6/21 Primary Preview

DC, mostly

Congratulations, everyone! You made it through the densest period of the primary season. This Tuesday is our first light week in a while. It's Washington, DC's time in the spotlight. (Okay, Virginia also has congressional elections, but the only contested one is VA-08, where incumbent Don Beyer faces Victoria Virasingh. She's much more progressive than him, but she's also going to lose because this race never really caught fire.) Most of the action this week is across the Potomac. There are also runoffs for a handful of state legislative contests in Alabama and Georgia, included at the end of this preview; Arkansas also has runoffs today, but there are none to cover on the Democratic side in blue-leaning areas.

While every contested race in the nation’s capital today is very high-stakes, there are only a few. This preview is therefore on the shorter side.

Washington, DC

Mayor

Muriel Bowser (i) vs. Robert White vs. Trayon White vs. James Butler

Muriel Bowser triumphantly unseated incumbent Mayor Vincent Gray in 2014, and warded off any serious challengers in 2018. But after 8 years, discontent is starting to grow. Bowser was always a pro-corporate, pro-cop mayor, but it wasn’t until the recent leftward turn of the council that she found herself constantly fighting over the city’s contentious issues: taxes for the rich, family leave, fare evasion decriminalization, homeless encampment sweeps, and policing, always against a council (and in the case of many ballot measures, a populous) to her left. She’s facing City Councilmember At-Large Robert White, a leading progressive on that Council.

The two have sparred for months over conditions in the city, Bowser’s leadership, and crime. Especially crime. Bowser’s plan to fight crime is adding another 500 cops to the force, and using a $20,000 signing bonus to do so. She clearly thinks that as crime surges in the city, her allegiance with the police force will be the perfect contrast to Robert White, who was mildly supportive of police defunding efforts in 2020. White’s trying to thread the needle on the issue, arguing that surging crime rates show not the need for more police, but Bowser’s failed leadership, and that while he has a multi-point plan to address crime, her only plan is “4000 cops”. DC Attorney General Karl Racine, far from a Krasner-esque reform DA, supports White. 

Also supporting White are a bevy of progressive groups and a few large labor unions: AFSCME, and the city’s teachers and nurses unions. The AFL-CIO, conversely, backs Bowser, and most locals of the more progressive SEIU are staying out. Bowser also has the support of the Washington Post.

This race has been oddly treated as a layup for Bowser, despite White being a citywide elected official with some major support. There’s only been a single public poll, released in February. Bowser led 47% - 19%. That doesn’t seem like a solid lead for an incumbent months before campaign season, but no one ever funded a follow up. White’s campaign released a poll last week showing him down just 41% to 37%.

Also in the race are Trayon White, Ward 8 Councilmember, and James Butler, best known for more or less defaulting into the role of anti-Bowser protest vote in 2018. While Butler’s unlikely to register in the final tally, Trayon White has the potential as a spoiler. You may remember Trayon (no relation to Robert, by the way) from that time he speculated about a Jewish weather machine. He may have doomed his citywide prospects with that remark (and a similar follow up), but he’s still popular in Ward 8, the poorest and most neglected corner of the city, which also has been Bowser’s worst historically. 

Attorney General

Brian Schwalb vs. Bruce Spiva vs. Ryan Jones

After two terms, DC’s first-ever elected AG, Karl Racine, is retiring. After early drama over Councilmember Kenyan MacDuffie’s mistaken belief that he was qualified to run for the office (a last minute court ruling eventually tossed him from the ballot), the field quickly reoriented into a contest between what previously had been the election’s B team. Fighting for the status quo is Racine’s pick, Brian Schwalb. And if there’s anything Schwalb wants you to know, it’s that he’s Racine’s pick. Racine’s picture graces the face of all of Schwalb’s mailers (at least the 6 we could find) and the front page of his website. In truth, Schwalb may be even worse than the status quo. He promises a renewed focus on police minors who are “repeat offenders” with undefined “meaningful consequences”, an all-but explicit guarantee to increase incarceration for the city’s already overpoliced poor. Naturally, he’s the Washington Post’s endorsed candidate. 

Running to his left-ish is Bruce Spiva. Spiva promises to end drug prosecution for recreational use (likely a popular position in a city that recently voted by overwhelming margins to decriminalize not only marijuana but psychedelic mushrooms) and to disrupt the school to prison pipeline. Spiva is not particularly radical, and the way he’s self-funding his campaign with over $500,000 instead of using public financing has rubbed some people the wrong way, but progressive groups such as the Sierra Club still see him as a better bet than Schwalb. Labor is split here, with 32BJ SEIU and LiUNA behind Spiva, but most of the building trades unions on Team Schwalb. The third attorney in the race, Ryan Jones, is the most conservative, but also lags in fundraising and has been slowly squeezed out of what has become a Schwalb-Spiva contest.

