6/14 Primary Preview
Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, and South Carolina
Four states vote today: Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, and South Carolina. Between them all, there’s exactly one competitive Democratic congressional primary in a blue(-ish) district, but there’s a bevy of state legislative primaries and a pair of big DA races to make the night interesting anyway.
Note: in the initial version of this issue, we mistakenly described South Carolina state Rep. Cezar McKnight as a “pretty normal” Democrat. He is not. McKnight is a fervent supporter of discriminatory anti-trans legislation. We’re grateful to the readers who brought this to our attention. We apologize for the error, and our SC-HD-101 item has been updated to reflect McKnight’s record.
Maine
SD-27
Ken Capron vs. Jill Duson
Jill Duson, a pretty normal Democrat, is the clear favorite for this seat against semi-perennial candidate and recent Democrat Ken Capron, who fancies himself an ideas guy (most of those ideas are not good).
HD-48
Holly Stover (i) vs. Thomas Moroney
State Rep. Holly Stover and challenger Thomas Moroney, who volunteered for climate activist and now-state Sen. Chloe Maxmin’s successful 2020 campaign, both cite climate change and housing affordability as their top issues. It’s not clear which candidate is more progressive.
HD-100
Dan Ankeles vs. Andrew Kaleigh
Brunswick Town Councilor Dan Ankeles and Bowdoin student Andrew Kaleigh are hitting similar notes in their campaigns: more aggressive climate action, more housing to solve Maine’s housing and homelessness crises. Both seem like they’d do a fine job in office.
HD-119
Susanne Robins vs. Charles Skold
This district in downtown Portland is the state’s least white district (at a mere 72%), one of its most Democratic-leaning, and could potentially send the most progressive member of the state legislature to Augusta. Hopefully the choice between local Chamber of Commerce board member Susanne Robins and Charles Skold, a party activist and the designated successor of progressive state Rep. Mike Sylvester, is an easy one for Portland voters.
HD-126
Jean-Marie Caterina vs. Andrew Gattine
Drew Gattine, the chair of the Maine Democratic Party, represented a neighboring district until he was term-limited in 2020. Now, with a redrawn map putting part of Gattine’s hometown of Westbrook in HD-126, he’s trying for a comeback; in his way is Scarborough Town Councilor Jean-Marie Caterina. Neither is anyone’s idea of a progressive firebrand, but at least Gattine is a partisan attack dog while Caterina takes pains to emphasize collaboration and her “independent streak.”
HD-146
Heath Ouellette vs. Walter “Gerry” Runte Jr.
Realtor and Ogunquit Town Board Member Heath Ouellette is running a standard Democratic campaign and probably would be a standard member of the Democratic caucus. Walter “Gerry” Runte Jr., a local planning board member, is focused on climate change and housing affordability, and carries the endorsement of the Sierra Club.
Cumberland County District Attorney
Jonathan Sahrbeck (i) vs. Jackie Sartoris
Former Brunswick City Councilmember Jackie Sartoris isn’t a decarceral candidate, really. She’s less reform-minded than many of the other candidates backed by George Soros, who tends to invest heavily in prosecutorial candidates who promise to make bold moves to roll back mass incarceration. But she’s nevertheless the clear choice in Maine’s bluest and most populated county, because her opponent—independent-turned-Democrat incumbent DA Jonathan Sahrbeck—is opposed to almost any reform. Even Sartoris’s vague promises to try to seek incarceration in fewer cases and charge misdemeanors rather than felonies when possible make her the better candidate, though not one criminal justice reform advocates are excited about. Because, again, this is a DA who will charge victims of sex trafficking with prostitution, and who believes that Narcan—a proven overdose-prevention drug that has saved thousands of lives—doesn’t help drug users.
Nevada
NV-01
Dina Titus (i) vs. Amy Vilela
Rep. Dina Titus has made no secret of her displeasure with her new district, which was made a little redder to shore up fellow Democratic Reps. Susie Lee and Steven Horsford in their swingy Las Vegas-area districts; she calls it “the worst district in the state” as a result of Democrats’ redraw. She’s also not too shy about her distaste for campaigning and desire to exit the House.
Naturally, like most senior House Democrats who hate their jobs and their districts, she’s running for reelection anyway.
