Primary School 11/16

"I know where all the skeletons in closets are"

We apologize in advance for the length of this one. News, inconsiderately so, kept happening as we wrote up election results. Because we made an error and forgot an item and noticed both problems right away, we’re re-sending the issue. Sorry.

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Housekeeping

Our friends at Justice Democrats are hiring a fundraising director. If you’re interested, check out the job posting or contact them to learn more. If your progressive organization is hiring, contact us and we’ll get the word out in the following issue. There’s no cost—Primary School is supported by its readers, not advertisers.

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Results

Boston, MA: Voters went along with Mayor Michelle Wu. The mayor had drifted apart somewhat from the leftmost flank of the city council, two of whom were sank by personal scandal in the September preliminary election, but still aligned with the left more than the staunchly anti-Wu moderate-conservative faction. All incumbents who made it to November won reelection—and Wu-backed candidates won the seats of all three who didn’t. Retiring moderate Michael Flaherty’s at-large seat was won by Wu staffer Henry Santana over conservative ironworker Bridget Nee-Walsh; Wu staffer Enrique Pepén and worker’s rights lawyer Ben Weber won the seats of already-defeated leftist councilors Ricardo Arroyo and Kendra Lara, beating moderate police officer Jose Ruiz and moderate IT worker William King.

Quincy, MA: Mayor Thomas Koch, a conservative, anti-abortion ex-Democrat indefensibly supported by Democratic Gov. Maura Healey, won 55-45 over normal liberal and actual Democrat Anne Mahoney in this city of 100,000 where Donald Trump got less than a third of the vote in both of his elections. Great job, everyone!

Springfield, MA: Mayor Domenic Sarno seemed to be in mortal danger after winning 47.8% of the vote in the first round of the mayoral election. All City Councilor Justin Hurst had to do was win over the Sarno-skeptical. That’s hard to do when the lead story for the final week of the campaign was about surveillance footage showing Hurst among a group of drivers who personally ferried voters to the polls as someone apparently associated with Hurst’s campaign handed each voter a $10 bill.

Worcester, MA: Mayor Joe Petty easily won reelection against a split field.

Bridgeport, CT: Joe Ganim “won” Tuesday’s mayoral “election” in Bridgeport, once again losing in election-day votes but winning absentees by a lopsided margin—a familiar pattern that the mayor and convicted felon has used to “win” election after election. A judge had already caught on before Election Day, invalidating the September Democratic primary and ordering a do-over because of surveillance footage of city employees literally stuffing ballot boxes.

Hartford, CT: Democratic nominee Arunan Arulampalam won the mayoral election with the absolute minimum effort required, and the Working Families Party kept its two out of three minority-party seats on the city council, though they traded incumbent Tiana Hercules for pastor Alex Thomas.

Philadelphia, PA: Over the furious protests of Philadelphia’s Democratic machine leadership (for some reason), the Working Families Party won both of the at-large minority-party seats on the Philadelphia City Council. Predictably, the five Democratic at-large nominees placed first through fifth. WFP incumbent Kendra Brooks and her running mate Nicolas O’Rourke placed sixth and seventh, ahead of the Republican slate, finally locking the GOP out of citywide office. (Longtime GOP at-large councilor David Oh gave up his seat to run for mayor; he lost handily to Democratic nominee Cherelle Parker.) The WFP, a left-wing third party backed by a coalition of labor unions, DSA, and local activist groups, now displaces the GOP as the largest opposition party on the council—Republicans are stuck with a single seat from Northeast Philly’s District 10. Progressives had a dispiriting primary season in Philadelphia that saw them lose ground on the council, but they came roaring back in November at Republicans’ expense.

Allegheny County, PA: Here, progressives had a rough night. After well-funded Republican attacks on the progressive Democratic nominees went unanswered, Sara Innamorato only narrowly won the County Executive race and Matt Dugan actually lost to DA Steve Zappala, who was running on the Republican ballot line after losing the Democratic nomination to Dugan in May. It’s no wonder this was not the year independent progressives broke through on the county council; Sam Schmidt and Carl Redwood Jr. both lost by wide margins: 70%-29% in the former’s case and 62%-37% in the latter’s.

