Primary School 3/1 and 2021 Mayoral Overview

On which unfortunate functionaries America's cities get to cyberbully next year, Kurt Schrader's role as the new Henry Cuellar, and Andrew Cuomo being awful

We’re sorry, we’re sorry, it’s very long again. In this issue, we’re looking at some of the year’s big-city mayoral elections (except for NYC, which has already gotten an overview.) After this, we plan to revert to the normal schedule of regular issues which are primarily composed of news items. (We also have a subscriber-only issue, examining the electoral coalitions formed in 2020’s most hotly-contested House primaries, coming out today! Hit the button below and give us some money if you want to read it.)

But before we get to the mayoral elections…

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Election updates

Special elections

A couple of state legislative special elections are taking place tomorrow. One, CA-SD-30, is expected to be a snooze, with Assemb. Sydney Kamlager a strong favorite over progressive, DSA-backed Culver City Vice Mayor Daniel Lee. (Though Lee’s performance could serve as a barometer of his strength in the special election for Kamlager’s seat that would result from her winning; Culver City is in Kamlager’s Assembly district.) The other, for the Massachusetts House’s 19th Suffolk district, is a mess. Let’s recap:

Last week, progressive union organizer Juan Jaramillo was running an upstart challenge for the seat left open by the resignation of longtime Speaker Bob DeLeo. The establishment favorite was Democratic State Committee member and state legislative aide Valentino “Tino” Capobianco, while state House staffer Alicia DelVento and conservative Jeffrey Turco rounded out the field. That is...not the case anymore.

First, multiple allegations that Capobianco had committed sexual harassment came out. Capobianco’s establishment endorsers, such as former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, state AG Maura Healey, and state Sen. Paul Feeney (Capobianco’s former boss) quickly began to drop him.

Then, Jaramillo really consolidated progressive support, adding U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, state Reps. Liz Miranda and Mike Connolly, and state Sens. Becca Rausch, Sonia Chang-Díaz, and Jamie Eldridge (among others) to his already-formidable list of endorsements. Joining them? Moderates and members of state House leadership, like Frank Moran, who very obviously made the calculation that one more progressive in the legislature was preferable to a sexual predator (Capobianco) or a Trump supporter (Turco.) Why there’s been little interest in DelVento, who is not as progressive as Jaramillo but lacks the baggage of Capobianco or Turco, is anybody’s guess; we assume she isn’t seen as a viable candidate.

This all boils down to one thing: progressives’ chance of winning the old speaker’s seat jumped significantly this week. Tomorrow night, we’ll find out if the Massachusetts left gets a desperately needed morale boost after a 2020 primary cycle in which wins for the Massachusetts left were few and far between (with the exception of Ed Markey’s victory over Joe Kennedy III, which should not be minimized or dismissed.)

Endorsement updates

LA-02: SEIU, state Sen. and former U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, and Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng (R) for Troy Carter

Troy Carter continues to demonstrate that he is the most conservative choice, notching a major Republican endorsement: the parish president (essentially the county executive) of Jefferson Parish, a large, reddish suburban parish west of New Orleans. LA-02 includes the most Democratic parts of Jefferson Parish.

OH-11: Amalgamated Transit Union and Akron DSA for Nina Turner. The ATU is a much more establishment, cautious union, which means Turner is either playing on some relationships she developed while in local politics, or, hopefully, she’s seen as a prohibitive frontrunner.

NYC Council District 13: Bronx Democratic Party for Marjorie Velázquez

This one strikes us as the Bronx machine giving up after the retirement of Mark Gjonaj, conceding this seat (which, as we’ve discussed, almost perfectly overlaps with AOC’s section of the Bronx) to Velázquez, the progressive who nearly beat Gjonaj four years ago.

NYC Council District 15: Sunrise Movement NYC for Elisa Crespo (3/23 special election)

Council Member and likely Speaker candidate Carlina Rivera for Jenny Low (CD-01), Julie Menin (CD-05), Carmen De La Rosa (CD-10, incumbent), Marjorie Velázquez (CD-13), Pierina Sanchez (CD-14), Althea Stevens (CD-16), Amanda Farías (CD-18), Sandra Ung (CD-20), Lynn Schulman (CD-29), Jennifer Gutiérrez (CD-34), Crystal Hudson (CD-35), Sandy Nurse (CD-37), Alexa Avilés (CD-38)

Most of these aren’t too out of character, but endorsing Nurse is eyebrow-raising (in a good way): Nurse is challenging one of Rivera’s colleagues, Council Member Darma Diaz, from the left. It could indicate the arguable frontrunner for the speakership is amenable to the left, thinks Diaz is toast, or both.