She faces Amy Vilela, a star of the documentary Knock Down the House along with now-Reps. AOC and Cori Bush and a co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s Nevada campaign in 2020, running with Sanders’s endorsement. (Titus, a moderate Democrat, was an early and vocal supporter of Joe Biden’s campaign in the 2020 primaries.) Vilela has raised and spent serious sums of money; Titus has, too, but she’s also relying on help from the network of shadowy centrist PACs that’s increasingly defining the Democratic establishment’s efforts to beat back progressive congressional candidates. Titus has survived tough campaigns before—she’s one of very few Nevada Democrats who’s faced down the legendary political machine of the late Sen. Harry Reid and lived to tell the tale—but in this race she sounds like an incumbent at risk of being caught napping. She’s favored to win renomination, but we’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
SD-10
Fabian Doñate (i) vs. Jack Absher
Appointed incumbent Fabian Doñate could theoretically be vulnerable, but local businessman Jack Absher is only running a barebones campaign against him.
SD-13
Skip Daly vs. Mark Miranda vs. Nnedi Stephens
State Rep. Skip Daly is the party-favored candidate in this open Reno-Sparks district after representing Sparks in the Assembly on and off since 2012. But, in a dynamic that we’ll see play out across many Assembly races as well, progressives, including the non-machine-aligned teachers’ union, are backing someone to his left (which is not hard to be—the man is a reliable vote against gun control, and also voted against ending qualified immunity for police officers in the state). That someone is Nnedi Stephens, a nonbinary first generation immigrant from Nigeria, who has been involved in community organizing for over a decade and served as the regional representative for Sen. Jacky Rosen’s office. She’s running on a progressive platform, and, in addition to the teachers’ unions, counts EMILY’s List, Planned Parenthood, LGBTQ Victory Fund, and a few other unions in her corner, though most of them support Daly. Daly has outspent Stephens, and labor is very important in Democratic primaries, but the Reno area has always been less committed to voting for the candidates chosen by the state establishment.
SD-21
James Ohrenschall (i) vs. Jacqueline Alvidrez
Jacqueline Alvidrez is another cryptocurrency candidate, and intensely so, from the cryptocurrency business she runs, Crypto Saves Us, to her libertarian-prepper-crpyto infused policies (which are more common than you would think in Nevada). James Ohrenschall is a boring incumbent, but, given the alternative, boring is good, and sufficient to win.
HD-16
Cecelia González (i) vs. Chuck Short
Chuck Short, who served as Clark County court administrator for over a decade in the 90s and 00s, and who now sits on Gov. Steve Sisolak’s unemployment taskforce, could have been a threat to a first-term state rep on paper, but he has basically no campaign, and only spent $100 on this race.
HD-20
David Orentlicher (i) vs. Patricia Marsh
Patricia Marsh, who bills herself as “Your Moderate Democrat“, has a strategy in this campaign, as her amateurish website demonstrates: call her opponent a carpetbagger from Indiana. It’s not an entirely unfair charge. David Orentlicher spent 6 years representing Indianapolis in the state house, and even ran for Congress in the state in 2008 and 2016. But that issue came up in Orentlicher’s unsuccessful 2018 run for Nevada Assembly on the other side of Las Vegas, as well as his successful run in 2020 for this district. He’s a shameless carpetbagger, but Nevada is full of highly transient voters who themselves have moved from out of state recently, and Orentlicher has the state establishment and labor now. (It’s also rather hard to make the carpetbagger charge stick against someone who’s already won an election in their new home.)
HD-25
Alex Goff vs. Selena La Rue Hatch
Democrats converted a Republican Reno suburbs district into one that Hillary Clinton won by 10% and Joe Biden won by 13%. The state establishment and the teachers’ unions are split on who should fill it. The former wants union rep Alex Goff, while the latter wants public school teacher Selena La Rue Hatch. As usual, Goff has more money, while La Rue Hatch has some national groups like EMILY’s List and Moms Demand Action.
HD-27
Brian Lee vs. Angie Taylor
Unlike the other open Reno-area districts, this is not a battleground between teachers’ unions and the more traditional establishment, both of which support former public defender and current executive director of the Nevada State Education Association Brian Lee. The divide instead is between statewide and local political forces, the latter of which prefers local school board member Angie Taylor.
HD-28
Aaron Bautista vs. Antonio Bowen vs. Reuben D'Silva vs. Cindi Rivera
Here we have one final establishment/teachers’ unions showdown. Preschool teacher Cindi Rivera is the establishment choice, while former Harry Reid staffer Reuben D'Silva is backed by the teachers’ unions. Those bios are correct even though normally you’d expect them to be swapped given their supporters. Unusually for this kind of contest, D'Silva has a cash advantage, as well as a few local politicians in his corner, most notably state Sen. Mo Denis, whose district includes HD-28.
