Issue 71

when will my New York ballots return from the war

Results

As was the case last week, many primaries are still up in the air due to large volumes of mail ballots. However, we have results in some of last night’s races, as well as results from last week’s primaries in Kentucky.

In KY-SD-37, Louisville Metro Councilor David Yates emerged way ahead of his competitors; we’re not impressed by him, but neither were we impressed by his opponents, so, meh.

In KY-HD-40, progressive state Rep. Nima Kulkarni easily defeated Dennis Horlander, who she unseated in 2018.

For Louisville’s Metro Council, two democratic socialist candidates came up just short; Robert LeVertis Bell narrowly lost to Jecorey Arthur in the open District 4, and Ryan Fenwick got 49% to incumbent Pat Mulvihill’s 51% in District 10.

In Oklahoma, voters expanded Medicaid. This is a direct policy victory which gives hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans access to public insurance. It’s absolutely fantastic news. But that’s not all Oklahoma did last night. While the more moderate, establishment candidate prevailed in three of the four competitive state House primaries last night--state Reps. Monroe Nichols and Ajay Pittman held off their flawed-but-probably-less-bad challengers in House Districts 72 and 99, and Kendra Horn staffer José Cruz easily won the open HD-89 over phantom candidate Chris Bryant and democratic socialist Christian Zapata--that fourth state House primary diverged sharply from the other three. In HD-88, three-term state Rep. Jason Dunnington lost renomination to Mauree Turner, a queer Black Muslim ACLU organizer with the support of Ilhan Omar and local progressives. Turner, who uses both she/her and they/them pronouns, is all but guaranteed to become the first openly nonbinary state legislator in American history when she wins the general election in this safely Democratic district in the heart of Oklahoma City. The policy implications are, sadly, minimal, because it’s still Oklahoma and Democrats are a tiny minority in the state legislature; however, it’s a poignant coda to Pride Month as well as another sign that the left’s ascendancy is far from confined to liberal coastal cities and left-leaning college towns. Congratulations to Mauree Turner and the people of Oklahoma on their historic victory.

In Colorado, most of the state’s ideologically-tinged primaries are still undecided; of those where a winner can be safely declared, two are victories. Appointed state Rep. Steven Woodrow fended off his seemingly more moderate challengers in HD-06, and Bernie-endorsed, reform-oriented challenger Alonzo Payne thrashed appointed incumbent DA Bob Willett in southern Colorado’s 12th Judicial District. The third is one we didn’t cover in our primary preview, because it’s the Democratic nomination to face Republican Sen. Cory Gardner--while Gardner is very likely to lose in November, we stay away from races with Republican incumbents. However, we’d like to complain a bit about the nomination of former Gov. and noted fracking enthusiast John Hickenlooper, largely echoing our friends at the Sunrise Movement.

There are two chambers of Congress, folks. Please focus on both. (And when you do acknowledge the Senate’s existence, try to stick to states where Democrats might actually win federal elections.) Andrew Romanoff is far from a perfect standard-bearer for the left, but John Hickenlooper is the absolute worst, and now we’re stuck with him for six years because the national left mostly sat this race out. House primaries are good and necessary, and they are also easier to win. But what, exactly, do we expect to pass in a Senate which counts John Hickenlooper, Dianne Feinstein, and Chris Coons among its blue-state members? Are we all doing this because we want better press clips, or do we actually want to improve people’s lives? Realistically, there’s only enough time to organize for two Senate primaries left this cycle, both in September: Massachusetts, where Ed Markey faces a vapid challenge from Joe Kennedy, and Delaware, where Chris Coons faces a well-deserved progressive challenge from Jess Scarane. Let’s not drop the ball on these ones.

MA-Sen

Speaking of the Senate, two internal polls from congressional campaigns reportedly show Sen. Ed Markey trailing by double digits in MA-01 (western Massachusetts) and MA-04 (Joe Kennedy’s congressional district.) Apparently Massachusetts will just vote for anybody with the last name “Kennedy”. Gross. Donate to Markey here to help save the Senate sponsor of the Green New Deal.

MA-04

Former Brookline Selectwoman Jesse Mermell was endorsed by state Sen. Julian Cyr and a collection of local politicians, joining Ayanna Pressley and a number of labor unions. Newton Councilor Jake Auchincloss was excoriated in a guest column on a local news website by a Black student over his past defense of the Confederate flag (which is unsurprising, we suppose, given his eagerness to hear Steve Bannon speeches and his love for the race-science website Quillette.) And three candidates who seemed like long shots reported impressive fundraising numbers: democratic socialist Ihssane Leckey reported raising $710,000 in the past three months, tech businessman Chris Zannetos raised $638,000 in the past three months, and public health expert Dr. Natalia Linos raised $200,000 in under two months. (Linos was a late entry into the race.) Auchincloss and City Year founder Alan Khazei, who had already established themselves as top contenders, raised $288,000 and $544,000, respectively.

There’s no word on how much of each candidate’s fundraising hauls came from self-funding.

MI-13

Rashida Tlaib launched her reelection campaign late last week, boasting a strong slate of endorsements and a joint fundraising committee with the other three members of the Squad. She faces Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones in a rematch of their peculiar 2018 race, in which Jones won the primary for the special election to fill the last six weeks of disgraced Rep. John Conyers’s term but Tlaib won the primary for the full two-year term on the same day.

NJ-05

Per her campaign, Arati Kreibich had her best fundraising day of the campaign on Monday, raising over $25,000 in 24 hours for her challenge to conservative Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer. Gottheimer is worried enough that he suddenly spent six figures on a last-minute cable ad buy; he was last on the air in October of 2019.

