Primary School 1/18/22
Rashida Tlaib's district switcheroo
CA-37
Ex-LA City Councilor Jan Perry has formed an exploratory committee to run for this open seat. While the generally progressive Perry did well in the district during her 2013 mayoral campaign, she has been out of politics since then. But the big news of the week isn’t anything new, exactly: state Sen. Sydney Kamlager filed with the FEC months ago, and she was widely expected to announce a 2022 congressional campaign at some point. But this week, she finally announced she was running.
CO-07
Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a moderate Democrat from the western suburbs of Denver, announced his retirement this week. Perlmutter’s district was made redder in redistricting; however, at Biden+14, we’re not too worried, even though Hillary Clinton only won it by three percentage points. The area has a deep bench of ambitious Democratic politicians, and some started making moves as soon as Perlmutter announced his retirement; state Sen. Brittany Pettersen, who ran for this seat in 2018 when Perlmutter was running for governor, only to drop out when Perlmutter decided to seek reelection instead, has already filed with the FEC. Pettersen is a fairly generic moderate Democrat, and certainly not the best this district can do.
FL-10
Last quarter, we wondered whether March For Our Lives organizer Maxwell Alejandro Frost’s strong fundraising, which outpaced every one of his far more established opponents’ quarterly hauls, was a fluke. It was not. Frost, only 25 years old, raised $407,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021. When the field originally settled in this race, we worried Frost would siphon votes from former reformist State’s Attorney Aramis Ayala, who we thought was the leading progressive candidate; now we’re wondering if it’s the other way around.
GA-07
North Georgia AFL-CIO president and state Rep. Dewey McClain endorsed Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux. Bourdeaux is currently fighting for her life: she’s a white candidate facing a Black opponent in fellow Rep. Lucy McBath in what is likely a majority-Black electorate, and she crossed the Democratic Party by joining in the Josh Gottheimer-led effort to smother Build Back Better this summer. To that end, the endorsement of a Black elected official with ties to organized labor is probably more important than your average endorsement.
GA-13
David Scott has long been one of the most conservative Democrats in the House. (We profiled his long career way back in 2019, and he hasn’t gotten any better since then.) Nothing good was ever going to come from Scott inheriting the chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee, a committee that top House Democrats seem to have reserved for Blue Dogs—the previous chair was Collin Peterson, and Scott defeated Jim Costa in the chairmanship election. Perhaps House Democrats do that because they think more conservative Democrats are better spokespeople for the party on farming issues or something—but there’s an insidious side effect: Blue Dogs chairing House Ag means Blue Dogs get to write the appropriations for a number of key welfare programs, most importantly SNAP (more commonly known as food stamps.) Fiscal conservatism and feeding the hungry don’t mix. But that isn’t why we have a reason to write about him. No, House Democrats are growing dissatisfied with Scott because his health is allegedly getting in the way of his job, and they fear he isn’t up to the task of writing the upcoming farm bill.
What’s the farm bill? It’s a major omnibus bill, basically a catch-all, covering most of the nation’s food, nutrition, and farming policy. That includes farm subsidies, agricultural workforce regulations, some environmental provisions, import and export rules, and—most importantly—SNAP. Like the NDAA, which governs defense spending, it’s one of the only major must-pass bills which generally passes on a bipartisan basis—but that comes after months of negotiations. By having a weak negotiator at the table on their behalf, Democrats would risk losing out on billions in welfare spending to feed the poorest Americans. (Last time there was a farm bill, Republicans wanted to cut SNAP so badly that they abandoned the bipartisan tradition and tried going it alone; they failed thanks to a unified front of opposition from House Democrats, who were then in the minority, plus a revolt from the Freedom Caucus. Only after an embarrassing floor defeat did House Republicans give in to House Democrats and walk back their SNAP cuts.)
Several of Scott’s colleagues told Politico that Scott’s presence of mind seems to be slipping, and there is apparently widespread dissatisfaction on the Democratic side of the aisle with Scott’s ability to control committee hearings (well, really his lack thereof.) At stake: food on the table for millions of American families, plus a range of other issues that could conceivably get roped into the bill—the last farm bill loosened federal marijuana laws, for example.