Working Families Party for Austin Shafran (CD-19), John Choe (CD-20), Amoy Barnes (CD-49), and Amit Singh Bagga and Jesse Laymon (CD-26, ranked-choice endorsement with Bagga first, Laymon second). The Choe endorsement makes the Council races an actual battle between WFP and U.S. Rep. Grace Meng, intentionally or not. They had already endorsed Aleda Gagarin, the spouse of her 2020 primary challenger, in CD-29; now they’ve endorsed against her chief of staff in CD-20 as well.

PSC-CUNY (representing 30,000 workers at the City University of New York) for Brad Lander (NYC Comptroller), Christopher Marte (CD-01), Erik Bottcher (CD-03), Keith Powers (CD-04, incumbent), Julie Menin (CD-05), Maria Ordoñez (CD-07) Diana Ayala (CD-08, incumbent) Tiffany Cabán (CD-22), Jaslin Kaur (CD-23)

The Road to Justice Coalition (Make the Road Action, SEIU 1199, and Community Voices Heard Power) for Marjorie Velázquez (CD-13), Ischia Bravo and Elisa Crespo (CD-15, 3/23 special election), John Choe (CD-20), Shekar Krishnan (CD-25), Amit Singh Bagga (CD-26), Lincoln Restler (CD-33), and Sandy Nurse (CD-37)

Council Member and NYC Comptroller candidate Brad Lander (CD-39) for Sandy Nurse (CD-37)

NYC Comptroller: Assemblymembers Khaleel Anderson, Bobby Carroll, and Yuh-Line Niou; Churches United for Fair Housing; and Council candidates Jen Gutiérrez (CD-34, Williamsburg/Bushwick) and Sandy Nurse (CD-37, Bushwick/East New York) for Brad Lander

Also on the topic of the Comptroller’s race, it sure looks like City Council Speaker Corey Johnson is in, months after his mayoral bid tanked before it began. Corey Johnson’s habit of progressive posturing paired with less-than-impressive follow-ups could be an issue of its own (it certainly played a role in his mayoral bid’s sudden implosion.) We’ll save more words about him for when he actually announces.

OR-05

Nancy Pelosi pretty much held her entire caucus together on the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, which doesn’t go nearly as far as needed but is also a lot better than nothing. I mean, she lost Jared Golden’s vote, but Jared Golden represents a rural Trump district and is probably the only Democrat who can hold it down, so we might be stuck with him. She also lost Kurt Schrader’s vote, which is totally inexcusable. (For Schrader. We have many issues with Pelosi, but it would be silly to act as if Kurt Schrader’s defection is her fault on a vote where she kept all the usual suspects in line, even Henry Cuellar and Josh Gottheimer.)

He was mad that it helped too many people. 2020 primary challenger Mark Gamba, the mayor of the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, is running again, and in the name of all that is holy, he deserves much more support than he got last time, because Kurt Schrader is a nightmare.

IL-HD-22

Last week, we talked about Edward Guerra Kodatt’s appointment to the state House to succeed Mike Madigan. That didn’t last.

After just two days and change, Kodatt resigned at Madigan’s behest, due to unspecified “questionable conduct,” and was replaced by Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar, who was the preferred candidate of Ald. Silvana Tabares at the nominating convention which chose Kodatt. As in the first nominating convention, Madigan alone chose his successor; he cast a majority of the weighted vote at the nominating convention. This debacle doesn’t inspire confidence in the Madigan machine’s ability to keep it together in 2022 if progressives decide to challenge Guerrero-Cuellar.

NJ-SD-37

Assemb. Gordon Johnson, the choice of the Bergen County Democratic machine, is now whining at progressive groups for not following proper process in their endorsements of fellow District 37 Assemb. Valerie Vainieri Huttle. New Jersey Working Families state director Sue Altman rightly points out it’s rich for a machine choice to complain about the democratic process.

NY-Gov

So this blew up since last week, huh.

