Primary School 11/30
Happy Hanukkah!
Elections
Atlanta runoff elections (Mayor, City Council)
Today, Atlanta will elect a new mayor and decide several city council races where no candidate got a majority of the vote in the November 2 first-round election. A recent poll tells us we can expect a big shift in voter preferences from the first round of the mayoral election, when City Council President Felicia Moore was way out in front with 41% of the vote, while City Councilor Andre Dickens took a distant second place with 23%. The poll has Dickens leading by about five percentage points, with 42.6% to Moore’s 37.2%; the main reason is an apparent consolidation of Black voters behind Dickens. Moore handily won white voters in the first round, while Black voters split between Dickens, former mayor Kasim Reed, and City Councilor Antonio Brown. Moore is the candidate of the wealthy, white, resents-being-in-Atlanta mega-neighborhood of Buckhead, and as such has run an increasingly conservative campaign tailored to them, while Dickens is running as a fairly standard Democrat. We’ve seen this story before: in 2009, Buckhead favorite Mary Norwood got 45% of the first round vote, while Black candidates trailed. But in the runoff, their vote consolidated, and Norwood stalled at 49%. Of course, that was a nailbiter, as was the very similar 2017 contest (once again featuring Norwood as white voters’ candidate of choice) that was also decided by <1%. A slight difference in turnout and things could have gone very differently.
The other major open office that’s gone to a runoff is City Council President, where longtime politician Natalyn Archibong faces businessman Douglas Shipman. While Archibong is something of an insider wheeler-dealer, she comes from perhaps the most progressive district in the city, and has a strong voting record likely owing to that. Shipman, meanwhile, is ideologically decent, but his base is in Buckhead, which is a huge red flag and a sign he’s going to have trouble tonight. There are also a few competitive, ideologically-fraught council runoffs: in Council At-Large Place 3, Atlanta progressive political fixture Keisha Waites, who nearly forced Blue Dog Rep. David Scott into a runoff last year, is facing off against moderate Jacki Labat. In Council District 4, labor and progressive-backed Jason Dozier only needs a narrow majority of the voters who didn’t back incumbent Cleta Winslow in the first round. In Council District 5, queer Muslim progressive activist Liliana Bakhtiari came within a fraction of a percent of avoiding a runoff, and is a huge favorite to win. And in District 12, activist Antonio Lewis shockingly finished very close to incumbent Joyce Shepherd last month. Lewis, a BLM protester, refers to his runoff as a matter of “Blue Lives Matter vs. Black Lives Matter”, and he’s right.
News
CA-14
In our last issue, we wrote about Jackie Speier’s surprise retirement and mentioned a few possible candidates for the seat: state Sen. Josh Becker, ex-state Sen. Jerry Hill, and Assemb. Kevin Mullin. But given the reactions from other Bay Area politicians, it appears that hers, unlike most “surprise retirements”, was an actual surprise. As a result, few politicians were publicly interested in running by that point. Needless to say, that has changed.
Running:
Assemb. Kevin Mullin. Mullin was born and raised to run for this district. He was a Speier staffer. He’s the only member of the legislature who actually lives in the district. He owns a media startup company. He has never taken a vote that’s made a single person upset. He’s about as memorable and exciting as a Terms & Conditions update. He’s perfect for this district.
San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa. Canepa began his career as a Daly City Councilman, during which time he was relatively nondescript, taking a few good stands but vociferously siding with the pro-car status quo, and in one particularly striking moment, said he’d allow marijuana to be sold in the city “over his dead body”. He was elected San Mateo County Supervisor in 2016, where he is perhaps best known for nearly blocking construction of a Chick-fil-A over their anti-gay donations. He’s been quite bad on policing issues. In 2019, he stood by police use of tasers during an outcry over the county’s police killing 4 people in the previous year with them.Then, in 2020, minutes after passing a non-binding resolution supporting Black Lives Matter, he voted to purchase nearly $1 million of Tasers for the police department to use against Black Lives Matter protesters, something he said was “common sense”. Confusingly, he endorsed both Michael Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders for president. Although he already represents about ⅕ of the district, he starts out an underdog, and it’s anyone’s guess why he’s running for Congress instead of the open Assembly seat Mullin leaves behind.
