Issue #45

Happy New Year! Inside we've got a fundraising exclusive for you

Fundraising Early Numbers

The 4th quarter of 2019 ended with the new year, and that means we get another round of fundraising reports to mull over. It’s still early in the reporting period (the deadline isn’t until the 15th), but we already have a few numbers to share.

OH-03: Morgan Harper’s campaign has exclusively informed the Primaries for Progress newsletter that they have raised over $217,000 this quarter, bringing her total to about $551,000 from 4,500 individual donors and nothing from corporate PACs. Harper had an average donation size of less than $75, and that 90% of them come from zip codes in OH-03. Notable donors include Marty Nesbitt, Pauletta and Denzel Washington, Ursula Burns, Kimberly Steward, Roxane Gay, Saeed Jones, Hanif Abdurraqib, Susan Sarandon, Rashad Robinson, Cynthia Nixon.

WA-10: Socialist truck driver Joshua Collins announced he’s raised roughly $79,000 in the fourth quarter. Based on an earlier statement of his, this means he raised over $47,000 in the month of December.

That’s all for confirmed numbers. But we can piece together one other total from public statements.

MD-05: Mckayla Wilkes’s campaign announced a goal of $120,000 in total donations, which they met on 12/31, and later announced they’d raised at least $420 more before the day’s end, making her quarter at least $37,588, but likely not too much more. In other Wilkes news, she scored her first TV interview this week, on The Rising.

Incumbent Challenges

CA-SD-07

We last covered this race in October, when progressive activist Marisol Rubio blocked conservative, anti-union Democratic state Sen. Steve Glazer from getting the state party endorsement at the California Democratic Party convention. She’s continued to consolidate labor support, most recently adding the California Federation of Teachers to the list of unions backing her. (That list already includes the state SEIU, of which she is a member, as well as the ILWU, the Alameda Building and Construction Trades Council, and the Northern California Carpenters’ Regional Council.)

Glazer has fought unions at every turn, so it’s no surprise they’re returning the favor. His defeat, should we be so lucky, would allow California Democrats to use their supermajority in the state Senate without relying on Democrats in swingy suburban districts in Southern California.

IL-01

Two weeks ago, we covered a challenge to Rep. Bobby Rush’s nominating petitions. If the challenge succeeds, Rush would be knocked off the ballot, setting up a surprise open seat race between activists Sarah Gad and Robert Emmons. In our initial coverage, we noted that Gad’s challenge to Rush’s petitions would likely need the Board of Elections to strike either all petition sheets after a page numbering error or all petition sheets notarized by Darva Watkins. The board has now granted Gad’s subpoena of Watkins, meaning the board could strike Rush from the ballot as soon as tomorrow, when a hearing will be held. The situation is very much unsettled, but Rush could lose reelection before a single vote is even cast.

IL-03

You almost have to admire Lipinski for being so dedicated to getting himself out of office. The election is just ten weeks away, so you’d figure he could wait just a little bit to stake out a loudly anti-choice stance, but he refuses. Lipinski has signed onto an amicus brief before the Supreme Court that argues states should be allowed to regulate abortion clinics out of existence, and then takes it even a step further, stating that the ‘right to abortion’ under Roe v. Wade is “unworkable” and repeal of the entire ruling should be considered.

NY-16

Some good news: Jamaal Bowman has decided to step down from his position as a middle school principal in order to focus on his campaign full-time. While Bowman’s fellow primary challenger, Andom Ghebreghiorgis, may be running slightly to Bowman’s left, by many measures — from polling to fundraising to his endorsement from the grassroots powerhouse Justice Democrats — Bowman is the stronger challenger and is better situated for toppling incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel. We’re happy to see that Bowman is going all in.

PA-HD-36

Activist Jessica Benham’s challenge to conservative Democratic state Rep. Harry Readshaw, which we covered in November, continues to pick up steam. Today, she earned the endorsement of the Pennsylvania state council of the SEIU, a major labor union. Should she win, she will be the first openly bisexual member of the Pennsylvania legislature, and one of the first openly autistic elected officials in the country.

Readshaw, who is anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, and anti-gun control (among other things), deserves the challenge, and Pittsburgh-area progressives have been taking out conservative Democrats in primaries at an impressive pace over the past few years. Two county councilors went down in 2019, and two state representatives lost resoundingly to DSA members in 2018. Benham’s momentum is a sign that the Pittsburgh left is far from done with its war on the area’s conservative Democratic establishment.

TX-28

Henry Cuellar’s been busy with the endorsements recently, releasing a list of 114 local officials who back his re-election bid. While the list is long, it’s not necessarily thorough. Texas is notorious for putting its voters through a ridiculously long ballot with dozens of state, county, municipal, judicial, and school board positions. In fact, 29 of these politicians were from school boards, some as small as 244 Pre-K-12 students. Cuellar did get many big names: for instance, he lists all 8 Democrats in the State House who represent part of TX-28 (but none of the 3 Democrats in the State Senate who represent part of TX-28.) He also lists, for instance, 2 of the 8 Laredo City Councilors. It’s of course better for Cuellar to have local support than to not, but the fact that he contacted obscure school board members means it’s unlikely he didn’t contact some of the bigger names who don’t appear on the list. The obvious conclusion is that they told him no, and it’s not a good sign for an incumbent when that happens in large numbers. 

