Issue #52

It's been a year. Thanks for sticking around this long

Incumbent Challenges

CA-16

Jim Costa is going negative, and hard by releasing two negative ads. The first goes after Soria’s finances, kind of? The main thrust of the attack seems to be that Soria has said she is living paycheck to paycheck while earning $96,000 a year and dating a developer. Again, it’s a pretty haphazard ad that doesn’t really leave you with a clear message. Using the term “paycheck to paycheck” while making more than the average person in your city probably isn’t a good look, but Soria is currently paying her chronically ill parent’s medical expenses and her own $150,000 of student debt, and in our debt-driven capitalist hellscape, many otherwise middle class people are still financially precarious.

The second ad is more effectively done. It plays video of Soria endorsing Costa in the 2018 general election and listing his accomplishments, before zooming out to reveal Costa playing the video on his phone. Soria pushed back on that ad by releasing a long, long list of Democrats who endorsed her this cycle after endorsing Costa in the last one. Soria also unveiled an endorsement from former lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante, who had previously represented an Assembly district in Fresno, and who has stayed in the public eye, considering running for CA-21 in 2012.

IL-01

Robert Emmons Jr., an underdog challenging Rep. Bobby Rush, received the endorsement of the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago area’s biggest newspaper. Newspaper endorsements are more valuable further down the ballot, but since this primary is on the same day as the presidential primary, this could give Emmons a boost with casual voters who show up to vote for president. The Tribune is Chicago’s more conservative paper (it endorses Dan Lipinski in the same editorial), and the endorsement is a non-ideological one. (After all, Emmons is running well to Rush’s left.) They fault Rush for being one of the more anonymous members of Congress:

Rep. Bobby Rush has served the solid-blue 1st Congressional District since 1993, but frankly, it’s been a long time since he’s provided constituents with distinguished representation. This South Side/south suburban district, beset by gun violence and economic hardship, needs someone with enthusiasm and energy in Washington.

It’s a late sign of momentum for Emmons in his challenge to Rush, who recently became a national co-chair of Mike Fucking Bloomberg’s presidential campaign. Nick interviewed Emmons a few weeks ago, and you can read that interview here if you want to learn more.

NY-16

Jamaal Bowman got his first labor endorsement this week from the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA), which has members throughout New York City. As a former middle school principal, Bowman himself has been a member of CSA, which makes it an obvious pick for his first labor endorsement. Since CSA is a citywide union, it is unclear how much of the CSA’s membership is actually in NY-16, but any amount of boots-on-the-ground support CSA can provide should prove helpful to Bowman’s campaign. This one labor endorsement is a good start, but it would be great if more unions would follow CSA’s lead in the coming weeks.

NY-SD-23

Every time there’s news about Sen. David Carlucci, we scream into the abyss about the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a group of Democratic New York State Senators who caucused with the Senate Republicans for a number of years for personal perks like bigger offices and committee chair positions and in return handed Republicans a functional Senate majority. While most former IDC members were voted out and replaced with real Democrats in 2018, two remain: Carlucci, who is currently running for congress in NY-17, and Diane Savino, who represents parts of south Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Savino is facing two primary challengers this year. Brandon Stradford, a human resources professional from Staten Island, challenged Savino from the left in 2018 but came in third place with 12 percent of the vote. In 2018, though, Stradford only started campaigning in June for a September primary. This year, he will have had the benefit of six full months of campaigning. The other Savino challenger, Rajiv Gowda, is a retired civil engineer and former president of Staten Island’s Community Education Council also from Staten Island. Gowda’s only prior electoral experience is a 2009 City Council race in which he received 9 percent of the vote. Both Stradford and Gowda are seeking support from groups that helped take down former IDC members in 2018, such as No IDC, True Blue NY, and the Working Families Party, but it is still early and none of them have picked a candidate yet.

Overall, this race might prove challenging, as south Brooklyn and Staten Island are some of the most conservative parts of New York City. However, Stradford and Gowda can still probably make the case to voters that Savino, who ran as a Democrat and then legislated as a Republican, is untrustworthy.

TX-28

Early voting has begun in Texas, and the campaigns are moving into their end games. The biggest last minute play is on the side of Henry Cuellar, in a natural conclusion to his current status of being one of only two Democrat the Kochs maxed out to. The Koch network announced this week they were going all in for Cuellar, through their political group LIBRE Initiative Action, which will be using “direct mail, digital ads and field efforts”. This marks the first time the Kochs have mobilized their political operations for a Democrat. While perhaps unsurprising that Cuellar would be the Democrat they go in for, the fact they’re making this move at all is surprising.

 The last few cycles have seen some clear liberal/conservative divides in Democratic primaries, for instance Tim Holden’s and Matt Cartwright in the 2012 PA-17 primary, but the Kochs have stayed out publicly. It’s unclear what’s causing this change in strategy. Maybe Cuellar is more valuable to them than any other Democrat in the last decade. Or maybe he’s the first to welcome their help instead of reject it. After all, it’s not like LIBRE has much experience working with Democratic electorates, and soliciting Koch help could very well backfire in a primary. The DCCC saw that and immediately leapt to hold a fundraiser to get Cuellar even more money in case the Kochs’ wasn’t enough.

