by 31%, and got 52% of the vote.
The ideological contours of this race are subtler than most primary challenges—Gomez is a Medicare For All-supporting CPC member who, should he lose, would be comparable only to Mike Capuano in terms of progressiveness of Democrats who’ve lost primary challenges. Kim however, supports universal basic income, the BDS movement, and abolishing ICE. More than that, he’s part of a new wave of leftist politics emerging in Los Angeles, supported by groups like Ground Game LA, Sunrise, and Our Revolution. In a dynamic that mirrors New York, the divide between Los Angeles progressives and the establishment is a lot clearer than the divisions in terms of national politics. The Gomez campaign may just be exercising caution, but they’re acting worried about Kim, accusing him of supporting Qanon because he asked the defeated Republican candidate from the June primary for her endorsement, and bringing up old policy proposals Kim supported in 2020, when he was much more of a Yang-ite, for attack ads.
CA-37 (Culver City, South Central LA)
Sydney Kamlager vs. Jan Perry
Round 1: Kamlager 44% - Perry 18%
Also from our primary preview:
The race to succeed Karen Bass as she departs for city hall is Sydney Kamlager's to lose. Kamlager, who recently ascended from the state Assembly to the state Senate in an anticlimactic special election that seemingly no one bothered to vote in, already represents most of the district. Which parts, and how popular she is in them, are discussions for the runoff; for now it's time to choose her opponent. Kamlager isn't terrible, merely meh, but this district is capable of electing someone better (for instance, Karen Bass). … Former Los Angeles City Council member Jan Perry has been in political retirement after losing a mayoral election nearly a decade ago. She's not the easiest to figure out, ideologically, but her ties are to an older, more progressive machine of the dense urban core, now on the wane, and it wouldn't be hard to see her cleaning up in the working class eastern portion of the district that's new to Kamlager.
Indeed, Kamlager nearly took a majority of the vote in the district’s west, but only half that in its east. Perry is in a tough spot in the runoff, but, overall, Kamlager took less than half of the Democratic vote, and that was after a ton of outside spending. Unfortunately for Perry, she never raised much money, even after making the second round. And while Rep. Maxine Waters and former Rep. Diane Watson are good gets for Perry, Kamlager has basically every other Democratic politician in California.
California Senate
District 4 (Central Valley, Sierra Nevada, and Death Valley)
Marie Alvarado-Gil vs. Tim Robertson
Round 1: Robertson 22% - Alvarado-Gil 19%
This is, frankly, a hilarious race. Senate District 4 is a seat Democrats should only be competitive in during Democratic wave years, having voted for Trump twice. However, in the first round of the top-two primary, Democrats’ two candidates, labor union leader Tim Robertson and public school administrator Marie Alvarado-Gil, split their party’s vote almost perfectly—and Republicans’ top three candidates did the same. With three more Republicans on the ballot drawing a few percent each, the top-performing Republican, former congressman George Radanovich, fell into third place. Under California’s top-two system, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election—so, despite getting just under 41% of the first-round vote, Democrats got both slots in the general election. There’s still a clear gap between the candidates, however. The Democratic establishment, environmental groups, and labor unions preferred Robertson in the first round, and it’s now clear why: in the general election, Republican elected officials, most police unions, and the Chamber of Commerce are backing Alvarado-Gil, who’s running against tax hikes and criminal justice reform. In a district where most voters are Republicans, that makes her a formidable opponent for Robertson. Either one will have a hard time holding this seat in four years, but Robertson will do more good with four years in Sacramento than Alvarado-Gil.
District 8 (Sacramento)
Angelique Ashby vs. Dave Jones
Round 1: Jones 46% - Ashby 41%
Former California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has been a fixture in California politics since the 90s, when he first won a seat on the Sacramento City Council. In this race he’s the clear progressive choice, supporting statewide single-payer and ambitious climate action. Sacramento City Councilor and Vice Mayor Angelique Ashby is the conservative choice here—on any issue where Jones takes a clear progressive stance that isn’t bare-minimum Democratic stuff, Ashby hems and haws or outright opposes the progressive position. It shows in who’s backing the two candidates: Ashby has the oil and gas industry, the health insurance industry, and charter schools backing her. Jones has the labor movement, Planned Parenthood, environmental groups, and progressive groups.
