Issue #62

Happy early May Day

Coronavirus Corner

Queens BP/New York State

As it usually goes with Andrew Cuomo, we’ve got two pieces of bad news and one piece of good news out of New York this week. The good news is that all voters will now be able to cast absentee ballots in the June 23rd primaries. Honestly, this news isn’t that amazing, since New York’s election laws were so restrictive in the first place as to not allow no-excuse absentee voting already, but we guess we’ll take the crumb. Even worse, though, Cuomo has cancelled almost all city and state special elections for this year, including the nonpartisan special election for Queens Borough President, and Cuomo’s administration has voted to remove Bernie Sanders from the ballot and cancel the New York presidential primary because...Coronavirus? And without the presidential primary motivating Bernie supporters to show up for down-ballot leftists, turnout will likely be depressed among progressives in key primaries. With the Queens Borough President election cancelled, someone who was appointed by previous Borough President Melinda Katz and who was never actually elected will hold the office until someone new is elected in the other special election in November. There was a nonpartisan special election scheduled for April 28; Andrew Cuomo canceled that. However, there is also a special party primary, scheduled for June 23, and a special general election, scheduled for November 3, both on the same date as regular elections. Those elections will still proceed. (Why there were initially going to be two special elections for the same office in the same year is beyond us.)

Note: In the first version of this issue, we incorrectly reported that Cuomo had cancelled all special elections for Borough President, not just the April 28 one. We regret the error, and we’re grateful to the readers who alerted us.

Results

OH-03

As tough as it is to say, Harper lost, and by a dispiriting 68-32 margin. Morgan Harper had said before the election that the chaos caused by COVID-19 and the postponed election severely hampered her campaign. That’s probably true, and she likely would have come closer if the election had been held as planned, but it’s hard to imagine that being the difference between a win and a loss here.

The fact is, this was always going to be one of the toughest races for progressives. Joyce Beatty is a largely average Democrat, and indeed Morgan Harper never went negative on her. Voters tend to re-elect incumbents unless they’re given a reason not to, and Beatty had a lot of allies assuring voters there weren't any. Moreover, Beatty took this race seriously from the moment it began, and made sure to run an expensive campaign that was extremely visible in the community. Columbus also lacks many of the grassroots progressive groups that, for instance, New York has. It was an extremely tough race, and Morgan Harper was brave for trying it. It’s a shame that she lived in Columbus and not Toledo or Youngstown, with a less imposing incumbent, but you play with the cards you’re dealt, and we’re glad she did, even if she didn’t win.

OH-HD-09

This race was a total blowout. Incumbent Janine Boyd easily turned back challenger Vincent Stokes II 86-14.

OH-HD-25

In another loss for Columbus progressives, establishment choice Dontavius Jarrells won with 45% of the vote. Second place at 23%, was Mohamud Jama, a former Somali refugee, while the two progressives in the race, Mayo Makinde and Kofi Nsia-Pepra, took 17% and 8%, respectively. 

Hamilton County Sheriff

The sheriff’s race was the bright spot tonight, and boy was it bright. Charmaine McGuffey absolutely wiped the floor with Jim Neil by a punishing 70-30 margin. McGuffey’s strength was best in Cincinnati, but she won convincingly everywhere in the county, with the exception of Harrison and Miami, two smaller, more rural and conservative suburbs on the western end of the county. It’s hard to get voters to oust incumbents in general, but Democrats in Hamilton County rejected Jim Neil to a degree even greater than we were hoping for. It helps, we suppose, when the incumbent is best known for going to a Trump rally and the county party endorses his opponent. 

While McGuffey is no Larry Krasner, she has promised to invest in anti-recidivism programs, end Neil’s practice of detaining suspected undocumented immigrants at the behest of ICE and to end cash bail for non-violent offenders. All of those changes will make huge differences in the lives of a great many people in Hamilton County (pop. 817,000). Every once and a while it’s good to think about the way these elections are impacting people’s lives, and McGuffey’s win will ease the cruelty of the American prison system, even if it’s in a limited capacity.

Incumbent Challenges

MA-01

Alex Morse has spent the last month in the local news headlines, not for his Congressional campaign, but as Mayor of Holyoke. One of the first coronavirus outbreaks in Massachusetts occurred at the Soldiers Home in Holyoke, a state-supported nursing home for veterans. Only it wasn’t the first major outbreak reported in the state. The administrators kept it quiet, and the outside world only learned what was happening after an anonymous tipster informed Alex Morse of the problem. Morse called the administrator of the building directly, and only then got official confirmation of the problem. By that time, the death toll was 8. Four days later, it was 21. It is now 68. Morse has spent the last monthtrying to get state intervention into these homes, many of which are mostly private entities which often don’t directly report to the state. A bill is currently making its way through the legislature to do just that.

Morse has also been front and center in calling for more action from the state, and going further than the state in social distancing measures. While Morse is, of course, just doing the job he was elected to do, a crisis is a time for local officials like him to shine, and it contrasts well with Congressional Democrats, who have adopted the strategy of passing whatever Republicans want and then hiding. This is an important race, and we’re glad that Morse is getting the attention his candidacy deserves, despite the grim circumstances.

