Issue #49

Allow us to take your mind off of Iowa for a few minutes

Incumbent Challenges

CA-16

With most California ballots set to go out on Monday, campaigns are entering their final pre-primary preparations. While in some Congressional districts California’s Top 2 primary system - where all candidates share a ballot and the top two regardless of party face off in November - could produce an intra-party contest later on, CA-16 will only have one Republican on the ballot, meaning he’ll suck up all the Republican voters. Since CA-16 has historically had a Republican primary share in the 40s or 50s, this makes it a near-certainty the November election will be between a Republican and a Democrat. In other words, this is going to be like a normal party primary.

Jim Costa announced a large fundraising haul for the final quarter of 2019 - $505,633. That’s his best quarter ever, which means that he’s raising more vigorously for his primary challenge than for the three cycles where the general election was close. Costa also announced that he had $903,734 on hand, which we can subtract his third quarter cash on hand from to find something unusual. Jim Costa only spent $177,432 in the final quarter of last year. That means that Costa still wasn’t spending much money two months before the first votes are sent out and three months before they’ve all been cast.

Meanwhile, while she hasn’t announced her fundraising numbers yet, Esmeralda Soria has pulled off a minor coup. She has secured the backing of the California Labor Federation, a coalition of other 1,200 local unions from both the more establishment AFL-CIO and more progressive Change to Win. It’s essentially the voice of labor in the state. This year they endorsed most incumbents and in two cases refused to endorse two more conservative, less labor-friendly Democrats, Ami Bera in CA-07 and Scott Peters in CA-53. Soria was the only challenger they endorsed for Congress.

IL-07

It seemed like activist Kina Collins’s challenge to Rep. Danny Davis never quite took off, but that may be changing. Collins rolled out a list of endorsements from local officials, including Chicago Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor (who dedicated readers may remember as one of the DSA members who won as part of the left-wing wave in Chicago’s 2019 municipal elections, and whose district overlaps with IL-07) and state Rep. Anna Moeller (who does not represent anything even close to IL-07, but sponsored the Illinois Council on Women and Girls Act, which Collins co-authored.) Davis meanwhile is going up with some ads in the final stretch of the campaign, but only a few thousand on a cheap cable buy. Still, he doesn’t have a lot of money in campaign account, so it’s not like he could spend a lot if he wanted.

IL-11

Despite her weak fundraising, Will County Board Member Rachel Ventura seems to have put Rep. Bill Foster on notice. He’s concerned enough about her challenge that he’s rolled out the endorsements of Sen. Dick Durbin, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky in the past week. Foster is one of a number of members of Congress whose relative conservatism might have fit their districts back when they were purple or light blue and the GOP still had downballot strength, but are now sorely out of step thanks to the suburbs zooming left in the Trump era. (There are plenty of House Democrats who fit this description--Scott Peters, Ami Bera, Salud Carbajal, Julia Brownley, Greg Stanton, Seth Moulton, and Foster’s fellow Illinoisans Brad Schneider and Raja Krishnamoorthi are among them.) A challenge is welcome.

Foster also has the backing of most labor unions, but that’s to be expected for a Democratic incumbent. As we mentioned in our TX-28 item, it’s far more noteworthy when a labor union opposes a Democratic incumbent; Foster is far more centrist than his district requires, but he’s no Henry Cuellar, so most unions are defaulting to the incumbent here. Not all unions are doing that, though: on Monday, Ventura announced she had the endorsement of the Cook County College Teachers Union, which represents more than 5,000 professors, employees, and retirees teaching throughout Cook County. (The union’s only other endorsement for federal office was Marie Newman for IL-03.)

Only one-half of one percent of the district is located in Cook County, but CCCTU presumably has members who live in neighboring DuPage and Will counties who commute into Cook County. Additionally, like with all union endorsements, there’s immense value in the volunteer work unions can do on behalf of their endorsed candidates, knocking doors and hosting phone banks.

