Primary School 3/5/22
Cuellar-Cisneros Round 2: Part 2
Results
TX-28
Let’s be real here. You read a newsletter about primary elections – you already know that this one’s going to a runoff after Cuellar just barely garnered more votes than Cisneros, but failed to hit 50%. But did you know Jessica Cisneros says her campaign raised $240K since the runoff was announced?
TX-30
Progressive state Rep. Jasmine Crockett is headed to a runoff with former Biden primary campaign staffer Jane Hope Hamilton, a mainstay of establishment Dallas Democratic politics. Crockett, always the favorite for this seat, fell just short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff, earning 48.5% of the vote. Hamilton was far behind, with just 17% of the vote. There’s always the chance that national moderate donors flood this district with money to stop Crockett, or that something else weird happens—perfectly plausible in a race where cryptocurrency interests are shelling out millions to help Crockett, a candidate with no record on cryptocurrency issues whatsoever—but Crockett is an overwhelming favorite.
TX-33
Another election, another underwhelming primary performance by Rep. Marc Veasey against an unheralded and underfunded opponent, 69% to 31%. We will keep publicly pining for a well-resourced primary challenger to the moderate Fort Worth Democrat until one finally emerges.
TX-34
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez ultimately didn’t have any trouble clinching the Democratic nomination for this seat, even though he currently represents TX-15 (which got turned into a Trump-voting swing district, so he bailed) and most of TX-34 is new to him.
TX-35
As every media outlet would love for you to know, Austin City Councilor Greg Casar is a socialist. The New York Times’s results page for this race describes it as follows (emphasis added by us): “A close Democratic primary between Greg Casar, a socialist candidate, and Eddie Rodriguez, a member of the Texas House, could provide a window into how far left the Democratic electorate has moved in a district that runs from Austin to San Antonio.” But in the end, it wasn’t close: despite plenty of red-baiting from the media and mudslinging from his opponents, Casar easily won the Democratic primary for this diverse, heavily Latino Austin-to-San Antonio seat, and is all but guaranteed to take a seat in Congress in 2023.
Casar was a clear favorite, but this is an even bigger win than expected; he polled in the mid-40s, but ended up getting more than 60% of the vote, winning all four of the district’s counties and getting a stunning 72.6% of the vote in his home of Travis County. National progressives went all in for Casar, and his resounding victory is worth celebrating; in all likelihood, the Squad just added another member, and the left just got a congressional foothold in Texas. Additionally, we’d like to take another moment to laugh at Eddie Rodriguez, who gave up his state House seat and burned every bridge he could think to burn with his former progressive allies—all to get 15.6% of the vote.
TX-37
Woof. Lloyd Doggett, who currently represents TX-35, had no trouble fending off former TX-31 nominee Donna Imam for this newly-created Democratic vote sink in Austin. (Doggett’s switcheroo did put Greg Casar on a glide path to Congress, so we can’t complain too much.)
Texas State Legislature
There are going to be a ton of runoffs in the state legislature. In SD-27, the most liberal candidate, Sara Stapleton Barrera, made the runoff with 33%, but she’ll be facing off against conservative Morgan LaMantia, who took 34%. In HD-22, the runoff will be between Manuel Hayes and Joseph Trahan, as expected. HD-70 will have a runoff, but it’s not yet clear with whom. While Cassandra Garcia Hernandez leads with 34% of the vote, Mihaela Elizabeth Plesa currently only has 29 more votes than Lorenzo Sanchez, a margin that could change in a recount. In HD-76, Suleman Lalani leads with 37%, but his runoff opponent, at 25%, will be Vanesia Johnson, in an upset. In HD-100, Sandra Crenshaw’s billionth comeback attempt has her at 34%, going into a runoff with Venton Jones, who has 26%. HD-114 created one of the weirder results we’ve seen: a five-way race where no one even got a quarter of the vote. The runoff is between ex-Congressman John Bryant and lawyer Alexandra Guio.
Some races did get decided on Tuesday, however. Labor-backed moderate Erin Gamez won the open HD-38 58%-42% over conservative Jonathan Gracia. In Austin’s HD-51, establishment pick Lulu Flores won 60% of the vote. In HD-79, mainstream Democrat Claudia Ordaz Perez defeated quorum-break turncoat Art Fierro in a 65-35 rout. (Both Ordaz Perez and Fierro are sitting state representatives; they got stuck together in redistricting.) In HD-92, Euless City Councilor Salman Bhojani (barely) cleared 50%, meaning he won’t need to fight charter school-backed Tracy Scott in a runoff. And the most conservative candidate in HD-124, Josey Garcia, dominated with over 60% of the vote.
