Issue #53
See you on the other side
Our own Opinion Haver, one of the authors of this newsletter, has an article in The Nation (under his real name even, not just his Twitter handle) discussing which are the most exciting House primary challenges for progressives.
Super Tuesday
Man, it’s been a year of anticipation, hasn’t it? Watching these races develop, challengers announce and drop out, incumbents surprisingly retire, sides being taken, and blood, sweat, and tears being poured into these races. But primary season is now upon us.
In just six days, polls will close for Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, and Texas. This weekend, we’ll be publishing a primary preview covering the interesting races happening in those states. Then next week, we’ll be talking about the results alongside our coverage of races still yet to vote. But for now, there are some final fundraising numbers to discuss.
Because the FEC requires candidates to file a fundraising report which covers everything this quarter up to 20 days before the election, that means we have numbers from 1/1 - 2/13. Many of these look pretty similar to the Q4 numbers from a few weeks ago, but a few things stand out. In CA-20, it looks like Jimmy Panetta is taking his challenge seriously and dropping some money into the primary. Sara Jacobs is using her fortune to absolutely blanket the airwaves; her report says she spent over $700,000 on advertising. Meanwhile, her parents have formed a Super PAC for her called Forward California and dropped $1.5 million into it. As of Monday, it has already made $1.3 million of independent expenditures for her campaign. And in TX-28, Jessica Cisneros has raised an incredible $343K in those 6 weeks, allowing her to at least run somewhere in the neighborhood of Cuellar in terms of late campaign spending.
Incumbent Challenges
IL-01
Indivisible Chicago - Southside has endorsed Robert Emmons Jr. in his race against Michael Bloomberg national campaign co-chair Bobby Rush. Indivisible Southside is a larger and less ideologically oriented grassroots organization compared to some of the others he’s gotten, and they’re well respected among Democrats in the district, for instance being the only group that hosted a forum all the candidates attended. Their endorsement suggests an expanding reach of the Emmons campaign. Though still a longshot campaign for an election taking place in only a few weeks, Emmons has been picking up steam recently and may surprise people with how well he does.
IL-03
A coalition of progressive groups announced their intent to spend $1.4 million on behalf of Marie Newman’s challenge to Rep. Dan Lipinski; the coalition includes the SEIU, Planned Parenthood Votes, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, NARAL, and EMILY’s List, and they plan to attack Lipinski for his staunch opposition to abortion and his votes to defund Planned Parenthood through TV and online advertising, as well as direct mail. The primary is just three weeks away; $1.4 million is a huge amount to spend in such a short period of time, although the huge, expensive Chicago TV market means a lot of that money will be wasted on advertising to viewers outside of IL-03, an unavoidable pitfall of TV advertising in major metropolitan areas.
Newman also got the endorsement of former presidential candidate and former Obama HUD Secretary Julián Castro last Thursday.
MA-Sen
A new poll from UMass-Lowell shows that Sen. Ed Markey is very much still alive in his contest to keep his seat from Rep. Joe Kennedy III’s challenge; he trails Kennedy 35-34 among likely Democratic primary voters, but holds a wide lead among self-identified liberals, 44-31. One thing to note here is that Markey and Kennedy’s contest will not be conducted on the same date as the presidential primary, but this poll also tests the presidential primary; the electorate in the September Senate primary will look different from the presidential primary electorate. If we had to guess, we’d say the lower-turnout September electorate will be more skewed to the party’s more motivated ideological base, which would be good for Markey. But we probably shouldn’t be guessing about a primary that’s seven months away, especially with so many undecided voters and Kennedy’s access to corporate money.
TX-28
This primary has been getting uglier and uglier for weeks, and it’s finally reaching fever pitch in the closing days. After months of campaigning first campaigning, of releasinging competing statements, of putting up first positive and then negative ads, there was a moment that symbolized everything leading up to it.
Laredo has a local tradition of turning George Washington’s Birthday into a celebration that lasts weeks, despite its ugly origins. While it’s not strictly relevant, we’d like to point out that Henry Cuellar has previously played George Washington for the celebration. It’s safe to say the Washington’s Birthday parade that was held on Saturday was a big deal. Cuellar, as an elected official, was offered a place in the parade, but Jessica Cisneros wasn’t. Shut out, she decided to attend the parade anyway, and, as Cuellar’s truck proceeded down the parade route, she was talking to spectators about her campaign, pausing to call for a debate (something which Cuellar has repeatedly refused), as Cuellar drove by and waved. If Cisneros wins, she should hang this picture in her office.
