Issue #73
The last real FEC week of the primary season. Feeling nostalgic?
Results
Officially, New York City is staying mum on what the ballots they’re counting say, but several candidates have claimed victory or conceded based on results they saw in-person during the counting. We’re not going to presented scattered partial results from Facebook and Twitter feeds just yet. Maybe next week if New York still thinks official numbers are a long way off, but not yet.
Texas
However, Texas did count its votes, and the results were overwhelmingly positive. In Travis County, decarceral challenger José Garza handily unseated incumbent DA Margaret Moore. Garza, a defense attorney backed by DSA, the Working Families Party, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the Castro brothers, is the latest in a long list of reform-oriented district attorney candidates to win on a platform of fundamentally changing the criminal justice system. Another Garza won a Travis County prosecutor election: progressive city councilor Delia Garza defeated her more moderate opponent Laurie Eiserloh, who had the backing of the outgoing incumbent, for the position of Travis County Attorney, which prosecutes misdemeanors. Both victories will lessen the cruelty of the criminal justice system for Travis County’s more than one million residents.
Also in Travis County, Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt came alarmingly close to getting a majority, but fell just short, sending her to a runoff with progressive state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez. The date of the runoff is undetermined at the moment.
In the one disappointing Texas result of the night, state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. narrowly survived his challenge from attorney Sara Stapleton-Barrera 53.6% to 46.4%. Lucio is one of the most conservative Democrats in state office anywhere in the country, but unfortunately national investment in this race (which took place in a district larger than a Congressional district), was minimal outside of Planned Parenthood. There’s always 2022.
2022 is also the year that progressives will have their next chance to go after Henry Cuellar, also a conservative, Republican-collaborating border Democrat who was not supposed to be anything close to beatable, right before they almost were. Here’s an article asking why Eddie Lucio Jr. was going so hard on his opponent when he was on track to win so easily. It was published the day before he came within 8% of losing. Progressives made two big attempts to break through the conservative Democratic deadlock at the border (three if you count the challenge to state Rep. Eddie Lucio III), and despite being totally dismissed they almost knocked all three out. Now that we know incumbents like those aren’t the dreadnoughts they’re cracked up to be, the next two years should be fun.
In state House races, there were two status quo results: Liz Campos defeated Jennifer Ramos (but then again, both were status quo politicians) in HD-119, and state Rep. Harold Dutton turned back a challenge from Houston City Councilor Jerry Davis in HD-142. There were also two progressive victories, both over incumbents elected in special elections just a few months ago: state Rep. Lorraine Birabil lost to civil rights attorney Jasmine Crockett in central Dallas’s HD-100, and pro-charter school state Rep. Anna Eastman lost to pro-public school challenger Penny Morales Shaw in Houston’s HD-148. Both losses were narrow; Birabil trails by just 92 votes, or one percentage point, while Eastman trails by 200 votes, or two percentage points. Eastman has conceded; Birabil has not.
Maine
In Maine, because there are so many races, we’re just going to list the winners in the races where the AP has called it. New England election administration is generally abysmal, owing to the extreme decentralization of the process (every town and city runs its own elections, for the most part, and some towns just count votes when they feel like it.) You can find more context on these race, along with the Texas race, in our primary preview from Tuesday
SD-09: no winner; university administrator Glenn Curry 44%, activist Robyn Stanicki 31%, doctor Charles Pattavina 25%
SD-11: Bangor City Councilor Joe Baldacci defeats state Rep. Victoria Kornfield
SD-24: State Rep. Mattie Daughtry defeats former state Sen. Stan Gerzofsky
SD-29: State Rep. Anne Curry leads businesswoman Sari Greene and former city councilor Eben Rose
HD-04: Patricia Hymanson (i) defeats medical marijuana entrepreneur Mark Despres
HD-09: Businesswoman Staci Gere defeats LGBT rights activist Gia Drew
HD-30: Termed-out state Sen. Rebecca Millett defeats former state Rep. Kimberly Monaghan
HD-35: Westbrook school board member Suzanne Salisbury defeats fellow Westbrook school board member James Violette
HD-37: no winner; Bernie Sanders staffer Grayson Lookner 52%, county commissioner Jim Cloutier 48%
