6/6 Primary Preview
Denver runoffs and New Jersey
Denver
Mayor
Round 1: Mike Johnson 24.5% / Kelly Brough 20.0%
Okay, let’s start with [neck crack] Kelly Brough. Brough is the top fundraiser, possibly because she used to be the CEO of Denver’s Chamber of Commerce, and has some support from the previous generation of Denver’s establishment, possibly because she worked in the Hickenlooper administration (the mayoral one, not the gubernatorial one.) Also, she’s dating the go-to lobbyist for developers in the city. Is she any good? No, of course not, why would you ask that question? She’s a center-right business ghoul in the Bloomberg vein. She supports land acknowledgements and also “recognizing our authority” to get rid of homeless people. She opposes adding new bike lanes and also rent control. Her commitment to “building a police culture around national best practices, transparency and accountability” is three bullet points away from her desire to get qualified immunity for police officers back. She’s worse than substanceless—she’s full of terrible, terrible ideas for recommitting to the status quo or making it worse, and platitudes to sell them with. She also might be the next mayor.
Next, state Sen. Mike Johnston, the “wait, there was a third candidate?” of the 2018 gubernatorial primary. Propped up by Bloomberg, he got 24% of the vote, and everyone promptly forgot about him, which is the correct response to encountering Mike Johnston. Johnston is a great candidate for people who like Kelly Brough but wish her policy documents were longer. If you’re looking for more cops, enforcing more crimes, with longer sentences, Mike Johnston is for you, because “citizens who are following the law need to feel like Denver still belongs to them.” Wow, fuck him. Also, he might win, because he’s raised $3.5 million and the Denver Post endorsed him.
Faced with an incredibly dispiriting contest between bad and worse, progressives, including third place finisher Lisa Calderón, have begrudgingly gotten behind Mike Johnston, while the GOP is supporting Brough. Both are big-money corporate Democrats who would be an impediment to any progressive legislation the Council might pass, and depending on how the night goes, there may indeed be a Council willing to pass some. What separates the two is how they would wield the city’s police force. Though Johnston is nothing close to progressive on the issue, it’s Brough who’s leaning into the reactionary tough-on-crime backlash, proposing a return of qualified immunity, and ending the homelessness crisis by arresting anyone who decides to sleep on the street - it is technically a foolproof plan - if it’s illegal not to have a home, the homelessness rate will plummet as the city rounds them up and throws them in prison instead. It’s impossible to feel excited for Johnston, but we’ll take him riding into office on a wave of money from Bloomberg and Reid Hoffman (funder of one of the DMFI-adjacent anti-left PACs last cycle) if it shuts out Brough.
Council District 7 (South Denver)
Round 1: Flor Alvidrez 38.5% / Nick Campion 19.2%
This election is only nominally contested: Campion withdrew weeks ago.
District 8 (Park Hill, Central Park, Montbello; northeast Denver)
Round 1: Shontel Lewis 35.7% / Brad Revare 33.5%
Former RTD Director Shontel Lewis is running a staunchly progressive campaign with an admirably detailed platform and the support of DSA and WFP. Her main opponent is Brad Revare.
(Note: Nick’s original meltdown about how annoying Revare’s refusal to answer questions was has been cut for space.)
In the interim, something of note has happened. Revare has started answering questions with words that mean things, and his official position on every issue is now whatever Shontel Lewis just said. We don’t believe he actually means that, and neither does the Denver GOP, which is why they’ve endorsed him.
District 9 (North Denver)
Round 1: Candi CdeBaca (i) 44.2% / Darrell Watson 42.9%
Candi CdeBaca is a socialist and all-around fantastic councilmember who unseated an incumbent in a very close 2019 election. Naturally, her existence infuriates the city's moderate business-allied establishment, and they’re backing Darrell Watson to get her out of there. Watson is a small business owner who has unsuccessfully run for council twice before, but he’s never had as much support as he does now after the moderate establishment decided to make him the anti-CdeBaca choice. There’s another moderate candidate in the race—to oppose CdeBaca, Denver’s establishment didn’t even have to back a candidate who once plead guilty to beating a kid he was watching, but they did anyway.