This is the most expensive contest of any state race in California, with nearly $8 milllion in outside spending, over ⅔ of which was spent supporting Ashby or attacking Jones. The single largest group trying to influence the outcome of this election is the oil and gas industry, which has spent close to $2 million. These figures may not seem large by congressional standards, but state Senate and Assembly races in California rarely get this expensive, and in a city like Sacramento, separate from the major media markets of LA and San Francisco, that’s created an expensive TV ad war, and made this the marquee race of many voters’ ballots. Big Oil is clearly scared that another environmentalist vote in the Senate could tip the scales too far from their favor, and they may be right. This is one of the highest stakes elections for the future of California happening right now, and as far as anyone can tell, it’s a dead heat.
Gavin Newsom endorsed Ashby in a very last-minute way last week, after a large portion of ballots had already been returned.
District 10 (East Bay)
Lily Mei vs. Aisha Wahab
Round 1: Mei 33% - Wahab 30%
Speaking of high-stakes NorCal firefights with tons of outside spending, this is the election attracting the second-most outside spending in the state—roughly half of what SD-08 has—and has turned into an ugly battle between Hayward City Councilmember Aisha Wahab, who briefly ran for Congress in 2020 and who has been speaking out in favor of progressive causes since well before than, and Fremont Mayor Lily Mei. Mei’s side, with a healthy seven-figure outside spending total brought to fruition by money from landlords, charter schools, and healthcare lobbyists, has been attacking Wahab for associating with Black Lives Matter and not voting for police funding increases. The primary outside spending group, Keep America Golden, which lists its top three donors as the primary industry groups for Realtors, developers, and police officers, in that order, has been even more explicit in its TV ads, saying Wahab “supports weak laws on crime and reduced charges on criminals”, tough-on-crime messaging straight out of the 90s. Wahab, whose outside support is funded primarily by labor unions, has gone on the attack against Mei for supporting a domestic abuser in her administration. Mei is most likely tacting so hard to the right to attract the 22% of the primary vote that went to a Republican, which explains the predicament Wahab finds herself in: even if there’s no guarantee Republicans will even vote in the runoff, she still has to find more new votes than Mei does in the runoff, and the pool of potential voters is mostly conservative.
District 20 (San Fernando Valley)
Daniel Hertzberg vs. Caroline Menjivar
Round 1: Hertzberg 31% - Menjivar 30%
Moderate Daniel Hertzberg is running one of the most shamelessly nepotistic campaigns we’ve ever seen. His whole thing is “do you know who my father is?” (Outgoing state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, by the way.) Because Papa Hertzberg has a lot of rich and powerful friends thanks to a long tenure in Sacramento, Baby Hertzberg is a formidable contender with a lot of establishment support. Unfortunately, he hasn’t figured out how to campaign without sounding like a coddled failson—his closing argument at a debate for why he’d make an effective legislator was that, as a kid, he convinced his mom to buy him a dog. Not everyone in Sacramento is looking for Baby Hertzberg to succeed his dad—perhaps finding the blatant nepotism galling, probably not helped by Sen. Hertzberg being so notoriously handsy that a state Senate panel had to ban him from hugging in 2018 after multiple female legislators and a male state Senate employee reported a number of incidents of unwelcome and inappropriate hugging and grinding. Caroline Menjivar, an LGBTQ activist and military veteran, is running to Hertzberg’s left with the strong support of LA progressives—and some more unexpected sources, like outgoing Mayor Eric Garcetti and a half-dozen of Bob Hertzberg’s Democratic Senate colleagues.
District 28 (Culver City, Mar Vista, South Central LA)
Lola Smallwood-Cuevas vs. Cheryl Turner
Round 1: Smallwood-Cuevas 45% - Turner 30%
After three blockbuster Senate races and a hilarious D-on-D runoff in a red seat, District 28 is the forgotten election of the bunch—both because, unlike everywhere else, it’s kind of clear who’s going to win (the candidate who almost got 50% the first time, not the candidate who was 20% away), and because the ideological differences between the two aren’t large enough to unlock the tsunami of outside spending other races have attracted. Establishment choice Lola Smallwood-Cuevas was joined in the runoff not by either of the two more interesting and progressive opponents she had, but by Cheryl Turner, literally the lawyer for landlords in Los Angeles, who has been attacking the eviction moratorium in that role during her campaign.