MA-08

Brianna Wu is ending her campaign citing coronavirus concerns, despite having more than enough signatures to get on the ballot in Massachusetts’ 8th District. She mentioned the difficulties of pivoting to an all-digital campaign for primary challengers, as well as the safety of her staff, volunteers, and the public as major reasons for her decision. Stephen Lynch is still a nightmare who needs to be voted out of office, so thankfully Robbie Goldstein is still in the race, and his successful lawsuit is why the nomination signature threshold for congressional candidates got cut in half. As of right now, Goldstein has still not confirmed his place on the ballot, but is expected to do so by the deadline. On the bright side, this ends the danger of split field allowing Lynch to win with a plurality.

NY-16

Two weeks ago, we called out the Andom Ghebreghiorgis campaign for challenging signatures during a pandemic. They then accused us publicly of “peddling” “misinformation” for doing so, and claimed that no challenges came from their campaign. To be clear, the reason that we attributed the challenges as coming from their campaign was not solely that candidate Chris Fink, who brought the story to the attention of local news media, believed it was from the campaign. Though we did not link them all, we were relying on multiple pieces of reporting for the sake of accuracy. Specifically, we took into account a quote from Ghebreghiorgis’s campaign to the Pelham Examiner:

Christian Amato, campaign manager for Ghebreghiorgis, said, “When we received the other candidates’ petitions, we saw errors that violated the board of elections guidelines for the petitioning process.” He offered no comment on the high number of signatures challenged or taking the step during the crisis.

We have asked the Ghebreghiorgis campaign whether they stand by that quote. They have not responded to our multiple requests for comment.

NY-03

It’s not just Ghebreghiorgis who’s making the dangerous and harmful choice to challenge signatures during this pandemic. (Well, allegedly, we suppose.) Melanie D’Arrigo has gone down a similar route. Earlier this month, someone officially unconnected from the D’Arrigo campaign challenged both hers and Weinstock’s signatures. That fact was unsurprising, but it wasn’t a challenge from a Suozzi backer like it appeared at first blush. When it came to light that the challenger was in fact married to a member of her staff, the D’Arrigo campaign took ownership of the challenge and withdrew it. The campaign claimed, in essence, that they planned this before the coronavirus hit, and forgot to tell the volunteer coordinating it to not go forward with the challenges once social distancing became necessary. Weinstock and Suozzi allies did not buy her explanation.

Matters got worse when a D’Arrigo lawyer served Weinstock with a summons for the lawsuit regarding the signature challenge on a Saturday. Weinstock is Jewish, and state law prevents serving legal papers on holy days, which for observant Jews is Saturday. When Weinstock tried to get the lawsuit thrown out because of this error, the D’Arrigo campaign’s lawyer, Arthur Schwartz, opted to double down by claiming in court that Weinstock was not, for instance, a “super Orthodox Jew”, and the law should not be applied too strictly. This insulting legal argument was thankfully not pursued too deeply, and the case was thrown out because the papers were served a day late regardless. We wish the D’Arrigo campaign would just let it be at this point, but Schwartz says they plan to appeal.

Open Races

IN-01

Congressman Jesus “Chuy” Garcia has endorsed state Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon’s bid for this open house seat. While a congressional endorsement from another state normally wouldn’t be too interesting as news, especially since this endorsement is sort of redundant, given that the CHC, of which Garcia is a member, has already endorsed Reardon, Garcia isn’t just any Congressman. Garcia ran for mayor of Chicago in 2015, and came surprisingly close, 56-44, to unseating powerful incumbent and garbage human being Rahm Emmanuel. Garcia’s campaign was a major organizing point for the Chicago progressive community, and the race was very closely watched by the Chicago media. IN-01 is in Chicago’s media market.

MA-04

As of today, only four candidates out of the 11 in Massachusetts’ 4th District have gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot: Alan Khazei, Becky Grossman, Jake Auchincloss, and Jesse Mermell. The deadline for signatures is May 5th, which could mean that the field could be drastically shrunk by next week. Although we’re glad that at least Mermell is on the ballot, we’re hoping Ihssane Leckey, a democratic socialist and Wall Street regulator with a decent shot at the nomination, pulls through. Leckey stated before the signature threshold got cut in half that the campaign had collected over a thousand signatures, just half of the previous threshold -- but enough to get on the ballot now. We’re not sure why she hasn’t turned them in yet, but assuming she does, she should be on the ballot.

NY-17

Mondaire Jones, our favorite NY-17 candidate, penned an op-ed this week arguing that the Supreme Court should be expanded. To those who say that expanding the court would hurt our democracy, Jones argues that the court has already been working to erode democracy for years by doing nothing to stop gerrymandering and voter suppression. This position is basically the same as the ones taken by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris during their presidential campaigns.

WA-10

On Monday, state Rep. Beth Doglio got the endorsement of the Washington Federation of State Employees, which represents 46,000 public employees across the state of Washington and likely has a disproportionate presence in this district, which contains the state capital of Olympia. Doglio is a solid progressive, though truck driver-turned-Twitter presence Joshua Collins is to her left; the other major candidates in the race (Tacoma mayor-turned-Amazon stooge Marilyn Strickland, moderate carpetbagging state Rep. Kristine Reeves, and former congressional aide Phil Gardner) are all bad-to-terrible.