Primary School 12/12
(Primary) On The Waterfront
Houston Runoff Results
We apologize for failing to put out a preview of the Houston runoffs; weekend elections are a scourge.
If you were wondering whether Sheila Jackson Lee could turn around a massive polling deficit in the runoff, and prevent the disaster of conservaDem John Whitmire becoming mayor, she released an ad telling voters to vote on the wrong day shortly before the election. Whitmire coasted to victory with nearly two-thirds of the vote; Jackson Lee got a share of the vote almost exactly equal to her 36% in the first round. Jackson Lee, who was the de facto Democratic nominee and leader of the liberal slate in Houston’s nonpartisan local elections, crashed so hard that she appears to have brought down like-minded at-large council candidates: Republicans Julian Ramirez and Willie Davis won at-large seats over normie Democrats, and centrist at-large candidate Twila Carter beat liberal favorite Richard Cantu. The only at-large candidate who beat a more conservative opponent was mainstream Democrat Letitia Plummer. Democrat Chris Hollins still coasted to an easy 58-42 victory in the City Controller’s race over Republican Orlando Sanchez, however. In district seats, incumbent Carolyn Evans-Shabazz and establishment favorite Mario Castillo beat challengers Travis McGee and Cynthia Reyes Revilla by similar, roughly 2-to-1 margins in Districts D and H, respectively.
CA-Sen
No other state does endorsements quite like California, and we hope it stays that way. The state’s AFL-CIO committee, the California Labor Federation, endorsed in the Senate contest… drum roll please… Barbara Lee… as well as Katie Porter…and also Adam Schiff. Hurray! They endorsed every candidate! What’s even the point! Doing a more respectable version of the same thing was the state party, which deadlocked at the convention between Lee and Schiff, and therefore made no endorsement because neither candidate could reach 60%.
Meanwhile, the polling picture remains steady, according to the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll. In it, Schiff leads with 21%, Porter takes 2nd with 16%, and Lee trails with 8%, in fourth behind a Republican.
CA-16
We have some early entrants to the race to succeed Anna Eshoo. As expected, Big Tech-friendly Assemb. Evan Low filed this week, and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian made his campaign official. Former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo also filed to run. We’ve also got tech guy and Marine vet Peter Dixon, who worked in the Obama administration and raised $350,000 within 24 hours of announcing, and Palo Alto city councilor Julie Lythcott-Haims, better known as a popular author on parenting and childhood. Evan Low is the candidate most compromised by Big Tech, so naturally he got an early endorsement from Ro Khanna and raised $300,000 in his first 48 hours as a candidate.
CA-25
Indio (pop. 89,000) Mayor Oscar Ortiz announced this week that he’s putting together a congressional campaign and will be challenging incumbent Rep. Raul Ruiz. Though the language of his sole statement to the press on the matter is entirely anodyne (promising “new leadership” and “better leadership”? Slow down there, Robespierre), this is very much going to be a challenge from Ruiz’s left.
Ortiz is a cannabis consultant who was elected to the city council in 2018 as a progressive challenger to a member of the pro-business, status quo faction. He then served as a field organizer for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign in California and was profiled in Mother Jones at the time. Ortiz was also an early politician calling for a ceasefire, doing so on October 31. Ruiz, meanwhile, is a centrist who still votes like he represents a swing district, which he hasn’t done in almost a decade. Ruiz is a member of the New Democrats, and doesn’t support big progressive programs like Medicare for All.
Though Ortiz has a moderately prominent position, it probably won’t translate too much to a direct electoral benefit. Indio’s mayors are appointed from among the city council, and city council elections are woefully low turnout affairs, leading to a state of affairs where the mayor of a city of 89,000 people was first elected with fewer than 1,800 votes. Realistically, Ortiz’s experience with and connections from field organizing are going to be more useful.