California Assembly
District 10 (Southern Sacramento, Elk Grove)
Eric Guerra vs. Stephanie Nguyen
Round 1: Nguyen 29.9% - Guerra 29.5%
The Assembly has a crazy number of very tight D vs. D races being decided today, so it’s fitting that we’re starting with the tightest. Sacramento is simply chock-full of expensive high-stakes intra-party battles: if you live in this district you’re probably also voting in the SD-08 election and the Sacramento mayoral race. Like its senatorial cousin SD-08, AD-10 is one of the most expensive contests in its chamber, though unlike SD-08, AD-10 narrowly misses the #1 spot by only receiving $2.5 million in outside spending, behind AD-20’s $2.8 million. Incidentally, AD-20 is in Hayward…part of SD-10, the second most expensive senatorial contest. These are not accidents; Sacramento and the East Bay are going through political identity crises right now. Sacramento’s revolves around whether the oil industry is going to keep getting away with propping up a conservative faction of Democrats currently dominant from the local level on up. The only reason one of Sacramento’s two congressional representatives is a liberal is because the Matsuis have represented the city in Congress since the 70s. In fact, some measures place Jim Cooper, the Assemblymember that is leaving this seat open to run for Sheriff, as the most conservative Democrat in the Assembly.
On one side of the battle for Sacramento is Sacramento City Councilor Eric Guerra, a thoroughly generic character who may lean slightly more moderate than the average Calfornia Democrat (his main financial backers in this race are real estate interests and landlords), but if he does, it’s only slightly. On the other side is Elk Grove City Councilmember Stephanie Nguyen, a real standout supported by a coalition of cop unions, chambers of commerce, oil interests, and Jim Cooper, who actually recruited her to run for the seat. (Hey, no one ever said candidates can only stand out for good reasons.) If anyone’s favored here, it’s probably Nguyen, who’s been making a much stronger play for the ⅓ of the electorate which votes Republican, but with first round vote totals under 30% for both candidates, it’s a wide-open race.
District 12 (Marin County, southern Sonoma County)
Sara Aminzadeh vs. Damon Connolly
Round 1: Connolly 37% - Aminzadeh 36%
Marin County is home to some of the most cursed, high-income suburbanite politics in the Bay Area, already a nation-leading producer of them. That makes it hard to be even cautiously optimistic for Sara Aminzadeh, a genuine progressive, even if she has the endorsement of the San Francisco Chronicle and 3rd place finisher Steve Schwartz (14%). County Supervisor Damon Connolly, a man who literally protested the possibility of building housing on the grounds of a shuttered hospital during the campaign represents so much more of what Marin County’s been about historically that if he lost it would be both an upset and a sign that housing politics in California have seriously begun to change.
District 13 (Stockton and Tracy)
Carlos Villapudua (i) vs. Veronica Vargas
Round 1: Villapudua 59% - Veronica Vargas 27%
While there’s only one true sleeper in the California Assembly (AD-51), this one at least deserves a spot in the “less competitive” category. Carlos Villapudua, a moderate, narrowly won the November election for this seat in 2020, when it was open, and non-conservatives in Stockton want another crack at it. Unfortunately, Villapudua got nearly 60% of the vote in the first round this time; far from losing support, Villapudua expanded on it. Veronica Vargas may “consider [herself] to be a moderate on most issues” but she’s to the left of Villapudua’s often outright conservatism, and at least she hasn’t taken anti-vax votes that enthrall local right-wing activists to her.
District 20 (Hayward area)
Shawn Kumagai vs. Liz Ortega
Round 1: Ortega 32% - Kumagai 24%
As mentioned above, this is the most expensive election in the Assembly. Part of the reason is that, unlike in some other races, the progressive candidate isn’t getting horribly outspent—Liz Ortega, an SEIU director, has become a major project of organized labor, who are having a harder time than you’d expect getting some of their own into office in a blue state with relatively high union membership. The moderate side is still spending more, of course - that’s what a team-up of the real estate, charter school, and healthcare industries will get you. Liz Ortega hasn’t actually consolidated all of labor behind her; cop unions are supporting Shawn Kumagai, of course, as are some of the building trades, for a reason that shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with Bay Area politics: housing.
Kumagai is supported by at least 4 YIMBY groups, and for some clear policy-based reason, including Ortega supporting the current state of environmental review in California, a deeply flawed process currently coming under scrutiny for leading the state to order UC Berkeley to rescind acceptances and reduce their student population because a few wealthy local homeowners were concerned about overpopulation in their city. It’s contributing to the state’s housing shortage, and needs to be fixed. Kumagai also wants to “lead with strength” on homelessness, and is one of the most “rev up the bulldozers” approaches to the subject in general that we’ve seen in a while, declaring the necessity of “taking back our public spaces for children and families by moving people out” and rejecting the humanity of anyone without a house in the process. Combining that with commitment to low taxes, and it’s clear that Kumagai’s commitment to the issue runs exactly as deep as developers writing bigger checks than homeowners, rather than an actual interest in housing policy. However, unlike progressives’ choice in the primary, nurse and union organizer Jennifer Esteen, Ortega isn’t just bad on a housing policy position or two; the way she talks about it is legitimately concerning. Take this truly terrible mailer, which leads with the warning that “when neighborhoods get overcrowded…property values go down” and only gets worse from there, warning that Kumagai wants to “replace homes with apartment buildings in our neighborhoods - without providing parking” [emphasis theirs].