Durham, NC: The Bull City elected city councilor Leonardo Williams, a first-term city councilor, as its next mayor, choosing him over state Sen. Mike Woodard 63%-36%. Williams became progressives’ choice due to his willingness to work with them when other moderates on the council wouldn’t, and Woodard ran, awkwardly and vaguely, to Williams’s right. In the city council at-large race, the progressive Durham People’s Alliance got two of its candidates—incumbent Javiera Caballero and nonprofit consultant Carl Rist—on the council, and missed out on electing their third candidate, North Carolina League of Conservation Voters field director Khalilah Karim, because DSA-endorsed urbanist Nate Baker placed first, with more votes than any of the People’s Alliance candidates. Appointed incumbent Monique Holsey-Hyman, who had aligned with outgoing moderate Mayor Elaine O’Neal, placed a distant fifth.

Orlando, FL: Mayor Buddy Dyer and liberal city commissioner Patty Sheehan both coasted to comfortable reelections.

Houston, TX: ConservaDem state Sen. John Whitmire did very well in the first round of the Houston mayoral contest, beating Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee by a 43%-36% margin. While there will be a runoff, most of the rest of the voters in the first round chose Republicans, and polls that had the first round basically tied were also showing Whitmire with a wide lead in the runoff. The Congresswoman is cooked unless something huge changes in the runoff, which is only three weeks away. The Controller race looks similarly over, with Democrat Chris Hollins looking strong leading into the runoff with a 45% share of the vote to Republican Orlando Sanchez’s 27%.

In the city council, incumbents generally did very well: Tarsha Jackson in District B, Abbie Kamin in District C, Edward Pollard in District J, and Sallie Alcorn in At-Large Pos. 1 all won reelection outright, and another three incumbents are headed to a runoff, but all three just barely missed winning outright with 48% or 49% of the vote. In District D, Democrat Carolyn Evans-Shabazz will face fellow Democrat Travis McGee, in At-Large Pos. 2 Democrat Letitia Plummer will face off against Republican Roy Morales, and in District G, there’s a runoff between Republicans that we don’t care about. Other races that won’t go to a runoff are District E, where Fred Flickinger won outright, and District I, where Joaquin Martinez did the same. 

Additionally, runoffs will be held in:

• At-Large Pos 1: Julian Ramirez [R] 25% vs. Melanie Miles [D] 25%

• At-Large Pos. 2: Willie Davis [R] 32% vs. Nick Hellyar [D] 23%

• At-Large Pos. 3: Richard Cantu [liberal] 22% vs. Twila Carter [centrist business candidate] 21%

• District H: Mario Castillo 46% vs. Cynthia Reyes Revilla 25%

Lansing, MI: Chamber of Commerce pick Tamera Carter and normal-seeming Democrat Trini Lopez Pehlivanoglu uneventfully won two open seats on Lansing’s city council.

Minneapolis, MN: Progressives beat Mayor Jacob Frey at the ballot box on Tuesday. He wasn’t on the ballot himself, but together with his allies, the mayor put a lot of effort into maintaining the moderate majority on the city council, and they came up short. The moderate wing’s only noteworthy victory was City Council President Andrea Jenkins’s razor-thin victory in ranked-choice tabulation over DSA-backed activist Soren Stevenson; all incumbents won reelection, including embattled swing vote Jamal Osman and the entire five-member progressive wing of the council. Progressives picked up both open seats: DSA/DFL-endorsed policy aide Aurin Chowdhury easily won departing swing vote Andrew Johnson’s Ward 12, and progressive Katie Cashman won departing moderate Lisa Goodman’s Ward 7 in ranked-choice tabulation.

St. Paul, MN: This year’s city council elections were a clean sweep for progressives. They defended their incumbents—District 2’s Rebecca Noecker, District 4’s Mitra Jalali, and District 6’s Nelsie Yang—and won District 1 with Anika Bowie, District 3 with Saura Jost, District 5 with HwaJeong Kim, and District 7 with Cheniqua Johnson, who didn’t seem as progressive as the other winners but quickly aligned herself with the rest of the council after winning. St. Paul’s all-women city council will be sworn into office in January.