Watson’s top donor is a landlord association, and his endorsers include the Denver Metro Association of Realtors. While it can be hard to pin him down on some policy questions (whether to allow single-family zoning in Denver is “not an either-or question”, apparently), he’s openly calling for longer criminal sentences and sweeps of homeless encampments to support the camping ban (anything less would be “not compassionate”).
Candi CdeBaca proposed, in a debate, funding reparations by taxing white-owned businesses. We’re not going to get too into the weeds of policy, but it seems like a particularly hard-to-implement solution to a problem that doesn’t really need one (other municipalities with reparations programs don’t use dedicated funding schemes). An unforced error in other words, and one that blew up thanks to transphobe celebrity Chaya Raichik posting it to her LibsOfTikTok account. None of her followers subsequently tried to bomb anyone this time, but CdeBaca was deluged with hate messages for weeks following the debate. It’s become the biggest story of the runoff, which is troubling for a highly ideologically fraught battle where Denver’s business money is trying to snuff out one of the few dissenting voices in government, and where the spotlight should have turned onto the Watson’s troubling record and current stances instead of letting him skate by as “not CdeBaca”. CdeBaca may survive this one, and if she does it will be thanks to a more targeted operation from progressives than the first round, but if she doesn’t, it will have been a preventable loss.
Darrell Watson is endorsed by the Denver GOP.
District 10 (Capitol Hill; central Denver)
Round 1: Chris Hinds (i) 35.6% / Shannon Hoffman 27.1%
Chris Hinds is the kind of politician who can last a long time in the dense inner core of a city: he’s progressive enough on most contentious issues to avoid constantly attracting the ire of the left, but never quite confrontational enough about his positions to piss off business interests enough for them to wade into what is clearly a very progressive district. For instance, Hinds was first elected on a wide-ranging and humane platform for working on the city’s homelessness problem…but rent control was not on the menu, apparently, and much of the good stuff was not something Hinds ever seemed to be fighting for publicly. Hinds has triangulated, essentially, and probably effectively. He faces a candidate running to his right, and another running to his left, but both, should they make the runoff, will face a challenge getting to 50% against him. If someone can do it, it’s probably Shannon Hoffman. Hoffman is an educator, and, as she reminds people, a renter, who is backed by most of the city’s progressive organizations including WFP and DSA. Hoffman is running strongly in support of social housing, and we wish we could leave it there, but it looks like we’re not going to be able to make it through the Denver contests without talking about that fucking golf course.
(Note: Opinion Haver’s original meltdown about how annoying the 2O referendum was has been cut for space.)
The tone of the runoff hasn’t been vicious, but the candidates are unafraid of drawing a contrast with each other. Hoffman’s repeatedly cast Hinds as a controlled by developers, while one group backing Hinds, Denver Voters for Sanity, have sent out a mailer attacking Hoffman as a socialist and objecting to her support of safe injection sites and opposition to camping bans. Hinds has distanced himself from the mailers, though he hasn’t renounced his support from the Denver GOP, as far as we can tell. Hinds should be the favorite in the runoff; he has endorsements from both candidates who failed to make the runoff, has more money and labor support, and finished 8.5% ahead of Hoffman in the runoff. Still, he’s an incumbent who finished with just over a third of the vote; it’s hard to be that confident in his electoral abilities.
New Jersey
To understand party primaries in New Jersey, you need to understand the unique system of ballot design known variously as the party line, the county line, the ballot line, the organization line, or just The Line.
Here’s a sample ballot for Bayonne Ward 1, District 1 as a demonstration of what The Line looks like. (Column B is The Line in Hudson County this year; progressives won Column A in this year’s ballot position drawing.) It’s extremely difficult to win off the line in New Jersey, and the higher the office, the worse the chances are for an off-the-line challenger.
