AL-02: In contrast to the expensive contests in California and Texas, the race for Alabama’s new Democratic, Black-majority House seat is almost quiet. State House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels has a slim financial advantage that’s more than outweighed by what the cryptocurrency PAC Protect Progress has spent for Shomari Figures.
CA-Sen: If you’ve ever given to Adam Schiff, go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.
CA-16: Multiple candidates in this race made a sneaky move that self-funders often do—wait until right after the final regular filing deadline to toss a pile of their own money into the campaign bank account. Joe Simitian wrote his campaign a $250,000 check a few days after the filing deadline, and Peter Dixon gave his campaign another $150,000 on the same day.
CA-18: Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Chairwoman Charlene Concepción Nijmeh saw her fundraising slow down from last quarter, but she gave her campaign an additional $67,000.
CA-25: Like we said after year-end reports, if Oscar Ortiz makes it past March it won’t be because of money.
CA-26: Yawn. Julia Brownley’s fine.
CA-29: By far the best quarter for upstart leftist Angelica Dueñas across the three election cycles she’s been running for this seat, and a decidedly underwhelming one from Assemb. Luz Rivas. The picture is even better for Dueñas when you look under the hood: Rivas may have outspent her, but a sizable share of that spending is on consultants, catering, and travel expenses, while virtually all of Dueñas’s spending went to mailers and digital advertising.
CA-30: Same as it ever was, state Sen. Anthony Portantino is at the front of the pack, with self-funding Boy Meets World actor Ben Savage, Assemb. Laura Friedman, LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin, and former LA City Attorney Mike Feuer rounding out the six-figure spending club.
CA-31: Listen, if former Rep. Gil Cisneros doesn’t at least place first after spending all that money, that’s on him.
CA-34: David Kim had very little money the first two times he nearly defeated Jimmy Gomez. This time is no different.
TX-07: Oddly, Pervez Agwan’s fundraising hasn’t been hurt at all by the sexual misconduct allegations, but he’s kept up a high burn rate.
TX-18: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is in very serious trouble. She’s being outraised and outspent to the very end, and Amanda Edwards still hasn’t spent most of the cash she’s stockpiled.
TX-32: As bleak as that is, this is clearly a two-person race between Julie Johnson and Brian Williams, but we already knew that.
Outside Spending Tracker
AL-02
$289K of TV ads and $133K of mailers for Shomari Figures from Protect Progress. The crypto PAC has now spent $1.3M to elect Figures.
CA-16
$112K of TV ads and $26K of digital ads for Peter Dixon from Next Generation Action Fund. The With Honor Fund/Jeff Bezos-affiliated group has now spent $1.3M to elect Dixon.
$72K of digital ads for Evan Low from Voter Protection Project (VPP). VPP wasn’t active as much in primaries last cycle, but we distinctly remember them for spending $250,000 on Henry Cuellar in the 2020 TX-28 primary. They appear to us to be used as an intermediary for other Dem-aligned PACs rather than an autonomous organization in primaries.
$26K of mailers for Evan Low from Equality PAC
$100K of digital ads for Evan Low from Equality California Votes
CA-29
$50K of mailers for Luz Rivas from the Cooperative of American Physicians Independent Expenditure Committee
CA-30
$97K of mailers supporting Anthony Portantino and attacking Laura Friedman from Residents for Strong, Ethical Leadership. The PAC was formed a couple weeks ago, which means we have no information on its funder(s).
$81K of mailers for Laura Friedman from Fighting For Californians PAC. The PAC is now up to $255K spent for Friedman, and thanks to a pre-primary filing we can confidently assert this effort is funded by the carpenters’ unions, something we’d previously only speculated to be true.
$20K of mailers and $10K of digital ads for Jirair Ratevosian from Democrats Serve
TX-18
$31K of canvassing and $9K in assorted expenses (mostly printing) for Sheila Jackson Lee from the Texas Organizing Project PAC
TX-32
$60K of mailers and $52K of digital ads supporting Julie Johnson, as well as $2,500 of mailers attacking Brian Williams from Equality PAC. Equality PAC has now spent $194K to elect Johnson.