Outside of housing, the choice is easy: Kumagai opposes CalCare, the state’s proposed single payer healthcare system; he’s been running a tough-on-crime/fund-the-police messaging operation, while Ortega has been mostly sticking to progressive positions. Esteen won 22% of the primary vote, while the Republican candidate took 21%. Even if you allocate all Republicans to Kumagai, his path to victory still runs through a substantial number of Esteen voters, making Ortega the favorite. It’s such a shame—move a few votes, and Esteen would have made the runoff. Instead, it’s these two.
District 35 (East Bakersfield, rural northern Kern County)
Jasmeet Bains vs. Leticia Perez
Round 1: Perez 51% - Bains 49%
What a cursed race. In the first round, we were quite pleasantly surprised by Kern County Commissioner Leticia Perez’s weak showing; Perez, an extremely conservative and pro-oil Democrat, appeared to be a strong favorite, but local doctor Jasmeet Bains somehow managed to make the race a dead heat despite running against a well-known Democrat who Republicans should have no problem voting for. The fossil fuel industry has backed Perez to the tune of half a million dollars, while Bains is supported by every police union imaginable—and, apparently, Republicans. Ugh.
District 51 (Los Feliz, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, LA’s Westside)
Louis Abramson vs. Rick Chavez Zbur
Round 1: Zbur 62% - Abramson 38%
As promised above, this election is the only sleeper of the Assembly pack. establishment pick Rick Chavez Zbur cruised to a 23% victory in June’s beauty pageant primary, and not a whole lot has changed since then. Maybe if Zbur, an environmental lawyer, had any glaring flaws, the would be appetite by progressives to try and elevate scientist Louis Abramson, but Zbur is just kind of generic, and Abramson isn’t really all that different.
District 52 (Silver Lake, Echo Park, Eagle Rock, East Los Angeles)
Wendy Carrillo (i) vs. Mia Livas Porter
Round 1: Carrillo 50% - Porter 36%
Like the CA-34 race, this is about LA politics more than anything else. Incumbent Wendy Carrillo is a fairly reliable progressive in Sacramento, but her connections to the LA establishment (and some other problems, like allegations of inappropriate workplace behavior) have led LA progressives to go all in for anti-gun violence activist Mia Livas Porter. In an incident all too reminiscent of the city council recordings, LA City Councilor-elect Eunisses Hernandez reported being canvassed by a Gomez/Carrillo volunteer who expressed anti-Asian racist sentiment (Livas Porter is Filipina); while Gomez and Carrillo both quickly condemned the incident and promised Hernandez their campaigns would act to ensure it doesn’t happen again, there’s no denying that this race has gotten pretty damn ugly in the home stretch.
District 61 (LA’s Westside, Inglewood, Lawndale)
Tina McKinnor (i) vs. Robert Pullen-Miles
Round 1: Pullen-Miles 39% - McKinnor 33%
This race is a formality, really. After Assemb. Autumn Burke resigned from what was numbered District 62 under the old Assembly lines, a special election to fill out the remaining few months of her term was held concurrent with the June primary for a full term in the new AD-61, which contained most of Burke’s old turf. Lawndale Mayor Robert Pullen-Miles, Burke’s choice, outpaced progressive favorite Tina McKinnor in the primary for the new district—but narrowly lost the special election to McKinnor, giving her the substantial advantage of incumbency. Facing that somewhat confusing reality, Pullen-Miles decided not to actively campaign for the full term.
District 62 (Southeast LA/Gateway Cities)
Anthony Rendon (i) vs. Maria Estrada
Round 1: Rendon 67% - Estrada 33%
Another formality. LA progressives once thought they had a shot at Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, and indeed, Maria Estrada held him to single-digit victories in 2018 and 2020. Unfortunately, she crossed the line from anti-Zionism to blatant antisemitism (saying she enjoyed Louis Farrakhan’s sermons being a pretty representative incident.) Progressive voter guides that previously listed her have pointedly dropped her this time around, her fundraising has dried up completely, and she lost the first round by a punishing 2-to-1 margin. Expect little different this time, and hope for a better candidate in 2024.