HD-38: former city councilor Barb Wood defeats activists Charles Skold and Michael Flaherty
HD-41: no winner; doctor Samuel Zager 50%, former Maine Democratic Party chair Benjamin Grant 36%, former Portland Board of Education member Laurie Davis 14%
HD-43: Ed Crockett (i) defeats activist Bob Mentzinger
HD-47: no winner; environmental activist Art Bell 39%, Democratic activist Heather Abbott 36%, attorney Peter Fromuth 25%
HD-48: former Freeport town councilor Melanie Sachs defeats nonprofit director Kathryn Biberstein
HD-49: no winner; former Brunswick town councilor Poppy Arford 41%, single-payer advocate Corinne Perreault 30%, former Brunswick town councilor Kathy Wilson 29%
HD-81: no winner; attorney Tavis Hasenfus 57%, artist (and county sheriff’s wife) Joanne Mason 43%
HD-90: no winner; social worker Lydia Crafts 50%, former state representative Wendy Pieh 37%, Maine Bar Association President David Levesque 13%
HD-123: no winner; Orono city councilor Laurie Osher 53.5%, fellow Orono city councilor Meghan Gardner 46.5%
HD-125: University of Maine adjunct professor Amy Roeder defeats healthcare administrator Ken Huhn
HD-126: Bangor city councilor and bartender Laura Supica defeats Michael Sutton
HD-134: Lobster boat captain Genevieve McDonald (i) defeats lobster boat captain Julie Eaton
FEC WEEEEEEEK
AZ-01: see item
CA-12: You know how Amy McGrath raised a ludicrous amount of money from liberals who want McConnell gone, but they’re more focused on McConnell the man than how he’s doing the damage he is because he has the votes from his caucus, so the way to actually get rid of him is getting rid of boring Republicans from states that don’t get nearly as much money as liberals are sinking in the basically unwinnable windmill-tiliting that is a Senate race in Kentucky? This race is that, but for the left.
CA-18: Rishi Kumar’s fundraising had been slippin for a while now, but it really looks like he went through his entire donor list in the primary.
CA-29: Oh, Angelica Dueñas, we’re glad you got to the general election without raising any money, but we’d like to make the argument that you might benefit from trying it before November.
CA-53: Sara Jacobs’s fundraising numbers are kind of meaningless anyway, since she has a billion-dollar piggy bank she can reach into whenever her campaign needs something, but it’s good to see Gómez raising serious money after the primary is over.
DE-Sen: see Delaware item
MA-Sen: Joe Kennedy has evidently entered into late-game “spray money blindly all over the state” stage of this race. And still it only evens out the candidates’ cash on hand numbers. This race has just been an infuriating experience, as politicians who should know better, like Mark Pocan, get behind Kennedy. Kennedy literally hired a cop as a criminal justice reform advisor during Black Lives Matter protests. Nothing constructive to say here, we’re just angry about this race. Markey just got the Postal Workers union, which is good news, though.
MA-01: Richard Neal has over $4 million on hand. He will not be reached in the money race. He will not be approached in the money race. Morse’s best hope was always to raise enough money to get his name out and not let Neal’s messaging go unanswered. This quarter, when he raised over $300,000, might be enough to do that.
MA-04: see item
MA-06: Seth Moulton continues to have two poorly-funded challengers.
MA-08: Well, this is a welcome surprise. Dr. Robbie Goldstein, a gay, pro-single payer candidate who became the only opponent of Stephen Lynch (both frequently anti-gay and one of the 2 remaining Democratic no votes on the ACA) after 2018 candidate Brianna Wu left the race, had a fairly impressive quarter, four times what Lynch raised. $162,000 still isn’t a ton of money, and moving towards the end of the campaign, Lynch’s cash-on-hand numbers are still way better than Goldstein’s, but it still puts him in fighting shape if this race were to get some outside involvement.
MI-13: Brenda Jones was never a strong fundraiser, but considering the number of centrists who want Tlaib gone, this speaks to Jones’s inability to ignite her campaign. In 2018, she could get away with this by letting unions and the Wayne County establishment do much of her campaign work for her, but considering that Tlaib has unanimous union support this time, she’ll probably need more money than this, even if she still has many local politicians on her side.
MN-05: Oh Jesus Christ -- three million dollars??? Melton-Meaux was always liked by wealthy donors, and by NORPAC, one of the quieter pro-Israel PACs and which can bundle like no other, but that is a surprise.
MO-01: We talked about Clay and Bush’s fundraising last week - the only new information on here is Bush’s cash on hand, which is, like Putzova’s and Goldstein’s, not great, but far better than it was in 2018.