Two former aides to Gov. Andrew Cuomo have come forward to accuse him of sexual harassment: 2020 congressional candidate and 2021 Manhattan Borough President candidate Lindsey Boylan, who worked as an economic advisor to the governor for several years in his second term (he is now in his third); and former executive assistant Charlotte Bennett, who worked for him just last year, at the height of New York’s COVID outbreak. Both women’s stories are harrowing; you may or may not want to read them. They are difficult to read.

We believe Lindsey Boylan, and we believe Charlotte Bennett. Period.

Cuomo has issued a number of denials, non-denials, and misdirections; he indirectly painted his harassment of Charlotte Bennett, which included asking the 25-year-old Bennett if she had ever slept with older men and telling her he was open to relationships with women in their 20s, as mentorship; Boylan, never one to mince words, responded to this weak deflection by saying, “Andrew Cuomo wouldn’t understand the concept of mentorship if it punched him in the face.” Bennett herself wasn’t pleased, either: she said Cuomo “has refused to acknowledge or take responsibility for his predatory behavior” and is “wield[ing] his power to avoid justice.”

State legislators of both parties, including the leaders of the Democratic and Republican conferences, called for an independent investigation; they have been joined by New York members of Congress ranging from moderate Kathleen Rice to mainstream liberal (and former Boylan opponent) Jerry Nadler to democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cuomo’s response to the demands for an independent investigation was to try and rig it by appointing a former federal judge, Barbara Jones, who works with a close Cuomo ally; when the rest of the state’s government shot that down, he tried to make it a joint decision between New York Attorney General Tish James, previously a Cuomo ally but elected in her own right and ultimately beholden only to the voters, and Court of Appeals Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, a Cuomo appointee. State leaders shot that one down, too—most importantly, James herself demanded sole authority to appoint the investigator. Cuomo relented, and provided the necessary referral (that the AG, an independently elected executive official, needs a referral from the governor to investigate the governor, is a separate issue, albeit one that there seems to be an appetite to fix.) And Cuomo’s most reliable Albany antagonists—not Republicans, who get along with him from time to time, but progressive Democrats, who he’s always hated—have been strongest in their opposition: Manhattan Assemb. Yuh-Line Niou, Bronx state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, and Queens Assemb. Ron Kim are among the small but growing faction of New York politicians who have called for Cuomo’s impeachment or resignation outright. They are right.

Since Boylan and Bennett came forward, a number of other individuals have come forward with stories not of sexual harassment, but intimidation (along the lines of what Kim alleged after he criticized Cuomo’s coverup of nursing home deaths during COVID.) Obama EPA official Judith Enck told the Albany Times-Union of repeated intimidation from the Cuomo administration, including over an unfavorable EPA evaluation of fracking and a case of drinking water contamination in rural Hoosick Falls, New York; former local reporters Ayla Ferrone and Lindsay Nielsen spoke of threats from the Cuomo administration in response to insufficiently fawning coverage. The entire Cuomo orbit is a menace, following in the lead of the man at the top. The sexual harassment allegations are newly out in the open (though, as THE CITY’s Josefa Velázquez notes, they should come as no surprise given his long history of...ah...deeply weird public comments), but the bullying, intimidation, and threats are nothing new, and they will not stop until he is removed from office. A man who turns the entire state apparatus into his personal weapon—a man who berates unfriendly reporters and threatens independent officials who do their jobs rather than his, a man who harasses women and tries to intimidate duly elected state legislators—cannot remain governor except at great cost to the people he governs.

The possibility of Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul ascending to the governorship looks higher than ever; should Cuomo hang on and run for reelection in 2022, defeating him must be a top priority, no matter how steep a challenge it appears and pretty much no matter who the Democratic alternative is.

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Mayors

2020 is the year when America learned to stop worrying and hate the mayor. (Never has a country gotten more unexpected mileage out of an oddly specific meme than “not now, sweaty, mommy’s cyberbullying the mayor.”) And 2021 is the year when we elect an awful lot of the most important ones. Here’s a look at many of the major-city mayoral elections being held this year (though this is far from comprehensive, and simply excludes elections with first rounds occurring in November, because many of those don’t even have candidates yet.)