District 65 (Watts, San Pedro, Carson)
Mike Gipson vs. Fatima Iqbal-Zubair
Round 1: Gipson 68% - Iqbal-Zubair 31%
This is a rematch of 2020. This district contains many of the LA area’s oil refineries, and bears the heavy environmental burden of their presence in the form of noxious air pollution severely detrimental to human health. The refineries have their man in Assemb. Mike Gipson—and Gipson, unfortunately, did quite well in the first round. He did significantly worse in 2020’s second round than in 2020’s first round, but he still won the 2020 second round by 19 points, and his first-round performance in 2020 was pretty similar to his first-round performance in 2022. It’s a shame, because democratic socialist community activist Fatima Iqbal-Zubair is an inspiring candidate who’d be a much-needed departure from the pro-fossil fuel politics that have given this area an asthma epidemic.
District 69 (Carson, Long Beach, Channel Islands)
Al Austin vs. Josh Lowenthal
Round 1: Lowenthal 46% - Austin 27%
Josh Lowenthal, son of Congressman Alan Lowenthal and former Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal, has all the advantages you could ask for in this race: he’s got the name, the money, and the establishment support that comes with being the child of a political family. He should, perhaps, be a little concerned he didn’t crack 50% in the first round, but only a little. For a good demonstration of why, consider this editorial from the Daily Breeze, entitled “Just so everyone is clear, Josh Lowenthal is terrible”. The Daily Breeze ran that after endorsing Lowenthal. The problem here is that his opponent, Long Beach City Councilor Al Austin, is very similar, but a little bit worse in a ton of subtle ways that make it hard for anyone put off by political dynasties to like him. He’s supported by police unions, wants more carveouts to chip away at efforts to build more housing and build fewer urban oil wells, and just generally doesn’t seem to have anything to recommend him besides not being Lowenthal.
California State Board of Equalization
The California SBOE is a bizarre, mostly vestigial board with little power left after a series of corruption scandals led Sacramento to strip the board of most of its powers, but it still plays a role in tax assessment and collection—and because the board has just four members, each district represents a monstrously-sized constituency of nearly 10 million Californians, making it a good springboard to higher office. (State Controller nominee Malia Cohen currently holds District 2, and noteworthy past SBOE members include U.S. Reps. Brad Sherman and Judy Chu, state Controller Betty Yee, state Treasurer Fiona Ma, former Gov. Gray Davis, and former Treasurer John Chiang.)
District 4 (San Diego, greater LA Metro)
Mike Schaefer (i) vs. David Dodson
Round 1: Schaefer 36% - Dodson 15%
Here’s what we said in the first round:
Mike Schaefer is almost an inspiring story—if one finds it inspiring when perennial candidates win on accident—but he’s a spouse-abusing slumlord. No serious Democrat bothered filing for the Southern California-based BOE seat 4 in 2018, leaving Democrats with former Republican San Diego City Councilman (1965-1971) Mike Schaefer as their candidate—and, much to everyone’s surprise, Schaefer was washed into office by that year’s Democratic wave. Sure, the BOE doesn’t actually do much, but normal guy David Dodson will be an upgrade.
We stand by what we said, and we’re pulling for Dodson.
Washington Senate
The reality is that all these races are basically uncompetitive. Three fairly establishment Democrats have someone on their ballot—a progressive in LD-32, a conservative in LD-36, and someone in between in LD-46—but the primary results were so resounding in August that November is a purely perfunctory exercise.
District 32 (Northern Seattle suburbs)
Jesse Salomon (i) vs. Patricia Weber
Round 1: Salomon 65% - Weber 19%
District 36 (Northwest Seattle)
Noel Frame vs. Kate Martin
Round 1: Frame 82% - Martin 18%
District 46 (Northeast Seattle)
Matthew Gross vs. Javier Valdez
Round 1: Valdez 83% - Gross 12%
Washington House
The state House, on the other hand, has some live races. Washington’s peculiar multi-member district system means each district elects one senator and two representatives, but each district also holds two separate representative elections, for Position 1 and Position 2, on the same ballot rather than having all candidates run on one ballot, as is the norm in other states with multi-member districts.