Des Moines, IA: These elections wound up being quite close. Moderate Councilmember Connie Boesen barely defeated more progressive Councilmember Josh Mandelbaum by a margin of 48% to 46%. All city council incumbents were elected easily, especially Carl Voss in the at-large race and Joe Gatto in the Ward 4 contest; moderate Linda Westergaard won by a more modest 11% in Ward 2. In the Ward 1 special election, former city councilmember Chris Coleman defeated progressive Rob Barron 42%-33%.

Fort Collins, CO: The three city council races were a progressive sweep. Incumbent Julie Pignataro defeated her single-issue NIMBY opponent by double digits, and her colleague Emily Francis utterly demolished a “not a white supremacist anymore” opponent. The odd councilor out was Shirley Peel, who cast the deciding vote against a minimum wage hike earlier this year. She paid for that vote with her job, losing to her predecessor Melanie Potyondy 55%-45%.

Albuquerque, NM: Liberal hydrologist Joaquin Baca won the downtown-based District 2 seat on the Albuquerque city council with a slim majority over split opposition. District 6, which takes in Nob Hill and southeast Albuquerque, has a runoff in December between progressive financial services professional Nichole Rogers and tough-on-crime moderate Jeff Hoehn after neither achieved a majority.

Seattle and King County, WA: Thanks to a bunch of narrow wins, Seattle moderates have tightened their grip on the city council. Facebook lawyer Rob Saka won District 1, progressive ringleader Tammy Morales just barely survived in District 2, Joy Hollingsworth picked up District 3 for the moderates, Maritza Rivera won District 4 for the moderate team by less than one percentage point, squishy progressive Dan Strauss barely improved on his 51.8% first-round showing in District 6, and fellow squish Andrew Lewis made up enough ground to lose just 51-49 in District 7. The only blowout was in District 5, where retired judge Cathy Moore held the district for the moderates by a margin of nearly thirty points. Things were better elsewhere on the ballot; progressives Jorge Barón and Teresa Mosqueda easily won county council districts 4 and 8, respectively, and Seattle Port Commissioner Fred Felleman defeated Business Guy Jesse Tam 73-27.

Snohomish County, WA: County Auditor Garth Fell, a nonpartisan good-government guy, coasted past Democrat Cindy Gobel, who struggled to differentiate herself from Fell on the issue of election administration, 59-40.

Tacoma, WA: Elections in the Puget Sound’s second city went much better than Seattle. DSA-backed BLM activist and 2021 mayoral candidate Jamika Scott easily won the District 3 seat on the city council, and mainstream progressive Olgy Diaz defeated small business owner Kristen Wynne for the at-large council seat Diaz has held since her 2022 appointment to fill a vacancy.

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News

AL-02

The filing deadline passed for Alabama’s just-redrawn congressional districts. We have a final list of candidates now in the new AL-02, and it includes most, but not all, of the names previously discussed.

• Birmingham-area state Sen. Merika Coleman, who voted to criminalize trans healthcare

• Birmingham state Rep. Juandalynn Givan, who has a penchant for pissing off Republicans and loves to quote song lyrics

• House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, who lives in Huntsville but grew up in the district. If being a leader of famously dysfunctional AL Democrats didn’t scare already you off, then his endorsement of Michael Bloomberg for president should

• Mobile-area state Rep. Napoleon Bracy. Bracy may be a boring guy who wears a bow tie every day and hasn’t made waves in the state house, but he’s well-liked and has clearly been preparing for this election for a while. That time he co-signed onto Republican fear-mongering about Planned Parenthood selling aborted fetus parts may come back to bite him, though.

• Opelika state Rep. Jeremy Gray. A retired professional Canadian football player (which we would make a joke about if we knew anything about Candian football—we think the field is wider?) and current personal trainer, Gray has only been in the state house a little more than a full term, and doesn’t have much of a political identity yet beyond being young. 

• DOJ staffer Shomari Figures, the son of Mobile state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures

• Phyllis Harvey-Hall, the Democratic nominee for the old AL-02 in 2020 and 2022

• 2020 AL-01 nominee James Averhart, who may have residual name recognition in the Mobile portion of this seat, much as Harvey-Hall may have residual name recognition in Montgomery. 

Some notable candidates opted out of the race at the last minute: Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson did not file with the state as of the deadline, and both Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed and Montgomery state Sen. Kirk Hatcher took themselves out of consideration this week.