$35K of digital ads and $47K of mailers for Brian Williams from Principled Veterans Fund. The With Honor/Jeff Bezos-affiliated group has now spent $210K to elect Williams.
$50K of mailers supporting Julie Johnson and attacking Brian Williams from No Vote Left Behind PAC. NVLB is a traditional PAC with contribution limits instead of an unlimited Super PAC, and appears to be one of the slew of liberal pro-Democrat/anti-GOP PACs that popped up since 2016. Why they’re spending in a primary we have no idea.
CA-Sen
The Public Policy Institute of California released what is presumably their final poll of the Senate contest. The results are good-ish news for Katie Porter, in that she’s actually in second place in a poll again, but bad news in that it represents skyrocketing growth for top Republican Steve Garvey, who is only 1% behind her. Changes from their December poll in parentheses.
Adam Schiff: 24% (+4)
Katie Porter: 19% (+3)
Steve Garvey (R): 18% (+8)
Barbara Lee: 10% (+2)
Eric Early (R): 4% (+1)
This contest may come down to relative party turnout. A scenario where Republicans have higher turnout than usual because their presidential primary hasn’t finished, while Democrats don’t experience a similar bump, probably means Garvey beats Porter and Adam Schiff is functionally elected Senator in March. More even turnout means it’ll be close and the runoff could still be Porter-Schiff. (Barbara Lee, unfortunately, appears to be out of the running.) While she appeared to be pulling up to Porter in the polls as moderately politically engaged voters started tuning in late last year, her lack of money, and therefore lack of ads, stalled her momentum, and the less engaged voters now taking notice of the race are largely picking between Porter and Schiff, it seems. Lee’s been 4th in the polls all year, and at least 5% behind Porter in every single one.
DE-AL
State Treasurer Colleen Davis has dropped out of the race for Delaware’s lone House seat, citing recent medical troubles and a need to spend more time with her family. This leaves state Sen. Sarah McBride, the clear frontrunner, with only one opponent, Delaware State Housing Authority Director Eugene Young Jr.
IL-11
The United Auto Workers (UAW) Illinois made a surprising late endorsement in the 11th Congressional primary, backing progressive challenger Qasim Rashid against incumbent Bill Foster. Readers who were following primary elections in 2020 may remember the scare Foster had on election night, when then-Will County Board member Rachel Ventura held him to a 59-41 margin, but the world of Illinois politics has largely ignored Foster’s current opponent, despite Rashid’s stronger fundraising. This is probably because Foster’s new district replaced his weakest territory, the diverse working-class suburb of Joliet, with a large swath of white exurban Chicagoland, theoretically much better for Foster. The UAW clearly believes Rashid has a shot if they're willing to stick their neck out for him.
MD-Sen
Rep. David Trone’s campaign has released another poll showing him leading Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, which marks the third time he’s done that. This one has a much more sizable lead than the other two, showing him ahead by a margin of 52% to 31%. The poll was taken Feb 13 to 18, coinciding with the first few days of Alsobrooks running ads.
NJ-Sen
It would be wrong to say things couldn’t possibly be going worse for Tammy Murphy. The First Lady of New Jersey still has a lot going for her: she’s a legendary fundraiser married to the most powerful person in New Jersey, she’s backed by most of New Jersey’s powerful urban political machines, and she’s trying to become New Jersey’s first female senator, which matters to Democratic voters. This is not the start to convention season that her campaign envisioned, though.
