Issue #78

And all eyes turn to Massachusetts

Results

Florida

FL-05: Moderate Democratic Rep. Al Lawson’s weak performance last night is a clear sign that, should his district still exist in 2022, he’ll be a very easy target for the left. Lawson got a lower share of the vote this time than he did in 2018--and while Lawson only faced one opponent in 2018, as opposed to two this year, his opponent last time was Alvin Brown, the former mayor of Jacksonville. His opponents this year were little-known and underfunded, yet they held him to just 56% of the vote. Lawson’s weakness is geographic rather than ideological: it’s abundantly clear that Lawson, a longtime Tallahassee politician, has zero appeal to voters in Jacksonville, which is a problem for him in a district that has far more voters in Jacksonville than it does in Tallahassee. He eked out a plurality of the vote in Jacksonville; his two challengers, pharmacist Albert Chester and attorney LaShonda “LJ” Holloway, combined for 60.1% of the vote in Jacksonville despite spending very little and having no background in elected office. If Chester and Holloway can do that well, apparently solely on the strength of being from Jacksonville, a better-funded and better-known Jacksonville candidate could easily unseat Lawson.

FL-20: In the late eighties, corrupt federal judge Alcee Hastings became one of the only people in American history to be successfully removed from federal office through impeachment proceedings; he quickly found a new career as a member of the very body that impeached him. Aside from the corruption, he’s also a sexual harasser and a friend of the predatory payday lending industry, so it’s disappointing that he defeated little-known challenger Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick 69% to 31%; it’s also reason for a tiny glimmer of hope, because Cherfilus-McCormick lost by a wider 74% to 26% in her first run in 2018.

FL-23: Jen Perelman, an attorney running a progressive campaign, unfortunately lost to Rep. and former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz by a margin of 72% to 28%.

SD-29: Freshman state Rep. Tina Polsky, the choice of the party establishment and organized labor, defeated former state Rep. Irving Slosberg, a bizarre self-funder who is perhaps most notable for having voted for some brutal Republican gerrymanders in 2002. Polsky isn’t great, but Slosberg’s loss is very welcome.

SD-33: State Sen. Perry Thurston easily won renomination, but he appears to have gotten off easily because of a split field; he only won 57% of the vote.

SD-35: State Rep. Shevrin Jones easily defeated a crowded field which included abominable arch-conservative former state Sen. Daphne Campbell. Campbell was primaried out of a neighboring district in 2018 because of her ethical troubles, horrific social conservatism, and coziness with local Republicans; her attempt at a comeback in this open district blissfully fell way short. Jones, who was backed by unions and Orlando state Reps. Anna Eskamani and Carlos Guillermo Smith (the chamber’s most notable progressives), will become the first openly gay Florida state senator and one of just a few openly LGBT Black elected officials in the country.

HD-13: State Rep. Tracie Davis easily won renomination against Cynthia Smith, a proxy of conservative “Democratic” state Rep. Kim Daniels. Davis is fine, and any defeat of Kim Daniels is good news. Speaking of which...

HD-14: Union organizer Angie Nixon crushed state Rep. Kim Daniels, 60% to 40%. To understand why this is good news, here’s our bit on her from our primary preview:

For a start, all of these are actual Kim Daniels quotes:

“You can talk about the Holocaust, but the Jews, they own everything!” (Source)

“I thank God for slavery […]if it wasn’t for slavery, I might be somewhere in Africa, worshipping a tree.” (Source)

“We curse gay pride to the root and declare that i[t] is nothing to be proud of; it is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord […]We come against the witchcraft that is working behind the scenes of the homosexual agenda.” (Source)

It won’t surprise you that Daniels is aggressively anti-abortion, introduced legislation to mandate Bible studies in public schools, and, while she was on the Jacksonville City Council, opposed an anti-LGBT discrimination ordinance, drawing a bizarre analogy to Biblical Egypt, which she said also had anti-LGBT discrimination laws, along with laws allowing bestiality and necrophilia.