LD-18 (Edison, East Brunswick, South Plainfield, Metuchen)
Senate: Patrick Diegnan Jr. (i) vs. Christopher Binetti
Christopher Binetti is going to get crushed, but we simply must note he is a self-described “Italian-American civil rights activist” who testified against perceived anti-Italian discrimination in the state’s redistricting process. (There was none.)
Mama mia! They put-a the pizza place in a different district from the cannoli shop. Discriminationi!
LD-19 (Woodbridge, Perth Amboy, Sayreville)
Senate: Joseph Vitale (i) vs. Michelle Burwell
Social worker and realtor Michelle Burwell is running on her own without any slate. State Sen. Joseph Vitale will win in a landslide.
LD-20 (Elizabeth, Roselle, Union Township)
Senate: Joseph Cryan (i) vs. Angela Alvey-Wimbush
House: Reginald W. Atkins (i) vs. Annette Quijano (i) vs. Charles E. Mitchell Sr. vs. Myrlene M.A. Thelot
Jamel Holley, man. A backbench Democratic legislator when COVID ravaged Union County with some of the highest case and death rates in the country, Holley went further and further down a rabbit hole of COVID conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine quackery. Union County Democrats had quite enough of that in 2021; the county party threw Holley off the line, he ran for state Senate with a full slate as revenge, and he got crushed on primary day. Holley did, however, carry his hometown of Roselle (pop. 23,000) in that primary; two years later, he’s running for his old job as mayor of the borough, and fielding a slate of legislative candidates to fill out the ballot. (He is also supporting RFK Jr. for president, because he is nuts.) Roselle Board of Education member Angela Alvey-Wimbush is the only elected official Holley could find to go along with him, and she’s going up against state Sen. Joe Cryan, the Union Township boss who crushed Holley in 2021. Charles Mitchell and Myrlene Thelot are Holley’s candidates against Assembs. Reginald Atkins and Annette Quijano; Atkins is also Roselle’s Democratic Party boss and has been fighting Holley’s faction since the latter went loony in 2020. Nobody on Holley’s slate is remotely likely to make it to the legislature, but if they carry Roselle again, that bodes extremely well for Jamel Holley’s desired return to Borough Hall.
LD-27 (Montclair, Clifton, the Oranges)
Senate: Richard Codey (i) vs. Nia Gill (i)
House: John McKeon (i) vs. Alixon Collazos-Gill vs. Eve Robinson vs. Craig Stanley
Richard Codey has been around forever, and as far as he’s concerned he’s leaving feet first. Sure, he’s already got forty years of legislative service under his belt. Sure, he was Senate President for a time. Sure, that job even made him governor for a while, because Jim McGreevey’s resignation came before New Jersey established the position of lieutenant governor. Politics is a game Dick Codey can’t quit, and his colleague Nia Gill seems likely to be a casualty. Gill, 75, is only a year Codey’s junior, and her anti-machine positioning and rhetoric is undeniably opportunistic; she’s running off-the-line as a progressive reformer, but she’s doing that because redistricting double-bunked her with Codey and the county party preferred him. Still, Gill might have been a threat to Codey, and she initially seemed serious about it, recruiting Montclair school board member Eve Robinson and Clifton school board member Frank Kasper. Then Kasper dropped out and Gill’s fundraising dried up. Now it seems that Codey’s ticket of Assemb. John McKeon and Alixon Collazos-Gill, a former congressional staffer and the wife of Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill, is going to cruise to an easy victory. Former Assemb. Craig Stanley is running his own off-the-line campaign for Assembly, separate from both Gill and the official party slate and on an even smaller budget.
LD-28 (Newark, Irvington, Maplewood, South Orange)
House: Cleopatra Tucker (i) vs. Garnet Hall vs. Frank McGehee
The Essex County organization chose deputy county clerk Garnet Hall as the replacement for retiring Assemb. Mila Jasey a month before Hall was even a candidate. Unusually, that hasn’t stopped another serious politician from running: former Maplewood (pop. 26,000) mayor Frank McGehee. McGehee isn’t running as a more progressive alternative to the machine’s choice—both he and Hall are typical liberal Democrats—but as a more independent voice. Much of his campaigning is less against Hall in particular than the line in general. McGehee has rallied support from his allies in Maplewood, and in the neighboring town of South Orange, but the machine remains strong, especially in Newark, where about half the population resides but less than half the vote will be cast. Since this is a three-person race, some have speculated that if McGehee makes it to the Assembly, it may actually be at the expense of incumbent Cleopatra Tucker, an 80-year-old incumbent who hasn’t been campaigning much.
