Primary School 1/7/22
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! The holiday break provided no respite from breaking news, so our apologies for the very long issue.
CA-42
Centrist ex-Republican Long Beach mayor Robert Garcia has set an extremely low bar for Democrats in the new CA-42, but the support from nearly every important politician in California, and the jaw-dropping $720K he says he raised in just the first two weeks of his campaign, means it’s going to be extremely difficult for any other Democrat to try. Despite the odds, one is: Cristina Garcia (no relation, Garcia is just by far the most common surname in the state). Cristina is an Assemblywoman with a pretty good voting record. A pretty generic LA Democrat would be an obvious choice against barely ex-GOP Robert Garcia…if it weren’t for her personal behavior. 2018 and 2019 was a rough period for Cristina Garcia. It all started out with a groping allegation that was eventually dropped for lack of substantiation; she later admitted to calling the Assembly Speaker a “homo”, saying she wanted to “punch the next Asian person I see in the face”, and using staff for personal purposes.
Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, one of the few names mentioned with the potential to save us from this shitshow, has decided against running for the seat.
IL-01
House Democrats got another two safe seat retirements since we last wrote, bringing the total number of departing House Democrats to 25. The first is Bobby Rush, a man whose legacy is difficult to summarize. Rush accomplished a tremendous amount as a Black Panther leader in 1960s and 1970s Chicago. His career in elected politics, however, brought with it a gradual moderation in the stances Rush took. By the time he endorsed Bloomberg for president in 2020, hardly anyone was surprised. While Rush remains well-respected in Chicago, his increasingly checked-out attitude towards politics means he lacks the institutional power to choose his successor. Like every incumbent, Rush had the option of announcing his retirement after the primary, thereby letting local machine leaders choose who replaced him on the ballot. The fact that he didn't means either that he lacks the institutional pull to corral enough committee votes, or that he simply doesn't care. Either explanation is plausible. Rush's announcement appears to be a genuine surprise to the Illinois political world, as redistricting was clearly done with his preferences for IL-01 in mind (though he still hated his new district.)
Between state, county, and city government, the list of potential candidates is large, but Rush's retirement is news to just about everyone, so the characteristic behind-the-scenes jockeying has only just begun. Activist Jahmal Cole and pastor Chris Butler were the two most serious candidates running against Rush. Both reaffirmed their commitment to the race after Rush exited. Who might join them? Well…
In:
Chicago Ald. Pat Dowell. Before switching to the congressional race, Dowell was running for Secretary of State, and as such will start out with an advantage from already having a campaign in place. Even though she may have been something of an upstart challenger in the mid 2000s, Dowell, currently serving her fourth term, is firmly part of the Chicago establishment by now. She’s not overtly terrible in any one way. Instead, she just operates at a background level of bad. Just in the last couple years, she’s tried to block bus expansions (because they get cars’ way), taken huge contributions from developers she’s supposed to be directly overseeing, asked for the National Guard to suppress the George Floyd protests, and opposed a measure to increase the paltry eviction notice wait period. Don’t expect anything good to come from a Rahm Emanuel supporter.
Karin Norington-Reaves. Norington-Reaves is expected to launch her campaign this weekend, potentially with a very big supporter in her corner: Bobby Rush, though that is far from certain at this point. Norington-Reaves has been in government and nonprofit work since the 90s, and was briefly the chief of staff for ex-Alderman Willie Cochran.
Stephany Rose Spaulding. Spaulding, a Chicago native, was endorsed by Justice Democrats when she was the 2018 Democratic nominee for…Colorado’s 5th Congressional District. Wait, what?
Considering:
State Sen. Jacqui Collins. Collins makes both a lot of and very little sense as a candidate. Collins cut her teeth during the initial days of Black politics as a viable electoral force in Chicago, working on both the Harold Washington mayoral and Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns. She was first elected herself in 2002 to the state Senate, where she has stayed since. However, she’s 72 now, only a few years younger than Rush. While it’s not unheard of for politicians to enter Congress in their 70s (Donna Shalala was 77 at her 2019, one year shy of the record), it is unusual - only 3 current members of Congress were in their 70s at their first inauguration, and she’d be older than all of them. If she did win, she’d be fairly progressive and wouldn’t stick around forever, which isn’t a terrible combination. While the Chicago Crusader describes her as a candidate, her actual statements in her interview with them seem to clearly indicate she’s still in the exploratory stage.