Burlingame Councilor Emily Beach. Burlingame is a city of just 31,000, albeit a rich one. Given the small-potatoes nature of that job, there’s not much to say about her tenure. She likes bikes and dislikes duplexes.
Considering:
State Sen. Josh Becker, who we mentioned last time, is still considering.
Assemblymember Phil Ting has been mentioned. Ting began his political career over two decades ago, and in that time has been slowly but surely inching left from his initial corporate-friendly politics as Tax Assessor to an Elizabeth Warren-supporter and climate hawk. But Ting, who does not and likely will not live in the district, is very much a creature of San Francisco politics, and even if some of the district is in the city, most of it isn’t, and San Mateo County is famously antsy about the influence of San Francisco politics. There’s a reason why only one newspaper mentioned him as a potential candidate.
Redwood City Councilor Giselle Hale. Hale has had a management position in Facebook for about a decade, which is a red flag, but her 3 years on the Redwood City Council have been on the okay-to-good side, even if the bar is not particularly high in Bay Area suburbs. It’s not hard to see why Hale might have a shot—she knows people with tech money through Facebook, has a reputation for being involved locally, and has some prominence within the county Democratic Party. Redistricting is going to be a factor for her. Redwood City, with a population of 85,000, is currently mostly outside of CA-14. The current draft map has the city in the district, but that could change.
Former Redwood City Councilor Shelly Masur. Masur has been bouncing around San Mateo County politics for a while: she was on the Redwood City School Board 2005-2015 and Redwood City Council 2015-2020, and ran unsuccessful campaigns for County Supervisor in 2012 and state Senate in 2020. Despite being the favorite of teachers’ unions and San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener in that election, she came in 4th. Though she might have earned some credit in that race for not catering to the Bay Area’s notorious NIMBY political culture, she loses it for opposing rent control. And her support of mass transit is balanced out by her opposition to making PG&E a public utility. So, you know, land of contrasts.
Millbrae City Councilor Gina Papan. Millbrae is a city of only 22,000, but Papan is descended from Bay Area royalty—her father, Lou Papan, was an Assemblymember for two decades, and represented the seat Jackie Speier did, both before and after her. She declined to endorse his comeback bid, instead supporting Gene Mullin, father of Kevin, who now holds that seat and is running for Congress. In fact, Gina herself has run for that seat twice: once against Gene Mullin, and once against Kevin. Please, San Mateo County, find some new blood. Before Speier announced her retirement, Papan was looking to run for County Supervisor. Her main opponent was set to be Emily Beach, who is now running for Congress, giving Papan incentive to stay in that now-cleared race. Even though she’s been on the city council for over a decade, it’s hard to get a good read on her politics, though the endorser list for her more recent Assembly campaign runs pretty moderate.
San Mateo City Councilor Rick Bonilla. San Mateo, at just over 100,000 people, is one of the largest cities in the district. Bonilla, a retired carpenter and union representative, is a strong ally of organized labor, and an outspoken proponent of YIMBY/urbanist politics, a rarity in the South Bay. He supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, and is known for backing progressives in elections. He’s not the kind of politician you usually see in this part of the state. Unfortunately, Bonilla is an unlikely candidate: he is in his late 60s, has only faced one election in his life, and would have to forgo reelection to run for Congress.
Belmont City Councilor Davina Hurt. In addition to her two terms as a councilor in Belmont (pop. 28,000), Hurt was recently appointed by Gavin Newsom to the California Air Resources Board, a regulatory body devoted specifically to air quality issues. If Gavin Newsom likes her, that probably entails safe, mainstream political stances.