Humorously, two of the names on the list are his brother and sister. His brother, Martin Cuellar, is sheriff of Webb County, and brings us to an interesting wrinkle. Henry Cuellar touts endorsements from not only his brother the Sheriff, and not just from the police deputy’s union, but also from the Webb County Sheriff’s Office itself. He not only lists them by name - the Facebook page he links to is the official page of the Sheriff’s Office, as shown on the Webb County website. We’re actually not clear if it’s legal or not for an official government body to endorse in political campaigns, but it’s unusual if nothing else.

Another endorsement Cuellar has recently announced is that of the National Border Patrol Council, an interesting choice for a Democrat. The NBPC is exactly what it sounds like, the Customs and Border Patrol union, which is famously pro-Trump. They endorsed him early in 2016 and continue to pump out pro-Trump, pro-wall propaganda. If you go onto their website right now, they still have support up for the president in any potential government shutdown to get wall funding. Cuellar says he’s “humbled and honored” to have their support. They feel likewise, as evidenced by them defending their use of tear gas on migrant children by citing his support of the practice in a, what else, Daily Caller article. 

This is another example of Cuellar’s two step on Trump’s Wall. He’ll periodically release a public statement opposing it, but then act like a supporter when it comes time for decision making. Cuellar has recently been using the “vote no, hope yes” technique pioneered by Republicans who didn’t want a primary challenge. On one hand, he voted against the most recent spending bill. On the other, in that spending bill is a provision he negotiated for that allows for faster construction of the wall in exchange for a riverwalk in Laredo. Warmly embracing one of the loudest border wall proponents is just another example of his duplicity on the issue.

Open Seats

NY-17

Westchester County Legislator Catherine Borgia announced her campaign for NY-17 a few weeks ago, which we missed — and she’s certainly the better Westchester County legislator named Catherine in the race, compared to Catherine Parker. Borgia was one of the most progressive legislators on the board, introducing and passing a bill to protect undocumented immigrants and a bill to guarantee paid sick leave in 2018

She’s running a low profile considering how crowded the field is —  her campaign currently doesn’t have a website (the website up is for her run for the County Legislature, which she won re-election to in November) and has little to no social media presence. She also isn’t raising money in earnest, with no FEC filing that would indicate she’s crossed the $5,000 threshold, though this could be a deliberate choice to avoid competing with bigger names for Q4 fundraising.

The Yorktown Democratic Committee will be holding a candidates’ forum on the 13th with all 11 candidates invited, which will be the first public debate between the candidates this cycle.

Queens Borough President

With former Queens Borough President Melinda Katz officially taking office as Queens district attorney (and almost immediately breaking her campaign promise to reject cash bail), the race to replace her is officially on. In true machine fashion, the Queens County Democratic Committee decided to endorse in this race with little transparency or public input. Their candidate? Amazon shill and New York City Council Member Donovan Richards. At least the Committee didn’t end up endorsing Joe Biden for president as had been rumored, but still, ugh. Fed up with the machine, activist and District Leader candidate Moumita Ahmed organized a rally outside of the meeting. The protest drew a few primary challengers, including Shaniyat Chowdhury, who’s running against the Queens County Democratic Committee Chairman himself, Rep. Gregory Meeks, and Mel Gagarin, a candidate in NY-06. Council Members Jimmy Van Bramer and Costa Constantinides, who occupy the left lane of the Queens Borough President race, both tweeted against the Queens Democrats’ endorsement process. Van Bramer also used this moment as an opportunity to paint himself as a reformer in contrast to the machine, writing, “I beat the county machine in my 2009 insurgent progressive campaign for Council and have proudly stood up against the machine since.” Journalist Ross Barkan was quick to point out that Van Bramer actually supported Joe Crowley over AOC just over a year ago and voted with the machine for City Council Speaker, so he maybe shouldn’t be patting himself on the back just yet.

In the middle of the Queens Dems endorsement meeting, Assemblymember Alicia Hyndman announced that she was dropping out of the race for Queens Borough President because she didn’t want to split the vote in Southeast Queens. For those unfamiliar with Queens politics, Southeast Queens contains a majority black voter bloc that tends to vote for moderate Democrats and most recently made up Katz’s main supporter base. With Hyndman’s exit, Richards is the only Southeast Queens elected official left in the race. Since this race is a special election likely slated for February or March of this year, it slides in under the wire avoiding New York City’s 2021 implementation of ranked choice voting for city elections, so Hyndman may actually have a point about vote spittling, which doesn’t bode well for the multiple progressives in this race.

Also this week, former Council Member Elizabeth Crowley has been bragging that Queens loves her, pointing to a poll from back in October that had her in the lead. We don’t really see this as strong evidence, since the poll only shows her with a five-point lead, and a whole 44 percent (a plurality) of respondents said they were undecided. In her poll, she takes 21% of respondents, compared to 16% for Van Bramer, 10% for Richards, and 6% for Constantinides. Since campaigning has only just begun in earnest for this race, Crowley is probably just riding on a whole lot of name recognition from being a Crowley. We also should remember that Crowley’s most recent election was losing her City Council seat in 2017, and her whole family has not been doing too hot electorally overall lately. Elizabeth herself has run for office in Queens 7 times, and lost 5 of them, making the “Queens loves Crowley” claim especially bold.