CA-26
Agoura Hills (pop. 20,000) Mayor Chris Anstead filed with the FEC and with the state of California, so he’s either planning to challenge Rep. Julia Brownley or expecting a retirement.
CA-32
Rep. Brad Sherman, among the staunchest hawks in the Democratic caucus, picked up three opponents recently: longtime TV producer Dave Abbitt, neighborhood council member Christopher Ahuja, and Travis Strickland, who may be a high-end chef, or just someone with the same name. None have actually launched campaigns yet, but all three hold some promise as potential opponents to Sherman: Ahuja for having experience in politics and the other two for probably having money.
Illinois
Candidate filing just closed in Illinois, which means we know who's definitely getting reelected, and who's going to have opposition. Most of the Congressional delegation is getting by with little trouble. Some, like progressive Delia Ramirez in the 3rd, face no challengers, while others, like Blue Dog Brad Schneider in the 10th, face nominal opposition. Others, like Danny Davis in the 7th, are facing difficult, multi-candidate fields, but we knew that months ago. Only a few elections were actually shaken up by last minute filings, and only one on the congressional level, IL-06.
IL-06
Activist and healthcare professional Mahnoor Ahmad is running against Rep. Sean Casten, who defeated progressive fellow Rep. Marie Newman in a redistricting-induced primary battle last year. Ahmad, a Pakistani-American Muslim woman, charges Casten with being unresponsive to his Muslim constituents amid the horrific war in Gaza. The inner southwest suburbs of Chicago and the city’s southwest side—turf formerly represented by Newman, which Casten picked up in 2022—are home to a large Palestinian community and a larger Muslim community.
IL-11
Qasim Rashid has secured endorsements from the American Postal Workers Union 604/605 and the Chicago Federation of Musicians. The APWU national organization has called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is a point of division between the two candidates. Rashid has said he’d sign onto Cori Bush’s ceasefire resolution, and has criticized Rep. Bill Foster for not doing so, to which Foster responded that “Hamas must be held accountable” and repeated the executive branch line about humanitarian aid and reducing civilian harm.
MD-Sen
Rep. David Trone has spent the year airing an endless stream of TV ads across Maryland, the most recent of which, his ninth so far, has a 60 second run time. Owing to the cost, 60 second political commercials are rare, but Trone’s entire strategy is to use his vast fortunate to flood the airwaves before his competition can even introduce themselves. He’s spent $11.2 million on TV ads this year, and it looks like he’s finally getting results. The Trone campaign recently released an internal poll showing him leading his main competitor, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, by a 41% to 34% margin. This is the first real poll of the race in a while (we’re not counting the US Term Limits poll) and it shows both good news and bad news for Trone. The good news is obviously that he's leading in it, and also that he isn't simply sputtering out despite the massive ad campaign. But being up 7% in an internal, before your competitor—who has been endorsed by just about every Democratic politician in the state—has aired a single ad, is not where anyone would want to be.
MD-03
Two members of the state legislature entered the primary for this suburban district sitting between DC and Baltimore. State Sen. Clarence Lam, currently in his third term in Annapolis, was clearly running before his November 30th announcement, but he's now made it official, and also announced his campaign team full of A-listers in Maryland politics, as Maryland Matters’s Josh Kurtz notes. In the 48 hours following his launch, he raised an impressive but not outrageous $100,000. Lam has been a liberal his entire political career, and our gut sense at the moment is that he’s more promising for progressives than the Anne Arundel County establishment candidate (state Sen. Sarah Elfreth) the probable Howard County establishment candidate (Del. Vanessa Atterbeary) and a plastic surgeon with questionable ethics (Del. Terri Hill). That’s us trying to find distinctions where not too many yet exist, however—the candidates are going to define themselves much more during the campaign itself.