TN-05: Keeda Haynes raised $50,000, which is not great but also not terrible, especially since Jim Cooper is clearly not taking her seriously.
WA-06: We also discussed Parson’s fundraising last week, although we didn’t have Kilmer’s numbers. That’s not what you’d see if he was taking the race extremely seriously, but it’s more than if he were totally ignoring it. In the spending figures we can see that that “universal healthcare” ad for a man who doesn’t support it had $70,000 behind it.
WA-10: In a pleasant surprise, Beth Doglio came out on top in this race, with over $330,000. Compared to MA-10, we have such a quiet, low-budget contest. Strickland is particular is a surprise, considering she ran the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and did Amazon’s dirty work in the 2019 Council elections. You’d think she’d have a lot more businesses on call. Former Denny Heck district director Phil Gardner is not really in the game, and no-longer-running-as-a-Democrat socialist Joshua Collins is continuing his tradition of not filing on time (as well as not making corrections that the FEC has told him he needs to make.)
Elections
AZ-01
Eva Puztova’s perpetually weak fundraising has finally ticked up. It seems like it may be a bit too little, too late. $138,000 is finally some good money for Putzova, but it’s not the kind of money that can get you a TV presence. It can barely get you a few mailers and some digital ads. This report was turned into the FEC a month before the primary, and Putzova has barely $100,000 in the tank. AZ-01 isn’t a dense district with the kind of strong, effective electoral organizations like in New York City that could boost her for free. A bigger problem with the district is that Trump won it and most primary voters are likely aware it’s competitive. While we don’t really have enough examples to make a real argument here, both swing district challengers this year, Mark Gamba and Arati Kreibich, have hit a wall against opponents just as odious as O’Halleran, and the risk-aversion held by a lot of Democratic voters in purple districts (even though OR-05 isn’t really a purple district)might be to blame.
A good spot of news for her campaign came from Our Revolution, who endorsed her this week.
Delaware
The Working Families Party has endorsed four more candidates in Delaware Democratic primaries: state House candidate Eric Morrison, state Senate candidate Marie Pinkney, Wilmington City Council candidate Shané Darby, and, most notably, U.S. Senate Jess Scarane. Scarane is taking on incumbent senator Chris Coons, one of the most moderate Senate Democrats.
Chris Coons is intolerably conservative for such a safely Democratic state. Jess Scarane is great. This is good stuff. Scarane is still having fundraising difficulties - this most recent quarter was under $100,000, so outside help like the Working Families Party is absolutely essential to getting the campaign the reach it needs for an entire state (albeit a small one). An email from her campaign said that in the last days of June she raised $17,000, which might be speaking to a late surge for her. We won’t know for a while.
MA-04
On the topic of fundraising: wow that’s a lot of money. Not for any particular candidate, really, just in general. The two main moderates in the race: recent Republican Jake Auchincloss and former senate candidate Alan Khazei, have over a million dollars each. Auchincloss was the money magnet in the last quarter, but he’s let up this time around, probably because he has enough for the final stretch.
Then there’s the late entry big-money moderate, security advisor Chris Zannetos, whose $600,000 quarter was about half self-funding. Zannetos, whose website describes him as a “successful entrepreneur & job creator”, is somehow even more of a bloodless business-world centrist than the other two, though unlike Auchincloss he at least has the decency not to pretend like he isn’t. But if you want a public option and “new collar” jobs investment, you finally have a candidate in the race. Despite the money, we don’t expect him to do very well. He’s a late entrant who hasn’t really been making up for lost time, and who doesn’t really seem to know what he’s doing, campaign-wise. He does have these funny videos up on his official youtube channel, where he apparently took a bike ride through the district and stopped at a handful of buildings, where he filmed himself way too close to the camera saying “yup, I’m at the hardware store alright” for 20 seconds, like some tech illiterate facebook uncle.
Ihssane Leckey is the furthest candidate from any of those three, and she’s now joined them in the upper echelons of campaign money, thanks to a generous self-loan of $700,000. Self-funding is a tricky business, but in terms of the corrupting influence of money in politics it’s certainly not anything like taking money from odious industries, or self-financing yourself from your personal fortune from those industries (ahem, Adam Schleier). But on its own terms as far as campaigning goes, self-funders have a more-than-spotty track record. That may be because self-funders are often total political neophytes who are told by political consultants they can buy a win, but it’s still a generally weaker launching pad than money actually raised.