Insider-y stories like these don’t directly relate to electoral outcomes, but they can serve as an indicator that an incumbent might be checked out from their district as well, or that House Democrats might not give them the usual full-court press that members usually benefit from in the face of a primary challenge. And they can also be a harbinger of retirement—this has already been a busy cycle for Democratic retirements, and Scott is 76 years old. With at least one local politician, South Fulton City Councilor Mark Baker, already challenging Scott, any sort of vulnerability could make the difference for Scott, who was nearly forced into a runoff in 2020 by former state Rep. Keisha Waites, who spent less than $1,000 on her campaign. (She’s now an Atlanta city councilor.)
IL-01
Assorted updates on candidates, current and potential, from this last week:
State Sen. Jacqui Collins has filed with the FEC, but hasn’t given any indication of launching a campaign beyond that. Collins was one of the first politicians to consider a run, and she’s apparently still is still considering.
Karin Norington-Reaves entered the race and immediately raised $150,000. While Bobby Rush didn’t endorse her at her announcement, the rumor mill was abuzz that he would be officially getting behind her soon, and sure enough, that followed a few days later. This catapults her into the top tier of candidates, but Rush’s personal brand never really developed into a serious political network behind him (and to the extent that it did, it’s atrophied over the last decade).
Sen. Robert Peters declined to run, which is a real problem. His deferral comes after Ald. Jeanette Taylor similarly turned down the race, and now the left is now without any clear choice for this race, outside of perhaps activist Jahmal Cole, who was running before Rush retired.
Jonathan Jackson, son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, is considering entering the race. Jesse’s other son, Jackson Jr., represented neighboring IL-02 from 1995-2012. Jesse Jr. was a rising star credibly mentioned as a senatorial or mayoral candidate until his career imploded in a mess of criminal charges and a concurrent mental breakdown. Jonathan was urged to run in the race to succeed his brother by friends of the family, but decided against it and instead continued to serve as national director of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which grew out of his father’s two presidential runs.
IL-03
State Rep. Delia Ramirez continues to amass support among the Chicago left; this week, she was endorsed by the Working Families Party and United Working Families (a separate, Chicago-based progressive organization unrelated to WFP with ties to Rep. Chuy García and many progressive Chicago alderpersons.)
IL-17
Rockford Ald. Linda McNeely joins this overstuffed field. McNeely has been on the Board of Aldermen for 25 years, and has developed an idiosyncratic reputation for constantly voting no, usually against the unanimous majority. Aldermanic wards in Rockford are quite small, only a few thousand people, but regardless of the size of her base, McNeely is going to be a second Rockford candidate, complicating the path of former state Rep. Litesa Wallace, who is also from the city.
MD-Gov
Last week we talked about former Republican Anne Arundel County Executive Laura Neuman, and her filing to run in the Democratic primary for governor. At the time, she was just considering, but this week she actually decided to go for it for reasons that escape us. Even if she weren’t an ex-Republican, she’d start at a serious disadvantage, because her opponents have been campaigning and raising money for months or even years. Five of those opponents teased or revealed their fundraising totals for 2021 this week ahead of the upcoming filing deadline:
Nonprofit exec Jon Baron raised $2 million, partially self-funded
Obama education secretary John King raised $2.5 mil
Ex-DNC chair Tom Perez raised $2.7 million
Comptroller Peter Franchot has $3.3 million cash on hand (no word of total raised yet)
Sorta-most progressive candidate (if only by a few degrees) Wes Moore raised $4.8 million
MD-04
Former Rep. Donna Edwards, who vacated this seat in 2016 to run for Senate, is about to announce a campaign to reclaim her old job. Edwards, a Bush-era progressive favorite for her unsuccessful 2006 primary challenge to conservative Rep. Al Wynn and her 2008 landslide victory over Wynn, is an instant frontrunner and likely the best candidate we’re going to get here; her entry is great news, even though we generally prefer fresh faces. Even after defeating Wynn and entering Congress, Edwards didn’t fade into the background or go along to get along; she remained an unwavering progressive unafraid to clash with her own party when she saw fit. That willingness to fight is what led to her exit from Congress; she challenged then-Rep. Chris Van Hollen in the 2016 primary for US Senate, bucking the Democratic establishment in both Maryland and DC. She lost soundly—39% of the vote to Van Hollen’s 53%—but she made Van Hollen fight for it, amassed a strong base of support among Black voters statewide, and got more than 60% of the vote in her home of Prince George’s County, which makes up the bulk of MD-04. Since leaving Congress, she ran for Prince George’s County Executive in 2018; her 61-24 loss to Angela Alsobrooks in the Democratic primary is disheartening, to say the least, but Alsobrooks was already the county’s elected State’s Attorney, while Edwards had only represented parts of the county in Congress. Still, that loss puts a bit of a damper on the expectations any observer might have for how formidable her campaign might be.