MD-05

The progressive vote in MD-05 was at risk of being split between Mckayla Wilkes and Briana Urbina, which was also the reason a lot of progressive organizations have been wary of the race. This month, Urbina dropped out of the race. This is good news, but Urbina has thus far opted against taking her name off the ballot. Wilkes meanwhile has earned an endorsement from the Maryland chapter of Our Revolution.

NY-09

This week, Adem Bunkeddeko scored the endorsement of Lambda Independent Democrats (LID), a Brooklyn LGBTQ Democratic club. Apparently, LID members appreciated Bunkeddeko’s housing and criminal justice platform as much as we do. Having LID’s support can give Bunkeddeko a small field and fundraising boost and generally assist his campaign with outreach to Brooklyn’s queer community.

The only other NY-09 candidate that actually sought LID’s endorsement was incumbent Rep. Yvette Clarke. Obviously, homophobic City Council Member Chaim Deutsch didn’t apply, but neither did Isiah James, and odd move for a more activist driven campaign like his.

TX-28

Jessica Cisneros’s campaign to oust conservative, homophobic, anti-abortion, George W. Bush-supporting Rep. Henry Cuellar scored a major victory on Sunday, earning the endorsement of the Texas AFL-CIO, a federation of unions representing 240,000 workers in Texas. Some individual unions had backed her previously, but the state AFL-CIO is about as big as it gets in terms of labor endorsements. Cuellar is one of the only Democrats to oppose the PRO Act (a major labor reform bill supported by essentially the entirety of the labor movement, which would make it much easier to unionize), so in that context the AFL-CIO’s endorsement of Cisneros makes perfect sense. However, it’s still very rare for labor to go against Democratic incumbents, and it’s always noteworthy when they do. Unions, even in states like Texas where union membership is low, can provide crucial organizational assistance, knocking on doors and making calls for their endorsed candidates.

On Tuesday, the Sierra Club joined seemingly every major environmental group in endorsing Cisneros. Cuellar is staunchly pro-oil, and his campaigns are heavily funded by the fossil fuel industry; like the AFL-CIO endorsement, this makes sense on the merits, and is mostly notable because yet another pillar of the Democratic Party is willing to publicly cross the Democratic establishment. (In its press release, the Sierra Club notes that it hasn’t endorsed a primary challenger against a Democratic incumbent in years.)

Finally, this morning, Bernie Sanders endorsed Cisneros. Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley all did that months ago, so this is long overdue. Cuellar will be a roadblock to any progressive agenda, and getting rid of him will be a major step towards passing a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, or anything else the left cares about.

Cuellar may not have the support of organizations that fight for workers’ rights or a livable planet, but he does have a lot of fucking money from the worst people in the world. On Friday, news broke that a dark money group (an actual dark money group, not the Cuellar campaign’s absurd definition which includes any campaign funded by small donations) is pouring $700,000 into the race in an attempt to save Cuellar. Former DNC official Gilberto Ocañas, who heads the misleadingly-named nonprofit American Workers for Progress, joins the oil, natural gas, and private prison industries in supporting the Democratic Party’s absolute worst. The group’s ad claims that Cuellar is fighting to defend Obamacare--a bill he only begrudgingly supported in the first place, and which he called “extreme” as recently as 2017. Cuellar’s strategy is to lie rather than defend his record, likely because he knows his record is full of positions that won’t fly with a Democratic primary electorate.

Cuellar’s campaign itself seems nervous, too--after purchasing February ad reservations all the way back in December, the campaign made no additional ad purchases until this week, when it suddenly dropped an additional $80,000 on TV ads. Cuellar’s campaign may be publicly dismissive of Cisneros, but hurriedly dumping $80,000 on last-minute TV ads is generally not how a campaign projects confidence.

Open Seats

CA-53

CA-53 went for Hillary Clinton in the general election by a margin of roughly 63-30. Because there are three Republicans running and a widely split Democratic field, there’s a lot of uncertainty over what’s going to happen, and campaigns have to prepare for both the possibilities of one and two Democrats advancing to November. As we’ve outlined here and here, it’s mostly a three-way race between San Diego City Councilor Georgette Gómez, veteran Jessica Goldbeck, and heiress Sara Jacobs. Activist and veteran Jose Caballero and Obama administration alum Joaquín Vázquez, both progressives, are likely to be minor presences in the race, and none of the other Democrats are running active campaigns.

