Primary School 3/6/23
Results
Chicago Mayor
The first round of Chicago’s municipal elections are behind us—and soon Lori Lightfoot’s days as mayor will be, too. Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson finished in first and second place, respectively, punching each man’s ticket to the April runoff. Vallas’s crime panic platform won him the support of conservative and moderate non-Black voters in the city’s outer neighborhoods and in the very affluent city center, adding up to about a third of the overall vote; Johnson ran strong in the progressive North Side lakefront and diverse, strongly left-leaning inner Northwest Side, and held up well enough in West Side and South Side Black neighborhoods to prevent Lightfoot’s strength there from overcoming his aforementioned base, outpacing the mayor 20% to 17% for second place. Chuy García, once the frontrunner to take Lightfoot’s job, finished in a weak fourth place with less than 14%, holding on to his longtime Southwest Side Latine base but not much else from his 2015 mayoral run; Johnson poached the progressive Northwest Side and lakefront neighborhoods, and both Johnson and Lightfoot benefited as García collapsed into the single digits in Black neighborhoods where he had managed a quarter of the vote or more in the first round in 2015.
Each candidate has reason to be optimistic about the second round. Vallas ran strong in García’s territory, and fifth-place finisher Willie Wilson’s conservative stances don’t mesh well with the progressive Johnson. Johnson can likely count on racial polarization to close some of his gap with Vallas; Vallas won less than 10% of the vote in most of the city’s Black-majority wards, where voters gave Lightfoot consistent pluralities and both Wilson and Johnson consistently achieved vote shares in the teens or higher. Johnson’s ability to consolidate Lightfoot and Wilson voters on the South and West Sides is going to be critical in the runoff. Wilson, for his part, is fielding calls from Black Chicago politicians, including a prominent Lori Lightfoot supporter in U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, urging him to endorse Johnson. He’s also…asking his Twitter followers who he should endorse? Not all Black Chicago politicians are moving towards Johnson, however; on Friday, Vallas received the endorsements of Ward 27 Ald. Walter Burnett and former Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, who served a remarkable 24 continuous years as Secretary of State until his retirement in January. Vallas needs endorsements like these to keep flowing in, and to the extent he even wants any endorsements from conservatives, he’d probably prefer for them to keep coming from nonpartisan or nominally Democratic figures like former mayoral candidate Gery Chico, who was CPS board president while Vallas was CEO, and whose mayoral campaigns in 2011 and 2019 cobbled together an awkward coalition of Latinos and white conservatives. The praise he’s getting from, say, far-right 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee Darren Bailey has to be cause for heartburn at Vallas HQ; the more voters become aware of Vallas’s Republican ties (like his endorsement from the Chicago Republican Party in the 2019 mayoral race, or his open musing about running for office as a Republican in the Obama years), the more difficult it’ll become for him to win this deep-blue city.
Chicago City Council
Incumbents fared pretty well in Chicago’s city council races; only one, appointed 12th Ward Ald. Anabel Abarca, lost reelection, though a few others are or could be headed to runoffs. We’ll go ward by ward, very briefly.
Ward 1: Socialist Ald. Daniel La Spata is inches away from avoiding a runoff, standing at 49.72% of the vote at the time of this writing; late-counted mail ballots have skewed strongly to the left citywide, and La Spata’s position has improved a fair bit since election night. What’s left might secure him another term without having to face Sam Royko in April.
Ward 4: State Rep. Lamont Robinson is only a few points shy of a majority in Sophia King’s open seat; King’s chief of staff, Prentice Butler, got the second runoff spot with 15% of the vote, and he has a very uphill climb ahead of him.
Ward 5: We got the frontrunner right in our preview; as expected, Desmon Yancy, a SEIU-aligned community organizer, finished first. Finishing behind him is former Fairfax County, Virginia Public Schools Board member Martina “Tina” Hone, who moved back to her hometown of Chicago to raise a ton of money and run on a platform of cops cops cops. To our mild surprise, Hone’s money was able to overcome the fact that she was an elected official in suburban DC, at least for now.