While it would be better to have her in the Senate right now, Edwards returning to Congress would be a welcome upgrade over Anthony Brown, who succeeded Edwards in 2016 and is now running for Maryland Attorney General. A former representative seeking to reclaim their old seat would usually command deference from other politicians—but since Edwards has never been one to take marching orders from party leaders, and Prince George’s County politics is dominated by relatively conservative Democrats, Edwards will likely have to fight for her old seat. Del. Jazz Lewis, former Del. Angela Angel, and former Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey are already seeking the Democratic nomination; Edwards’s entry might present a problem for Angel (who won’t get the support of women’s groups now that Edwards, who those groups love, is running) and Ivey (who is, by the standards of Prince George’s County, anti-establishment and sort of progressive.) Lewis, a protegé of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, has less reason to defer to Edwards. And Ivey raised enough money in the fourth quarter—$277,000—that he might conclude he’s come too far to quit.
MA-Gov
State Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz announced another batch of endorsements, 13 mostly local politicians, most notably state Rep. Marcos Devers of Lawrence and Boston City Councilor Kendra Lara (previously Kendra Hicks in her political life). Chang-Díaz is about to face down at least one opponent (state AG Maura Healey) with millions to spend, and is fighting for her ability to stay relevant. This is a good sign in that regard.
MA-LG
Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, who has long been speculated to harbor statewide ambitions, has entered the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor. Already running are state Sens. Eric Lesser and Adam Hinds, state Rep. Tami Gouveia, and college lecturer Bret Bero. Driscoll considered challenging Rep. Seth Moulton from the left in 2020, so she’s probably not terrible, ideologically speaking.
MA-01
Richard Neal—who is in his 70s, has been in Congress for multiple decades, and is currently steering a powerful committee through what is mostly likely the last Democratic trifecta for a while—was the subject of a long-running retirement watch this year, especially after a top staffer departed. However, Neal said this week he’ll be running again.
MI-12
Rashida Tlaib was never going to have a smooth reelection. As a left-wing, non-Black politician in a Black-majority district who never genuflected to the city establishment, Tlaib is always going to have primary vulnerabilities on paper; inevitably, someone is going to forget that Tlaib’s actual history has shown her to be a fantastic campaigner, and challenge her themselves. Last year was City Council President Brenda Jones, and this year it’s going to be former state Rep. Shanelle Jackson. Jackson was a state representative in Northwest Detroit from 2007-2013, but her electoral record this decade has been painfully lackluster. She attempted to primary John Conyers in 2012, but came in third with 13% of the vote. In 2014, she badly fucked up a state Senate race despite overwhelming establishment support. And finally, in 2018, she ran for MI-13 again and came in 6th place (dead last) with only 5% of the vote. She's a spent force electorally, and has spent the last few years lobbying for big oil and predatory lenders.
Jackson’s angle in this contest is primarily anti-Tlaib, who she calls “crazy and extreme”. Jackson labels herself a “pro-business” Democrat, and specifically mentions the subprime loan industry, which she works for, as one that she would be more favorable to than Tlaib. But it’s issues of Israel and Palestine that Jackson seems to prioritize as a line of attack. In the first interview of her campaign, Jackson made a blunt dual-loyalty accusation against Tlaib, claiming the child of immigrants is “carrying water” for her parents’ home country at the cost of her native Detroit. (Tlaib was born and raised in Detroit, where she’s lived her whole life. Her parents are immigrants from Palestine, as are tens of thousands of people in the Detroit area, home to one of the nation’s largest and oldest Arab communities.) And it’s not hard to understand why Jackson might think Israel is a fruitful issue for a Tlaib challenge—pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian interests hate Tlaib, and they’ve demonstrated a willingness to spend heavily in Democratic primaries against candidates like Marie Newman and Jamaal Bowman who express skepticism of the Israeli government or support for the rights of Palestinians. Indeed, Jackson says she’s been in contact with multiple pro-Israel PACs, thought the only one who went on the record to confirm this was CityPAC, which is currently sitting on a relatively modest $91,000 in the bank.
