Issue #23
Finally, somebody polled something
New Developments
CA-15
Three weeks ago, Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the presidential race and decided to instead run for re-election in Congress, which meant that he was in a primary race with Hayward City Councilmember Aisha Wahab, who had been in the race for months. At the time, she seemed unlikely to bow out even though she was publicly unsure whether to continue. However, on Monday Wahab announced that she would be “suspending” (read: basically ending) her campaign. Besides a desire to refocus her advocacy on the City Council, Wahab does not offer an explanation for this abrupt suspension, but looking back on Wahab’s Q2 fundraising numbers we suspect that money had something to do with her decision. Swalwell now has no Democratic opposition to re-election.
NY-03
For months now, eyes have been on Democratic National Committeeman Robert Zimmerman and whether he would be challenging Rep. Tom Suozzi in NY-03, a district which includes parts of Long Island and north eastern Queens. Well, it looks like that’s not happening. Zimmerman announced Sunday that he wouldn’t be running because doing so would cause unproductive party division: “The congressional primary at this time would distract from our need to unify and focus on winning the White House.” Readers may remember, though, that Zimmerman’s main motivation for running was his “profound concern” for how much Suozzi votes with Trump (it’s about 25% of the time, for the record, which puts him to the right of most of the Democratic caucus), and conservative Democrats don’t actually have a good track record of uniting the party.
Suozzi still has two other opponents in the race running to his left: Melanie D’Arrigo, a nonprofit executive and Democratic activist who only filed a couple weeks ago, and Michael Weinstock, an openly gay 9/11 firefighter. Weinstock did post pretty poor Q2 numbers, so we’ll be looking to see if D’Arrigo can pick up his slack, especially now that the only other potential challenger that anyone was talking about is out of the race.
New Primaries
MI-13
Last week, there was some speculation in Detroit politics that Brenda Jones, Detroit City Council President, 36 day Congressmember, and primary competition to Rashida Tlaib in 2018, was mulling a rematch in 2020. It sounds like that speculation is being taken seriously by someone. Michigan political news daily MIRS commissioned a poll by Target Insyght of a potential 2020 primary in the district. They find that Tlaib is well liked among Democratic voters in the district, with 68% viewing her favorability and only 13% unfavorably. She also fairs well in a potential rematch with Brenda Jones, winning that 56-19. Considering Jones spent half of 2018 campaigning in this district, that deficit probably isn’t name recognition. Tlaib looks very much favored in a potential one-on-one rematch with Jones.
However, that wasn’t the only race MIRS polled. They also looked at a potential match-up between Rashida Tlaib, Brenda Jones, and Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon. They find that Tlaib wins this contest too, but less overwhelmingly, 51-23-8. Interestingly, the candidate with 23% of the vote is not Jones, but Napoleon. Benny Napoleon was appointed Wayne County Sheriff in 2009, and has been elected to the office in 2010, 2012, and 2016. His career has been marked by a series of scandals, starting before he was appointed, when he allegedly mishandled the aftermath of police killing a disabled man holding a rake in 2000, and continuing through his tenure in office with campaign finance violations, fiscal mismanagement, being named in a federal corruption probe, potentially retaliating against a whistleblower, and being sued by multiple employees for gender discrimination. Still, he’s maintained a level of popularity. He ran for mayor in 2013 (after an abortive 2009 attempt), and made it through the preliminary round only to lose the general by 10%, despite an endorsement from then MI-13 rep John Conyers. He was also talked up as a potential running mate for Democratic gubernatorial nominees in 2014 and 2018, though he wasn’t picked either time.
We’re not quite sure why MIRS chose to poll Napoleon for this race, as we haven’t seen any interest expressed from him towards this race. MIRS is the kind of news organization that knows every politician in the state, and keeps tabs on them as well, so it’s possible they know something most of us don’t. It’s also possible they picked Napoleon because he was probably the strongest candidate in 2018 who opted against running.
This poll doesn’t show Tlaib totally boxing out any potential challenge, but it shows her in damn good shape, bolstered by the fact that her likeliest challenger doesn’t look anything like her strongest.