Ward 6: Progressive pastor William Hall and conservative police officer Richard Wooten advanced; the FOP had backed a different conservative cop, Barbara Bunville.
Ward 8: Machine Ald. Michelle Harris, a powerful ally of the mayor’s office, cleared 70% of the vote.
Ward 9: Ald. Anthony Beale had a closer call than Harris; repeat challenger Cleopatra Draper held him to a 60-35 victory.
Ward 10: The runoff will be between labor organizer and establishment favorite Ana Guajardo and conservative police officer Peter Chico, who actually came in first with an alarming 41% of the vote to Guajardo’s 27%. (DSA/CTU-endorsed community organizer Óscar Sánchez came in third with 18%.)
Ward 11: Appointed machine Ald. Nicole Lee did much worse than we expected, only managing about 30% of the vote; in April, she’ll face FOP-backed conservative Anthony Ciaravino, who currently trails her by less than 100 votes.
Ward 12: Progressives scored their first big win here. Social worker Julia Ramirez sent appointed Ald. Anabel Abarca packing, winning 57% of the vote to the incumbent’s 43%.
Ward 13: The far Southwest Side still loves disgraced former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, whose vaunted political machine is based here; Madigan-owned-and-operated Ald. Marty Quinn beat anti-corruption opponent Paul Bruton with nearly 90% of the vote, despite Madigan’s well-publicized resignation and indictment.
Ward 14: Thankfully, Cook County Commission staffer Jeylú Gutiérrez trounced Raul Reyes, who was proudly aligned with indicted Ald. Ed Burke, another titan of Southwest Side conservative machine politics.
Ward 15: Nightmarishly conservative Ald. Raymond Lopez crushed Vicko Alvarez, the chief of staff to DSA Ald. Rossana Rodríguez-Sánchez.
Ward 16: Ald. Stephanie Coleman got three-fourths of the vote, leaving FOP challenger Carolynn Crump in the dust.
Ward 18: Ald. Derrick Curtis—known for his alliance with Lori Lightfoot, the time he accidentally shot himself, and the time he broke off his alliance with Lori Lightfoot because she didn’t call him to wish him well after he accidentally shot himself—defeated community organizer Heather Wills, who was favored by progressives, by about twenty percentage points.
Ward 19: Centrist machine Ald. Matt O’Shea won easily—and his nearest opponent was FOP-backed conservative Michael Cummings with a third of the vote. Normal liberal Timothy Noonan got a depressing 5% of the vote, because this is that kind of ward.
Ward 20: Chicago DSA’s incumbents had an excellent night. With the exception of La Spata, who may yet avoid a runoff himself, all of them won comfortably. Jeanette Taylor, DSA’s only South Side Alderperson, won 52% of the first-round vote against a pair of opponents, one with FOP backing.
Ward 21: To our surprise, the firefighter’s union was able to get one of its own, Cornell Dantzler, into the runoff here, even without the support of the normally-aligned police union. Dantzler finished a close second to high-powered political consultant Ronnie Mosley, whose clients and supporters include Gov. JB Pritzker.
Ward 22: Progressive, Chuy-aligned Ald. Mike Rodriguez got 66% of the vote against a pair of amateur opponents running to his right.
Ward 23: State Rep. Angie Guerrero-Cuellar’s camp lashed out at Ald. Silvana Tabares this cycle for reasons unclear to us, running Guerrero-Cuellar’s chief of staff, Eddie Guillen, against her in a race without any real divide beyond personality. Tabares won a commanding 73% of the vote, which only strengthens her hand should she decide to retaliate against Guerrero-Cuellar when the latter is up for reelection next year.