San Carlos City Councilor Adam Rak. Rak is one of the more worrying names to be dropped so far, considering that he is both very ambitious (he’s been in politics since the 90s) and well to the right of anyone else in the field. A quick FEC search reveals multiple large contributions from Rak to Republican candidates for Congress. He’s part of a bipartisan business lobbying group, he supported moderate Steve Bullock for president in 2020, and he spent most of his business career doing government relations in Big Tech. Particularly on this nose, this year he pushed to increase the traffic cop budget right before being the lone vote against giving city employees a COVID-related bonus. What a nightmare. Unfortunately, he’s wealthy, and has Big Tech connections, so if he runs we’ll have to care about him.
Out:
State Sen. Scott Weiner. We have no idea why someone floated the idea that Scott Weiner, who represents San Francisco and a small part of Daly City, and has very clearly been waiting to run for either Mayor or Nancy Pelosi’s seat, would carpetbag into the county most hostile to the upzoning bill he’s best known for. Still, someone did, and he quashed that rumor immediately.
Assemb. Marc Berman. Berman was mentioned by a few sources, but he says he won’t be running because he lives in another district.
San Mateo City Councilor Diane Papan, who is running for Mullin’s open Assembly seat instead. Diane is the sister of Gina Papan, so her lack of interest might indicate Gina is more seriously considering it.
FL-20
Two weeks after finally, officially, losing the special election primary to Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick by a razor-thin 5 vote margin, Broward County Commissioner Dale V.C. Holness has filed a “Hail Mary” lawsuit over the election. It contains one faintly reasonable complaint about a half dozen overseas ballots that were rejected for missing documentation (number of otherwise accepted overseas ballots that went for Holness: 0); however, it quickly devolves into nonsense, at one point claiming Cherfilus-McCormick is guilty of the crime of bribing voters by promising to pass a version of UBI. You may recognize “saying the government will do things for voters is bribery” as the oldest Republican talking point in the books. Holness seems to recognize he’s about to get laughed out of court, and has already filed for a rematch in the regular 2022 primary election.
GA-07
Georgia Republicans passed a new gerrymander of the state’s congressional map. It makes its most significant changes in the northern Atlanta suburbs, turning Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath’s GA-06 safely Republican and fellow Democratic Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux’s GA-07 safely Democratic. McBath and Bourdeaux are both running for the new 7th, even though neither lives in it and McBath currently represents very little of it. (For what it’s worth, Bourdeaux and McBath are both moderate, but Bourdeaux is worse; she was part of a group of House Democrats who tried to hold the Build Back Better Act hostage.) The two congresswomen won’t be alone in the primary for the new 7th district; state Rep. Donna McLeod is also running, and Gwinnett County School Board Chair Everton Blair Jr. is considering a run, though he’s also looking at a run for state school superintendent.
This primary has the potential to be very messy: Bourdeaux has the strongest claim to incumbency, but she also has serious vulnerabilities in a primary. Bourdeaux, charitably, has been preparing to run in a more conservative district than the one she’s running in, while Lucy McBath has spent 4 years as a more standard swing-seat Democrat. And ideology isn’t Bourdeaux’s only problem: the new district is overwhelmingly majority-minority. Bourdeaux is white, while McBath, McLeod, and Blair are Black; Bourdeaux only eked out narrow primary majorities in a much whiter, much redder version of this district in 2018 and 2020 against candidates of color. In both primaries, Bourdeaux’s strongest area was the district’s portion of Forsyth County, much whiter than Gwinnett County; Forsyth has been removed from the district, replaced with predominantly Black parts of southern Gwinnett County. Since Georgia has runoffs in primaries, Bourdeaux will need to do much better with Black and brown Democrats if she wants to keep her job.
McBath and Bourdeaux both came out swinging once the new districts were announced. Right off the bat, McBath pointedly said that she has “never wavered on President Biden’s agenda,” something Bourdeaux can’t say. Bourdeaux released a list of local officeholders backing her campaign. Conspicuously, most of the names on that list are white politicians, in a district where white voters are now a small minority. According to McBath’s campaign, the primary electorate in GA-07 was majority Black in 2020. Bourdeaux has since picked up one very big name for her campaign: former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young.