NJ-10
New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne Jr. has a golden last name, being the son of the late Rep. Donald Payne Sr., an institution in Newark politics. New Jersey’s unique primary system, in which local party committees award a special ballot column to their preferred candidates, will likely protect Payne Jr., as he’s not feuding with the party machine in any of the three counties (Union, Essex, and Hudson) that get a say in this seat, and machines generally protect incumbents by default unless there’s a bitter dispute between the incumbent and key party bosses. Payne Jr. is a reliable, albeit low-profile, progressive. None of that is stopping Rev. Stephen Green from entering the Democratic primary.
Green, formerly the NAACP’s youth director, takes issue first and foremost with one descriptor in the above paragraph: “low-profile.” He told BuzzFeed’s Darren Sands that he seeks to emulate “the squad,” the high-profile group of four progressive women of color first elected to the House in 2018 (Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.) Green says he won’t officially launch his candidacy until after Labor Day, and will spend the next month or so putting together a campaign. According to Sands, Green’s fundraising goal is an ambitious $1 million; for an insurgent primary challenger, that’s a tall order, but Green’s activist past--which included overseeing a national voter registration drive for the NAACP, organizing protests of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, and speaking at the anniversary commemoration ceremony of the famous Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march--may provide him the connections necessary to pull it off.
A clear challenge for Green will be geography. Roselle, where he lives and where he is the pastor at Heard AME Church, is predominantly Black and heavily Democratic, like the district overall. However, Roselle is a small city of 20,000, located near the southern end of the district, which is centered on Newark and a handful of other Essex County municipalities. Green will need to make inroads outside of Roselle (and outside of Roselle’s Union County entirely), whereas a Newark-based candidate like Payne Jr. could hypothetically afford to run up the margins at home without focusing on cities like Roselle, Linden (Union County), Rahway (Union County), or Jersey City (Hudson County).
NY-14
The Queens machine, still smarting from the embarrassing 2018 defeats of Joe Crowley and several state legislators, may have found a candidate to run against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Badrun Khan, who sits on Queens Community Board 2, filed to run last Thursday. Khan, like all community board members, was appointed by Queens Borough President Melinda Katz (who you may know as the Queens machine’s preferred candidate in the contentious Queens DA race.) Half of all board members are nominated by local city councilors, while the other half are directly chosen by the borough president; whether Khan was the choice of city councilors or Katz is not public. Whether Khan was chosen by Katz or city councilors is less important than the fact that Khan will very likely be running to AOC’s right.
Is he definitely the candidate of the Queens Machine? There’s no saying for certain. This could be a coincidence, after all, or she could be running in hopes that the Queens Machine will back him up, rather than the reverse. But it bears watching nonetheless.
MA-01
Recently, we talked with Holyoke mayor Alex Morse, who announced his campaign for Massachusetts’s 1st district last week. The full interview will be out this weekend for subscribers.
Opinion Haver:
You're a millennial. I'm a millennial. Do you think younger voters are approaching politics differently now that they're entering voting age?
Alex Morse:
Yes, I think they are. And I think when I say that a lot of people have lost faith in government actually being able to get things done and be a force for good in their lives, a lot of young people have been skeptical for some time because when Democrats are in power, sometimes we can't seem to deliver on a lot of the things that are important to millennials and so it's not just about having a Democrat and the seat, it's about having a Democrat that's willing to take on the establishment, willing to change the way Washington works and actually advocate for policies and issues that change lives and improve outcomes and expand opportunities.
...
Opinion Haver:
One urgent crisis that's been the news right now is what's happening on the border with immigration. Long-term, we obviously need to have reforms about citizenship status and such, but immediately what should we be doing?
Alex Morse:
Well, I think immediately what we need to do is stop separating families. We need to close the concentration camps. We need to get kids out of cages. I think we need to live up to what this country has purported to stand for by treating people, kids in particular, and all human beings, regardless of their citizenship, with decency, humanity, and respect. I think that's where we start. And I think the Trump administration has made this crisis worse than it ever has been.
Opinion Haver:
In terms of specifically Congress, the Trump Administration has made it clear that they're going to keep doing this. Should Democrats be willing to stop funding the Department overall if they won't close down these camps?
Alex Morse:
Yes. I commend those House Democrats that voted against the most recent funding bill. I think we need to stop bowing to President Trump and the Republicans and stop giving them a blank check to keep pursuing the inhumane practices and policy that the border.