MN-04
Amane Badhasso, who is challenging Rep. Betty McCollum, raised over $300,000 in the fourth quarter of 2020. McCollum, who is generally on the more progressive side of the House Democratic caucus (though she is oddly not a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus), doesn’t seem to grasp that a well-funded primary challenger is something to worry about, nor does her team seem to have a finger on the pulse of the Democratic base—when interviewed, her campaign punched left at Ilhan Omar’s vote against the infrastructure bill, claimed McCollum was actually more progressive than Omar, and cited seniority as the number-one reason to keep McCollum. Readers of this newsletter know by now that seniority and generational change have played a role in several successful primary challenges; running on seniority just tees up an argument for the challenger that it’s time for a change. Beyond that, creating a conflict with Ilhan Omar for no reason when the local activist left generally still likes you would be an inexplicable effort to lose friends and alienate people even if McCollum weren’t in the Twin Cities.
NJ-08
Union City-based progressive organizer Ricardo Rojas will run for Congress. This makes him the only candidate attempting to deny U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez’s spawn the nomination. Owing to New Jersey’s county line system, this is an enormously difficult task, but if it’s ever going to happen, this is the time most ripe for it. Owing to corruption scandals, Menendez Sr. had a shocking close call in the 2018 primary against a total unknown who spent next to nothing, and Rob Menendez Jr. is working hard to make sure people know who his dad is.
This district saw an unexpectedly spirited 2020 challenge against incumbent Albio Sires by activist Hector Oseguera, a campaign which Rojas managed. That campaign ended in a 70-27 loss, but given the circumstances—a long-tenured incumbent and a pandemic limiting canvassing—it wasn’t that bad, and the Hudson County machine took notice.
NY-Gov
Gov. Kathy Hochul continues to entrench herself ahead of the primary which would secure her first full term as governor. She got one endorsement signifying that the New York City establishment, while it may have been unfamiliar with the Buffalonian Hochul, is perfectly fine with her now; that would be Rep. Jerry Nadler, a titan in Manhattan politics. She also got an endorsement signifying bipartisan appeal: Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, the Democrat who lost the Democratic nomination to democratic socialist India Walton and proceeded to mount a Republican-backed write-in campaign. The Brown endorsement doesn’t really matter—Hochul was going to get overwhelming margins out of Buffalo no matter what—but it is extremely funny. Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Long Island conservative Democrat who’s challenging Hochul from the right, went all the way to Buffalo to campaign for Byron Brown to make a point about Socialism Bad (and to court Brown’s support for his gubernatorial run), and Brown left him out in the cold.
NY-03
Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat Josh Lafazan raised $450k in 18 days, which is kind of terrifying. There’s no word if any of this was self-funding, but we’re guessing not much of it was, if any. Lafazan’s parents are wealthy, but not that wealthy, and he hasn’t had a career himself outside of politics. He’s no longer the only one in the race with connections to deep-pocketed donors, though: DNC member Robert Zimmerman tells Long Island newspaper Newsday that he’s running in 2022. Zimmerman is no leftist, but he’s also not Suozzi—he considered challenging the congressman in 2020, angered by his performative bipartisanship and needless conservatism; Zimmerman said then that he supported the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, though statements made as a prospective primary challenger don’t necessarily translate into policy positions as a candidate for an open seat.
NC-06
This week, one North Carolina congressional race was scrambled by a blast from the past. 2003 American Idol star Clay Aiken, who ran unsuccessfully for what was then a deep-red exurban Raleigh House seat in 2014, is now running for Durham and Chapel Hill’s newly-drawn NC-06. Aiken seems to be hoping to coast on his celebrity—but his decision to run wasn’t purely vanity-driven. No, he’s also a diehard centrist. (As a reminder, this is one of the most left-leaning and culturally liberal districts in the entire South, containing several large universities and lots of state government employees.) According to a source in Durham politics, Aiken has been telling local heavyweights that he’s alarmed by Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam’s staunchly left-wing stances, and he wants to prevent her from winning. Yikes! But back when Aiken was first getting into politics, and in the couple years immediately following his candidacy, he said enough to make winning a future Democratic primary extremely difficult, even if he can raise good money (which is itself in doubt—he barely raised $1 million in his 2014 campaign, when he was only a few years removed from actually being famous.)