Council Chair

Phil Mendelson (i) vs. Erin Palmer

Phil Mendelson has served in the DC Council far longer than anyone else currently in the body, an uninterrupted streak of representing an at-large seat, then the Council Chair, since 1998. As Chair, Mendelson has immense power, and has often wielded it against progressive ends. He was instrumental in Council votes to begin sweeps of the city’s homeless encampments and to overturn the ballot measure that would have eliminated tipped minimum wage, among other things. In 2018, he was challenged by Ed Lazere in what turned into a closer-than-expected 63-37 win for Mendelson. Mendelson is taking this cycle’s challenge more seriously, proactively messaging to fight the biggest knock against him (that he’s gradually drifted more conservative over the years) by proclaiming that he’s “still Phil” and using his work as a tenant advocate 40 years ago as evidence of his progressive politics today.

Challenger Erin Palmer, an ethics lawyer and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner (ANC), has attacked Mendelson for taking corporate money, and for closing schools instead of investing in public education, a claim being bolstered by longtime Mendelson antagonists the Washington Teachers Union, who broke with the rest of organized labor to support Palmer. She’s still seen as a significant underdog based on Mendelson’s twin pillars of support: the wealthier, whiter, more suburban neighborhoods in the west of the city, and the poorer Black neighborhoods to the east.

Council At-Large

Anita Bonds (i) vs. Lisa Gore vs. Nate Fleming vs. Dexter Williams

For every complaint about Phil Mendelson, Anita Bonds is far worse. If you take any contentious issue in front of the council, she’s on the wrong side. On top of that, after 50 years in politics (she was working for Marion Barry’s campaign all the way back in 1971), she’s clearly losing interest in the day-to-day functioning of the city. Recently, she made news for saying she was unaware that DC had a waitlist for affordable housing, a waitlist that currently includes almost 5% of the city’s residents.

Bonds has never been that popular—her best primary performance across three elections is 53%—but she’s always won easily owing to a split opposition, and this year looks like it’ll be no different. Lisa Gore, a HUD special agent and current ANC Commissioner, is the choice of many of the city’s progressives, including the Working Families Party and a few housing groups. However, some generally progressive groups, including the Washington Teachers Union, like Dexter Williams, a former Council staffer and current voting rights nonprofit worker. Finally, there’s Nate Fleming, a staffer to Trayon White. Fleming differs the least from Bonds on policy, but is running an aggressive campaign and was, somehow, endorsed by the Washington Post, which should honestly count as a mark against him given the rest of their endorsements.

Council Ward 1

Brianne Nadeau (i) vs. Salah Czapary vs. Sabel Harris

Ward 1, which covers Columbia Heights and adjacent neighborhoods, including Howard University, has long had a reputation as the most consistently progressive ward in the city. Incumbent Brianne Nadeau was first elected in 2014 after defeating an incumbent. Since then, she’s made waves for pushing progressive policy after progressive policy, which has infuriated a lot of big DC money. They want her gone, and this year they’ve found just the Republican cop to do it: Salah Czapary.

Normally when a Democratic candidate gets called a Republican plant, it's a more general sort of claim about a certain type of politician who was always going to serve the wealthy and powerful, and chose their party out of convenience. In Czapary's case, it's because there's a substantial case to be made that he's a Republican attempting to sneak through the Democratic primary. Czapary, previously an independent, switched to the Democratic Party right before starting his campaign. That campaign is being run by Republicans, and not merely mercenary campaign consultants who happen to be registered GOP. He appointmented as his campaign chair William Pack, a registered Republican whose father is a Steve Bannon ally and former CEO of the far-right think tank the Claremont Institute. William, in sync with his father, sits on a fossil fuel industry think tank. Czapary's campaign treasurer was also a registered Republican right up until Czapary started getting his campaign together. He also scheduled at least one fundraiser with a local Republican group, all while asserting his campaign is nothing but loyal to the Democratic Party. 

These accusations are clearly getting to the campaign. A local group has taken to putting a poster detailing these ties under every official Czapary poster, and his campaign manager's husband was recently caught tearing them down. That's of course a crime, which would be ironic for a law-and-order candidate like Czapary, if we didn't all know who exactly is meant when politicians like him strike those notes. Czapary has been striking those notes, over and over and over again. As excited as he was when the Washington Post endorsed him, he was probably also a little concerned that displaying that endorsement might cut into the number of times per mailer he could remind voters he's a cop. The entire campaign is an exercise in breathtaking cynicism, from Czapary on down to the number of federal Democratic staffers financially supporting him in what is most likely an effort to drum out of the party anyone who supported police defunding, considering Czapary has yet to find a second attack to make on Nadeau. It may even succeed—he's managed to buy his campaign more visibility than Nadeau's, though the last few weeks after his Republican ties were uncovered have been a brutal news cycle for him, and he couldn't have picked a worse place to try to pull this off.

Council Ward 3

Eric Goulet vs. Matthew Frumin vs. Deirdre Brown vs. Beau Finley vs. Monte Monash vs. Phil Thomas (vs. Tricia Duncan vs. Ben Bergmann vs. Henry Cohen)

Ward 3 is DC’s richest and whitest ward; it’s also the only ward located entirely west of Rock Creek, where DC is more suburban. It’s home to an embarrassing number of dignitaries, retired politicians, media executives, professional lobbyist ghouls, and so forth. Naturally, this race is a clusterfuck.