Leckey has used this money to make and launch her first TV ad, which her campaign says they’re putting six figures behind for internet and streaming services, with broadcast to come. The ad, which will be many voters’ first impression of her, opens with an image of Bernie Sanders and Ilhan Omar at a rally. Omar has endorsed Leckey, but the message sent by beginning that way couldn’t be clearer: Leckey is running as the Bernie candidate. This is a risky move. Bernie did poorly in MA-04, getting only 21.4% of the vote in the district, his worst in the state. Since there are nine candidates, being a very factional candidate might be a viable strategy, but she can’t run as the lone progressive in the race like Mondaire Jones did in NY-17, to great effect. The rest of the ad is more general messaging for a Democratic a primary, and includes the phrase “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare”, which never hurts.
Interestingly, the Auchincloss campaign seems to want to use her as a foil for Auchincloss’s more moderate (ahem, Republican) image. They sent out an email after the release of her ad identifying her as a threat and actually including the phrase “Socialist Ihssane Leckey, who believes in nationalizing the economy”. A two-way race like that would probably be beneficial for Leckey, but it’s not likely to happen.
Jesse Mermell, who has also been pitching herself as a progressive, and has the support of Ayanna Pressley, had a relatively good quarter, avoiding getting left behind by the pack, as has Becky Grossman, though in Grossman’s case it’s a step down from last quarter in a crowded field, which isn’t good news. On the lower tiers of fundraising we have Dave Cavell and Ben Sigel, who both raised less than $100,000 and are not in good places financially right now, and Natalia Linos, also a newer entrant to the race, and one whose figures are a lot better than we expected.
Linos is a Harvard-trained epidemiologist and human rights advocate. She’s also currently a coordinator for the Poor People’s Campaign, a religiously-motivated social and economic justice movement run by Rev. William Barber II. Linos shares the progressive lane with Leckey and Mermell, calling for Medicare for All, a reduction in policing, and a public housing investment. She’ll probably find herself somewhat trapped by the fact that Mermell and Leckey, running similar campaigns, have put themselves out there earlier and have more money.
MI-13
Rashida Tlaib was endorsed for reelection by the Democratic Socialists of America ahead of her August 4th rematch with Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones. Tlaib is one of the organization’s two members in Congress, the other being AOC (though with Jamaal Bowman’s victory over Eliot Engel, the number may soon grow to three, and other members are also on the ballot in upcoming August and September primaries.) The Michigan AFL-CIO announced their endorsements this week, and Tlaib was on the list. This maybe isn’t surprising, but, considering the union backed Jones in 2018, it’s still a blow to her.
MN-05
Ilhan Omar was endorsed by Bernie Sanders for reelection ahead of her August 11th primary, when she will face exceptionally well-funded vapid centrist Antone Melton-Meaux. This isn’t a surprising endorsement--Sanders has been supportive of the Squad, and Omar was a key surrogate for his 2020 campaign--but it’ll provide Omar with some extra small-dollar donations.
Omar was also endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, which is surprising given the latter’s open disdain for the Squad, but it’s nice to see that House Democrats’ protect-incumbents-at-all-costs policy does extend to some progressive members. In the press release announcing Pelosi’s endorsement, Omar also announced the endorsement of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman; Melton-Meaux may be flush with cash, but local Democrats don’t seem interested in getting rid of Omar.
Melton-Meaux has spent the last month dogged by writings published in an Intercept article. In 2015, he wrote an editorial that chided the Black Lives Matter movement for not focusing on things like education and crime, as well as not condemning a joke chant about “pigs in a blanket” someone captured on video. In 2018 he wrote in favor of confidentiality agreements for employees, because they “protect the brand and reputation of the organization” during sexual harassment lawsuits, going so far as to compare damage to the company’s reputation to the Scarlet Letter. He finally took the time to address these issues, doing a 180 on his #MeToo complaints, but sticking by his words on Black Lives Matter. It’s generally a sign of a scandal with legs when a candidate has to do a full interview about it. Either that, or the candidate has a terrible comms team.
Last-minute pre-publication news item: Ilhan Omar just released a poll from Change Research (and with her money, she should honestly have paid for a better pollster) showing her up 66-29 on Antone Melton-Meaux. The two other candidates split another 13% of the vote and 2% are undecided. This is, like most Change polls, reflective of a sample of people with higher levels of political engagement than reality, but in this case that’s good news, since Melton-Meaux only pulls 29% of the vote even as he has 72% name recognition, suggesting that he doesn’t have too much room to grow.