One candidate we can safely say is out of the conversation for progressives is Del. Mark Chang, who just filed papers with the FEC to run this week. Chang spent a decade as a Republican politician and political aide before decamping to the Democrats in 2012 after his boss, the most powerful Republican in the county, got indicted for corruption. Chang got elected as a Democrat to the state legislature in 2014, but didn’t let anything as trivial as no longer being a Republican stop him from voting like one. Politics rewards nothing if not shamelessness, but there’s still something unusually brazen about how Chang is pitching himself. According to Kurtz, Chang “said that on the campaign trail, he will focus on social justice and eradicating hate crimes; eliminating student debt; passing universal health care legislation; combating gun violence; creating more affordable housing; and bolstering reproductive rights”. The “social justice” line is bad enough coming from one of the only four Democratic votes to oppose allowing trans Marylanders to change their birth certificate, but the “bolstering reproductive rights” claim is…does he think people are just going to forget that he sponsored Republican anti-abortion legislation?
As if the field wasn’t crowded enough already, a sixth member of the legislature also entered the fray this week: Del. Mike Rogers, Chang’s seatmate. Rogers was first elected in 2018, and spent his first term, like many freshman legislators, attracting little media attention. His public persona leans heavily on his decades in the Army, and a military background could help him stand out in a district with Annapolis in it.
After gaining three new entrants, the field then shrunk by one: Atterbeary dropped out via a text to a reporter, saying she’d decided to focus more on her General Assembly priorities. That’s good news for Lam and Hill, the two Howard County candidates left standing.
NJ-03
Longtime Assemb. Herb Conaway will run after all for Andy Kim’s NJ-03, setting up a contest between him and his seatmate in the 7th Legislative District, Assembly Majority Whip Carol Murphy. Murphy is more closely aligned with South Jersey machine boss George Norcross and is also seen as having a good shot at the Norcross-friendly but not entirely Norcross-controlled Burlington County party line in the primary, where about ⅔ of votes will come from Burlington County. Conaway has the early endorsement of Burlington Democratic Chair Joe Andl, but Andl has less power than most chairs and can’t always control the county committee convention-goers. A doctor and Air Force veteran, Conaway would be the first Black representative from South Jersey if he won.
Anti-abortion Assemb. Wayne DeAngelo and Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami Covello continue to consider campaigns of their own, but this is a Burlington seat and it’s hard to see the line crumbling here the way it might with a Menendez or Tammy Murphy carrying the machine’s banner. Burlington will almost certainly award its line to one of the LD-07 assemblypersons, and whoever gets the Burlington line will very likely win.
NJ-08
What a week, folks! One of the nastiest House primaries of 2024 is actually happening. The Hudson County Democratic Organization announced it would stick with Bob Menendez’s son Rob Menendez Jr., the freshman congressman for NJ-08, despite his father’s troubles and despite polling showing Rob Jr. is far from a sure thing for reelection. Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla announced today that he’s launching his long-awaited challenge to Rep. Rob Menendez Jr. Bhalla may be best known nationally for his successful effort to eliminate pedestrian deaths in his city, a densely-packed square mile home to 60,000 on the west bank of the Hudson River. He’s already stockpiled more than $500,000—more than the incumbent had as of September 30, and enough to run a real race. He also has one big (tacit) supporter in his corner: Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, the HCDO-backed gubernatorial candidate, who made a rare break from HCDO to anti-endorse Rob Jr., a jab which got Rob Jr. to angrily respond.