Regarding then-President Obama, 2014: “I have nothing to do with President Obama. I can count several places I disagree with him: I support the Second Amendment; I support fiscal responsibility; I support securing the border.”
Regarding revenge porn, 2014: “Anybody who takes inappropriate pictures of themselves deserves exactly what they get."
Regarding Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, 2015: “I’m a friend of his. I like him as a person…he’s a good guy.”
Regarding Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, 2016: “I don’t think he’s a fascist. I don’t think he’s a racist. I think he’s a Democrat.” (he later walked the “racist” descriptor back)
But that 2014 campaign was tainted from the start. When he was exploring a run, the person he called to gauge whether it would be a good idea was…Donald Trump.
So! We’ve established by now that Aiken will be running in the moderate lane of this primary. That lane was already experiencing turbulence. Sources tell us that state Sen. Valerie Foushee, the original choice of the North Carolina Democratic establishment, abruptly fired her finance director over the holidays. Last week, dueling fundraising announcements from the Allam and Foushee campaigns revealed that Allam had badly outraised Foushee in the last three months of 2021 (nearly 2 to 1, in fact); it’s hard to imagine that the sudden, year-end firing of the finance director was unrelated to Foushee’s finance operation getting lapped by Allam’s grassroots money printer.
All campaigns appear poised to get more time to make their case to voters thanks to North Carolina Republicans, who are poised to move the date of North Carolina’s 2022 primaries to June 7 to accommodate for the potential implementation of new district lines by the state Supreme Court, which is hearing a lawsuit alleging the state’s congressional maps are impermissibly gerrymandered under the state constitution.
OR-Gov
Secretary of State Shemia Fagan requested a state Supreme Court opinion on Nicholas Kristof’s residency, all but ensuring his appeal will at least get a hearing after her office declared that he was ineligible to run for governor because he voted, lived, and paid taxes in New York as recently as December of 2020, violating Oregon’s three-year residency requirement.
OR-04
Outgoing Rep. Peter DeFazio has endorsed Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle to succeed him. DeFazio’s endorsement makes sense—there’s no way he wants to be succeeded by an AirBnB executive, and he wasn’t going to endorse 2020 primary challenger Doyle Canning (even though she might be ideologically closer to him than Hoyle is.) This is Hoyle’s race to lose.
OR-05
Blue Dog Rep. Kurt Schrader’s primary challenger, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, continues to build momentum. She raised $227,000 in the fourth quarter of 2022, got an endorsement from the national arm of the liberal activist group Indivisible, and added some more Portland-area current and former elected officials to her list of local endorsements. (McLeod-Skinner is from rural eastern Oregon and ran in 2018 in the old district covering eastern Oregon; to beat Schrader, she’ll need to make inroads in the Portland area, where she is less known and where the majority of the new district’s Democratic voters live.)
OR-06
Hey, Oregon, quick question: why are there two separate self-funding cryptocurrency guys running in your new congressional district? Seriously, we have a lot on our plate right now, and we don’t need you to make us have to remember the difference between Matt West and Chris Reynolds. Yes, right now we can look up FEC records that say that Matt West’s the one who self-funded $437,000 and raised $182,000, while Reyonds self-funded $2,000,000 and only raised $10 elsewhere. But that information is not going to stick. We have almost 30 open congressional seats right now, we do not need this in our lives.
TN-05
Well, we knew it was going to happen. Tennessee Republicans corrected their oversight in 2011 and cracked Nashville three ways, creating three unwinnable districts for Democrats (the bluest voted for Trump by 11%). To be fair, it wasn’t any great insight on our part—it’s stupidly easy to do and Republicans had been saying they would, in public, for years at this point. But there was no actual proposal until this week. Now there is one—you can see it in all its awkward, unnecessarily, squiggling glory—and it’s lights out for both Democrats running in TN-05, Blue Dog Rep. Jim Cooper and Justice Democrats-endorsed Odessa Kelly. We like Kelly, and hope she runs for something else in the future, but no Democrat, progressive or conservative, will be winning this year in a Trump+11 district.
