Issue #64
The news drought has ended
Incumbent Challenges
MA-01
Happy Meltdown May, everybody. Last week Alex Morse retweeted a supportive tweet from Evan Weber, Sunrise’s political director, that happened to call Richard Neal a “joke of a Democrat” that could use his position as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee to fight the climate crisis, but he “never lifts a finger”. To be clear, we have no objections with the tweet. Richard Neal is a joke of a Democrat, and his inaction on climate is disgraceful. But the Neal campaign took offense, calling the tweet “embarrassing” and pointing out that Morse only has about $140k cash on hand, while Neal has almost $5 million to spend. Maybe if Neal spent more time listening to his constituents and less time fundraising, people wouldn’t tweet mean things about him, but then he wouldn’t have as much money in the bank, so I guess his priorities are clear.
MA-Sen
According to a series of polls over the last week, things aren’t looking good for Ed Markey, but the degree to which the damage has been done differs based on which poll. Emerson College/7News has Kennedy up by 16 (!) points, while UMass-Lowell has Markey only down by a much more manageable 2 points. With less than four months to go until the election and the challenges of a pandemic on campaigning, closing a 16-point gap seems unlikely, but a two-point gap is achievable.
Last week, Kennedy launched his first ad blitz of the cycle, spending over $1.2 million on television ads focusing on his work to fight the coronavirus pandemic. With almost $2 million cash on hand, Kennedy has plenty of money to spend on advertising now that coronavirus has stopped in-person campaigning, and his ads are the first of the entire race. In just two weeks, NBC 10 will livestream the second debate of the race on June 1st, and while Kennedy’s ad buys give him a notable television presence, Markey is a skilled debater and will (hopefully) have a good showing.
In other news, Boston Magazine released a profile of Kennedy earlier today titled “Joe Kennedy Wants You to Know He’s More Than Just a Name”, in which he came off as more insufferable and entitled than ever, if that can even be possible.
Minnesota
In Minnesota, the state Democratic Party (known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, or DFL) holds conventions to determine which primary candidates get the endorsement of the DFL. The DFL, unlike a lot of state parties, isn’t dominated by awful establishment types and corporations; Ilhan Omar had the DFL endorsement in her 2018 primary, and now-Gov. Tim Walz lost the DFL endorsement to progressive state Rep. Erin Murphy before defeating her in the gubernatorial primary that same year. That’s how you get things like normal, even progressive incumbents falling to even more progressive challengers, which is 1) cool as hell and 2) exactly what happened to three legislators this past week.
State Sen. Jeff Hayden is a veteran of Minneapolis politics. He serves as Assistant Minority Leader of the Republican-controlled body, and served two terms in the state house of representatives before winning a 2011 special election to the state senate. It came as a shock, then, when he was upset for the DFL endorsement by local activist and democratic socialist Omar Fateh with a stunning 72% of the vote in an online convention. State Rep. Raymond Dehn, who lost the 2018 Minneapolis mayoral election to Jacob Frey, lost the DFL endorsement to attorney Esther Agbaje on the third ballot. Agbaje lists renters’ rights as a top priority. It wasn’t just Minneapolis where legislators were upset by progressive challengers; state Sen. Erik Simonson lost the DFL endorsement to attorney Jen McEwen in a district containing the city of Duluth, in northern Minnesota. All three incumbents questioned the validity of the process, and Simonson made clear that he’s still running in the August primary. (He also emphasized his “moderate and inclusive approach to legislating,” so McEwen, who says she ran because she was disappointed with Simonson’s environmental record, is probably the better choice.)
The DFL endorsement doesn’t guarantee a primary victory, especially against an incumbent; however, if the endorsements are not successfully challenged by the losing incumbents, the challengers will have access to party resources and branding, which can be powerful campaign tools.
NJ-05
Blue Dog Rep. Josh Gottheimer is something of a special case; despite representing a district narrowly carried by Donald Trump, he’s earned himself a serious primary challenge from Glen Rock borough councilor Arati Kreibich. (For what it’s worth, Republicans failed to field a serious candidate this year.) This week, Gottheimer provided yet another example of why that challenge is well-deserved.