In addition to her background with organized labor, Nixon worked for Bernie Sanders in 2016, so the establishment support isn’t the warning sign as it normally is. Daniels is just so fucking bad that even the very moderate Florida Democratic establishment wanted her gone.

HD-20: In a fairly non-ideological primary, former Gainesville City Commissioner Yvonne Hayes Hinson defeated former Alachua County Commissioner Rodney Long 60%-40%. Hayes Hinson, who was the Democratic nominee against Ted Yoho in 2018, had the support of the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida, so she was probably the better choice here.

HD-43: We said four of the six candidates for this open seat were bad. Unfortunately, one of those four won. Political consultant Kristen Arrington, the wife of a local politician, admitted to deliberately giving wrong information about candidate filing to one of her clients’ opponents, leading to him not getting on the ballot. She will be the next state representative, prevailing with 32%; establishment favorite Alex Barrio, one of the two non-terrible candidates, placed second with 21%.

HD-48: Orange County Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor Daisy Morales defeated legislative aide Samuel Vilchez Santiago, the progressive choice here, 40%-30%.

HD-70: State Rep. Wengay Newton, who, like a concerning number of Florida Democratic politicians, likes to endorse Republicans, retired from the State House to instead run for the Pinellas County Commission. (He was, thankfully, defeated in the primary for that, so he’ll be out of elected office entirely come 2021.) The open seat was won by civil rights attorney Michelle Rayner, the favorite of organized labor and progressive groups, with 31% of the vote; Keisha Bell, an attorney who unsuccessfully challenged Newton from the left in 2018, came in second with 27%. Rayner will be the first openly LGBTQ woman of color in Florida’s legislature.

HD-81: Former state Rep. Kelly Skidmore appears to have narrowly defeated attorney Michael Weinstein for the nomination to succeed the aforementioned state Rep. Tina Polsky; Skidmore and Weinstein are similar on the issues, but Skidmore was the favorite of organized labor and abortion rights groups, so this is probably good.

HD-88: Ethically-challenged, fairly conservative state Rep. Al Jacquet lost to Lake Worth Beach City Commissioner Omari Hardy 43%-27%. Hardy isn’t a staunch progressive all the time, but he’s at worst a mainstream Democrat, and he was in the news recently for lambasting city officials for cutting off power and water to nonpaying customers in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak, which shows he at least takes the welfare of his constituents seriously. Meanwhile, Jacquet is a staunch supporter of charter schools and lukewarm at best on issues of LGBT rights. Good riddance.

HD-94: State Rep. Bobby DuBose, a fairly run-of-the-mill Democrat, easily defeated young leftist challenger Elijah Manley, 70%-30%.

HD-95: Anika Omphroy became a state representative in 2018 largely by accident: the incumbent, Barrington Russell, just...didn’t file for re-election, leaving Omphroy unopposed. And that’s a shame, because she’s anti-abortion and pro-charter schools; she voted for a parental-consent requirement for minors seeking abortions and also backed an expansion of charter schools, despite the fact that many private charter schools have incredibly cruel homophobic and transphobic policies that have hurt LGBT children. She appears to have fended off a challenge from former Elizabeth Warren staffer Jasmen Rogers-Shaw, 51% to 49%, despite Rogers-Shaw’s support from a broad spectrum of progressive and establishment groups.

HD-96: Parkland Mayor Christine Hunschofsky easily defeated Saima Farooqui for this seat tragically left open by the death of state Rep. Kristin Jacobs. Farooqui was seemingly the more progressive option, but she also touted the endorsement of “Floridians for Equality and Justice,” a shadowy Republican front group messing around in Democratic primaries, which is bad.

HD-101: Marie Woodson, the most moderate of the three candidates to succeed Shevrin Jones (she wants more cops), narrowly won over West Park Vice-Mayor Brian Johnson, 37%-33%.

HD-102: Former Miami Gardens City Councilwoman Felicia Robinson defeated Miami Gardens City Councilman David Williams by a surprisingly wide 47%-22% margin.