Incumbents mostly held up well. In SD-15, socialist Molly Cook held longtime incumbent John Whitmire to a surprisingly close 57.5%-42.5% victory, an ominous sign for his Houston mayoral campaign (but a promising sign for Cook if she runs again.) In HD-42, incumbent Richard Peña Raymond had a solid but not spectacular 63%-37% win over JD Delgado. Ray Lopez also had a relatively soft 58%-42% win in HD-125, and Alma Allen got a thin majority in HD-131, saving her from a runoff with a Republican-backed opponent. Ronald Reynolds (HD-27), Erin Zwiener (HD-45), James Talarico (HD-50), Mary Gonzalez (HD-75), and Rhetta Andrews Bowers (HD-113) all easily dispatched their opponents. Unfortunately, Harold Dutton squeaked out a 51%-49% victory over teacher Candis Houston.
News
FL-10
Progressive ex-DA Aramis Ayala jumped races into the AG contest this week. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a Gen Z progressive activist, now has an undisputed claim to the progressive mantle in this race.
FL-22
Look. We’re sorry. It was us. We were the ones wishing on the monkey’s paw for more Democratic retirements. We, uh, probably should have googled how that story ends before making that wish, huh? We swear we didn’t intend for 31 Democrats and counting to be on their way out. Mostly because it’s a lot of work, but also because a lot of them are in districts like this where we’re not likely to get much better.
Rep. Ted Deutch is retiring. He’s done nothing in Congress and will be easily forgotten—a description that, because this is Broward County, Florida, will also fit most of the 50 lawyers and real estate agents who are going to run for his seat.
The first candidate to enter the race is former Florida Director of Emergency Management Jared Moskowitz. Moskowitz, a former Joe Lieberman staffer and state representative, was chosen by Gov. Ron DeSantis to run the state’s disaster response shortly before COVID hit, earning him plenty of TV time as he advised one of the worst COVID responses in the nation. Recently he was snapped up by Miami-Dade County to run their COVID response.
The list of candidates considering includes:
State Sen. Gary Farmer. Farmer was the Senate Minority Leader for part of a term, but the caucus tossed him mid-session because (they claim) he wouldn’t stop lying about them to the press.
State Rep. David Silvers. Silvers has been in the House for 6 years, and hasn’t done anything newsworthy. He’s a moderate, and his district is in north Palm Beach County, well outside of FL-22.
Broward County Commissioner Mark Bogen. Bogen’s day job is as a lawyer representing condo and homeowner associations, the most Broward County job possible.
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis. Trantalis was on the City Council when they passed a law criminalizing the feeding of homeless people. Trantalis technically voted for the measure, but only because of other, unrelated provisions. He was very much in favor of those “feeding restrictions” and said that Ft. Lauderdale was the victim in this situation, since “these people” wouldn’t accept the city’s generous help.
Palm Beach County DA Dave Aronberg. Aronberg is a tough-on-crime asshole who won his election in 2012 by enlisting millionaire Marty O’Boyle to fund a months-long astroturf campaign against the incumbent, including paying actors to protest the incumbent not seeking the death penalty often enough. Seriously, the story is insane; never let this man into Congress.
State Rep. and ex-Parkland mayor Christine Hunschofsky. Hunschofsky has a very particular claim to prominence—she was mayor of Parkland during the tragic Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
Chad Klitzman, who nearly won the Broward County Supervisor of Elections primary in 2020. He has little political experience beyond that mostly non-ideological position.
IL-01
State Sen. Jacqui Collins is in. a 73-year-old ten-term state senator might not seem like a natural choice for progressives, but skepticism of corporate power has been a hallmark of Collins’s tenure in Springfield, and she launched her campaign with the support of state Sen. Robert Peters, a DSA member and chairman of the state Senate’s Black Caucus who had been the first choice of a lot of the left in Chicago. She also counts some influential South Side civic leaders and the Illinois chapter of the National Association of Letter Carriers, the main labor union representing U.S. Postal Service mail carriers, among her early supporters. As of now, she’s the most promising candidate for progressives, despite her age.
Also filing is Chicago lawyer Howard Spiller. Spiller is involved in several civic organizations, including the Legal Aid Society.
IL-06
Marie Newman released a poll showing her tied 37% to 37% against fellow incumbent Sean Casten. Newman is, to put it mildly, in a delicate spot at the moment. The unfolding scandal over the job she promised to a potential candidate hit her at the worst possible time: in a new congressional district, where her opponent is already an incumbent. This poll should be interpreted in that light, as a signal to allies that she is far from dead. While most local politicians and labor groups have stuck by her, liberal pro-Israel PAC J Street recently switched from a dual endorsement to backing Casten only, and major, monied groups at the state and national level have yet to weigh in here.