Burlington (3/2, plurality winner)

Vermont politics is, if nothing else, rarely dull. This technically isn’t a primary, it’s a general election. However, it’s a general election between a Democratic candidate, a Progressive, and an independent who identifies with both parties. There are no Republicans to speak of here. Some background here is that the Progressives were founded in the 80s to support the socialist administration of independent mayor Bernie Sanders in the wake of his surprise victory. (Whatever happened to that guy, anyway?) They were running strong for a couple decades, but fell into a slump in the early 2000s. In 2012, they fell to just two members of 12 on the city council, and resigned themselves to co-nominating moderate Democrat Miro Weinberger for mayor. They punted on his 2015 re-election and nominated a nobody who lost badly. They actually tried in 2018, but after a heated convention led to both the winner and the loser staying on the ballot for the general election, Weinberger consolidated Republican support and won with a plurality.

While it was a loss, that 2018 election, where Progressive candidates got a majority of the vote, was a good sign. In 2020, they finally took back the city council. This year, they nominated City Council President Max Tracy. Here’s a very thorough profile a local newspaper did on him. (For such a small city, Burlington has a fantastic press.) This election has become incredibly negative, and the most contentious topic has been police. This summer, as the George Floyd protests raged, the new Progressive council, led by Max Tracy, instituted a 30% cut to the police. Weinberger has been hammering Tracy for this constantly, calling it a “staffing crisis” and blaming Tracy for a coming crime wave that will definitely, totally, for real, happen any day now, he’s sure. Sparks have also flown over housing issues. Tracy’s support for rent control, good cause eviction, and mandatory weatherization have been targets of Weinberger’s attacks.

Also in the mix is independent City Councilor Ali Dieng. Dieng is more or less what you’d call a centrist in the context of Burlington politics. While he’s always been dual-nominated as a Democrat and Progressive, he had caucused with the Democrats until 2020, when Progressives needed him as their #7 to form a majority. He’s running an independent candidacy for mayor that promises a move away from the moderation of the Weinberger administration, but without moving too far, too fast like he charges Tracy wants to do. 

Weinberger’s been running a slick, well-financed campaign, while Tracy’s more grassroots campaign has had a considerably scrappier tone to it, partially because he has only had about half the money. Tracy will be boosted by labor, specifically the AFL-CIO, which has endorsed him and has generally been friendlier to Progressive candidates for a while. Dieng, meanwhile, is not really expected to win and hasn’t raised much money.

St. Louis (3/2, nonpartisan approval voting with April runoff between top two candidates)

Incumbent mayor Lyda Krewson won an open, contentious 2017 primary, but her political wounds never healed. 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests took a further toll on her public image, and in November, she bowed out of the 2021 mayoral race. Three of her vanquished 2017 foes are back, though: Republican nominee Andrew Jones; the city’s elected Treasurer Tishaura Jones; and President of the Board of Aldermen Lewis Reed. They are joined by Alderwoman Cara Spencer.

Tishaura Jones is far and away the progressive choice in this race; she fell less than 1,000 votes short of Krewson in 2017, and is once again running as the clear favorite of progressive groups and organized labor. Spencer is the most palatable alternative, having been co-endorsed (with Jones) by Planned Parenthood and having received the endorsement of democratic socialist Ald. Megan Ellyia Green, a co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s Missouri campaign. Reed is the nightmare candidate: he’s backed a misogynistic Republican radio host, propped up fake news websites to attack opponents, attempted to get an opponent stricken from the ballot for having changed her name when she converted to Islam, and attempted to privatize St. Louis’s airport until public outcry forced him to back off. Pretty bad! And Andrew Jones is just a Republican.

St. Louis will be using nonpartisan approval voting, meaning voters can vote for as many candidates as they want—theoretically, a voter could approve of all candidates, though that would be weird. The top two vote-getters will advance to April’s general election, lessening the need to vote tactically and eliminating the possibility of someone winning with a weak plurality (as Krewson did in 2017, getting barely more than a third of the Democratic primary vote and thus sailing through to the general election.) The downside here, then, is that Andrew Jones will not have an R next to his name on the ballot, removing the most potent signal possible for voters not to choose him in this heavily Democratic city. The dream is a Tishaura Jones-Cara Spencer general election, where nobody has to worry about Lewis Reed or Andrew Jones at all; here’s hoping it’s what St. Louisans vote for.

San Antonio (5/1 jungle primary, June runoff if necessary)

This looks set to be a fairly uninteresting rematch of 2019’s race between de facto Democratic incumbent Mayor Ron Nirenberg and de facto Republican former city councilor Greg Brockhouse. However, since Brockhouse came pretty close in 2019—and since a Brockhouse victory would put Republicans back on the board after San Diego Democrat Todd Gloria picked up the last Republican mayoralty remaining in the US’s ten largest cities this past November—this is worth watching.