HD-107: NAACP official Christopher Benjamin beat former Miami Gardens City Councilman Ulysses “Buck” Harvard 61% to 39%. Neither candidate seemed like much of a progressive, so the stakes here were probably pretty low.

HD-108: State Rep. Dotie Joseph, who’s been a decent member of the legislature, easily defeated former state Rep. Roy Hardemon, who was back for another try after being unseated by Joseph in 2018. Hardemon was bad on abortion, but more concerningly, he was arrested for kidnapping and assault. It’s good news that he lost.

HD-117: Kevin Chambliss, a former DeKalb County, Illinois, Board Member who has worked for Miami members of Congress from both parties, barely leads self-described entrepreneur and “micro-influencer” Jessica Laguerre Hylton 37%-36%. Both Chambliss and Laguerre Hylton ran on very vague platforms, so this is pretty low-stakes and mostly interesting because Chambliss had just about every local endorsement and might still lose.

9th Judicial Circuit State Attorney (Orange and Osceola counties): Reformist candidate Monique Worrell, the choice of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and outgoing incumbent Aramis Ayala, won with 43% in a crowded field. Worrell benefited from big spending from George Soros’s affiliated groups, allowing her to prevail over Belvin Perry, an old-school law-and-order judge best known for presiding over the Casey Anthony case and who ran with the backing of moderate Rep. Val Demings (a cop) as well as her husband, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings (also a cop.) This is good news for criminal justice reform; while Republican power grabs involving Ayala’s reforms and her opposition to the death penalty may have led Ayala to retire in frustration, they didn’t lead to a carceral candidate taking over.

11th Judicial District/Miami-Dade County State Attorney: State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle is horrific: after guards in a Miami prison locked an inmate in the shower with the water turned to boiling hot, literally boiling him alive, Rundle refused to prosecute any of them. Sadly, she’ll get another four years; Melba Pearson, the Deputy Director of the Florida ACLU, lost to Rundle 61%-39%. Rundle may owe her victory to Republicans. This was an open primary, allowing Miami’s Republicans to vote for her. 

17th Judicial District/Broward County State Attorney: Horrible prosecutor Mike Satz thankfully retired, and Harold Fernandez Pryor, the second-best candidate in the field, narrowly won. Pryor talked about creating a conviction integrity unit, ending the school to prison pipeline, not criminalizing poverty, and ending cash bail for at least some crimes; he was not the choice of police unions, either. The best candidate, Joe Kimok, ran in the mold of Larry Krasner, had a pretty bold platform, and was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and local left-leaning groups; he got a close second, with 19.9% to Pryor’s 21.2%. And Josh Rydell, the choice of police unions who we feared was the frontrunner, came in fifth, which was a nice surprise.

Alachua County Sheriff: Sadie Darnell, a nominal Democrat who regularly endorses Republicans in competitive statewide races, like Rick Scott in the 2018 U.S. Senate election, lost decisively, by nearly 20%, to state Rep. Clovis Watson, who was a police officer and city manager before being elected to the State House. 

Broward County Sheriff: After the 2018 Parkland shooting, Sheriff Scott Israel came under a significant amount of scrutiny. When Ron DeSantis was elected governor, he removed Israel as Sheriff and installed Gregory Tony as Israel’s replacement. Israel ran for his old job back this year, but lost by a few thousand votes to the incumbent. Neither candidate here was great, so we can’t muster up any real reaction to this result.

Orange County Property Appraiser: State Rep. Amy Mercado easily ousted embattled incumbent Rick Singh, who faced accusations of everything from monetary corruption and fraud to sexual harassment, 60% to 32%, 

Orange County Sheriff: Incumbent Sheriff John Mina, the former Orlando Chief of Police, won this post in a bizarre 2018 special election: Mina and former state highway patrolman Joe Lopez initially intended to run in the Democratic primary, but both had switched from the Republican Party too recently, and were forced to run as independents. The Democratic nomination went to Darryl Sheppard, who had a long arrest record. No Republican ran, and as a result, a bizarre election between two independents and a Democrat took place, with Mina narrowly winning. In his first Democratic primary, Mina deserved a tough challenge.