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, just about every industry can make a compelling case that it needs federal aid. Private equity, the industry best known for gutting Toys ‘R’ Us, running media companies into the ground, and making Mitt Romney rich at the expense of laid-off workers, is one of the few industries that absolutely does not need help. But Gottheimer, of course, stepped up to ask for a bailout for private equity--an industry which just happens to be a major donor to Gottheimer and the nihilist centrist group No Labels. Gottheimer, who represents the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, could be focusing on getting money for testing, treatment, or a bailout for...actual people, but instead he’s trying to put more money in the pockets of a greedy, parasitic industry.
NM-SD-28
Over a year ago, we discussed Mary Papen, the conservative New Mexico State Senate President, elected in essential a fusion control of Republicans and the right flank of the Democratic Party
She opposes not just marijuana legalization, but even marijuana decriminalization, and holds powerful positions in the state senate that she could use to hinder or even kill it. Last month she killed Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s proposed $12/hr minimum wage bill and replaced it with legislation business groups wanted. She was also one of the few votes to preserve local anti-union right-to-work measures, and frequently sides with business groups over unions. She was also one of the few Democrats who worked to keep New Mexico’s abortion ban.
One progressive challenger, Tracy Perry, entered the race. Then another, Carrie Hamblen, also joined. They both ran strong campaigns, and then both filed to run, guaranteeing a ballot with two roughly equally strong candidates running against a single incumbent, our nightmare scenario. Perry dropped out yesterday and endorsed Hamblen. Without ballots not just printed, but already in voters’ hands, it’s hard to say if word of this change can get out fast enough. Papen may win with a plurality.
Open Races
IN-01
Curtis Hill, who was elected Indiana’s Attorney General in 2016, attended a Christmas party in 2018 with many legislators present. It was there that he (allegedly) got drunk and started groping state Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon. Reardon bravely came forward with her account, starting a year-long proceeding involving the Indiana Bar Association and three legislative staffers who came forward with similar accounts. This week, that proceeding finally concluded, when the Indiana Bar suspended Hill’s law license for 30 days.
This has likely been a difficult time for Reardon, and while this saga has highlighted her bravery in coming forward, it’s a shame that it means most of her press attention has come from something ultimately unrelated to her legislative work. At any rate, this ruling has likely come at a good time for her Congressional campaign: late enough to remind people what she’s done, but early enough that it won’t subsume her messaging in the home stretch.
NM-03
Two local newspapers, Taos News and the Santa Fe Reporter, have endorsed in this very crowded race so far, and despite the plethora of options, they’ve both chosen to back progressive attorney Teresa Leger Fernandez. Both mention her local roots and experience, which is good for Leger Fernandez, seeing as those are the themes she’s been focusing on during the campaign, including in the ads she’s unveiled recently. As a matter of fact, let’s look at the ad wars in this crowded race.
Leger Fernandez has three TV spots. The weakest of the three focuses on healthcare, where she obliquely brings up the coronavirus crisis, but opts against connecting that to her support of Medicare for All, and produces unfortunately a very generic ad. Her other two are better. The topic of one is her work on water rights, an important issue in the rural north of the state that only she can really lay claim to. The other is a clever not-negative spot that nominally discusses her support of Social Security and Medicare, but the main purpose of which is to highlight her family’s long history in the region and her cultural connections to it. Drawing an implicit contrast like this is not uncommon technique in a race against a newcomer(s) to your state when you want to keep reminding people about that without “going negative”. This ad does that well.
Valarie Plame has two ads out for the campaign’s home stretch. Well, one and a half - the first is a slightly trimmed down version of her intro ad, making it a one minute spot. It’s about as good as the original is, which is to say we thought the super-tough-spy theme of the ad was awkward and try-hard, but it’s still flashy and attention-grabbing. The other ad continues down the same route, showing her running through what is implied to be a CIA-style obstacle course, while her brother talks about her CIA experience. It’s more of the same, although “we need her national security experience to fight the coronavirus” was a particularly weird line. It seems like she’s determined to base her entire campaign around her CIA tenure, which will help her stand out of the pack, but risks making her look like a novelty rather than a serious candidate.
John Blair has produced one TV spot. It’s a neat idea: Blair gives out his personal cell phone number to everyone in the district because “if lobbyists can call members of Congress, why shouldn’t you?” The rest of the ad shows him answering it as he goes about his daily life, including two segments that feature his husband. Its main problem is execution. The ad uses this setup to have Blair functionally monologue about his biography and policy stances for a minute, and his acting is just not good enough to back that up. There are a lot of stilted lines and awkward delivery in what may very well be his only TV ad.