HI-Gov
Public Policy Polling has released a poll, commissioned by 314 Action, of the Hawaiʻi Democratic gubernatorial primary. It finds Lieutenant Governor Josh Green way out in front with 51%. Sales executive and former First Lady of Hawaiʻi Vicky Cayetano takes 14%, and ex-Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell gets only 7%. Green has been viewed as a serious favorite, but this is still a huge margin.
IL-06
They clearly didn’t know me. At the end of the day it’s like a lot of comedy for me.
-Marie Newman, on attempts to draw her out of her district
Weeks after it was confirmed that Reps. Sean Casten and Marie Newman would be fighting it out over the newly drawn IL-06, labor unions and other groups have begun choosing sides. The SEIU, which backed Newman in her 2018 and 2020 primary campaigns against conservative incumbent Dan Lipinski, has once again picked her over an opponent to her right, albeit one who’s merely moderate as opposed to odious. Meanwhile, IBEW Local 701 and IUPAT Local 30, two building trades unions, are supporting Casten. EMILY’s List, another two-time Newman backer, has made it 3 times. Newman has also released a list of 10 mayors supporting her in this contest. All are from the old IL-03, and most are mayors of small suburbs. Most notable are Terry Vorderer, of the large suburb of Oak Lawn, and Steve Landek, who is also a state senator.
NY-Gov
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a conservative Democrat who represents northeastern Queens and Long Island’s affluent North Shore, announced yesterday that he’d run for governor in 2022. Suozzi was one of a few Democrats who held the Build Back Better Act hostage until Democratic leadership begrudgingly added restoration of the SALT deduction (effectively a huge tax cut for the rich) in the bill; he also campaigned for Byron Brown over India Walton in the general election, when Walton was the Democratic nominee and Brown was a Republican-backed write-in candidate. He has pretty much zero chance of actually winning, but he might hurt Gov. Kathy Hochul by siphoning off relatively conservative suburban voters who might otherwise back her over state AG Tish James and New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. He’s also close with New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams—he even considered resigning from Congress to accept a job as deputy mayor (of a city he does not live in) in the Adams administration, presumably until Nancy Pelosi dragged him by the ear into her office and told him there was no way he was subtracting from the House majority right now—so Adams’s orbit might be friendly to Suozzi’s gubernatorial bid.
NY-LG
New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin has never faced a statewide electorate; the largest electorate (and, in fact, the only Democratic primary electorate) he’s ever faced was New York City’s 2021 electorate, and they rejected him resoundingly. It’s hard to defeat an incumbent statewide officeholder in a partisan primary, but Benjamin’s fourth-place finish in the Democratic primary for New York City Comptroller, with 7.6% of the first-round vote, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in his electoral abilities—and that failed campaign isn’t done haunting him. Real estate developer Jerry Migdol was indicted on federal charges of wire fraud and identity theft on Friday, November 19 (less than 24 hours after our last issue) for masterminding a straw donor scheme benefiting Benjamin’s Comptroller campaign. Migdol’s straw donor scheme was first reported by THE CITY back in January; it was not a particularly sophisticated scheme, seeing as at least three ostensible donors to Benjamin’s campaign told THE CITY they had never even heard of the then-state senator, and a fourth ostensible donor was Migdol’s two-year-old grandson. Worse, the scheme wasn’t just fraudulent in its use of non-donors’ identities without their knowledge; it was also an attempt to con the city’s public campaign financing program, which was just being started in 2021. The fake donors were all reported as city residents, and all purportedly gave in accordance with the program’s contribution limits; had the fraud not been noticed by the media and the city government’s campaign finance agency, Benjamin’s campaign would have gotten each fraudulent donation matched 8 to 1 with taxpayer funds, potentially scamming the City of New York out of more than $16,000.