In the event this becomes a regional contest, Montgomery—the single largest source of votes in the district—has no elected officials in the race, only Harvey-Hall and some equally-unknown candidates: Brian Gary appears to be a Montgomery surgeon, and Darryl Sinkfield appears to be a leader in the Alabama Education Association. Gray and Daniels both have some claim to the portion of the district east of Montgomery; Gray lives outside the congressional district, but his state House district includes much of Phenix City on the Georgia border, and Daniels’s family home is in Bullock County. Bracy, Figures, and Averhart are all from the Mobile area, and Coleman and Givan have the unenviable task of convincing voters to overlook the roughly ninety miles separating their homes from AL-02.

CA-Sen

The latest poll from the Institute of Government Studies at UC Berkeley shows Rep. Katie Porter leading Rep. Adam Schiff in next year’s Senate election by a margin of 17% to 16%, with Rep. Barbara Lee coming in at 9%, behind a Republican. Polls of this race have changed little this year, and will likely continue to remain stagnant until the candidates begin spending on TV ads.

Jersey City Mayor

The Hudson County machine is committing to its most bizarre gambit yet. After twelve years of an uneasy truce with Steven Fulop, who unseated Mayor Jerramiah Healy in 2013 on a reformer’s platform, the machine desperately wanted the ambitious Fulop out of their hair and replaced with someone more pliant and loyal. Fulop is committed to a 2025 gubernatorial run, and the machine has officially launched its chosen successor: …disgraced former Gov. Jim McGreevey? Casual observers and insider obsessives alike could be forgiven for thinking that’s a joke. It is, however, oh so very real.

The ex-governor was forced out of office after the revelation that he had given a state job to an extramarital lover—or, at least, that’s how the McGreevey scandal might land today. In 2004, the only detail the press cared about was the gender of McGreevey’s state-employed side piece: McGreevey, it turned out, was gay, a fact he revealed in a speech announcing his impending resignation. (Golan Cipel, the alleged lover in question, claims the entire thing was sexual harassment and not a consensual relationship; McGreevey, not Cipel, went public.)

McGreevey’s support from the Hudson County Democratic Organization isn’t formal yet; it may never officially come. The election is nonpartisan, so the HCDO’s most powerful tool, the party line, isn’t in play. However, McGreevey was recruited to run by Brian Stack, the colorful North Hudson boss who serves concurrently as mayor of Union City and as a state senator, and Stack has managed to convince most of Hudson County’s mayors (who are traditionally powerful machine bosses) to back McGreevey early. (Stack has not been able to convince Fulop or Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, however.) Also on Team McGreevey are former mayor Gerry McCann, whose sister Barbara McCann Stamato was just elected to a Jersey City-based Assembly seat, and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney, a conservative Democrat and likely 2025 gubernatorial candidate who’s the public face of George Norcross’s South Jersey machine. The gang’s all here!

The choice of McGreevey is a baffling one for endless reasons. There’s his unceremonious exit from public life 19 years ago, and also the fact that prior to becoming governor, McGreevey was the mayor of Woodbridge, a suburban township south of Jersey City—while Jersey City is full of domestic transplants and recent immigrants, those voters are not the machine’s base. Older longtime residents are, and at least two candidates who threaten to chip away at McGreevey’s HCDO-provided base are running. City Council President Joyce Watterman is a minister popular in Greenville, where voters, predominantly Black, lean towards the machine in the abstract but are willing to buck the white, Irish-dominated HCDO when it neglects to work for their votes. Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea represents the dwindling population of white Irish old-timers in Journal Square and on the West Side. Both are likelier to pull from McGreevey than the one candidate HCDO really doesn’t want: City Councilman James Solomon, a progressive reformer who represents the same downtown ward Fulop did and who has shown an ability to deliver downtown’s votes for anti-machine candidates even in Democratic primaries against the line.

(Note: Nick here. Barbara McCann Stamato is Gerry McCann’s sister, not his wife. This is what I get for writing too fast.)

NJ-Sen

Congratulations, New Jersey! You begged for a senator who wasn’t lining his jackets with Benjamins from a mobbed-up developer and getting his wife a new Mercedes courtesy of the Egyptian government, and we heard you: the governor will be installing his wife as your next senator to replace Gold Bar Bob.

Oh? What’s that? It seems like corrupt nepotism to hand a Senate seat over to the spouse of the man who controls the state budget and has appointment power over hundreds of patronage posts? Tough shit.