Cincinnati (5/4, top two, runoff in November)

Incumbent John Cranley, a perpetual rising star who’s spent the last two decades trying to actually rise, is termed out and probably going to run a doomed statewide campaign, leaving an absolute frenzy in his wake.

Gavi Begtrup is a startup founder and former legislative director for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. While Giffords is today best known for her gun control advocacy, she was a Blue Dog in Congress before the assassination attempt, so being her legislative director is not a great sign. He says his main priority as mayor would be growing the city’s population by ⅓ in a decade, which is just weird.

Then there’s Councilman David Mann, who was first elected to the Council 1973(!), served a single term in Congress in the 90s, and made it back to the Council a few years ago. Mann was known as a liberal in his day, but now, in his 80s, he’s in full grumpy old man mode. He recently had his 2 top staffers quit after he shut down a meeting because too many people were speaking out for defunding the police. Mann has his supporters, but there’s not a more obvious symbol of Cincinnati’s past than Mann.

Hamilton County Clerk Aftab Pureval was supposed to be in Congress by now. In 2016 he was the only Democrat to win a county office without being a Trump supporter, and in 2018 he ran for OH-01. Young, good-looking, charismatic with a good story, and a sitting officeholder who knew how to raise money, he was one of the DCCC’s top recruits. Then he made a race-defining mistake by paying for a congressional poll from his state account. He was eventually exonerated by the state campaign finance board, but the scandal swallowed up the race and he lost. Pureval is a moderate-ish mainstream Democrat, and quite clearly looking to the office as a stepping stone, but that may be the best of bad options.

State Senator Cecil Thomas is a retired cop-turned-city councilor-turned state senator. As the only Black candidate left in the race, Thomas is seen as very likely to win most of the Black vote, probably putting him on the path to making the runoff. He’s not the total conservative you might imagine, but his career does not suggest anything but moderation as mayor.

Pittsburgh (5/18, Democratic primary)

So, Bill Peduto, we meet again. One of this newsletter’s two authors lived in Pittsburgh for a few years, and can confirm he’s always sucked. But nothing in his history compares to the pure torrent of awful that came this summer when he decided to meet Black Lives Matter protests by unleashing the cops to do whatever they liked, then lied and covered up for their brutality and misconduct. And while it’s less important than the actual actions of governing, some politicians know how to handle sustained criticism. Peduto is not one of those politicians. He’s grown increasingly defensive, perhaps even paranoid, and has begin getting in more and more fights on Twitter. One moment that sticks out to us is when he said that the protesters represented the “radical left”, who were joining up with the radical right to defeat him, like how the Nazis got to power (this is not how the Nazis got to power). Before this, Peduto had been competent enough, but unambitious and often uninterested in tackling problems like lack of low-income housing.

Peduto is running for a third term, not uncommon for a Pittsburgh mayor. Unlike his 2017 re-election, he has serious competition in the form of state Rep. Ed Gainey, who has represented the eastern, predominantly Black neighborhoods of the city, like Highland Park, since 2013. Gainey has staked out a progressive reputation in the House, especially on police reform. Notably, he worked with Rep. Summer Lee over the summer on a use of force bill. Lee is, of course, one of the original wave of progressive candidates who took down old-school machine incumbents in 2018, and is now probably the most powerful politician of Pittsburgh’s left. Lee’s powerful UNITE PAC has not issued its endorsements for cycle yet, though it seems pretty likely Gainey will be getting that support. 

Pittsburgh is 26% Black, but has never had a Black mayor*. While Gainey would be an important first, Pittsburgh’s Black political leaders are not universally behind him. While he does have Lee in his corner, both of the city’s Black Council members endorsed Peduto. Labor has mostly stuck with Peduto, though the SEIU Healthcare workers have backed Gainey, perhaps resulting from a three year old fight with him over a UPMC proposal. Distressingly, state Rep. Emily Kinkead, who unseated a moderate incumbent in 2020, has also endorsed Peduto. But for as many endorsements as Peduto has, it’s notable that a lot of names have stayed out. Sen. Jay Costa, Reps. Dan Frankel and Jake Wheatley Jr., and a handful of city and county Councilors seem like obvious endorsements that Peduto hasn't been able to pull in yet. 

*Sort of. In 1903, Ajax Jones held the role in an acting position for 3 days after the sitting mayor had been forced out.