After a stinging loss at the Monmouth County convention in early February, the Murphys had time to regroup and reconsider their strategy. Their first big change became public last week: Tammy Murphy’s campaign manager, Max Glass, was unceremoniously let go, with no replacement lined up. (Glass happens to be the husband of Phil Murphy’s 2021 campaign manager; nepotism is evidently a Murphy family value.) The Murphy campaign also committed to a strategy it had been tentatively floating after the Monmouth loss: if it looks to them like Andy Kim will win a convention, hastily offer to share the prized ballot line as a Hail Mary play. At conventions in Burlington County on Saturday and Hunterdon County on Sunday, Murphy allies tried to get a line-sharing deal past the convention—in Hunterdon with just minutes’ notice, sprang upon unsuspecting convention-goers by Hunterdon County Democratic Chair Arlene Quiñones Perez right before voting for the Senate endorsement was set to begin. Both counties rejected the deal and voted to endorse Kim: 90% of convention delegates in Kim’s home of Burlington County voted for their hometown congressman, and 62% of Hunterdon delegates voted for Kim. (8% of Burlington delegates and 33% of Hunterdon delegates voted for the first lady.) That’s an 0-2 record for the line-sharing Hail Mary so far, but Burlington and Hunterdon are both quite Kim-friendly—counties with narrow majorities for Kim may not be so hostile to a local truce. If Team Murphy tries to pitch delegates in Bergen, Atlantic, or Cumberland on a line-sharing deal, it would be a sign of weakness even in counties with strong machines. (Bergen, coming this Monday, is shaping up to be the biggest convention fight of the Senate race; while Murphy has the advantage, that there’s even a chance she could lose a county like Bergen with a strong patronage operation that employs a critical share of convention-goers is a bad sign. Before Bergen goes, lineless Sussex and tiny Warren vote on Saturday and Sunday, respectively; Kim should win the party endorsement easily in both of those red, exurban/rural counties, though only Warren’s endorsement comes with a party ballot line.)
Speaking of the line, Kim made a bold move to keep it in the headlines and potentially topple the only-in-New-Jersey system once and for all: he filed suit in federal court, seeking an injunction against the system’s use in the 2024 primaries and a ruling on the constitutionality of the line. Kim’s lawsuit, which is joined by NJ-02 candidate Carolyn Rush and NJ-03 candidate Sarah Schoengood, points out that the practice of “bracketing”—candidates agreeing to be placed in the same ballot column, effectively agreeing to run as a slate—forces candidates to choose between taking the hefty electoral penalty of running off the line and running on a slate with people they may not agree with. The fate of the line now rests in the hands of federal judge Zahid Quraishi; a timeline for a decision, either on the preliminary injunction or the underlying merits of the case, is not yet clear.
A final note on that fundraising skill we mentioned earlier: Tammy Murphy’s fundraising ability does come with a downside. She has long been a major asset to her husband’s political career for her ability to woo donors and network behind the scenes, but this is the first time the Murphys have been subject to the tighter contribution limits of federal campaigns, which make it more difficult to sustain a campaign entirely on large checks from wealthy donors. It’s no problem for Kim—whose average donation in January was just $45.14, according to ActBlue data—but for Murphy it might be: her average donation was $1,033.79, meaning many of her donors are likely to be donating at or near the federal maximum of $3,300. Once a donor has given $3,300 to a campaign, they cannot give any more (well, they can, but that money has to be reserved for the general election, not the primary—it’s complicated, but the gist is once you’ve given $3,300, anything more that you give is off-limits to a campaign until after they’ve won their primary.) Murphy will have to find more and more donors willing to write large checks for her (or, less likely, galvanize a small-donor base like Kim’s), or she’ll have to rely on her ironically-named super PAC, Garden State Integrity, which was set up by longtime Murphy aide and confidant Joe Kelley, and which can take unlimited donations.
NJ-03
Twenty years ago, Assemb. Herb Conaway tried to win election to Burlington County’s congressional seat. At the time, Burlington County was still purple, and the district also included much of conservative Ocean County, so Conaway won the Democratic nomination but lost by nearly 30 points to Republican incumbent Jim Saxton. Today, Burlington leans Democratic, and the 3rd congressional district traded Ocean County for bluer parts of central New Jersey; the winner of the Democratic nomination will be a solid favorite to succeed Andy Kim in Congress, and Democrats are poised to give Conaway a second try. At Burlington County’s Democratic convention, Conaway comfortably defeated fellow Assemb. Carol Murphy for the party endorsement and the coveted ballot line. It remains to be seen whether Murphy will carry her campaign to the June primary without any ballot lines—Mercer County holds one of the state’s latest conventions, and she could still theoretically get the Mercer line—but if she does, she faces a steep uphill climb, even with the Mercer line, since Conaway already has the lines in Burlington and Monmouth, which together account for over three-fourths of the district’s Democratic voters.