First Lady Tammy Murphy’s much-expected, just-announced Senate bid already has some key supporters. Not unions or politicians, though she has those too and is only going to accumulate more with time. The early endorsements Tammy’s really counting on are party bosses, and she enters the race with the backing of Democratic bosses in Bergen, Essex, and Middlesex counties, three of the largest sources of Democratic votes. George Norcross has also signaled he’s likely to support the first lady, and he controls several South Jersey counties; the biggest, Camden, announced its support for her this morning. The Hudson County Democratic Organization swiftly dumped Bob Menendez, its most powerful product, to back Murphy for Senate as well. Tammy Murphy is far more involved than your average political spouse, and has been ever since her husband’s tenure as DNC finance chair in the late 2000s. She has serious fundraising skill and connections with party insiders across New Jersey, and by all accounts is one of the governor’s closest advisers on politics and policy. She’s made lowering the maternal mortality rate a signature issue as First Lady, but her public profile is still fairly undeveloped compared to her reputation as a mover and shaker behind the scenes.

Rep. Andy Kim is undeterred for now, and he has a poll showing him with a healthy 40-21 lead on Murphy with likely primary voters—but polls don’t account for the line, which Kim is definitely running against now. (He does have a chance at lines in counties that hold open conventions, and in his home of Burlington County, where he’s well-liked.) Bob Menendez seems equally undeterred for now, but based on every poll taken since his indictment earlier this fall, he has no chance. Whether or not Menendez is actually deluded enough to think he’s got a chance or just reacting out of spite is anyone’s guess, but he responded to Murphy’s announcement by sharply attacking her for her past Republican affiliation and her husband’s record as governor. His response to Hudson Dems abandoning him was even more classically Menendez: his first words were “I know where all the skeletons in closets are.” Never change, Bob! Unless an ambitious AUSA decides to interpret this as witness intimidation, in which case you probably should cool it with the mob boss threats.

NJ-03

State Senate Majority Whip Troy Singleton opted out of the race for Andy Kim’s House seat, clearing the most difficult obstacle from Assembly Majority Leader Carol Murphy’s path to Congress.

NJ-08

As Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla mulls a primary challenge to Rep. Rob Menendez Jr., he’s apparently stockpiled half a million dollars somewhere for an eventual campaign against the first-term representative, who owes his job entirely to his now-indicted senator father. Since the Hudson County Democratic machine seems on board with Tammy Murphy now, Rob Jr. may have to choose between slating up with his dad in ballot Siberia and sticking with the much safer organization slate, so we expect the Menendezes will have a very tense Thanksgiving.

MD-Sen

Baltimore County U.S. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger and the Maryland State Education Association both just endorsed David Trone in what we can only assume was paying him back for some favor, because this race has been over for months now.

MD-03

State Sen. Sarah Elfreth’s campaign launch last week was a star-studded affair, at least as far as stars of women in Anne Arundel County politics go. State Sens. Pam Biedle and Dawn Gile, Del. Heather Bagnall, Anne Arundel County Councilmembers Lisa Rodvien and Allison Pickard, and Annapolis City Councilmembers Karma O’Niell and Rhonda Charles were all in attendance. Anne Arundel County Executive Steurt Pittman, who endorsed Elfreth a few days earlier, confirms that Elfreth is unofficially Anne Arundel County’s candidate.

State Del. Terri Hill, who represents Columbia and Hanover, has also announced that she’s running. Hill, a plastic surgeon, ran in the MD-07 special election in early 2020. The district contained, at the time, a chunk of Howard County, which Hill won with 23% despite only taking 7.5% districtwide. Hill, despite clearly having no shot and being not even the obvious candidate #4 in a 3 candidate race, raised almost $100,000. Hill came across as kind of moderate in that campaign, but overall focused little on policy, and her time in the statehouse is somehow less illuminating. After more than eight years in office, she’s become the definition of a backbencher, and everyone in the legislature just votes with their party, so there’s little actual record to go on to pick out the wheat from the chaff (and there’s a lot of chaff in Maryland). We will say that Zooming in to legislative meetings while performing elective surgery, on patients who didn’t know their surgeon was going to be legislating during their surgery, is pretty gross.