NJ-08

Hector Oseguera’s challenge to Rep. Albio Sires has flown under the radar for a number of reasons. For one, Sires is among the most obscure, low-profile members of the House; in over a decade since succeeding Bob Menendez in the House upon the latter’s ascension to the US Senate, Sires has managed to do nothing to distinguish himself. No legislative accomplishments, no big policy proposals, no controversial comments, he’s just...there. Additionally, Oseguera, a former volunteer for AOC’s 2018 campaign, who's running on a similar message of Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, social justice, and a Jersey-specific anti-corruption pitch, looked to be waging a lonely battle with the New Jersey machine, with little outside backing or prominent supporters to speak of. And then there’s the machine itself--many primaries in New Jersey are largely a formality due to a system known as the county line or the party line, and Hudson County (which makes up the bulk of this district) has one of the most fearsome Democratic machines in the state. Yes, Oseguera’s progressive slate was assigned a favorable ballot placement generally awarded to the machine, weakening the power of the line somewhat, but the power of the line lies primarily in its placement of every famous name in one column with the official endorsement of the Democratic Party noted next to each name, not in its physical location on the ballot.

A lot happened in the past week to change that.

First, last Wednesday, Oseguera filed his pre-primary report with the FEC. The fundraising number contained therein--$39,000--isn’t much, though for an insurgent challenger it’s not bad. It’s noteworthy for two reasons: one, it’s more than half of Oseguera’s total fundraising from the day he started his campaign in September 2019, and two, it’s more than triple what Sires raised in the same period. Momentum is a tricky thing, and generally unquantifiable; however, Oseguera appears to have it, and Sires isn’t taking him seriously.

Or, at least, he wasn’t. The Hudson County Democratic Organization, aka the Hudson machine, suddenly awoke from its slumber, blasting out a press release bashing Oseguera for taking money from a Trump donor. (Just this year, Sires has taken money from donors including real estate executives, nursing home CEOs, Verizon, and what seems like the entire American sugar farming industry--but who’s counting?) Sires reactivated a campaign Twitter account that had lain dormant since 2012. A fairly obvious pro-Sires sock puppet account popped up on Twitter. (They were, hilariously, too late to reserve albiosires.com, which redirects to Oseguera’s ActBlue donation page.) Whether the machine is scared or just playing it safe is an open question, but Oseguera’s campaign is real enough that they’re at least sorta trying.

New Jersey progressives seem to agree with the machine’s assessment: Oseguera is for real. He got the endorsements of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance (the state’s WFP affiliate) and Jersey City Ward E Councilman James Solomon in quick succession. Practically overnight, this became a race to watch. Perhaps it’s because of the district--the Democratic electorate here in this district along the Hudson River is mostly working-class Latinx residents of Elizabeth, Newark, Jersey City, and northern Hudson County, plus young, college-educated liberal whites in Hoboken, Weehawken, and parts of Jersey City. Both are groups that have consistently shown themselves to be very favorable to left-wing challengers. Perhaps it’s because a spirited primary challenge in New Jersey is a novelty in and of itself. But one thing is definitely clear: while Sires remains a strong favorite to win, Hector Oseguera has put New Jersey’s 8th district on the map.

NYC

Two things from New York City: one, they will not be counting absentee ballots for the June 23rd primary until next week, a bit of news that made your beleaguered authors wince; it’s par for the course for the New York City Board of Elections, an incompetent patronage jobs repository run by people who would likely struggle at any job but (unfortunately for us) are stuck doing extremely important jobs running our democracy. Two, the City Council voted for a budget that fails to make significant cuts to the NYPD, engaging in cheap accounting tricks in a frankly insulting attempt to mollify the thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters who have packed the streets of the five boroughs for more than a month uninterrupted. Thanks to young activists Aaron Narraph and Lucy Merriam, who were harassed and intimidated by city councilors for simply posting city councilors’ publicly available and often freely provided phone numbers (because many of their office voicemails were full and constituents could not contact them), there’s an easy database of who voted which way on the budget and why. Every yes vote, as well as every no vote from the right, is utterly unacceptable. (Just nine city councilors, out of 51, voted against the budget for the right reasons. NYC’s 2021 elections cannot come soon enough.)

TX-SD-27

Conservative South Texas state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. is feeling the heat in his July 14 Democratic primary runoff against attorney Sara Stapleton-Barrera; Lucio just barely fell below 50% in the March primary against Stapleton-Barrera and state Board of Education member Ruben Cortez, triggering a runoff. Stapleton-Barrera has consolidated support from NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, the Human Rights Campaign, Progress Texas, and the Texas affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, the latter two having previously supported Cortez. Lucio is now up on TV with an extremely low-budget ad attacking Stapleton-Barrera for being a defense attorney and for being insufficiently bipartisan. It’s slimy, and it’s also something you do when you’re scared.

Travis County DA

Democratic socialist José Garza is running against incumbent DA Margaret Moore on a decarceral platform of the kind that was both popular and desperately needed before Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation; now, the urgent need for such a platform has only grown more apparent. Garza, endorsed by Austin DSA, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, outpaced Moore in the March primary, but fell short of the 50% threshold required to avoid a runoff in Texas, giving the DA one last chance to save her career. In a recent debate, Moore didn’t give an inch to the movement for a less horrific criminal justice system, defending her office’s sluggish investigations of police officers and zealous prosecutions of drug users. Travis County, which contains most of the city of Austin and some suburbs, has a reputation as a very progressive place, one that would be belied by reelecting Margaret Moore.