Gómez has been locking up progressive and labor support recently. The California Labor Federation (see the CA-16 item for more on them) chose her in the race, along with five other local or regional unions. She’s scored the LGBTQ Victory fund and the Equality PAC, notable as she is not the only high-profile queer candidate in the race. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Progessive Caucus have also both backed her through their campaign wings. Today, Bernie Sanders joined that chorus when he unveiled his first slate of congressional endorsements, joining Marie Newman who he had previously endorsed separately.

Sara Jacobs is also growing her list of supporters, and doing so almost exclusively among establishment politicians. Congressional Democrats Eric Swalwell, Lois Frankel, Katie Porter, Andy Kim, and Abby Finkenauer endorsed her recently. Jacobs’s main asset has always been her bountiful money, but this time around at least it seems like she won’t be doing the campaign runaround we can’t legally say occurred in CA-49 last cycle, where her father gave $2,500,000 to the EMILY’s List Super PAC, who coincidentally gave Sara Jacobs $2.4 million in help, by far their biggest expenditure in a primary. This time around, there doesn’t appear to be any Super PAC activity at all.

Jessica Goldbeck’s major get this week came from failed presidential candidate and incredibly annoying centrist grandstander Seth Moulton, representative of MA-06. He and his VoteVets PAC will be backing her over fellow veteran Jose Caballero.

MD-07

The election’s next week! We’ll be sending out a final primary preview either this weekend or Monday, but there’s been a lot going on even in just the last few days to talk about now.

First, Kweisi Mfume’s is getting labor support locked down. The former Congressman and NAACP president was endorsed by the Maryland AFL-CIO this week, and has gotten financial support from the SMART union. Meanwhile state senator Jill Carter has picked up the National Our Revolution endorsement and is leaning hard on Medicare For All messaging going into the final stretch of the race, announcing she plans to submit a state version of the bill.

We also have a final look at fundraising in this race, thanks to pre-primary FEC filings, going from the announcement of the special election up until 1/15

The one big surprise here is Saafir Raab, who pulled in the second most of anyone. Still, he lacks institutional support or the sheer volume of money that Higginbotham loaned himself, so it’s unclear how far that will get him. It’s also notable how Harry Spikes, despite working for Cummings for years and being supported by Cummings’s daughters, barely raised anything at all

MA-04

City Year founder and ex-Senate candidate Alan Khazei unveiled a pair of endorsements. The first was from MD-08 Democratic Congressman Jaime Raskin, one of the more progressive members of the House. In 2016 he, as a state senator, beat back two rich centrists to win a district that stretched from the suburbs to rural towns and had been left open after the previous occupant had decided to run for Senate. In other words, there are a lot of parallels from his race to MA-04 this year, but Khazei is not the analogous candidate here. The endorsement likely had more to do with personal connections than anything, as Khazei and Raskin knew each other from their time together at Harvard. The other endorsement was from Holly Ryan, a prominent trans activist who has been active in the Newton community for decades and who was recently elected to the Newton City Council.

NY-15

For all the good work organized labor is doing in other parts of the country this week to flush out the worst of the Democratic Party, New York City unions seem to be thinking differently. Two of the biggest unions in the city — 1199SEIU, which represents health care workers, and the 32BJ SEIU union of cleaners — announced this week that they’re backing Assemblyman Michael Blake’s run for congress, joining the prior endorsements of fellow labor groups including District Council 37 (a collaboration of AFSCME and the AFL-CIO), the Painter’s and Carpenter’s Unions for the city, and smaller building trades. We’re not sure what these unions are finding so attractive about Blake — maybe it’s his history working for a firm that harrasses poor people, or maybe it’s the fact that he likes to spend taxpayer money on personal trips — because there are just so many examples to pick from of Blake totally, definitely acting in the best interest of working class New Yorkers.