Clark County DA
Steve Wolfson (i) vs. Ozzie Fumo
Steve Wolfson’s tenure as DA has been marked by an embrace of the tough-on-crime policies of his predecessors, and a proclivity for seeking the death penalty. In 2018, Wolfson only won his reelection primary 56% to 44% over ACLU board member Rob Langford, who entered at the last minute. Former state Rep. Ozzie Fumo is a much stronger opponent for Wolfson, and has the backing of the Culinary Union (which represents Las Vegas casino workers and is a cornerstone of the Reid machine.) Fumo promises to end the death penalty and stop prosecuting sex work. Wolfson has a massive cash advantage (thanks in part to Republican megadonor and casino magnate Steve Wynn) but his only community support is an endless string of cop unions.
North Dakota
HD-4A
Lisa Finley-DeVille vs. Thomasina Mandan
North Dakota, like South Dakota, generally elects two state representatives per district, but, like South Dakota, sometimes creates subdistricts that each elect one representative instead. Two new subdistricts were created after the 2020 census to give a pair of Native reservations a guaranteed voice in the state capitol. HD-4A was drawn for the Fort Berthold Reservation, home to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation (MHA Nation, or the Three Affiliated Tribes.) Whether Lisa Finley-DeVille or Thomasina Mandan, both past candidates for the state legislature under old lines, emerges victorious, the winner will finally give the MHA Nation’s reservation an enrolled member as its state representative. (One MHA Nation member, Democrat Ruth Buffalo, currently serves in the legislature representing Fargo.)
HD-9A
Tracy Boe (i) vs. Jayme Davis
Unlike in HD-4A, it’s not guaranteed that the Turtle Mountain Reservation will actually get an Indigenous state representative. That’s because of longtime state Rep. Tracy Boe, who opted to seek reelection here after the district he shared with fellow Democrat Marvin Nelson was subdivided to give the Turtle Mountain Reservation its own seat. Jayme Davis, a former aide to U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad who works in Native-focused nonprofits, is running against him, and is an Anishinaabe from the Turtle Mountain Band herself.
South Carolina
HD-25
Adriene Atkinson vs. Justin Bennett vs. Wendell Jones vs. Derrick Quarles vs. Bruce Wilson
Greenville has the only open Democratic state house seat in the state, and five candidates are crowding in, making it a likely candidate for a runoff. The most serious seem like social worker Adriene Atkinson and young BLM activist Derrick Quarles.
HD-62
Robert Williams (i) vs. Bryson Caldwell
Robert Williams, who could be considered progressive by the low standards of South Carolina politics, is being challenged by Hartsville (pop. 7,000) City Councilman Bryson Caldwell, whose day job is in insurance and whose social media is littered with gross posts, for instance, about how the unemployed are just lazy and how he loved doing personal searches as a security guard. Thankfully, Williams should be favored here.
HD-70
Wendy Brawley (i) vs. Jermaine Johnson (i) vs. Bridgette Jones Larry
Redistricting double-bunked two incumbents in this rural district just east of Columbia. The new district is more that of Jermaine Johnson, a fan of radical centrist former presidential candidate Andrew Yang who made it to the state house by sensing the intense weakness of the elderly white incumbent in his district last cycle, than it is the district of Wendy Brawley, who, like Robert Williams, meets the low bar of progressive within South Carolina. Bridgette Jones Larry is also running, and may force this race to a runoff.
HD-90
Justin Bamberg (i) vs. Evert Comer Jr.
Justin Bamberg is a civil rights attorney specializing in representing victims of police violence. Not only is he a rare Bernie Sanders endorser from South Carolina, he’s also a former board member of Our Revolution. He finds himself with a primary challenge not only for swimming upstream against a more moderate establishment, but because redistricting radically altered his previously rural district to include the city of Orangeburg. Luckily, he faces only Bamberg County Councilman Evert Comer Jr., his opponent in 2016 and 2020, who he previously beat 78-22 and 81-19, respectively.
HD-101
Roger Kirby (i) vs. Cezar McKnight (i) vs. William Terry Wallace
Roger Kirby is one of the last rural white Democrats in the south, and unsurprisingly, he’s one of the more moderate Democrats in the state house, breaking with his party last year to support the state’s open carry bill. He’s also probably losing reelection after his district was blown to pieces by redistricting and his home of Lake City wound up in the district of Cezar McKnight, who is also only sort of a Democrat and a huge proponent of state-sanctioned discrimination against transgender kids. (To Kirby’s credit, he voted against the state’s ban on trans student athletes, calling it “discriminatory” and “unnecessary.”) Like HD-70, this incumbent-on-incumbent battle may see a runoff thanks to the presence of minor third candidate William Terry Wallace, though we’re thinking McKnight should clear 50% here.