The Koch network, already helping Cuellar through their LIBRE Initiative group, has also begun spending on him through Americans For Prosperity. Starting on Thursday, their total in the race had already risen to about $79,000 by Monday, the last day of record available.
Just before we were about to send this newsletter out, The Intercept published a blockbuster report on years of quiet favors Cuellar has done for a border security firm and their lobbyists. It’s a damning condemnation of both Cuellar, and of America’s system of legalized corruption. Unfortunately we don’t know how much voters will hear about it this close to the deadline.
Open Seats
CA-53, NM-03, NY-15
AOC, through her Courage to Change PAC, endorsed three candidates in crowded primaries for open, safely Democratic House seats on Friday. Georgette Gómez, Teresa Leger Fernandez, and Samelys López are running for CA-53, NM-03, and NY-15, respectively, and each one faces a crowded field of significantly less progressive candidates. López, like AOC, is a DSA-endorsed self-identified democratic socialist from the Bronx; NYC DSA’s field efforts played a major role in AOC’s own victory in 2018, in which she not only easily carried the fast-gentrifying Queens portion of NY-14, but also carried the working-class section of the Bronx where she lives. Gómez’s race for a San Diego seat has received a fair amount of national attention, with endorsements from Bernie Sanders and Justice Democrats; Leger Fernandez has not received as much attention as Gómez or López, despite having been a candidate for longer than either. The support could help her stand out in the primary for this district, which includes Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and rural northern New Mexico, including most of the state’s portion of the Navajo Nation.
NY-15
Torres scooped up his ninth labor endorsement last week from International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 (IBEW Local 3). IBEW Local 3 is a 35,000-member, citywide building trades union that plans to knock doors for Torres. While Torres has the largest number of endorsements from individual unions, labor is pretty split in this race, as manufairly big unions have endorsed Blake. And now a third candidate is getting union support as well.
Former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito got her first labor endorsement this week from United Auto Workers Region 9A (UAW). She’s still behind Assembly Member Michael Blake and WAY behind Council Member Ritchie Torres in terms of labor support, but a citywide union with about 1,200 members in-district should provide Mark-Viverito with a nice field boost. This endorsement also comes right as New York candidates begin collecting petition signatures to qualify for the June ballot. We hope that not all of the candidates will actually make it on the ballot so progressives can consolidate support around one or two candidates and keep homophobic City Council Member Ruben Diaz Sr. out of congress, but we’re not overly optimistic at this point.
Circling back to Blake, last week we got yet another reason not to support him: apparently, Blake has been living in a government-subsidized affordable housing unit even though his income is too high for him to actually qualify for the unit. In a city like New York, where rents have skyrocketed, and almost half of households are rent-burdened, the fact that Michael Blake, a higher-income earner, is taking up the little affordable housing that exists means that he is indirectly depriving someone of secure housing within their means. Congress will need to play a big role in ending the current housing crisis, so it is imperative that we elect Democrats who actually walk the walk when it comes to supporting housing as a human right — in other words, not Blake.
NY-17
Westchester County Legislator Catherine Borgia announced this week that she’s dropping out of the race. Borgia also said she would be endorsing in the race but didn’t say who yet. As one of the most progressive Westchester Legislators, we hold hope that she might endorse the progressive frontrunner, Mondaire Jones. Even with Borgia out, as an open seat race, NY-17 still has one of this year’s biggest New York congressional primary fields. Luckily, Jones seems to be the only progressive in the race with both a strong track record and a strong campaign, but there’s always a chance he could get screwed over by New York’s terrible state election laws, which makes it all the more important that local progressives consolidate support around him.
OH-03
The Working Families Party has endorsed Morgan Harper! As an impressive grassroots fundraiser with a stellar track record of standing up for working people against corporations while working at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Harper seems like an ideal candidate for this endorsement. WFP will likely help Harper continue to build on her already solid fundraising and field in the final weeks of this race.