NY-16
Westchester County Executive George Latimer is officially challenging Rep. Jamaal Bowman after months of public consideration, and if there’s one thing he’d like to do with his launch, it's put all those racism allegations to bed. He can’t be racist, you see, because he knew Black people growing up; look, here’s a MLK quote! Anyway, he also just said outright that he can’t win if his district gets more Black people in redistricting, but luckily for him, his deputy Ken Jenkins chairs the state’s redistricting commission. (That entire spiel was Latimer’s angry response to Justice Democrats noting that AIPAC, which recruited Latimer to run, has a record of targeting progressive Black representatives, which is unambiguously true.) This is a five-alarm fire for the Squad; Latimer is a very tough opponent. As we’ve said before, and as Latimer himself said, redistricting is an unknown variable without which we can’t predict much beyond that this will be a competitive and expensive race. Latimer, however, is acting like a man who doesn't expect the district to change much. In fact, Latimer is expecting a district where the Bronx has so little footprint that he can just leave it off his campaign material. Latimer got some heat for that move and eventually added the Bronx in, but the message, and his strategy, is clear: he’s a white guy, and he can run up the margins in the white parts of Westchester to outvote the Black and Hispanic voters in the district, which is why he's been so blunt about needing the district to be white enough for him to win. Good thing he's got the head of the “Independent” Redistricting Commission on payroll or that might be a tall order in the coming round of redistricting, provided the court okays it. Right now, the district is nearly maximally terrible for Bowman—instead of being willing to split the Bronx again, the special master chose to cut the Black neighborhoods in half, giving NY-16 the minimal possible amount of Bronx voters, and then included the bluest part of Westchester County in the district. Any Democratic redraw would want to, at minimum, use some of those blue towns to make NY-17 or NY-18 bluer, which would mean redder towns in NY-16, and a reduced footprint in a Democratic primary. And that's if they don't outright recreate the Long Island-Westchester district from the original, struck-down maps that pushed NY-16 far deeper into the Bronx than the current configuration.
OR-03
Oregon state Rep. Maxine Dexter is now the third candidate running to succeed Earl Blumenauer. Dexter was first elected in 2020 as a progressive-but-not-leftist candidate, supporting single payer healthcare and the Green New Deal. She defeated a candidate to her left and one to her right in that primary, and she’ll need to do the same here if she wants to make it to Congress. That's easier said than done. The Portland left already likes (now former) Multnomah County Board member Susheela Jayapal, while we can't imagine the center going for anyone other than suburban politician and anti-homeless crusader Eddy Morales. In ideological contests, candidates trying to split the difference usually get boxed out.
One reason to expect this election to turn into a high-profile ideological contest, beyond that just being the default state of Portland politics right now, is that AIPAC and DMFI are eyeing the race, according to Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel. Kassel cites “[p]ro-Israel activists in Portland” who are afraid she’s going to hold positions on the Israel/Palestine conflict similar to those of her sister, CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal. Kassel also says that both “Democratic strategists and Jewish activists in the region expect” either AIPAC or DMFI to spend in the race, something DMFI says it’s considering but AIPAC is remaining more noncommittal about.
TX-07
A former staffer to Pervez Agwan is suing the candidate for sexual harassment. Her suit charges that Agwan called her to his office alone, put his hands on her, tried to kiss her, and then blocked her from leaving some time after she refused. According to the lawsuit, this happened after she accused a different employer of sexual harassment. Pervez handled the accusations poorly, to say the least. His response, provided to Houston Landing, included a claim that his campaign had “retained an independent party to do a thorough investigation many weeks back”, which would be promising, if true, but then pivoted to calling the lawsuit part of a smear campaign being orchestrated by AIPAC, which is the kind of thing you should really have evidence of before saying to reporters. We’ve been observing AIPAC’s activities in Democratic primaries since the beginning and we can say with confidence that their electoral plays are of the blunt, public variety—cloak-and-dagger political thriller shit like faking an accusation would make more sense for an organization that doesn't have access to the infinite money glitch that is Republican donors, allowing them to blanket the airwaves.
If he has any proof that AIPAC is behind the allegations, he hasn’t been sharing formally with reporters or informally with other activists—the Houston DSA chapter first suspended campaigning for Agwan the day the allegations broke, and then voted to rescind its endorsement just days later at an emergency meeting. Agwan reacted to the impending endorsement by, a few hours before the vote, hurriedly releasing a statement disavowing DSA for supporting Hamas in a statement that was apparently released a while ago and also doesn’t seem to exist anywhere online.