Benjamin’s best shot here is to plead ignorance—after all, there’s nothing yet in the public record indicating he had any knowledge of the scheme. But his deep ties to Migdol and his past ethical troubles relating to campaign finance will make that a hard sell, and federal investigators may yet go after the lieutenant governor himself. The entire mess only makes Benjamin a more inviting target for ambitious New York Democrats looking to make the jump to statewide office. Speaking of that…
The New York Post reported a few names are on AG Tish James’s shortlist of potential running mates: Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (who may also run for governor), Westchester County Executive George Latimer (who openly wants the job), state Sen. James Skoufis (who has already endorsed James for governor), and Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick. Each makes sense in their own way: all are from outside New York City and could make James’s appeal as a candidate more balanced.
NY-03
With Rep. Tom Suozzi running for governor, that means his House seat is open. Right now, it’s Democratic-leaning but swingy; after redistricting, it’s very likely to take in more of Queens and lose some of its reddest turf on Long Island. For now, progressive activist Melanie D’Arrigo, who challenged Suozzi in 2020 and was going for a rematch, is the only candidate left in the race, but that will surely change. D’Arrigo’s chances are much improved with Suozzi gone; though Suozzi was a terrible fit for a Democratic primary electorate, he still had decades of name recognition as a fixture in Long Island and New York state politics. Now, D’Arrigo has a head start on her eventual competition, and she already has a lot of backing from progressive organizations.
Per the New York Times’s Katie Glueck, potential candidates include Rob Zimmerman, a DNC member who mulled a challenge to Suozzi in the 2020 cycle (we actually mentioned him in our very first issue); Assemb. Ed Braunstein, a centrist Democrat from Queens; and Nassau County Legislator Josh Lafazan, who a) isn’t even a Democrat, but an independent, and b) authored a law allowing cops to sue protesters under the county’s hate crime statute for hurting their feelings. City and State NY’s Jeff Coltin mentions Assemb. Ron Kim, a progressive and Cuomo critic who does not live in the current district but nevertheless considered running for it in 2016; we’ll also throw in state Sen. Anna Kaplan, who as a town councilor ran for this seat in 2016 after the retirement of Rep. Steve Israel but ended up coming in fourth in the primary, and since her 2018 election to the state senate has been a member of a conservative bloc of state senators from Long Island known as the Long Island Six (now five, after one lost reelection in 2020.)
TX-28
Jessica Cisneros picked up four endorsements this week: Planned Parenthood, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), Texas College Democrats, and the Sunrise Movement. None of these groups are a huge surprise; Rep. Henry Cuellar has never done a single thing that would make abortion rights advocates, progressives, young people, or climate activists happy. But they’re all still noteworthy as signs that the coalition to oust Cuellar is no less energetic than it was in 2020, when Cisneros nearly beat him.
TX-30
Longtime Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a very moderate Democrat and the oldest member of the party in the House today, announced she would finally retire at the end of this term, ending her House tenure at an even thirty years. Her Dallas district is now open for the first time since 1992. Let’s take a look at who is (and isn’t) trying to succeed her:
Already Running:
Activist Jessica Mason. Mason is a Navy veteran who previously worked as a campaign and legislative staffer for Virginia state Sen. Roz Dance in 2019. She’s been able to raise a credible amount of money for a grassroots, first-time candidate: $134,000 over the course of 2021. She’s been running a very progressive campaign, but she never really broke out.
Strategist Jane Hope Hamilton. Hamilton was moderate-next-door Marc Veasey’s chief of staff for years, and ran Joe Biden’s Texas campaign during the primary. Despite her establishment pedigree, she’s been struggling with money so far, raising only $116,000 in more than half a year. She’d been saying she’d only stay in the race if Johnson didn’t run for reelection, so that could explain the money issues.
Abel Mulugheta, chief of staff to state Rep. Rafael Anchía filed his paperwork about a month before Johnson announced her retirement publicly.
Small business owner Shenita Cleveland. Cleveland previously ran against Johnson in 2020, getting 14% of the vote, and in 2017 for city council in the suburb of Cedar Hill, where she lost a racially-charged runoff where some poll workers criminally backed her opponent.