Albany (6/22, Democratic primary)

Two-term incumbent Kathy Sheehan is running again. She’s been a quiet, typical corporate sort of mayor—she ran as a technocrat, one of her first big pushes was to get Verizon FiOS in the city, and she’s been lukewarm on charter schools. Her term has been low-key and devoid of controversy. But like so many of these mayors, her record with the police has been pretty awful. She was unresponsive during the 2015 Black Live Matter protests in her city, and during the renewed wave last year she struggled to appear like she was doing something, and tried to keep out of the public eye, while watering down reform efforts. She was also attempting to increase the size of the police force during defund efforts.

She now has three opponents. Marlon Anderson, a perennial candidate, is running to her right. Black Lives Matter activist Lukee Forbes is promising when it comes to the issue of policing, but his role in a brutal homophobic hate crime a decade ago (he was 15) assures that he’ll struggle for support. That leaves the Rev. Valerie Faust. Faust has also been an advocate for criminal justice reform, and has run for mayor twice before, in 2009 and 2013, failing to make the ballot both times. In a sign of just how fed up with the current field progressives are, the Working Families Party announced it’ll be staying out of the race.

Buffalo (6/22, Democratic primary)

Byron Brown is seeking an unprecedented fifth term. He won his first in 2005, a world ago in politics for most of the county, but in Erie County things sometimes move much slower. Byron does politics the old-fashioned way. He’s one of Andrew Cuomo’s top allies in the state, runs an office periodically under FBI investigation, and views land speculation as his primary development tool. He’s also been ridiculously defensive of his police’s handling of Black Lives Matter protests. Remember that video of police officers who saw a 75 year old man dottering towards them and decided to shove him to the ground hard enough to give him permanent brain damage? He refused to call for them to be fired. Another viral video from the city featured a man standing with hands up and his back to the line of officers, then promptly being tackled to the ground. Brown blamed it on the man who was tackled for being an “agitator”. After 15 years, activists are growing increasingly tired of him.

The leading progressive candidate opposing him is India Walton, a union organizer and school nurse, who has established herself in the city’s activist community as director of both the Fruit Belt Community Land Trust and Open Buffalo. Walton has been endorsed by the Working Families Party as well as the city’s DSA chapter. She’s running on progresive platform of bringing the police under control with a fully empowered civilian review board, and investing in an affordable housing stock. Also in the race are Le'Candice Durham, a local 311 operator, and Scott Wilson, a bowtied young conservative staffer for the city’s conservative Comptroller.

If his fundraising is any indication, Brown doesn’t seem particularly worried. On paper, Walton may be the least formidable candidate Brown has faced, but his last three opponents were a pro-lifer, a cop, and a soon-to-be Republican. This is the first time Brown’s opponent has run to his left, and it’s definitely the first time he’s had to contend with the progressive left activist community—which in New York state is certainly feeling emboldened by a series of upset victories in congressional and state legislative primaries in 2018 and 2020, though none in Buffalo (yet.)

Rochester (6/22, Democratic primary)

Mayor Lovely Warren is under indictment for campaign finance crimes. She’s also pretty moderate, connected with the city’s Democratic machine, and has been absolutely horrible at handling the city’s Black Lives Matter protests—which flared up in September after the news broke that RPD had killed an unarmed Black man, Daniel Prude, by kneeling on him as he lay facedown until he stopped breathing, and Warren’s administration colluded with RPD to cover up Prude’s murder for as long as they could. Her main challenger, City Councilman At-Large Malik Evans, could offer a sharp break from Warren. He isn’t. In fact, he’s not offering much of anything specific.

Syracuse (6/22, Democratic primary with partisan general election vs. incumbent Walsh in November)

Ben Walsh should absolutely not be mayor of Syracuse. The city voted 75-20 for Clinton and 77-21 for Biden, and yet in 2017, the scion of a powerful local Republican political family rebranded himself as a nonpartisan independent, consolidated the meager Republican voting pool, and then took advantage of the relatively weak campaign of the Democratic nominee to win an upset victory. Walsh has been opposed to higher taxes for the rich, unresponsive to BLM activists, and has generally been averse to tackling any real problems in the city, even as COVID raged. Walsh will be running for reelection as an independent. It is unclear whether Republicans will field a candidate against the gift that fell into their laps, but Democrats will be.