Incumbent Mary Cheh, who had been running for reelection, abruptly reversed course and announced her retirement; roughly a million candidates piled into the race to replace her. Then one of those candidates, Eric Goulet, got an assist in the form of more than $1 million in spending from Democrats For Education Reform, a right-wing group that boosts conservative Democrats who want to divert money from public schools to charter schools. Combined with racist comments Goulet made about low-income housing voucher holders in response to an apparently anodyne question about how to make the super-white ward slightly less white, other candidates began deciding they’d had enough of Goulet. Over the course of about 24 hours on the night of June 13 and the morning and early afternoon of June 14, local ANC commissioner Ben Bergmann and high school student Henry Cohen, both progressives, and community activist Tricia Duncan, a more moderate candidate backed by Cheh, all dropped out to endorse Matt Frumin. All three reasoned that defeating Goulet was more important than any one of them getting elected, and all three believed Frumin to be the strongest candidate to defeat Goulet. (Frumin, a former State Department official in the Clinton administration, is a normal Democrat rather than a right-wing charter school ghoul.) Many of their endorsers, including Cheh, followed suit. This sort of fuck-this-guy coalition can be powerful, but we fear it happened too late—early voting had already begun. (We’re nonetheless impressed by and grateful for the three former candidates’ decision to put Ward 3 before their own ambitions.)

If Goulet wins, the only consolation will be that he’s already hated by an unusually broad spectrum of Democratic politicians, activists, and interest groups. Here’s hoping he doesn’t.

Council Ward 5

Zachary Parker vs. Vincent Orange vs. Faith Gibson Hubbard vs. Gordon Fletcher vs. Kathy Henderson vs. Gary Johnson vs. Art Lloyd

Despite the colorful list of candidates, this race is Orange vs. Red. That joke only makes sense if you knew ahead of time that Zachary Parker is a socialist, but we wanted to lead off with it anyway. SNL, hire us. 

Vincent Orange represented Ward 5 1999-2007, at which point he left for a citywide political career, one that he would only ever have minor success at. After an embarrassingly failed 2006 mayoral bid, and a failed run at Council Chair, he narrowly won a City Council at-large special in 2011, and just barely managed to get a full term in 2012, owing to split opposition. But then he was ignored once again while running for mayor in 2014, lost reelection in 2016, and failed in his 2020 comeback bid. After three straight losses, he’s returning home to Ward 5.

Standing in his way is Zachary Parker. Orange is still popular in Ward 5, as evidenced by his last two campaigns, where he won there. But Orange is decades past his peak, and no one expects his return to be smooth sailing. Parker, first elected to the State Board of Education in 2018, is now the Board president. He’s also a DSA member and the only DC politician to carry their endorsement this cycle. He’s also supported by Ward 4 Councilmember and fellow DSA member Janeese Lewis George, Ward 6 Councilmember George Allen, and retiring AG Karl Racine. He’s also the candidate of labor, progressive groups like Sunrise and the Working Families Party. (The Washington Post is backing Faith Gibson Hubbard here, because lol why not?)

Parker is a strong candidate, and just as importantly, Orange is proving himself to be a weak one. Facing the openly gay Parker, Orange has fumbled repeately on LGBTQ issues. Orange tried to claim his campaign manager as gay when he wasn’t, and attacked the timing of Parker’s coming out. His own anti-gay past has come back to haunt him as well, including instances where he attacked his opponents in 2006 for supporting gay marriage, even though “they say they believe in God”. 

Alabama runoffs

SD-23

Robert Stewart vs. Hank Sanders

Party activist Robert Stewart faces former state Sen. Hank Sanders, who’s running to get his old job back after his daughter retired to run for governor. Sanders got 45% in the first round, which is low for someone who recently represented this district but close enough to 50% that he should win in the second round.

HD-55

Rod Scott (i) vs. Fred Plump

Incumbent Rod Scott is anti-trans; he also got a pitiful 25% of the vote in the first round. Retired firefighter Fred Plump, who got 22%, simply has to win over people who already voted against Scott.

HD-56

Ontario Tillman vs. Tereshia Huffman

Attorney Ontario Tillman and Birmingham Water Works Board Member Tereshia Huffman, a field organizer for Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin’s reelection, beat a pair of local elected officials to get into this runoff. Tillman, who got 42% in the first round, is probably likelier to win than Huffman, who got 24%.

Georgia runoffs

HD-39

Monica DeLancy vs. Terry Cummings

Monica DeLancy is a renters’ advocate; Terry Cummings is a lawyer for prisons. DeLancy got 29% of the first-round vote to Cummings’s 27%, so it’s anyone’s guess who has the upper hand here.

HD-90

Saira Draper vs. Michelle Schreiner

In the first round, progressives wanted leftist organizer Bentley Hudgins. Hudgins came in third, and in the runoff, progressives including Hudgins are backing Michelle Schreiner, a former HHS staffer, over Saira Draper, a Georgia Democratic Party staffer. Schreiner got 34% of the first-round vote; Draper got 43%.