Joseph Sanchez has one TV ad, produced a couple months ago. The ad is extremely cheap, barely above slideshow quality. The sound mixing is off too. The music is too loud, making his voiceover take effort to hear, which is something you never want in a TV ad, especially if it’s not clear what you’re saying from what’s on the screen. Although perhaps it’s for the best, considering he sounds half asleep in it.
NY-17
Literal Republican state Sen. David Carlucci, who is running for Congress as a Democrat, is back at it again, doing Republican shit. This time, son-of-a-billionaire Adam Schleifer is hitting Carlucci for taking money from payday lenders throughout his career--and legislating to the benefit of his donors, attempting to legalize payday lending during his time in the state senate. We’re no fans of Schleifer--the progressive choice here is attorney Mondaire Jones--and it’s ironic that a pharmaceutical heir is attacking anyone for taking money gotten through unethical, predatory means, because Adam’s father Leon is a pharmaceutical billionaire (he founded Regeneron, a biotech giant specializing in expensive medications.) But he’s right, despite the glaring hypocrisy; payday lenders are predatory parasites whose money should be rejected by all Democrats.
PA-HD-36
All of the HD-36 candidates participated in a League of Women Voters forum over video conferencing. Jessica Benham was well prepared with good answers to the questions, but she’s not the most interesting part of this video. That would be conservative, party-endorsed candidate Heather Kass, who seemed to take every question as an opportunity to make the viewer wonder why she’s running as a Democrat. She raised the specter of “too much voter fraud out there”, said she “[didn’t] think fracking is necessarily wrong”, said that we should address food insecurity by planting community gardens, talking to farmers, and “that’s it”, said that “the LGBTQ” had “stigmata” over the “the lifestyle that they prefer”, claimed that “there are enough laws on the books for the guns”, argued that charter schools “need to have more funding”, and that “we pay enough taxes as it is”.
You might be inclined to think that, after a trove of social media posts were discovered where she attacks Obama, supports Trump, makes bigoted statements, and calls for mass deaths of drug users, she might try to run a campaign that would convince people she belongs in the party. Apparently not.
WA-10
State Rep. Kristine Reeves was endorsed this week by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. While it’s not a shock - Reeves was the only candidate eligible for the endorsement after all - it’ll still make life somewhat harder for progressives in the district. Reeves winning isn’t quite the disastrous outcome that would be a Marylin Strickland nomination, but her long record of anti-tax stances mean Beth Doglio would clearly be a better congresswoman. Pramila Jayapal agrees with us on that, as she demonstrated by endorsing her last week, apart from the CPC endorsement which had come the week before. Doglio also demonstrated her commitment to her signature issue, climate change, by releasing a detailed Green New Deal plan. There’s a lot of good stuff in there: climate justice, green housing, mass transit, and getting to net zero climate emission by 2030 in power generation and cars.
And while Doglio was bolstering her reputation on the left, fellow candidate Joshua Collins was ruining his. We’ve gone through a few emotions about Joshua Collins aka Joshua4Congress. We were skeptical of his chances at first, but after incumbent Denny Heck dropped out, Collins looked like he was ready to capitalize on the opportunity. He began raising an amount of money that was at least viable for a fully grassroots campaign, opened an office, set a couple of ambitious but not impossible targets for voter outreach, and partnered with a few existing organizations like DSA. Collins produces a lot of social media content, and most of it is, well, cringy, but it helped him raise money and it seemed like he was using it as a tool for that rather than campaigning.
That lasted a while, but things deteriorated from there. There were truly bizarre FEC filings that made us question what he was doing with that money. For instance, multiple consultants making thousands of dollars a month happens on larger campaigns, but is an unusual choice for a campaign that’s only raising about $27,000 a month. All without even have had bought a web ad by that point. Then there were the quite credible allegations that he’d plagiarized large portions of his website from various sources, including Bernie Sanders. Then, as we said last week, he appeared to indicate he wouldn’t be filing as a Democrat, which is a move that basically guarantees a low cap on his vote share. Even Kshama Sawant, a talented politician running in the most left-wing part of the state, couldn’t pull it off until she ran in a nonpartisan race.