LD-31: (Bayonne, Kearny, Jersey City)
Senate: Michael Griffin vs. Angela McKnight
House: William Sampson (i) vs. Shanelle Smith vs. Barbara McCann Stamato
State Assemb. Angela McKnight was chosen to be one of Jersey City’s two state senators by mayor (and now-gubernatorial candidate) Steve Fulop. She’s not a conservative, just a typical machine stooge. She is not the story here, nor are her running mates, incumbent William Sampson and Barbara McCann Stamato, the sister of former Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann and former Democratic municipal chair. Hudson County’s fledgling progressive scene is the story—an odd blend of your usual collection of anti-machine archetypes and more familiar ideologically-minded lefties similar to those across the river in NYC. Along with a fuller slate for county office, the Hudson County Progressives’ ballot column will include Senate candidate Michael Griffin, campaign manager to Jersey City Councilman Frank “Educational” Gilmore, and teacher Shanelle Smith, another Gilmore ally. Gilmore’s base on the south side of Jersey City will cast an outsized share of the primary vote due to its strong Democratic tilt, and the performances of Griffin and Smith could help sink or buoy other candidates on the progressive slate.
Hudson County Executive
Craig Guy vs. Eleana Little
As far as the public is concerned, until just a couple months ago, Craig Guy was just some guy. To Hudson County politicos, he was County Executive Tom DeGise’s chief of staff. With DeGise retiring after 20 years (and his daughter Amy, a Jersey City councilor, no longer a viable successor thanks to her hit-and-run collision with a cyclist), the Guy behind the scenes was thrust into the spotlight. There were some early bumps in the road, like Guy blatantly living all the way down in exurban Hazlet, and the revelation of an expunged charge of official misconduct against Guy during his career as a Jersey City cop (according to Guy’s attorney, it resulted from an overeager agent interpreting a mention of a birthday on a wiretap as a reference to drugs when it was actually just a reference to someone’s birthday.) Nevertheless, Guy has remained a clear favorite over progressive challenger Eleana Little, an activist and environmental engineer who nearly won a seat on the county commission off the line three years ago. Little is one of several progressives to have come close to beating the machine on his or her own in recent years; by running for the county’s top job, she’s ensuring other progressives don’t have to run on their own this year, either. In six of the county’s nine county commission districts, Little has a running mate in the Hudson County Progressives column. She also has the support of Ward E Councilor James Solomon, an independent progressive regarded as a likely 2025 mayoral candidate.
Hudson County Commission
District 1 (Bayonne)
Kenneth Kopacz (i) vs. TJ Senger
Kenny Kopacz is a machine guy. He’s the assistant superintendent of schools in Bayonne, population 70,000, and he represents the city on the county commission. Fortunately for Kopacz, Bayonne is a lot like its neighbor to the south, Staten Island; it’s not Republican like Staten Island, but it’s older, whiter, and more culturally conservative than most of Hudson County. Realtor TJ Senger faces very steep odds.
District 2 (West Side, McGinley Square, Downtown)
William O'Dea (i) vs. Adrian Ghainda
Bill O’Dea is the longest-serving member of the commission, and he appears to be feeling at least some heat. Hudson County DSA ran a city council campaign on Jersey City’s West Side with Joel Brooks in 2021, forcing the machine to pull out all the stops in order to secure a narrow 52-48 victory for Ward B incumbent Mira Prinz-Arey. Since Brooks’s narrow loss, Hudson County DSA has taken up a new fight, pushing for the Jersey City Council to adopt and fund a right to counsel in eviction proceedings. Challenger Adrian Ghainda has organized for the right to counsel campaign—and O’Dea endorsed the right to counsel ordinance just two weeks before primary day.