At-large city Councilors Michael Greene and Khalid Bey are competing for the Democratic nomination. Greene is the county party’s endorsed candidate, a youngish policy guy who moved back upstate a couple years ago and got appointed to the city council. That’s not the most inspiring resume, but in the council he’s been a consistent progressive, and his campaign platform—a detailed urbanist wishlist that calls for a public land trust and wide-scale expansion of public transit, and hits the right notes on other important issues like climate change mitigation and civilianizing control of the police—is quite encouraging. Bey has been on the Council since 2011, when he won his first election by only a few votes against Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins. (Yeah, that Howie Hawkins.) Still, he’s not running on experience as much as he is deeper connections to the community and electability. Bey’s an intriguing candidate, but his reticence to lay out much in the way of policy means Greene’s probably the better choice.

Seattle (8/3, top two, runoff in November)

After a mediocre term capped by a truly miserable 2020, Jenny Durkan has surprised us by making a good decision as mayor: retiring. The frontrunner at the moment is City Council President Lorena González. González can be hard to figure out sometimes. On one hand, she’s led the Council in its increasing willingness to plunge ahead with progressive policies with or without the mayor. Under her watch, veto overrides have become an increasingly common part of Seattle governance. She’s at least publicly been on board with every major policy initiative the Seattle left has pushed for: the Amazon head tax, gig worker minimum wage, and 50% police defunding. But the head tax and police defunding mostly fell apart, the latter of which seems like something Gonzalez had a hand in, and the former of which she definitely did. And while she opposed Amazon’s attempts to take over the Council in the 2019 elections, she endorsed against Kshama Sawant in the first round of the election (though she sided with Sawant in the runoff against Amazon’s candidate.) In conclusion, Lorena González is a land of contrasts. But she has the support of most of the Council’s progressive bloc, the bloc that Amazon tried to get rid of: Lisa Herbold, Tammy Morales, and Teresa Mosqueda. Kshama Sawant, the Actually Socialist councilor that González has not always had the best relationship with, has not endorsed anyone. 

The potential list of opponents is long, and since this race is 5 months away, we’ll have plenty of time to acknowledge anyone as they enter. For now, the race has another 3 declared candidates. Andrew Grant Houston, a former Morales staffer, is running a very longshot urbanist campaign. Colleen Echohawk runs the Chief Seattle Club, an organization devoted to fighting homelessness among Indigenous Seattleites. Her politics aside from homelessness legislation are unclear, though her “let’s all come together” type message so far does not inspire confidence (not that we imagine she could be as moderate as Durkan). Lance Randall is an economic developer from the city, who touts being a “job creator” during his time in Georgia, and who has been in the race since September, without much impact.

Minneapolis (8/10, ranked-choice)

After his handling of George Floyd’s murder and the uprising that followed, Mayor Jacob Frey should’ve been an obvious candidate for an early retirement, like Krewson and Durkan. But Minneapolis’s boy mayor is a glutton for punishment, so he’s running again. Right now his only challenger is activist Sheila June Nezhad, an organizer with Reclaim the Block running to his left on just about every issue (but especially policing.) Nezhad would be the city’s first openly queer mayor as well as its first Indigenous mayor (per her website, she is Anishinaabe, in addition to Persian, Swedish, and Norwegian.) She’s raised little money, but municipal politics can be like that, and she is a huge underdog.

St. Petersburg (8/24, majority wins in the first round, top two candidates advance to a November runoff if nobody achieves a majority)

Florida, increasingly solidifying its position as the country’s most cursed state, has a long history of cities that should by all accounts be voting Democratic choosing Republican mayors for fuck-if-we-know reasons. St. Petersburg is no exception, having elected a Republican mayor as recently as 2009. Despite that, and perhaps because Biden won the city 62-36, no Republicans have thus far stepped forward to run in this year’s nonpartisan mayoral election yet. Right now the race looks like a three-way competition.