This week, though, has been a minor meltdown. It started with a weird saga where he posted that he needed donations to pay for the ballot filing fee, starting a minor online blowup. “Chip in to help us pay for [expense]” is a common fundraising pitch that usually goes over without much notice. In fact, here’s fellow democratic socialist insurgent primary challenger Rebecca Parson in WA-06 doing just that, to only positive response. Collins phrased the fee as if it had been an establishment attack on his campaign, and mentioned that his 100 volunteers had been very close to getting the required signatures, but now they couldn’t. This was odd because he clearly had the money to pay the relatively small fee, and also that math worked out to each volunteer collecting like 10 or fewer signatures over the course of multiple months. He proceeded to get into fights in the replies over this. Also, the signature requirement had already been waived.
Meanwhile, he gave a weird and tense interview with he said that, among other things, that anyone interested in helping his campaign should join their Discord server. Discord is not widely enough used to be the only entry point for potential volunteers on any campaign, but putting that aside, the campaign has apparently not responded to any volunteers on Discord for weeks.
A lot of this happened on Twitter, and we’d normally have linked the relevant tweets, but this morning he deleted his account. All of his accounts on social media in fact. His comms director says this is because the stress of managing his accounts got to him and he’s taking a break. This raises the question of why he chose to deactivate the public face of his campaign, a campaign which appears to be mostly public face if we’re being honest, instead of turning off notifications, logging out, deleting the apps, turning his accounts over to his staff, taking a personal break from going online - anything else really.
Collins seems like a nice guy, his platform (whether or not he wrote it) is amazing, and someone like him definitely could have a good chance on his budget, especially given the 5 way split of this race. We danced around it before, but by now it’s clear that his campaign is just mismanaged to the point where it’s hard to see him getting more than a few percent of the vote.
Endorsement-a-palooza
Bernie
On Monday, Bernie Sanders released a very good (albeit short) slate of state legislative endorsements, all of them in contested primaries against more conservative opponents. Among them are six incumbents:
Justin Bamberg, SC-HD-90
Wendell Gilliard, SC-HD-111
Mike Gianaris, NY-SD-12
Jessica Ramos, NY-SD-13
Julia Salazar, NY-SD-18
Summer Lee, PA-HD-34
And three non-incumbents, two of them challenging incumbents:
Nikil Saval, challenging incumbent Larry Farnese in PA-SD-01, who also scored an endorsement from WFP City Councilor Kendra Brooks (also receiving the Brooks endorsement was state house challenger Rick Krajewski)
Roslyn Ogburn, challenging pro-Trump incumbent Karen Whitsett in MI-HD-09
Megan Green, running for the open MO-SD-05
All nine of these candidates deserve your support if you’re in their districts or are able to contribute time or money, and we hope to see more of this from Bernie.
New York
A whole bunch of endorsements in hotly contested congressional and state legislative primaries in New York came out this week. We’ll list them here.
The Communications Workers of America, District 1, a major New York union, backed just about every incumbent running for reelection in a contested primary, both good (such as AOC, solidly left-wing state Sens. Jessica Ramos and Julia Salazar, Manhattan assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou) and bad (such as Reps. Eliot Engel, Carolyn Maloney, Tom Suozzi, and Jerry Nadler.) They also accidentally endorsed state Senator John Brooks not only in his district, but also the one next door. Their endorsements in open races are more noteworthy: New York City Councilor Ritchie Torres in NY-15 and Assemblyman David Buchwald in NY-17. Neither one is the progressive choice in the race (in the 15th, that would be AOC-, DSA-, and WFP-endorsed activist Samelys López; in the 17th, it’s WFP-endorsed attorney Mondaire Jones.) CWA’s endorsements weren’t all bad, though; they backed progressive primary challenger Amanda Septimo in Bronx’s Assembly District 84 over incumbent Carmen Arroyo, who has been followed by a trail of corruption scandals throughout her 26 years in the Assembly.
The Democratic Socialists of America’s national arm endorsed five New York candidates: the aforementioned López, as well as Zohran Mamdani for Assembly District 36, Marcela Mitaynes for Assembly District 51, Phara Souffrant-Forest for Assembly District 57, and Jabari Brisport for Senate District 25. Mamdani, Mitaynes, and Souffrant-Forest are challenging incumbents; López is running in the Bronx, Mamdani in Queens, and Mitaynes, Souffrant-Forest, and Brisport in Brooklyn. All five already had the endorsement of NYC DSA.
The Sunrise Movement’s NYC chapter endorsed a slate of incumbents and challengers over the course of the past week, including Souffrant-Forest, Brisport, López, Salazar, Niou, and Bronx Sen. Alessandra Biaggi. (Biaggi got into office by taking out the leader of the Republican-backing IDC, a group of Democrats who caucused with Republicans to hand the GOP control of the state senate; Niou and Salazar both got into office by defeating machine-backed incumbents in primaries.)