State Del. Vanessa Atterbeary is also running, or at least has filed to run. She has, at the moment, the best chance of being the Howard County establishment choice. Atterbeary is deeply ingrained in the state establishment, and chairs the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which will give her a fundraising base. It’s kind of amazing that she managed to attain the status she did, considering her 2010 campaign for state house, running against the party ordained slate, was such a shitshow that by the end she was sending out fliers faking endorsements from every prominent Democrat in the state and forcing them to make public statements that they didn’t support her, and spending most of her money on the MDGOP’s voter suppression guru. But after she lost that election she moved to Howard County, patched everything up, won the 2014 election, and was immediately placed on a leadership track. Maryland politics can be like that. 

Also considering, according to Maryland Matters’s Josh Kurtz, are Sen. Clarence Lam, Del. Jon Cardin, and Anne Arundel County Council Chair Pete Smith. Lam represents a Howard-Anne Arundel district (he lives in the Howard part) and has been a hair more willing to work with progressives than most legislators, so we’d like to see him run. Pete Smith we have very little information on, but the point is probably moot since it seems like Anne Arundel already has their candidate. And as for Jon “did you know I’m related to Ben” Cardin, who lives not only outside the district, but on the other side of Baltimore…lol.

Howard County Executive Calvin Ball is not running.

MI-13

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson endorsed former state Sen. Adam Hollier in his rematch bid against Rep. Shri Thanedar. Benson is the first major Michigan Democratic Party official to weigh in on this contest, and signals that Democrats in the state are, at the very least, not going to be closing ranks around Thanedar, not that that was expected.

MN-03

Dean Phillips is actually, for real, unironically, running for president, in a move that’s as baffling to us as it is to anyone not named Dean Phillips. Honestly, we’re not sure if he knows why he’s doing it, but he sure is running for president, and, for the time being at least, he hasn’t entirely dropped his congressional reelection campaign. And that means he’s going to get hit with a primary challenge, or several.

Running:

• State Sen. Kelly Morrison: Morrison was first elected to the state house in 2018, and then to the state senate in 2022. While she now represents a slightly more Democratic district, her state house races were very close, and she still considers herself a “purple district” representative, and we wish more Democrats who thought the same voted like her: a reliable party-line vote who is still willing to fight behind the scenes for better policy.

• DNC member Ron Harris: Harris has been working as a political organizer or staffer since Barack Obama was just a presidential candidate, and most of that work has been in or with the city of Minneapolis. He’s worked for both former Minneapolis mayor RT Rybak, and former City Council President Lisa Bender. Though neither were really part of the progressive faction of Minneapolis’s politics, in the context of Congress and suburban Hennepin County, Harris would stand out in a positive way if he has the politics of his former bosses. That’s a big if, though—Harris hasn’t seemed interested in defining himself that way yet.

Considering:

• Secretary of State Steve Simon: Simon has the longest political career of any potential candidate listed: first elected to the state house in 2004, and then elevated to Secretary of State in 2014, Simon will soon be entering his third decade in elected office. While he was considered a progressive in his legislature days (and went mildly viral for a speech defending gay marriage around then), Simon has done his best to stay out of anything but election-administration-related issues since then, so it’s hard to know where he’d fit on a current-day ideological spectrum

• State Rep. Zack Stephenson: Stephenson may be best known for leading marijuana legalization in the state house, but there are some red flags for progressives. He brands himself a moderate, and was previously the chief of staff to quite definitely moderate Amy Klobuchar. And, though nothing has ever been alleged about him specifically, he at least has to have known about her abusing staff if he was the chief of staff, right? Also, he’s a criminal prosecutor.

MN-05

Ilhan Omar saw two primary opponents launch campaigns against her this week. The first, former Illinois congressional candidate Sarah Gad, isn’t a threat to her. The second, former Minneapolis city councilor Don Samuels, is, because Samuels nearly beat Omar in 2022 after the incumbent let herself get pummeled on TV largely unanswered.

NY-16

Westchester County Executive George Latimer has reportedly decided to challenge Rep. Jamaal Bowman in next year’s Democratic primary. Latimer may be a tougher opponent than Eliot Engel was; while this comes with a bit of an asterisk, this is a serious problem for Bowman. The asterisk: a redrawing of the congressional map as a result of ongoing litigation is a live possibility, and Latimer’s home base along the northern shore of Long Island Sound could get moved out of NY-16. (Maybe they’ll draw the Sound shore into George Santos’s district again, Latimer would probably be the least awful Democrat running there somehow.)