While Agwan was having his “you can’t fire me, I quit” moment with a substantial outside source of volunteers for his campaign, the lawyer representing his accuser announced that she’d been in contact with other women who had worked on the campaign, and would be representing “some of those individuals” in new sexual harassment lawsuits against the campaign for the behavior of “other male individuals within the organization”. The New Republic has a harrowing story out this morning detailing some of that behavior.
On top of all of that, someone put up a website smearing and spreading lies about his accuser, calling the accusation false, and encouraging people to call her parents at phone numbers the website proved. Agwan denied any involvement in the website, and there’s no evidence he had anything to do with it, but he still managed to make things worse for himself by starting his statement denying anything to do with the website with “Just as I will not stand for the harassment of myself or my family, I will not stand for the harassment of anyone else, either.” Not “I would not stand”, but “I will not stand”, which softly implies he believes he’s being harassed by having the accusation leveled at him.
TX-18
Sheila Jackson Lee’s disastrous mayoral campaign may end up costing her her job. Two candidates had already filed to run for her seat, but only one dropped out to make way for her when she announced she’d seek reelection. (The filing deadline was right after the mayoral runoff, so she had very little time to announce her plans either way.) Gen Z Democratic activist Isaiah Martin dropped out and endorsed Jackson Lee for reelection, but former Houston At-Large City Councilor Amanda Edwards is full steam ahead with a campaign. She’s probably encouraged to pursue a campaign by the fact that as of September 30, she had roughly four times as much money in her federal campaign account as Jackson Lee did; Houston is expensive, sure, but Edwards might be able to outspend the incumbent by a significant margin. Jackson Lee did manage to win her own congressional district, according to Houston Chronicle data reporter Matt Zdun, but only by a slim 51-49 margin.
WA-06
Jefferson County Commissioner Kate Dean entered the race for WA-06 this week with the endorsements of the mayors of Port Townsend and Port Angeles, the two largest towns on the rural Olympic Peninsula. This district awkwardly connects Tacoma and Bremerton to the rural Pacific coast, and both previously declared candidates hail from the suburban Kitsap Peninsula nearer Tacoma and Seattle. State Sen. Emily Randall, whose entry we have not previously mentioned, is a progressive supported by Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and many of her legislative colleagues; Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, the frontrunner, was running a vaguely progressive gubernatorial campaign before Rep. Derek Kilmer announced his retirement. Franz has been steadily rolling out union support from the generally more conservative building trades; she recently landed Tacoma-based LIUNA Local 252, which represents construction workers.
Cook County DA
Eileen O’Neill Burke’s campaign put out a poll of the two-way race to succeed Kim Foxx as the next DA of Cook County. The poll finds O’Neill Burke ahead of Clayton Harris III 25% to 13%. After what the campaign calls “balanced candidate information” (the text is included, you can judge if it is for yourself), she leads by less, 41% to 34%, a lead that the campaign says is bolstered by Latino voters and white college age women. They also helpfully included a preview of their planned line of attack against Harris, that he was a corporate lobbyist (specifically one for gig economy parasite Lyft as they ramped up their efforts to keep their employees from actually being classified as such. Harris is the Cook County Democratic Party choice, and is running to O’Neill Burke’s left, which would make that attack especially damaging if it lands.
Alexandria Mayor
Justin Wilson announced late last week that he wouldn’t seek a third term as mayor of Alexandria, a deep-blue city of 160,000 just south of DC. Two members of the city council have already announced bids to succeed him in next year’s Democratic primary.
Vice Mayor Amy Jackson is a dissenting voice on the current council; currently, a liberal/progressive YIMBY majority governs, and Jackson is a fan of single-family zoning who bristles at criticism of the police. Alyia Gaskins is part of that governing majority, and like Jackson she quickly announced a mayoral campaign after Wilson announced he’d retire from politics. Almost instantly, Gaskins got the endorsement of the Northern Virginia AFL-CIO.