District 4 (Downtown, Journal Square, the Heights)
Yraida Aponte-Lipski (i) vs. Mamta Singh
This is the district Eleana Little nearly won in 2020. Yraida Aponte-Lipski survived just 55-45 while sharing Joe Biden’s primary ballot column; now she’ll have to repeat that feat with much lower turnout, a more engaged electorate less likely to be confused by New Jersey’s terrible ballot design, and no well-known names listed above hers in Column B. Mamta Singh is hoping she can do what Little almost did last time; like Little, she has James Solomon’s support, and this district includes a lot of Ward E.
District 5 (Hoboken, Waterfront)
Anthony Romano (i) vs. Ron Bautista
This is a pure rematch of 2020. Ron Bautista lost that race to Anthony Romano 61-38. He’s running again, and he has James Solomon’s support just like he did last time. What he didn’t have last time was a long strip of Jersey City’s downtown waterfront in his district, where Solomon could have sway in a race between two Hoboken residents.
District 8 (North Bergen, Secaucus)
Robert Baselice (i) vs. Stephanie Martinez
Robert Baselice is only sort of an incumbent, having been appointed to fill the vacant seat of Anthony Vainieri in April. This is firmly machine territory, though—progressive organizer Stephanie Martinez getting 20% of the vote would be a new high.
District 9 (West Side, West Hudson, Secaucus)
Albert Cifelli (i) vs. Alex Valdez
Like Districts 1 and 8, this is some of the most reliable machine territory around. Commissioner Albert Cifelli should coast to another term, even if the few precincts of Jersey City’s West Side added to this district in redistricting end up being very strong for New Jersey Army National Guard veteran Alex Valdez.
Essex County Commission [Top 4]
Brendan Gill (i) vs. Romaine Graham (i) vs. Wayne Richardson (i) vs. Patricia Sebold (i) vs. Justin Harris
Justin Harris is a 20-year-old from Montclair who got pulled into Nia Gill’s ballot column, presumably to fill out more rows. He doesn’t have much of a campaign of his own (or any, as far as we can tell) but will presumably get votes from Nia Gill-supporting slate voters.
Middlesex County Commission [Top 2]
Leslie Koppel (i) and Charles Tomaro (i) vs. Carol Bustos and Lawrence Z. Liu
Carol Bustos and Lawrence Liu, two young professionals who volunteered for Bernie Sanders, are slated together for the County Commissioner election. They’re running on a progressive platform of climate change action and supporting unions, and are extreme longshots.
Union County Commission [Top 3]
Lourdes Leon (i), Joseph Bodek (i), and Michèle Delisfort vs. Travis Amaker, LaTysha Gaines, and Janet Vera Reynolds
A slate of self-styled outsiders is running for county commission—but unfortunately, their presence in the same ballot column as Jamel Holley’s slate does not appear to be a coincidence. Travis Amaker is the son of former Roselle mayor Garrett Smith, who Holley unseated as mayor in 2011; Smith later did prison time for insurance fraud, and has endorsed his old rival Holley’s comeback bid. LaTysha Gaines and Janet Vera Reynolds, like Amaker, have their own histories of involvement in Union County local politics; Gaines is an ally of Linden Mayor Derek Armstead, another on-again-off-again foe of the Union County machine, and Reynolds waged an off-the-line campaign for this same office back in 2010, when it was still termed the Board of Freeholders, coming impressively close. Who to root for here isn’t quite as clear as it is in LD-20, where the challengers are plainly just Holley cronies; for countywide office he was evidently smart enough to align with others who operate on the periphery of the machine in Union County politics. Incumbents Lourdes Leon and Joseph Bodek each represent one of the county party’s main constituent machines; Leon hails from Elizabeth, and Bodek was plucked from his post as Linden City Clerk by county party chair and state Senate President Nick Scutari, also of Linden, to fill a vacancy. Union Township Committeewoman Michèle Delisfort is the party’s anointed pick for the seat being vacated by Commissioner Angela Garretson of neighboring Hillside.