Unfortunately, Mina easily won with 54% of the vote, but the split field (the second-place finisher, decarceral candidate Andrew Darling, got just 15%) may have saved him from the scrutiny that comes with a one-on-one challenge.

Alaska

Alaska’s HD-39 is uncalled as of yet, thanks to a substantial number of absentees still being out, as well as a few precincts, which isn’t abnormal for the sparsely populated Bush.

Wyoming

In Laramie’s HD-13, incumbent Cathy Connolly turned back ideologically similar progressive challenger Marc Homer for what might be her final term. Also in Laramie, the open HD-45 went to Karlee Provenza, the choice of progressive groups and unions, over proud moderate Jean Anne Garrison by a 59-41 margin.

Washington and Arizona have finished counting its ballots, so it’s time to update what we said in our initial results overview. 

Arizona

More context on these races here

Eva Putzova finished about where she was on election night against Blue Dog Tom O’Halleran: down 41.4% to his 58.6%. In HD-02, big business -backed Daniel Hernandez Jr. was re-elected soundly. In HD-26, both members of the Menendez slate, Athena Salman and Melody Hernandez, won. In HD-29, the second spot went to progressive state Rep. Richard Andrade over business-backed challenger Teddy Castro.

Kansas

Only one race was left uncalled in Kansas, where Aaron Coleman, a shitposting 19 year old who ran for governor in 2018 on a goof, was up by a single vote over the long-time incumbent. After provisionals were counted, that’s no longer true. He’s now up by 14 votes, which is final. This isn’t a good thing. While he initially seemed like more of a character than anything else, middle school classmates of his have come forward to reveal a pattern of severe bullying against multiple girls, that included revenge porn and even driving a classmate to a suicide attempt. Coleman says that’s all true, but he’s grown up since then. Plenty of people have changed since middle school, but that’s a level of outright cruelty, sadism, and glee at the suffering of others that’s hard to brush off as him not knowing better a few years ago. Governor Laura Kelly has called him unfit to serve in the legislature, and it’s unclear if she meant should be expelled, though it doesn’t seem like there are clear grounds for that. Regardless, this seat won’t go uncontested in 2022.

Washington

More context on these races here

In WA-02, Jason Call got closer to making the runoff, but ultimately missed it 14.9% to 13.9%. The lt. governor situation is less dire than it appeared, with Mark Liias sitting at 18.5% to Denny Heck’s 25.0%, which isn’t too bad considering Heck’s name recognition head start. Moderate Steven Kirby won his primary for HD-29(2) by just 82 votes (.3%) over Bernie-endorsee Sharlett Mena. It was heartbreaking to watch Mena get so close as the late ballots came in, only to just miss it. And in HD-43(2), former Speaker of the House Frank Chopp did indeed fall below 50% (if you count write-ins), finishing with 49.8% to activist Sherae Lascelles’s 38.1%.

Elections

MA-Sen

Last week’s poll showing Markey up double digits was a giddy sugar high, but this week’s poll is a dose of what most Massachusetts political observers see as the reality: a close race with a small, but crucial, undecided block that will decide the race. Survey USA, or SUSA, polled the race for Priorities for Progress (a Massachusetts groups that’s unaffiliated with DFP) and found Ed Markey narrowly leading Joe Kennedy III 44% to 42%. 

Kennedy is sure acting like he’s behind in this race, as evidenced by a sudden and bizarre press conference he gave on the topics of the Kennedy dynasty and Ed Markey’s record on race, for some reason. It was a rambling attack on Markey for invoking the Kennedy dynasty, while also spending half the time listing all of the Kennedy achievements in front of a federal building named after a Kennedy. He then left without taking questions. Kennedy is probably taken off guard by Markey’s dynasty attacks, because Markey’s criticisms of the Kennedy dynasty are basically unprecedented in Massachusetts politics, and many people are taking note.