State Sen. Robert Peters. Peters may have been installed as a state senator by the South Side political machine of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, but he’s a favorite of the movement left nonetheless because he’s a DSA member with a stellar voting record and a resume including years with the grassroots progressive group Reclaim Chicago. If he runs, he’ll likely have both the left and the Preckwinkle machine firmly behind him.
State Rep. Marcus Evans. Evans is best known for trying to make Grand Theft Auto illegal in Illinois. According to Evans, GTA—as well as all “violent videogames” he was trying to ban—was to blame for high crime rates, echoing a common moral panic argument of the 90s…in the year 2021. This man is seen as a serious contender.
Deputy Governor Christian Mitchell. Before being snapped up by Gov. JB Pritzker, Mitchell spent six contentious years as a state representative, eking out wins in three grueling, expensive primaries, pitting big money and establishment forces against progressives and unions, especially the teachers’ union. He was the candidate of the former, and his value to them was demonstrated when he voted for the $100 billion pension “reform” (read: cut) in 2013. If Pritzker endorses Mitchell, he would immediately enter the top tier of candidates.
Ex-Chicago Treasurer Kurt Summers. A former finance executive, Summers, who was working for Rahm Emanuel’s top political donor, was appointed as Treasurer by Emanuel in a maneuver that essentially assured he didn’t have to run for reelection for 5 years, a Chicago classic. He was, for a long time, seen as Rahm’s top choice to succeed him, but after Emanuel’s sudden political collapse and surprise 2019 retirement, Summers exited public office with him after briefly considering, then rejecting, a mayoral bid of his own. Summers starts out with a lead in the “knowing rich people” competition, and he has deep ties to Rahmworld. Any Rahm protege is bad news, and unfortunately, Summers could be a serious threat.
Ald. Stephanie Coleman. Coleman is a freshman on the city council, winning back her mother’s old seat in 2019. In office she’s been…fine. Nothing particularly notable, and it’s not clear what she’d be like in Congress.
Ald. Michelle Harris. Harris got where she is through old-school machine connections. She was personally appointed to the Council in 2006 by Richard Daley at the behest of the once-powerful Stroger family, and has had no trouble sticking around in the high ranks of the county and state Democratic organizations—last year she just barely lost a hotly contested state Party Chair election. But she’s had a harder time with actual voters. In 2018 she ran for County Circuit Court Clerk, and despite carrying the party endorsement against an opponent who was under FBI investigation, she still lost badly. Her politics are just what you’d expect from a high-ranking machine cog.
Ald. Roderick Sawyer. The Chicago City Council is frequently a mess, but Sawyer is at least in the best third or so of the body. He’s been a voice of sanity against the push towards tough-on-crime policing, but he’s been light on distinguishing policies or causes—after 10 years on the Council, what he’s best known for is still his dad being mayor in the 80s. In 2019, he was nearly unseated by a political newcomer running to his left—the fact that he complained about a fellow alderman cooperating with the FBI in a corruption investigation didn’t help him then and won’t help him in a congressional race either.
Mentioned:
State Sen. Elgie Sims. There’s a lot to like about Sims. He spearheaded the state’s criminal justice reform package last year, and has never taken marching orders from the Chicago establishment. But he’s been talked up for higher office before, and he’s never shown much inclination towards actually going for it.
State Rep. Kam Buckner. Buckner is only in his second term in the House, but was a top Dick Durbin staffer before that, giving him a leg up in the crucial politician trait of knowing powerful people. Like many newer additions to the General Assembly, Buckner hasn’t distinguished himself much, but he did support Cory Booker for president, suggesting middle-of-the-road politics. Buckner sounds reluctant to go for it, though.