NY-26

Rep. Brian Higgins, who has represented Buffalo and Niagara Falls in Congress since 2005, will be resigning in February. Possibly to run Buffalo’s premier performing arts center? Odd, but okay.

A special election will be held at some point in the spring or summer of 2024, with the exact date up to Gov. Kathy Hochul. In special elections, New York holds nominating conventions dominated by party insiders and historically resistant to activist takeovers; the next representative for NY-26 will be chosen not by voters, but by Erie and Niagara County Democratic committee members. State Sens. Sean Ryan and Tim Kennedy, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz are seen as some of the likelier potential successors.

Regardless of who wins the nomination convention, they'll face a regular primary later in the year, possibly concurrent with the special general election.

NYC Mayor

Just in time for Thanksgiving, we’re hearing a lot about Turkey. The country, unfortunately for Eric Adams. The mayor canceled meetings and rushed home from DC on November 2 upon catching wind of a FBI raid on the home of his chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs; ever since, it’s become clear the FBI has the Adams administration in its crosshairs. Suggs was apparently one of many targets of simultaneous 6 AM raids and interviews conducted by the FBI that morning, in an investigation probing the mayor’s 2021 campaign and his ties to the Turkish government.

After wasting two years doing less than nothing to prepare for a campaign against Adams, NYC progressives finally woke up to reality and got to work. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, and especially Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos showed renewed interest in challenging Adams. Progressives squandered the head start they could’ve had by making moves before the emergence of a scandal of this magnitude, so more establishment-minded politicians are taking a look for themselves now, too: Diana Ayala, the council member for East Harlem and the South Bronx, and Christine Quinn, the former council speaker who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2013, are also considering 2025 bids.

OR-03

Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal, resigned her seat on the Multnomah County Commission to launch her campaign for OR-03, left open by the retirement of Rep. Earl Blumenauer. State Rep. Travis Nelson, a DSA-affiliated Bernie delegate and nurses’ union rep from Northeast Portland, is considering a run and says he’ll decide this week, and Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales announced a campaign shortly after Jayapal did. Morales, as the treasurer of the Oregon Democratic Party, falsely attested that a $500,000 donation from FTX executive Nishad Singh was actually from an obscure crypto payment processor, so we are honor-bound to root for his campaign to crash and burn.

TX-32

State Rep. Rhetta Bowers has ended her campaign for this district, only a few months after she began it. This once again leaves progressives with no viable candidates, and a filing deadline less than a month away.

WA-Gov, WA-06

Rep. Derek Kilmer announced his surprising retirement earlier this week. The former chair of the moderate, business-friendly New Democrat Coalition is only 49 and sits on the powerful Appropriations Committee, but after spending 12 years in Congress, he wants to spend more time with his family than the cross-country commute allows. 

His retirement was fortuitous news to Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner Bob Ferguson, the state AG, because of what it meant for his opposition. Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz had been Ferguson’s main competition for Democratic votes (state Sen. Mark Mullet is technically a Democrat, but is aiming for independents and moderate Republicans with an anti-tax campaign.) When Kilmer announced his retirement, Franz quickly announced she’d switch over to the newly-open race for his congressional seat, and Kilmer promptly announced his endorsement of her. The 6th is a bit awkward as a district; it crosses the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to attach most of the city of Tacoma to the more suburban Kitsap Peninsula and the rural Olympic Peninsula. Franz did her best to cover her bases with an initial batch of endorsements which included Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards and mayors, legislators, and tribal leaders from across the district; she’ll be hard to beat. 

At least one noteworthy figure is thinking of giving it a try anyway: state Sen. Emily Randall, a progressive who represents a Kitsap Peninsula swing district, told the Seattle Times she’s considering running. Franz is no Kilmer-style moderate, and was even running vaguely to the left of Ferguson, but it’s anyone’s guess if she’s going to move to the center in a congressional campaign, or fight for the progressive lane should someone like Randall enter. As a sign of just how much Franz may have cleared the field with this move, it’s been a full 3 day weekend since Kilmer’s retirement announcement, and no new names have been floated.