Markey went viral late last week with a new political ad that is honestly one of the best of the cycle. It includes the line “We asked what we could do for our country, and we went out and did it… With all due respect, it’s time to start asking what your country can do for you.” That last nod to JFK might have been what sent JKIII over the edge and caused the press conference. But Kennedy allies have been quietly fretting for a while about his directionless campaign that squandered a huge lead in early summer. A Politico article detailed these concerns and revealed that Kennedy had replaced his ad man in July with Tad Devine. Politico politely points out that Devine made award-winning ads for Ted Kennedy, but left unsaid is that those ads were for his 1994 general election campaign. Also left unsaid is that Devine, after being seen as having a role blowing Al Gore’s campaign against George W. Bush, gradually faded out of the American political scene before coming back into the spotlight as Bernie Sanders’s 2016 strategist--not his ad man. (And Devine was one of the few 2016 campaign strategists Bernie did not bring back for 2020.) For all his talk of youth, having Tad Devine make his ads is a decidedly old-school move by Kennedy, and one that speaks to not having any better ideas about his campaign’s direction.

MA-01

House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal’s chances of renomination look more and more doubtful as the primary draws closer. Last week, an internal poll for Holyoke mayor Alex Morse showed Neal leading 45% to 35%; this week, another Morse internal showed Neal only leading 46% to 41%. The cavalry is coming in for Neal--the American Hospital Association, which owes Neal big-time for his having all but single-handedly stopped a bipartisan bill severely restricting the predatory practice of surprise hospital billing; a PAC called American Working Families (not to be confused with the Working Families Party, which backs Morse); the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, best known for spending a fuckton of money unsuccessfully attempting to sink Jamaal Bowman in New York; a bunch of fossil fuel companies and executives, rushing last-minute cash to Neal’s campaign. This cast of characters is mostly the norm for moderate Democratic incumbents facing progressive challengers, but there’s extra money from businesses which specialize in bankrupting families and destroying the planet, owing to Neal’s immense power as Ways & Means Chair and his exceptionally terrible record on basically every policy that involves corporate power in any way.

Last week, we discussed a letter from the College Democrats of Massachusetts (CDMA) alleging Morse used his position as mayor and as a UMass lecturer to pursue romantic and sexual relationships with students, and noted that the story was ongoing. Indeed, it continues to affect the race--but not in a way that harms Morse’s campaign. The Intercept’s reporting on the circumstances surrounding the letter’s release focuses primarily on College Dems infighting, but also reveals that the CDMA’s board privately went to the Massachusetts Democratic Party seeking help handling the allegations against Morse, and Mass Dems connected CDMA with legal counsel. That legal counsel, though, was Jim Roosevelt--a DNC member and Neal ally whose day job is with the insurance lobby. Roosevelt, according to the Intercept, pushed CDMA to make the letter public; CDMA’s board apparently wanted to keep the entire situation a private matter between them and the Morse campaign, which does seem like the normal way this would go: “you’re making some people uncomfortable, please stop” is generally a request handled in private.

The Intercept also reports that members of the CDMA board were caught off guard when the letter was leaked to the Daily Collegian, a student newspaper at UMass Amherst, indicating the letter was released without notifying the board and possibly without their consent. After the letter’s lack of details, and potentially malicious origins, came to light, the state party’s executive director, Veronica Martinez, allegedly instructed students to delete messages regarding the situation, possibly an attempt to cover up the state party’s involvement. Additionally, Primaries for Progress recently learned that a senior Neal campaign official was aware of the allegations by mid-July at the latest; the letter was leaked in August. Together, these paint a very ugly picture: one of a senior congressman’s orbit cynically exploiting the well intentioned concerns of college students to score points on the congressman’s gay challenger by attempting to portray him as someone who preys on young men, then leaving the college students to take the blame when it all blows up.