Now Running:
State Rep. Jasmine Crockett is now running. In 2020, Crockett, then a civil rights attorney, primaried out a moderate, pro-charter school state house incumbent. She immediately became one of the most progressive members (if not the most progressive member) of the State House, and definitely one of most outspoken, especially during the quorum break. That 2020 primary was a nailbiter for Crockett; encouragingly for her, our precinct analysis shows her clearly winning Black voters, who will dominate the TX-30 primary electorate. Even better, most of the precincts she lost are in the section of her House district left out of TX-30.
Ex-Dallas City Councilor Vonciel Jones Hill has filed to run. Jones is an antigay nutjob—a memorably despicable moment of hers is the time she objected to an AIDS awareness billboard because on it “African-American men who engage in homosexual conduct [are] presented as acceptable.” She’s also on bad terms with just about everyone in Dallas politics, and hasn’t held office since 2015. Her attempt to run countywide in 2018 was an embarrassing flop.
Ex-state Rep. Barbara Mallory Caraway says she’s running. Caraway is practically a perennial candidate at this point. While she did spend 1995-2001 on the Dallas City Council, and 2007-2013 in the state House,by now she’s better known for running against Eddie Bernice Johnson in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020. She achieved a peak of 30% in 2014 but by 2020 she was getting 12.5%.
Potential candidates:
State Rep. Toni Rose. Rose is an effective legislator, a 10 year state House veteran, and pretty standard liberal Democrat. But she’s hasn’t made much of a name for herself in that time, and it’s hard to see what she offers that Crockett doesn’t.
State Rep. Carl Sherman. Sherman, a pastor and two-term state house member, reps the south edge of Dallas County, and has been publicly contemplating running for a while. However, he’s rising into State House leadership after a short time, and running for Congress would mean forgoing reelection.
Former Criminal District Judge Elizabeth Davis Frizell. Frizell left her position to run for Dallas County DA in 2018, only to lose the primary by fractions of a percent. She was the choice of reformists in that race, even if she declined to back any aggressive Krasner-style policies. After a bitterly fought ballot counting process, she conceded, ran statewide in 2020, lost with the rest of the ticket, and hasn’t done much publicly since. This office would make a lot of sense for Frizell, who did well in this district in her DA primary.
Out:
State Sen. Royce West
State Rep. Yvonne Davis
Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price
The first major development of the race was Crockett’s campaign launch, where she brought in a special guest…Eddie Bernice Johnson, who was endorsing Crockett. Johnson likely didn’t endorse Crockett because the latter shared Johnson’s politics (which are not great) as much as she was the only candidate who wasn’t trying to shove Johnson out of the door before she wanted to leave. Normally we’re in favor of trying to shove members of Congress out of the door before they want to leave, but waiting evidently worked out for Crockett. Crockett might not have a total lock on progressive support, though: Nina Turner, who commands a massive email list that can bring in tons of small donations, endorsed Jessica Mason on Tuesday.
MA-SD-3rd Suffolk
Newly-inaugurated Boston Mayor Michelle Wu took a few seconds to breathe after her historic landslide election to mayor, then hit the trail again. This time she’s not campaigning for herself, but for City Councilor Lydia Edwards, running in a Dec. 14 special election for State Senate in the city. Her opponent is Anthony D’Ambrosio, a Revere School Committee member. This election is a battle between the old-school machine moderate wing of the party and the newer progressive movement that’s elected politicians like Michelle Wu to powerful positions but hasn’t been able to break the machine’s hold on the legislature.
Bexar County, Texas County Judge
Two more politicians are mulling running for the top spot in Bexar County government, chief executive of a county of two million residents. First is former San Antonio mayor Ed Garza. Garza was on the city council from 1997 to 2001 and served as mayor from 2001 to 2005. Garza won landslide margins of the Latino vote and was popular enough for most of his term as mayor, but his final stretch was rocky, and since then he’s both endorsed Rick Perry for governor and managed the 2017 primary campaign of right-wing anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist incumbent Bexar County DA Nico LaHood, who left the Democratic Party immediately after losing. The other politician mentioned is Ivalis Gonzalez Meza, the chief of staff to San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg. She comes from a local political family, but little about her own politics is immediately apparent.