MI-13
The Michigan Democratic Black Caucus, who had previously polled this primary in January, came out with a second poll, this one taken in late February. They found
Ex-City Councilor Sharon McPhail: 24%
State Rep. Shri Thanedar: 12%
Ex-Chief of Police Ralph Godbee: 11%
Ex-State Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo: 7%
Michigan Civil Rights Commissioner Portia Roberson: 7%
State Sen. Adam Hollier: 6%
Sam Riddle: 1%
Michael Griffie: 0%
Adrian Tonon: 0%
The leader, Sharon McPhail, wasn’t a candidate when this poll was fielded, but she is now. McPhail has been in Detroit politics since the 1980s, when then-Mayor Coleman Young took the prosecutor and put her on the Police Commission. In 1993, she ran for mayor, with his backing, in an ugly contest that ended with business money and voter dissatisfaction with the economic decline contributing to her 57-43 defeat. She was elected to City Council in 2001, but declined to seek reelection in favor of another mayoral bid against incumbent Kwame Kilpatrick (who she once accused of trying to assassinate her via massage chair), but she wound up coming in third. A couple years later he hired her to defend him, as the city’s general counsel, against the numerous charges of corruption that eventually earned him a lengthy prison sentence. She has since continued that career of defending corrupt politicians in court, along with other pursuits such as managing a charter school so badly they tried to get a restraining order against her and getting less than 3% of the vote in another run for mayor.
Anyway, she’s the frontrunner if this poll is to be believed. Though, given that Target Insyght is the firm that put out the poll where Rashida Tlaib was only winning renomination by single digits in 2020 (actual margin: 33%), it should be taken with a grain of salt.
NY-03
Progressives in the New York legislature seem inclined to back state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi for this seat, opened up by the retirement of Rep. Tom Suozzi to run for governor. Our Revolution had other ideas, endorsing 2020 Suozzi primary challenger Melanie D’Arrigo this week. Meanwhile, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone endorsed Jon Kaiman—which makes sense, since Kaiman is currently serving as a Deputy County Executive in Suffolk County, an unelected position in Bellone’s administration. Unfortunately for Kaiman, Suffolk County doesn’t make up much of this seat, and the Suffolk County part of the district is redder than the rest.
NY-04
New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs, also chairman of the Nassau County Democratic Party, made a bizarre request to his email list: don’t donate to candidates for this seat yet. Why? He doesn’t think some of the candidates are electable. Granted, county legislator and accused domestic abuser Carrié Solages probably is unelectable—but given literally anything Jay Jacobs has ever done, we don’t think he’s just talking about Solages, and strongly suspect he’s no fan of county legislator Siela Bynoe, a progressive Black woman. Outgoing Rep. Kathleen Rice, generally an irritating moderate, slammed Jacobs on Twitter: “No wonder Democrats in Nassau County lose with this kind of leadership.” (To Rice’s credit, she’s never gotten along particularly well with Jacobs, a close ally of Andrew Cuomo, who she has also never liked, and unlike most Jacobs allies she actually has a winning track record in Nassau County elections, winning three terms as District Attorney.)
New York Working Families Party
In New York, the Working Families Party is stronger than it is anywhere else, with a ballot line and an established organization. That gives them the ability to really throw their weight around—and in the 2022 cycle, they’re going for broke (so much so it warrants a special consolidated newsletter item rather than attempting to break this up by each individual race like we normally do.) That became clear this week, when they rolled out an ambitious slate of endorsements for Congress, lieutenant governor, and dozens of competitive state legislative primaries.
NY-11/NY-12
The Working Families Party endorsed progressive candidates Brittany Ramos DeBarros for NY-11 and Rana Abdelhamid for NY-12. Both are DSA members running on left-wing platforms, and both are challenging powerful Democrats. Ramos DeBarros is attempting to deny former Rep. Max Rose a return to the House, now that his old Staten Island district leans Democratic thanks to the addition of deep-blue Brooklyn neighborhoods. Abdelhamid is Justice Democrats’ candidate to unseat House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney. This comes at the same time that the Staten Island Democratic Party is endorsing its moderate hometown boy, while Maloney’s been calling in favors for endorsements ever since Abdelhamid first got in the race—these are not easy races the party is choosing to wade into.
NY-Lt. Gov.
Ana María Archila, the cofounder of immigrant rights advocacy group Make the Road New York, is best known as the woman who confronted U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator over the looming confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Now, Archila hopes to be known as something else: lieutenant governor. Archila launched her candidacy with the support of the Working Families Party, as the unofficial running mate of New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who is running for governor. But while Williams faces popular Gov. Kathy Hochul, Archila faces Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin—a largely anonymous and severely ethically challenged former state senator from Harlem. (She also faces former New York City Council Member Diana Reyna, a moderate from Brooklyn who is the running mate to doomed right-wing crank Rep. Tom Suozzi, but we doubt Reyna will go much further than Suozzi.) In other words, he’s a much easier target than Hochul, who has worked doggedly to lock down key Democratic constituencies as she seeks her first full term as governor.