Over the weekend, Morse sent a private letter to CDMA, which leaked soon after. It was essentially the “Sorry, I didn’t realize, I'lI be more careful going forward” that you would expect if this had been handled in the private setting it seems like the board of CDMA was looking for. Now that a fuller picture has emerged of what went on behind the scenes of the letter, groups who initially paused or suspended campaigning for Neal in order to sort through what was going on are back on board. Sunrise said Morse was self-reflective, many of the attacks on Morse were homophobic, and that they’d be jumping back in. If Not Now said much the same. Jamaal Bowman, who had paused his endorsement, renewed it. Justice Democrats, who never backed off their endorsement but had condemned Morse’s behavior, simply tweeted a Morse donation link in response to the new revelations. The Working Families Party, which also was critical of Morse, but did not undendorse, has continued campaigning for him.

MA-04

Polling! We have polling! The first public, independent poll of this race comes from Data For Progress, and it confirms what we’ve known for a while, that this race is a level of multi-directional disaster that deserves some sort of new portmanteau like “clusterfucktastrophe” or something. 

The poll finds a dead heat for first place in a wide open race where six different candidates all have a shot at winning. With leaners included:

• Jake Auchincloss - 14%

• Becky Grossman - 13%

• Jesse Mermell - 13%

• Ihssane Leckey - 9%

• Natalia Linos - 9%

• Alan Khazei - 7%

• Ben Sigel - 3%

• Christopher Zannetos - 1%

• Dave Cavell (dropped out) - 1%

A full 29% of voters are undecided, even as ballots are being sent out. We guess that would be 30% when you include the Cavell voters after his exit from the race. This poll confirms that this field has no true leader; although Auchincloss, Grossman, and Mermell are doing better than Leckey, Linos, and Khazei, the latter three are still plausible winners. Maybe not Khazei, though, who’s already spent a lot of money and should have high name recognition from his Senate runs. The only serious demographic divide in this poll is that Leckey’s support leans heavily young, while Auchincloss’s leans old. Without learners included, Grossman falls into the Lecky-Linos tier, suggesting a softer level of support.

You may have noticed the (dropped out) parenthetical next to Cavell’s name, and that’s because he did. On Thursday, Cavell exited the race and endorsed Jesse Mermell, citing the need to prevent Jake Auchincloss from making it to Congress. There has generally been a growing anti-Auchincloss movement of late. He was rebuked this week by both a local Sunrise chapter and the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge for accepting multiple donations from fossil fuel executives; both groups removed him from lists of candidates who have signed their respective pledges, as the donations violate that pledge. Other candidates have also been attacking him for his opposition to legal marijuana, a position held by few Democratic politicians aside from the guy we inexplicably nominated for president.

Further bad news for the retired Republican operative came when Chris Zannetos, the zero-charisma generic businessman who entered the race at the last minute, went on the air with a more explicitly ideological pitch. Zannetos’s first ad was forgettable “he’s a good boss” fluff, but his second went negative, attacking “nearly every candidate for Congress” for wanting to eliminate private health insurance, as images of Ihssane Leckey, Jesse Mermell, Natalia Linos, Dave Cavell, Ben Sigel, and Becky Grossman hold on the screen. After using Biden’s (and insurance companies’) bad faith attacks against Medicare for All (which Becky Grossman does not actually support), Zannetos then goes on to describe his healthcare plan as “Joe Biden’s”, making the connection even clearer. We say this is bad news for Auchincloss because, while he was one of the two candidates left out of the attack, he is clearly running for the older, more conservative cohort of the electorate that would be the market for this kind of ad. If Zannetos can peel off a few percent of Auchincloss’s voters in a race this close, that could decide the election.

WA-10

Washington primary results are final, and although we knew who would be advancing to the Top 2 in November last week, the late absentees have, as expected, brought progressive Beth Doglio closer to top vote-getter Marilyn Strickland, 20.3% to 15.2%. Doglio has her work cut out for her. While 65% of voters picked neither candidate, most of that 65% are Republicans, who look more likely to back the former Chamber of Commerce president over the Sanders-endorsed Green New Deal supporter. And the third-place finisher, former Democratic state Rep. Kristine Reeves, has chosen to endorse Strickland over Doglio. This is not unexpected, as Reeves is much closer ideologically to Strickland than Doglio, but it still makes things even more difficult for her.