TX-28
We have two developments to report in the fast-approaching March 1 TX-28 primary. First, a runoff is possible this time; last time, only Rep. Henry Cuellar and progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros were on the ballot. Since Cisneros’s challenge to the nominating petitions of Tannya Benavides just failed, Benavides will remain on the ballot, likely splitting the anti-Cuellar vote a bit in the first round and creating the potential for neither Cuellar nor Cisneros to reach a majority of the vote on March 1, which would force a runoff between the two. Second, former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, who represented parts of this district from 1997 to 2005 and 2007 to 2011, endorsed Cisneros. Rodriguez has reason to despise Cuellar: Cuellar is the reason his congressional tenure was interrupted. Let us explain.
In 2003, Texas Republicans executed a brazen power grab in the form of mid-decade redistricting, aggressively gerrymandering the entire state to cement Republican control. It was so blatant and so outrageous that Democrats in both houses of the legislature fled the state in an attempt to deny Republicans a quorum. But while other Democrats were fighting tooth and nail to stop Republicans, Cuellar was asking them for help: he had congressional ambitions, and he wanted to know if he could count on his Republican friends in Austin to draw him a more favorable congressional district than the one he had lost to Republican Henry Bonilla in 2002. Republicans happily obliged, pairing Cuellar’s hometown of Laredo with Rodriguez’s home in San Antonio, fiddling with the district lines to ensure more Democratic primary voters resided in Laredo than San Antonio. Cuellar challenged Rodriguez (a pretty reliable liberal Democrat) in the primary, and emerged victorious by 58 votes. (Rodriguez returned to Congress after a court-ordered redraw put him in a different district.)
In short, there’s no love lost between Rodriguez and Cuellar. Rodriguez’s endorsement is a good sign for Cisneros in San Antonio, which makes up more of the new TX-28 than the old TX-28—and Cisneros already did very, very well in San Antonio last time. If she can repeat or exceed her 2020 margins in San Antonio, Cuellar’s path to victory narrows considerably.
TX-35
Austin City Councilman Greg Casar has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO Austin Central Labor Council, which is the biggest prize as far as labor unions go in this race. Texas, like all southern states, has atrociously low union density, but the AFL-CIO itself can still lend organizational muscle.
Also this week, his main competition, state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, pulled in two congressional endorsements: Marc Veasey and Filemon Vela. Both make a lot of sense for Rodriguez. While his voting record is more in line with the party mainstream, he’s been openly courting moderate and conservative voices in the party (Vela is a former Blue Dog, and Veasey is a left-punching corporate type) who want to prevent a Casar win.
VT-AL
State Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale became the third major candidate to launch a campaign, and she immediately raised $125,000 in 8 hours. Ram Hinsdale is running as a progressive, like state Senate President pro tempore Becca Balint and in contrast with establishment liberal Lt. Gov. Molly Gray. Ram Hinsdale got at least one major early endorsement, from Nina Turner—who won’t sway many voters in Vermont herself, but might sway Bernie Sanders. She was also endorsed by Mari Cordes and Taylor Small, two state representatives affiliated with the Vermont Progressive Party, a left-wing third party that sometimes works in coalition with Democrats and sometimes runs candidates against Democrats. Progressives likely need to consolidate behind one candidate to stop Gray: according to a Vermont Public Radio-PBS poll, Gray already leads Balint 31% to 10% among potential Democratic primary voters, with most voters undecided. (The poll did not include Ram Hinsdale as an option for respondents.)
VA-07
State Sen. Jeremy McPike, Del. Luke Torian, and former Del. and 2021 gubernatorial candidate Jennifer Carroll Foy have all turned down a challenge to Blue Dog Abigail Spanberger, who is hastily adopting this new Northern Virginia district after the state supreme court dismantled her previous Richmond-area district. There is some overlap between the old and the new 7th, but it’s lopsidedly Republican; most Democratic voters here reside in Prince William and Stafford counties, which are entirely new to Spanberger. Two big names are still considering a run, however: Del. Elizabeth Guzmán and Prince William County School Board Chair Dr. Babur Lateef. Guzmán, who ran for Lieutenant Governor last year before dropping out to seek reelection as a delegate, is one of the most progressive legislators in Virginia, and was a co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s Virginia primary campaign in 2020. Lateef is harder to figure out, since he holds a nonpartisan office (though he is a Democrat); however, perusing his Twitter tells us that he is fanatically opposed to COVID mitigation efforts in schools, even masks. (Dr. Lateef is an ophthalmologist, not an immunologist, epidemiologist, pulmonologist, or anything else remotely related to COVID.)