NY Legislature
The Working Families Party’s congressional endorsements were bold, but their state legislative endorsements are even bolder. First, they rolled out a slate of Assembly candidates, calling it the We Can’t Wait slate, and that was already an eyebrow-raiser: it included three of DSA’s four Assembly candidates statewide (Samy Nemir-Olivares in Brooklyn, Vanessa Agudelo in the lower Hudson Valley, and Sarahana Shrestha in Ulster County) and five other Assembly primary challengers from Brooklyn to Schenectady, plus progressive Juan Ardila in an open Queens Assembly seat. Then, the next day, they released a second batch of endorsements, backing challengers to a few more incumbent assemblymembers in Queens, Manhattan, and Westchester County, as well as Assemb. Yuh-Line Niou’s challenge to state Sen. Brian Kavanagh in Lower Manhattan. (A few days earlier, they had separately backed DSA’s David Alexis and Kristen Gonzalez in their bids for state Senate seats in Brooklyn and Queens, respectively.) All in all, more than one in ten members of New York Democrats’ 105-strong Assembly caucus now faces a WFP-backed challenger.
NC-01
We hadn’t been covering this rural, Black-access district because what Republicans originally drew was a blatantly unconstitutional swing district, but now that a court has (sort of) corrected that, we can talk about the exciting, three way cont– oh, sorry, we’re getting word that state Rep. James Gailliard decided to run for reelection instead of Congress. Well,,, now we can talk about the exciting two way contest to succeed Rep. GK Butterfield in Congress. It’s an ideological contest to rival Cisneros and Cuellar’s deathmatch runoff. Former state Sen. Erica Smith, while far from progressive in the North Carolina legislature, ran for Senate in 2020 outspokenly to the left of historically sexy (if you don’t get the reference, brighten your day by clicking on that link) eventual nominee Cal Cunningham. She was running for Senate this cycle in the same style, until she was convinced to run for the open House seat instead, sticking with the progressive branding she first picked up in 2020. Her opponent is state Sen. Don Davis, the best friend Republicans in the legislature could ask for. Most notably, he voted with them to override Roy Cooper and pass anti-abortion legislation. He’s anti-gun control, anti-environment, captured by Big Ag, and frequently supports the fiscal conservatism his Republican colleagues push.
NC-04
As we mentioned last week, the court-ordered redistricting changed this district in a key way. While it had been split between Durham, Orange, and Wake counties in the original incarnation, the court removed Wake, creating a dilemma for the two major Wake County candidates. State Sen. Wiley Nickel chose to run in a new Wake County district, something he announced before the districts themselves were even finalized. We didn't know Clay Aiken's intentions at the time, but this week he made it clear in a new campaign filing. Aiken will still be running for NC-04. While there will be a few minor candidates on the ballot, and someone else could always surprise us by entering last-minute, this has, in all likelihood, set the field for the primary: progressive favorite Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, establishment pick state Sen. Valerie Foushee, and Aiken, who…we're not really sure who his constituency is in this race, actually.
OR-04
Eugene DSA endorsed Doyle Canning.
OR-06
The campaign of self-funding pro-crypto candidate Matt West noticed something odd about the ads being run for Carrick Flynn by Protect Our Future, a SuperPAC funded by a crypto billionaire. (The other self-funding crypto candidate, Cody Reynolds, is not involved in this story—have we mentioned how cursed this race is?) Candidates and SuperPACs aren’t allowed to collude in any way, so candidates who know PACs want to run ads for them will often put up photos and b-roll for the PACs to cut ads from. But, the ads that just went up from the superPAC for Flynn contain footage that was not made public by Flynn until the ads went up. The clear implication is that Flynn gave the PAC the footage, which is a legal red line. The Flynn campaign says that the footage was on a YouTube video that was simply set to private, an “explanation” that raises the obvious question of how the PAC got the URL for a private video.
Also this week, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01) endorsed state Rep. Andrea Salinas. OR-06 was created mostly from parts of OR-01 and OR-05, and Bonamici represents just under half of the new district.
RI-02
The AFL-CIO endorsed Treasurer Seth Magaziner, adding to a growing list of labor endorsements for the moderate frontrunner. It’s dispiriting, but the growing consensus among power players in the state Democratic Party is to give one of the the least interesting, impressible, or noteworthy politicians in the country a more-or-less lifetime appointment to Congress as a consolation prize because he got out of their hair in this year’s governor’s race.
VT-AL
Former Gov. Howard Dean endorsed Lt. Gov. Molly Gray for Congress. Though Dean hasn’t been governor since 2003, he remains a national figure within the Democratic Party, and is well known within the state, especially given his twelve-year tenure as governor. It’s no big surprise Dean would prefer Gray, given they’re both part of the same fiscally moderate faction of the state party.