In NY-15, former New York City Council Speaker and noted non-Bronx resident Melissa Mark-Viverito got the endorsement of the city’s major education unions for this all-Bronx district; Torres had previously had a strong lead with labor endorsements, and Mark-Viverito is probably more progressive than Torres (but not as progressive as López.)
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence endorsed Eliot Engel for reelection in NY-16; this is unsurprising. Mainstream gun control organizations will endorse anyone with a D next to their name, regardless of their politics on other issues, so long as they’re good on gun control (and “good on gun control” often means things like supporting the use of the no-fly list, which is a racist clusterfuck, to ban gun purchases.)
Bernie Sanders also endorsed three progressive state senators for reelection in New York; see our Bernie item.
Finally in general New York news, Governor (and cursèd liberal sex symbol) Andrew Cuomo has ordered that every eligible New York voter be mailed an absentee ballot application; this is better than nothing, especially since the state has effectively done away with requiring an excuse to vote absentee, but it would be simpler and more effective to just mail everyone a ballot. Several progressive legislative candidates banded together to call on Cuomo to do exactly that; they are the aforementioned Brisport, Mamdani, and Souffrant-Forest, as well as AD-37’s Mary Jobaida and AD-50’s Emily Gallagher (both challenging incumbent assemblymen from the left.) If Cuomo actually cares about increasing voter turnout without spreading coronavirus, he’ll do it--even if that requires passing a law through the legislature allowing him to do so. Instead, it’s radio silence from MSNBC Daddy. (Did we mention he just cut Medicaid?)
Please stop thirsting over Andrew Cuomo, he’s awful.
Election Results
NE-02
We’ve always focused on districts where any Democrat who gets nominated is a huge favorite to win the general election. It keeps us from getting bogged down in the debate over electability, and besides, there haven’t been too many races where that would be a concern anyway. Which is all to say we didn’t cover NE-02 until now. And really, the race is already over, so we’re not covering an election. We’re engaging in some pointless, unprofessional, and highly enjoyable dunking.
In 2014 the DCCC recruited Brad Ashford, a Republican-turned-independent and 30 year Nebraska political veteran to run for NE-02 as a Democrat against the NE-02 Republican incumbent who had spent the last year cramming his foot in his mouth. Despite the horrible year, he won, and NE-02 was one of two R->D flips. Ashford was one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress for a term, then in 2016 he became the only Democrat to lose re-election for the House. He was recruited to run again in 2018. His conservative record and Republican past became issues in the primary, and he lost in stunner to come-behind grassroots champion Kara Eastman.
Enter Ann Ashford, Brad’s wife, who had nearly run that year instead of him, and who took it poorly. Very poorly. She refused to endorse and trashed Eastman on social media for months after the primary. Also not a fan of Eastman was the DCCC, who refused to help her out for months while the NRCC and Don Bacon relentlessly targeted her on the air. She only got added the Red to Blue list in August. She wound up losing that race by 2%, which is now canonical proof that The Left Can’t Win.
The DCCC recruited local restaurant owner Gladys Harrison to run in NE-02, but Harrison fizzled out and barely raised any money. Ann Ashford also jumped in, and ran an incredibly negative campaign. She barely raised any money, but towards the end she dropped $100K into her campaign so she could run this ad against Eastman. Ann Ashford didn’t even become a Democrat until after Trump was elected. Her social media shows stances before that like siding with Paul Ryan during the 2013 government shutdown. She also has a fury towards the “far left”, which is (horror) “anti-fascist” and “seeking perfect or near perfect equality”. On the eve of the election she tweeted out this gem
We’re happy to report that she got owned. Demolished. She lost 62-32. Gladys Harrison endorsed Kara Eastman soon after the results came in. Following a Facebook Live event hosted by the Nebraska Democratic Party where she refused to endorse Eastman, all Ashford’s said publicly so far is two words: “thank you”, to incumbent Republican Don Bacon.
One last thing: This is Ashford’s second race. In 2012, she ran for the University of Nebraska Board of Regents district in Omaha. She lost to the Republican incumbent Hal Daub, who had previously represented NE-02. Next time he was up, in 2018, Daub lost re-election to Democrat Barb Weitz. Weitz endorsed Eastman in this race.