For Cisneros meanwhile, the cavalry has come in the form of unions and progressive groups. She announced this week the support of AFSCME, SEIU Texas, The Rio Grande Valley Central Labor Council, The Texas AFT, and Unite Here Local 23, which covers Texas. Even in the states where labor’s weak, unions excel at proving a ground team and persuading members, and having near-unanimous labor support is a big deal. But that’s not all that unions are doing for Cisneros. The CWA and SEIU have joined forces with the Working Families Party and the Texas Organizing Project to launch a $350,000 independent expenditure effort to get Cisneros elected, which will include “funding canvassers in Laredo, phone banking, direct mail, and digital and radio ads that will be running in both English and Spanish.”

Cisneros has put up a new, hard hitting negative ad that goes after Cuellar over the wall, saying, in part “Donald Trump is building a wall with the help of Henry Cuellar, his favorite Democrat. Not only did Cuellar vote for Trump's Wall twice, but he's taken over $100,000 from corporations that build facilities and cages to detain families.” It’s brutal and probably the best ad of the primary so far. Emily’s List has also gone up with a negative Spanish-language ad about Cuellar, showing people disposing of his campaign merchandise, with a voiceover calling out his anti-choice votes and accusing him of “going Washington”. The Cuellar campaign’s response was to point to one shot in the video where his poster is being painted over, saying that the ad using white paint was “coded, racist language” because it was “whitewashing a person of color”. Millions will be spent on both sides before this race is over, and it will likely be the most expensive primary in the country.

Former mayor of San Antonio, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and ex-Presidential candidate Julián Castro also endorsed Cisneros this week.

Harris County, TX DA

On Thursday, Bernie Sanders endorsed Audia Jones, a former prosecutor challenging Harris County DA Kim Ogg in the Democratic primary. Ogg was elected in 2016 as one of a number of criminal justice reformers elected across the country, but unlike other reform-oriented DAs such as Orlando’s Aramis Ayala and Chicago’s Kim Foxx, she quickly turned her back on her campaign promises and became just another punitive prosecutor. Ogg campaigned on ending cash bail, then turned around and requested it in marijuana cases and opposed efforts to reform its use. Ogg continues to request the death penalty and charge children as adults, both practices that Jones says she will end if elected. She also plans to decline to prosecute sex work.

Jones also has the endorsement of the Houston DSA and the Texas Organizing Project (which reported over $300,000 in in-kind contributions for Ogg in 2016 in the form of canvassing and other volunteer efforts), giving her a head start in organizing ahead of the March 3 primary. If nobody gets a majority of the vote (possible, as two other candidates are on the ballot), there will be a May runoff between the top two vote-getters.

Open Races

MA-04

The eight person MA-04 field has bloomed to nine this week with the official entry of former Massachusetts Comptroller Thomas Shack. Shack announced that he’s be considering a run back in November, and what we said then still goes:

Shack is another barely distinguishable centrist to add to this field which already has too many of them. He voted in the Republican Presidential and state primaries in 2008, according to voter records, and he was appointed to his position in 2015 by Republican governor Charlie Baker. His campaign announcement was also full of the kind of mushy meaningless language that called Donald Trump “greatest threat to our democracy in a generation” one sentence, and then soon after talked about “bridging the divides” with the Party that supports him unquestioningly every step of the way.

In terms of electoral dynamics, it’s hard to see what he changes about this race except lowering the winning threshold just a bit further, which is probably slight good news for grassroots candidate Ihssane Leckey.

One candidate who won’t add to the field? Shannon Liss-Riordan, who ended her Senate bid recently. She’s confirmed she’ll be staying out.

PA-HD-34, PA-HD-36

The Allegheny County Democratic Committee held its endorsement meeting this week, and the result was a declaration of total war against progressives in the county.

In PA-HD-34, incumbent Democrat Summer Lee sought endorsement, but because she’s a progressive who made it to the house by primarying a member of a local political family, they endorsed extremely pro-fracking North Braddock Town Councilor Chris Roland.

PA-HD-36 was just as galling. Instead of grad student organizer and autism advocate Jessica Benham, they chose Heather Kass, whose social media history is filled with conservative and bigoted posts, supporting guns and Trump, attacking Obamacare and trans people, and wishing for the mass deaths of drug users. In most of America, that would be enough to kill a Democratic candidacy, but the Allegheny County Democratic Party establishment’s overwhelming desire to crush any political power of progressives made them more natural allies of a Trump supporter than of anyone supported by local grassroots groups. Some of them are even Trump supporters themselves.

The Allegheny County Democratic Committee is a disgrace, and ideally their endorsements wouldn’t even be helpful to Trump supporters and fracking industry executives, but unfortunately they have the power to dole out Party resources.