NY-17

Two NY-17 candidates scored new endorsements this week. To our delight (and another candidate’s dismay), Senator Elizabeth Warren announced Wednesday that she was backing Mondaire Jones. As the first candidate in the race, a star fundraiser, and the most progressive candidate in the field, Jones is an excellent pick on Warren’s part! We love to see high-profile politicians using their platforms to endorse down-ballot progressives like this. Warren’s endorsement will likely bring much needed visibility to Jones and get the attention of people who have only been focused on politics at the presidential level.

Presidential campaigns can also be a huge help to down-ballot candidates since they have access to big lists of volunteers and donors that they can use to drive supporters to endorsed candidates’ campaigns. Warren has been on a spree of endorsing progressive down-ballot Democrats lately, and since no president can achieve progressive change without other leftists in office at all levels, we hope she keeps it up. We’re also taking Bernie Sanders’s slate of Congressional endorsements, discussed in CA-53 and TX-28, as a very positive sign that we’re going to be seeing him getting involved in a lot more presidential attention to down ballot races this year.

Evelyn Farkas, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under Obama, also got an endorsement this week from Bob Graham, a former Governor of Florida and U.S. Senator. Farkas and Graham know each other from working together on the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, which at worst encouraged more U.S. military action in the middle east and at best didn’t prevent it. As someone with seemingly no connection to NY-17 (or New York State, for that matter), we don’t really see Graham having much of an effect one way or the other for Farkas.

PA-HD-36

We didn’t expect to cover Pennsylvania’s 36th state House District again, now that labor organizer and activist Jessica Benham seems like a strong favorite after her campaign appears to have scared conservative state Rep. Harry Readshaw into retirement. However, Readshaw and the conservative Pittsburgh Democratic establishment coughed up a candidate--and that candidate, local Democratic committeeperson Heather Kass, is really bad.

According to the Pittsburgh Current, 

Kass shared [a] post featur[ing] an AR-15 rifle decorated like a unicorn child’s toy. It also appears to be making light of gender fluidity. It reads, "And don’t ‘assume’ its identity. It’s NOT an AR-15. It identifies as a wireless, handheld peacekeeping device.”

She also posted the following, among other things:

“Freaking junkies get everything we should just make the drugs legal let them OD and less shit in the world...”

“I WORK MY A$$ OFF JUST LIKE MY HUSBAND AND BOTH OF MY KIDS AND WE HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS CRAP. SO DONE!!!!! GO TRUMP!!!!!!!!!!”

Benham and Kass will face off for the Allegheny County Democratic Party’s endorsement in February--and while one would think Benham is a shoo-in after this, even though she started out as a primary challenger, we’re reminded of the Rhode Island Democratic Party’s completely normal and levelheaded reaction to progressive state Rep. Moira Jayne Walsh. In 2018, the state party endorsed a Trump-supporting, alt-right-curious former registered Republican against Walsh as retaliation for her criticizing the state house speaker, Nick Mattiello (who deserves every ounce of criticism he gets.)

WA-10

State Representative Beth Doglio, who had previously been mentioned as a potential candidate for this district, has just filed with the FEC to begin fundraising for a potential candidacy, although she has not formally declared she’s running yet. Doglio’s entry would reframe the race ideologically. Currently, there is a DSA-backed outright socialist and three centrists - an Amazon-allied Chamber of Commerce head, an anti-tax crusader in the state house, and Denny Heck’s “post-ideological” district director. Doglio, a climate activist and one of the most progressive members of the State House, would fit inside the considerable gulf between those two camps. 

There’s also a geographical element to a Doglio candidacy. Former Tacoma Mayor Marylin Strickland is from, obviously, Tacoma, in the northern end of the district, and the other elected official, state Rep. Kristine Reeves, represents a district even further north, in fact so far north it’s almost entirely outside of WA-10. Doglio would be the only Olympia-area elected official in the race. Socialist Joshua Collins obviously isn’t elected, but his campaign headquarters is in Olympia.

As for Collins, his campaign is in a ramp-up phase. He’s brought on four staffers, opened a campaign office, and was featured in GQ and Business Insider interviews.