State Rep. LaMont Robinson. Look, we’re going to be honest, there just isn’t a lot to say about some of these guys. He was in the insurance industry before going into politics in 2017. This man is not interesting.
Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller. Miller would be a rarity in this race: a candidate from the suburbs. Though she lives in Lynwood, which is solidly in IL-02, her County Board district snakes its way through the 1st. Miller isn’t exactly a dynasty case, but when she was first elected in 2016 she was married to an ex-state representative (David Miller, who was nominated for State Treasurer in 2010). and had three blood relatives serving as judges. Her perspective on government is not encouraging, cheerily referring to downsizing government positions as “rightsizing” in order to avoid tax increases.
Flynn Rush, son of Bobby Rush.
Not running:
KY-03
Much to our amazement, the early rumors were right, and Kentucky Republicans have opted not to split Louisville in redistricting. This means that the open Louisville district, KY-03, will continue as a safely Democratic district, and that the current open primary there will continue as well.
MD-AG
EMILY’s List has endorsed retired judge Katie O’Malley, the wife of former Maryland governor and 2016 presidential candidate Martin O’Malley, for Maryland Attorney General. O’Malley faces U.S. Rep. Anthony Brown, Martin’s former lieutenant governor best known for fumbling the 2014 gubernatorial race to Republican Larry Hogan, in the Democratic primary.
MA-Gov
Es-state Sen. Ben Downing has dropped out of the race, surprising everyone (that he was running in the first place). That leaves only two serious declared candidates: progressive favorite Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz and nonprofit exec Danielle Allen. The frontrunner, however, is AG Maura Healey, who has technically not announced her campaign, something which hardly matters considering how clearly she’s telegraphed her intentions. December campaign finance reports show her pulling in $400K that month and finishing the year with $3.6 mil, compared to $116,000 and $248,000 for Chang-Díaz, and even less for Allen.
MA-LG
State Sen. Eric Lesser joined the field of Democrats seeking the lieutenant governor’s office this week, and immediately established himself as something of a frontrunner, raising more than $100,000 in less than two days. Lesser, an Obama administration alum, may find geography to be his biggest challenge: he’s the second major candidate from Western Massachusetts, joining his fellow state senator Adam Hinds. (Lesser represents the Springfield area, while Hinds represents the Berkshires.) The greater Boston area dominates the state of Massachusetts, accounting for a large majority of its population and an even larger majority of its Democratic voters; state Rep. Tami Gouveia, a more progressive Democrat from the outer Boston suburbs near the city of Lowell, may be able to use geography to counterbalance Lesser’s and Hinds’s financial advantages. Gouveia and Babson College lecturer Bret Bero, a Boston resident, are the only declared candidates other than Lesser and Hinds.
MI-11
Michigan’s redistricting commission acted with a commendable disregard for where incumbents lived—and as a result, Reps. Haley Stevens and Andy Levin were paired together in a deep-blue district containing many of Detroit’s inner suburbs in Oakland County. Each has a decent claim to the district: Stevens represents more of it, but Levin is the only one who actually lives in it, and neither Stevens (who represents the current 11th, an Oakland County-based swing district) nor Levin (who represents the current 9th, a light blue Macomb-Oakland combination) currently represents a majority of the district. Both are trying their luck in the new 11th; the one to root for is Levin, a Congressional Progressive Caucus member who was reportedly vetted to be Joe Biden’s Labor Secretary. As far as swing district Democrats go, you could do a lot worse than Stevens—but the new 11th is not a swing district, and Levin’s generally progressive record makes him a much better fit for a Democratic stronghold.