Former County Commissioner Ken Welch is the choice of the moderate establishment: Congressman Charlie Crist, ex-Congressman Jim Davis, and most of his colleagues on the Commission. Like many long-time municipal politicians, Welch has a reputation for the sort of soft corruption that’s either not illegal or not cared about if it is. He also had a socially conservative reputation until relatively recently. Running to his right is former state Rep. Wengay Newton, who may wind up as the de facto Republican choice if one doesn’t run. Newton served two terms in the State House, where he racked up an extremely conservative voting record: tax cuts, Medicaid cuts, school vouchers, you name it, he was there for it. He attempted to run for the Commission seat Welch vacated in 2020, but lost 52-33, potentially a good sign for his limited appeal with Democrats. Possibly to Welch’s left is City Councilor Darden Rice. Rice, who is the City’s first openly gay politician and a favorite of the city’s progressives. She has a longstanding reputation of fighting for environmental issues and green space, but her campaign finance reform efforts have taken some criticism. Rice raised a lot of money, very early, in anticipation of this campaign, setting up up for a showdown with Welch. Rice seems to be preparing for that possibility by wooing Republicans behind the scenes, making for a depressing race, all-around.

Charlotte (9/14*), Durham (10/5*), Raleigh (10/5*)

All three of these cities have interesting races. But before we even talk about candidates here, there needs to be an election to run in, and their city councils, owing to Census difficulties that might make the regularly scheduled 2021 council elections illegal, are leaning towards pushing these races off for a year.

Cleveland (9/14)

In incumbent Frank Jackson’s first couple terms, his focus on business revitalization amidst a national economic recovery was enough to carry him, but his third term saw much more criticism for his neglect of the actual people of the city, especially in its blighted neighborhoods. Now in his fourth, his neglect of the city’s problems is so extensive it seems like he’s practically asleep. While plenty of big city mayors have gotten heat for their handling of George Floyd protests—and yeah, he’s no different—Jackson’s an old hand at this. He’d been running the city for a decade when local child Tamir Rice was executed by the police for the crime of playing with a toy. Cleveland then took the official stance of blaming Rice for not being careful enough around police as Black Lives Matter protests raged. Black Lives Matter activists in the city have never warmed up to him, though he did win the Black vote in 2017.

The big question this year is whether Jackson presses his luck and runs for a 5th term. He hasn’t said. His fundraising is weak, but when you’re a big name like him you can afford to wait. In the meantime, some candidates are moving forward without him. City Council President Kevin Kelley is the front runner if Jackson doesn’t leave. Kelley’s a scion of the old machine, hand-picked by former Council President Marty Sweeney for his presidential role after an uneventful council tenure. He’s currently leading in the money race, with over $500,000, nearly 4 times what anyone else has raised. But as a white candidate in a majority-Black city that has only elected a white mayor once since the 80s, he’ll have his work cut out for him. Justin Bibb, a nonprofit exec, is running as an outsider, something Cleveland may decide it needs after yet more corruption investigations and economic struggles, and has raised $160,000. Basheer Jones is probably the most progressive member of the Council and could be the recipient of a lot of activist energy, but he may be in some deep campaign finance trouble after turning in a report that might as well have been written on a bar napkin. There’s also former Congressmember Dennis Kucinich, who’s filed to run but hasn’t decided if he’ll actually go through with it. As we said when he was considering running for the OH-11 special: commendable career, but at his age and with his Trump-era statements, he’s probably an electoral nonstarter.

Boston (9/21, top two, runoff in November)

Boston’s mayoral race was looking like a heated showdown between moderate incumbent Mayor Marty Walsh; progressive City Councilor Michelle Wu, who declared last year shortly after the Markey-Kennedy showdown came to an end; and mainstream liberal City Councilor Andrea Campbell, who declared shortly after Wu. Then Walsh got tapped to serve as Biden’s Labor Secretary; Walsh is awaiting confirmation, but he’s not expected to run into any trouble in the confirmation process, setting up an open mayoral election in a city that’s only had one (Walsh’s 2013 election) since Thomas Menino took office in 1993. Wu and Campbell stayed in the race, but were joined in January by moderate City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George and in February by progressive-turned-moderate state Rep. Jon Santiago. And City Council President Kim Janey, who will become acting mayor upon Walsh’s confirmation, could enter the race as a quasi-incumbent at any moment. In short, it’s a mess!

Wu is running way to the left of the rest of the field, and has endorsements that line up with such a campaign: Elizabeth Warren, some unions, Boston’s Sunrise chapter, and a smattering of progressive local elected officials (none from Boston, though. Mostly because Boston doesn’t have many in local office.) Campbell is decent on most issues (for example, embracing cuts to the Boston PD’s budget), but her big weakness is charter schools, which she favors. She’s also not better than Wu on any given issue; she’s just broadly acceptable, and better than Walsh. Santiago and Essaibi George are staffing up from the Buttigieg, Biden, and Walsh campaigns, so...ugh.