District 34 (West Seattle, Vashon Island)
Pos. 1: Emily Alvarado vs. Leah Griffin
Round 1: Alvarado 54% - Griffin 31%
Both candidates here are running as progressives but not leftists, which checks out for this part of Seattle. The Urbanist noted that they endorsed Griffin only because they had an internal rule against dual-endorsements, and the Stranger’s endorsement of Emily Alvarado begins with them mentioning that “the options are so good, that choice is incredibly difficult”. The candidates take the same positions on the issues, and the differences between them have to be teased out by their focuses: Alvarado has spent her public career focused on housing issues and basically wrote the Seattle eviction moratorium, while Leah Griffin has been focused on sexual assault victim advocacy and was part of legislative efforts to clear the rape kit backlog.
District 36 (Northwest Seattle)
Pos. 1: Jeff Manson vs. Julia Reed
Round 1: Reed 55% - Manson 14%
Former Obama staffer Julia Reed finished far ahead of Jeff Manson, an administrative law judge who led the successful effort to unionize administrative law judges in Washington state, and we credit that to her talent as politician—it’s quite difficult to score endorsements from both the pro-business Seattle Times and lefty The Stranger as a Seattle politician, but she did it. Manson, a former leader of the LD-36 Democrats, is staying alive through a large volume of party support, but progressives, by and large, like Reed, whose positions on more niche issues like single-family zoning (she opposes it, Manson doesn’t) indicate she’s the better choice.
District 37 (Southeast Seattle)
Pos. 2: Emijah Smith vs. Chipalo Street
Round 1: Street 42% - Smith 35%
We’d like to reiterate from the primary preview that it’s an enormous shame Democratic House leadership sidelined leftist Rep. Kirsten Harris-Talley so thoroughly she decided to retire after a single term. Even though both candidates to replace her have struck a progressive tone in their campaigns, her loss will be felt. Chipalo Street, a landlord who supports rent control, is liked by a lot of Democrat-associated advocacy groups and media organizations (and is another rare Seattle Times-The Stranger dual endorsee), but King County Equity Now activist Emijah Smith finished nearly as highly as Street in the first round and has the AFL-CIO behind her. As with HD-34 (1), they’d both be pretty good members of the House, mostly because in this pat of Seattle it’s hard not to be.
District 40 (Bellingham, Samish Bay, and San Juan County)
Pos. 2: Alex Ramel (i) vs. Trevor Smith
Round 1: Ramel 73% - Smith 24%
In the first round, business groups dropped $100,000 on elevating Trevor Smith, a representative for the building trades unions in the area. However, after a brutal nearly 50% loss in the August primary, they haven’t shown any more interest in Smith’s campaign, something that’s increasingly true of Smith himself, who’s skipping forums, no longer updating his online presence, and has basically stopped spending money. This is one dead election.
District 46 (Northeast Seattle)
Pos. 1: Gerry Pollet (i) vs. Hadeel Jeanne
Pollet 83% - Jeanne 16%
Similarly, this election is, technically, occurring, and, strictly speaking, it is physically possible for either candidate to win it. In reality, moderate-for-Seattle/progressive-for-WA incumbent Gerry Pollet is going to win easily—housing and renters’ rights advocate Hadeel Jeanne has dropped out—but we hope Jeanne gets plenty of protest votes along the way.
Pos. 2: Darya Farivar vs. Lelach Rave
Round 1: Farivar 32% - Rave 28%
Somehow, this is the only Seattle moderate-progressive factional battle going on in the legislature. The moderates, including the Seattle Times and outgoing Sen. David Frockt, are supporting physician Lelach Rave, while progressives, including The Stranger and former Seattle Mayoral candidate Cary Moon, are behind Darya Farivar, director of public policy at Disability Rights Washington. While moderate PAC Jackson Legacy Fund has done some spending here for Rave, most outside groups have stayed out of the runoff financially. They may simply find Rave to be facing odds that are too steep: not only did she finish second in the first round, but all three other candidates—Melissa Taylor, Nancy Connolly, and Nina Martinez—are progressives who have since endorsed Farivar.
District 47 Pos. 2 (Southeastern Seattle suburbs)
Shukri Olow vs. Chris Stearns
Round 1: Stearns 33% - Olow 20%
Republicans actually thought they had a chance at winning this seat, which has a history of voting Republican downballot but tends to give Democrats about 60% of the two-party vote. Then they locked themselves out of the general election, leaving mainstream Democrat and Auburn City Councilor Chris Stearns with progressive community organizer Dr. Shukri Olow as his opponent instead of a Republican. Stearns will presumably have an easier time getting Republican votes than Olow, and he was pretty far ahead of her in the first round, but we’re not sure how to handicap this one beyond that.