NY-16
Did you hear? New York Democrats spent over a year and what was probably a small fortune on lawyers to get the chance to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries, succeeded, and used that chance to…make basically no changes from the court-drawn map. Put the entire party in Politics Jail. The only change for NY-16 was swapping out ~30,000 residents from the Bronx neighborhood of Wakefield for Co-Op City, a different Bronx neighborhood. The effect it will have on Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s primary is negligible.
Last week, the deadline for voters to register for a political party passed, and the electorate for the primary is locked in. 1,300 Republicans in Westchester County switched parties to vote in the Democratic congressional primary, a boon to Westchester County Executive George Latimer. While efforts to encourage party-switching for primaries happen with some degree of frequency, 1,300 is a substantial result for those kinds of efforts.
TX-07, TX-18, TX-SD-15, TX-HD-146
Last week, the Hobby School of Public Affairs at University of Houston released a shocking polling result in the Harris County DA primary, showing challenger Sean Teare ahead of incumbent Kim Ogg 59%-21%. This week, they released the full poll, which includes findings in several contested primaries.
In the 7th congressional district, incumbent Lizzie Pannill Fletcher leads challenger Pervez Agwan 78% to 11%. Agwan’s initially promising campaign was entirely derailed by sexual harassment allegations against both him and a top staffer.
In the 18th congressional district, incumbent Sheila Jackson Lee is leading former Houston City Councilor Amanda Edwards by a margin of only 43%-38%. The crosstabs here suggest a hangover from the mayoral contest; Jackson Lee carries the Black and youth vote, while Edwards cleans up elsewhere.
The 15th Senate district appears to be a three way race for two runoff slots. Progressive nurse/organizer Molly Cook and state Rep. Jarvis Johnson both take 18% of the vote, while former congressional candidate Todd Litton takes 15%. All other candidates were in single digits. The poll suggests that Johnson's strength lies with Black voters and Litton’s with white ones, but Cook’s coalition is more balanced.
Finally, and we’re encouraging you to take this with a massive grain of salt, a 168-person subsample found transphobic state Rep. Shawn Thierry leading her top challenger Lauren Ashley Simmons by a margin of 40% to 16%. With a sample size that small, the margin of error is so large the poll basically says that Thierry is ahead, but whether she wins outright or heads to a runoff with Simmons is in question.
WA-06
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s BOLD PAC has endorsed state Sen. Emily Randall, who is vying to become Tacoma and western Washington’s next representative alongside Washington Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, the frontrunner in the race, and Jefferson County Commissioner Kate Dean.
IL-HD-32
State Rep. Cyril Nichols has withdrawn from reelection, leaving public defender Lisa Davis unopposed in the primary. Nichols was appointed to the seat in 2021 and almost immediately broke with the party on trans issues, but avoided a primary challenge in 2022, only to then become one of the leading voices opposing migrant shelters, which appears to have been the final straw. Unions backed Davis earlier this month, and House Speaker Chris Welch recently began spending to elect her as well, which is likely what prompted Nichols to exit. He will not be missed.
Baltimore City Council President
Baltimore City Councilor Zeke Cohen is gaining steam in his efforts to unseat scandal-tarred Council President Nick Mosby, winning endorsements from the Metro Baltimore AFL-CIO and State’s Attorney Ivan Bates. (That second one is unsurprising, considering Bates unseated Mosby’s wife Marilyn in 2022.) Cohen is also out with an internal poll showing him ahead of Mosby 31% to 22%, with former Baltimore City Councilor Shannon Sneed in third at 18%.
Bridgeport Mayor
Bridgeport’s endless mayoral saga appears to finally be over. The exhausted voters of Bridgeport shrugged their way to the polls this week, electing Joe Ganim to another term as mayor over John Gomes, 59% to 38%.