MI-12
Michigan’s redistricting commission shuffled the Detroit district boundaries, leaving Rashida Tlaib with a difficult choice: run in the new 12th district, the majority of which she already represents (and the remainder of which is mostly in heavily Arab Dearborn, a natural fit for the first Arab Muslim ever elected to Congress), or the new 13th, where she lives and where her longtime base in southwest Detroit is located? But Tlaib’s colleague, Rep. Brenda Lawrence, chose to make the choice much easier for her. Lawrence, who lives in the Oakland County suburb of Southfield and had little choice but to run in the new 12th (which contains Southfield) if she wanted to stay in Congress, opted to retire instead. With Lawrence out of the way, Tlaib announced she’d switch to the 12th. She might not be able to coast to reelection, though, because plenty of other politicians are considering:
State Sen. Jeremy Moss has been mentioned. Look, it may be possible to beat Rashida Tlaib, but this district isn’t going to be won by a white guy from Oakland County. Gary Peters may have pulled it off in a similar district in 2012, but Jeremy Moss is not Gary Peters, and Rashida Tlaib is not Hansen Clarke.
State Rep. Kyra Harris Bolden is considering. Bolden represents Lawrence’s home of Southfield, which is in the corner of MI-12, far away from MI-13, and even if there aren’t residency requirements for Congress, her only realistic choice is MI-12. She’s been a quiet member of the legislature and has all the makings of a Congressional backbencher.
Oakland County deputy executive Rudy Hobbs. Hobbs was nearly MI-14’s Congressmember instead of Brenda Lawrence. In 2014, Hobbs, then a state Rep. ran for the open seat, losing by a narrow 35.6% to 32.4%. Hobbs was the business community’s candidate in that race, even endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce. His base was in Oakland County, which has mostly been removed from MI-12.
Westland Mayor Bill Wild has been mentioned, and we have no idea why. He ran in the 2018 primary, and did abysmally in the city (and honestly pretty poorly in suburbs outside of Westland, which is now in the 12th.) He has zero shot against Tlaib and zero base in the 13th.
MI-13
Tlaib’s switch opens up the 13th, which includes southern and eastern Detroit as well as a diverse collection of suburbs. But the 13th got its first candidate before Tlaib even announced she’d switch districts. It’s time to ponder the enigma that is Shri Thanedar.
We’ve only briefly mentioned him before, because his run for governor was in 2018, a year before this newsletter started, but Shri Thanedar is one of those characters you don’t forget. Thanedar was a totally unknown pharma millionaire who burst onto the Michigan political scene by desperately turning the money hose everywhere he could in an attempt to become governor. Despite claiming to be “the most progressive Democrat running for governor”, no one in Michigan actually bought that, especially given his animal-murdering corporate past, and the presence of Abdul El-Sayed in the race, the candidate who all the progressive groups were actually excited about. Mid-campaign revelations that he enthusiastically attended a Marco Rubio rally in 2016 were surprising but not shocking given how obvious a political act this was for him. Thanedar came in third with 18%, doing best near Detroit, possibly because he’d been secretly buying off local radio hosts during the primary. It’s hard to describe Shri’s odd stage presence, his deluge of ads, or how damn weird that whole campaign was. (If you don’t have the phrase "Shri is me" lodged permanently in your brain, consider yourself lucky).
In 2020, he set his sights lower, running for an open state house seat in Detroit. The local establishment, figuring there was no reason to piss off the rich guy over a single house seat, put up only half-hearted opposition to him, and he won 35% to 20%. He's done little of note with his year in the House, except, evidently, plan a run for Congress. Thanedar first made noises about challenging Tlaib in November but no one took that bluster too seriously. Until now.
Luckily for Detroit, there are also a bunch of far more normal potential candidates:
Detroit School Board member Sherry Gay-Dagnogo is running for one of the two Detroit congressional seats. The 13th makes way more sense for her, so we’re going to assume that’s it. Gay-Dagnogo was previously a state represenative from 2015-2021, and was briefly a candidate to succeed John Conyers in the current MI-13. In 2020, she personally appealed to Donald Trump to have ludicrously corrupt former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pardoned, and nearly ran for mayor herself last year.
State Rep. Abraham Aiyash, whose district is entirely within the new 13th congressional district, is “not ruling anything out.” Aiyash, a DSA-affiliated freshman, would be a fantastic representative, but would also leave Michigan without any Black members of Congress, something many Black leaders are concerned about.
Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist. Gilchrist challenged the ludicrously incompetent City Clerk in 2017, and, despite being a first-time candidate supported largely by disempowered progressive organizations, nearly unseated her, a performance so impressive he was subsequently snapped up by Gretchen Whitmer as her LG candidate in a savvy move to undercut her opponents' bases of Detroit (Thanedar) and progressives (El-Sayed). Gilchrist has never had to pin himself to any particular policy stances, but Detroit progressives seem to like him. He voted for Bernie in 2016 but grabbed headlines for endorsing Joe Biden 4 years later. Reading between the lines, it sounds like he would have preferred to avoid that race altogether, but Whitmer's endorsement the day before forced his hand. Regardless of his presidential tastes, he's younger, didn't come up through any political establishment, and is the only possible contender who would come in with the platform and connections to immediately rival Thanedar.
Ex-state Sen. Ian Conyers. Conyers is, unintentionally, a major reason Tlaib is in Congress today. Ian, then a state senator, tried to sail through the primary on last name alone, splitting off much of Brenda Jones's Black Detroit base. His 7% of the vote only earned him 5th place, but proved decisive. In 2020, he supported Jones's incredibly doomed rematch attempt. If he couldn't put a real campaign together in 2018, he's not going to do so now.
State Sen. Sylvia Santana. Santana has largely been a loyal party foot soldier, but she still isn’t fully trusted by all the party—a result of her husband, who she followed into the State House in 2017, constantly siding with GOP governor Rick Snyder until he and the Michigan Dems more or less divorced each other in 2015. Regardless, her west Detroit district, which includes Dearborn, would be a much better base to launch a campaign for MI-12 than MI-13.
Detroit City Council President Mary Sheffield. Sheffield was elected president by the Council the same day that Lawrence announced her retirement. She's perceived as a progressive in the context of city politics, which, yes, merely means she clears the low bars of not being obviously corrupt or as much of a corporate stooge as Mayor Mike Duggan, but she's a progressive in the national context too. She spearheaded the city's reparations initiative and endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2020, when absolutely none of the Detroit establishment did.
Former Detroit Chief of Police Ralph Godbee Jr. is considering. Godbee was chief for only two years when was forced out of the job after news broke that he was sleeping with one of his employees. He spent several years as a religious radio host until a messy firing in 2019.
Former Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones may have another run in her. She famously won the special primary election for MI-13, but not the concurrently held regular election, meaning she spent a few weeks in Congress to fill out Conyers’s unexpired term, before Tlaib took office. She attempted to challenge Tlaib for the office in 2020, in what turned out to be an inglorious flop. She failed to raise money, couldn’t pull in any labor endorsements, and wound up losing by 33%. Jones is one of the most powerful creatures of the Detroit machine, and if this turns into a de facto Jones vs. Thanedar race, it will rival CA-42 in shitshow potential.
Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey has also been mentioned, and again, we are skeptical. Winfrey can barely hold off negative news coverage long enough to win reelection in an office she and her friends count the votes for. We suppose it’s fair to mention that she challenged John Conyers in 2016 and only lost 61-39, but that was far more about the diminishing power of the Conyers name than her in particular.
Detroit Director of Customer Service Adrian Tonon. Detroit “Night Mayor” Adrian Tonon is currently running for Lansing-based MI-07, where he will lose the primary badly to Elissa Slotkin. MI-13 Democratic Party Chair Jonathan Kinloch thinks it would make sense for Tonon to run in MI-13 instead, and we agree, even if he would also lose that race badly.
MD-Gov
Former Republican Anne Arundel County Executive Laura Neuman (2013-2015, appointed) has filed to run for governor as a Democrat. Running for an important office not long after holding a different one for the other party is always an act of cynicism, but in a deep blue state like Maryland it’s pure contempt for voters. Neuman was not some moderate Republican who can claim she left the party over extremism in the age of Trump. In her first election after being appointed, she went through a Republican primary. She boasted that she cut both taxes and government programs, grandstanded against the so-called “rain tax” (a small fee for wastewater runoff to protect the Chesapeake Bay that the state GOP made into their signature complaint against Democrats in 2014), and spent the campaign hammering her opponent on voting for a program that she said resembled Obamacare. It’s not ideological in any way, but during her election night primary, after it became clear she’d lost, she told reporters and supporters she was going to step out for a few minutes, and then left for the night, which is a very funny way to react to almost winning her first political contest ever. A few years later, GOP governor Larry Hogan gave her a minor state appointment.
So what’s Neuman’s angle here? Who knows. She would be the only woman in the race, but beyond that, who knows. Boredom? A steadfast belief in the power of the suburban moderate? Your guess is as good as ours.
NJ-08
The inexorable forward march of Robert J. Menendez, the son of Sen. Bob Menendez, continues apace. Governor Phil Murphy and Senator Cory Booker both endorsed Menendez for Congress weeks ago, despite the fact that he only actually launched his campaign yesterday.
NY-Gov
It’s hard to say that NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’s campaign is going well, exactly. He’s polling in the single digits, and incumbent Kathy Hochul has sewn up an incredible amount of cross-ideological support. But Williams demonstrated this week that he’s more than just a protest candidate. Five members of the NYC Council endorsed his bid, and we also learned that Eric Adams, who has so far been silent on the race, is at least open to supporting Williams as well.
NC-06
Two leading candidates for this Research Triangle district announced their fundraising hauls for the fourth quarter of 2021: Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam and state Sen. Valerie Foushee. Allam, a favorite of North Carolina progressives, raised “over $300K”, which is not actually a concrete number or even a particularly useful estimate; however, whether she raised $300,001 or $399,999, that’s a pretty good amount for a 28-year-old first-term county commissioner running as a Squad-style progressive and relying on a lot of small-dollar donors. Far less impressive is the number announced by Foushee, who is something of an establishment favorite: she raised about $162,000. Now, Allam did have a bit of a head start—she entered the race a week before Foushee, and this was a truncated quarter for both candidates because this race only began with Rep. David Price’s retirement announcement in October. But that isn’t a sufficient excuse for Allam pulling in roughly double Foushee’s total; Foushee got badly outraised, plain and simple. $162,000 is far from terrible, but it’s not what you want when you’re the establishment favorite and the progressive has way more money to spend.
OR-Gov
Let’s all point and laugh at Nicholas Kristof. A sweatshop-loving, sex worker-hating NYT columnist, Kristof decided last year that his opinions were simply too important to keep contained in a newspaper column, and chose to run for governor of his native Oregon. Sure, he hadn’t lived in Oregon in many years, but he was from there, so what’s to stop him from running?
Well, his New York voter registration, for one thing. And his New York driver’s license. And his New York state tax returns. That was the determination of the Elections Division at the office of the Oregon Secretary of State, which declared Kristof ineligible to run for governor in 2022 for failing to meet the residency requirement specified in the Oregon Constitution (which state that anyone seeking the office of governor must have lived continuously in Oregon for the three years immediately preceding the date of their election.) Kristof immediately promised to sue; whether or not he wins that lawsuit, this is all incredibly funny to us.
OR-04
This race may finally get an actual progressive candidate. Attorney, climate advocate, and 2020 primary challenger Doyle Canning has announced an exploratory committee to consider running for this now-open seat anchored by the college towns of Eugene and Corvallis, turned safely Democratic in redistricting. Oregon Secretary of Labor Val Hoyle and Airbnb executive Andrew Kalloch weren’t exactly impressing us; Canning is much more our speed.
TX-35
Greg Casar’s congressional campaign is starting to leave one with the impression of an unstoppable freight train. The Austin city councilor announced that he raised $460,000 in the two months since starting his campaign; in addition, he got an endorsement from the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, the first endorsement of a non-incumbent from the caucus’s political arm in the 2022 cycle.