Ward 24: We were unimpressed, to say the least, by the field of challengers looking to take on Ald. Monique Scott, who was appointed to replace her own brother after he unexpectedly resigned, but we noted that she was still at risk of a runoff just by virtue of having so many opponents. That turned out to be true: Scott’s best-performing opponent, Creative Scott (no relation), got just 15% of the vote, but with six other candidates besides Monique Scott and Creative Scott, the alderwoman was only able to get 45%.
Ward 25: DSA Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez had some of his most favorable neighborhoods drawn out of his ward in redistricting, and everyone from Chuy García (who comfortably carried Ward 25 with 40% of the vote) to the building trades unions to the business community threw the kitchen sink at him in the hopes of electing more moderate and machine-friendly teacher Aida Flores. It didn’t work. Sigcho-Lopez defeated Flores 53-47.
Ward 26: Progressive favorite Jessie Fuentes ran away with it in this open Humboldt Park seat, currently held by machine Ald. Roberto Maldonado.
Ward 28: Ald. Jason Ervin beat Republican perennial candidate Shawn Walker 3 to 1.
Ward 29: Ald. Chris Taliaferro is surprisingly in danger of a runoff; with just 50.32% of the vote as of this writing, the alderman is just 31 votes from a runoff with drug abuse prevention advocate CB Johnson.
Ward 30: Ald. Ariel Reboyras’s choice to succeed him, Ruth Cruz, trails Jessica Gutiérrez, the daughter of former Rep. Luis Gutiérrez who almost unseated Reboyras in 2019, 38-27. The non-machine choice here, DSA-backed activist Warren Williams, came in third behind Cruz with 23% of the vote.
Ward 31: Anti-gay Ald. Felix Cardona Jr. defeated phantom candidate Esteban Burgoa Ontañon 81-19.
Ward 33: Chuy and the FOP went hard against DSA Ald. Rossana Rodríguez-Sánchez, who only won in 2019 by thirteen votes. It didn’t work: Rodríguez-Sánchez defeated Samie Martinez, the chief of staff to Ald. George Cardenas, 54-34. Tribune-endorsed centrist/liberal developer Laith Shaaban took the remainder of the vote.
Ward 34: uuuugh. This ward moved from the South Side to the Loop to accommodate explosive population growth in the affluent downtown neighborhood and stagnation on the South Side, and two-thirds of the vote in the newly-configured ward went to billionaire heir Bill Conway, who ran in 2020 as the anti-criminal justice reform conservative primary challenger to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
Ward 36: Ald. Gil Villegas is headed to a runoff with progressive CPS teacher Lori Torres Whitt, leading her 47-30.
Ward 37: West Side machine Ald. Emma Mitts beat FOP challenger Howard Ray, 63-27.
Ward 38: lol far-right clown Nick Sposato won 55% of the vote and another term, what a mess
Ward 39: Progressive Denali Dasgupta lost to centrist machine Ald. Samantha Nugent 63-37.
Ward 40: Progressive formerly-DSA, now-Chuy-aligned Ald. André Vasquez had no trouble winning a second term over a pair of conservative challengers; Vasquez won nearly 80% of the vote.
Ward 41: Woof. Conservative de facto Republican Ald. Anthony Napolitano didn’t just defeat normal liberal Paul Struebing, he got 73% of the vote.
Ward 43: Ald. Timmy Knudsen, a centrist Lightfoot appointee, is headed to a runoff with his worst opponent, Tribune-endorsed neighborhood association president and incoherent crank Brian Comer.
Ward 45: Unhinged ethical nightmare and FOP favorite Ald. Jim Gardiner is just barely headed to a runoff; while he was at 49.97% the day after the election, late-counted mail ballots have already taken him down a full percentage point with more left to count, assuring a runoff with liberal attorney Megan Mathias.
Ward 46: DSA-backed housing activist Angela Clay starts the runoff with a 35-25 lead on well-funded moderate Kim Walz, and a further advantage in the 17% of the vote won by progressive third-place finisher Marianne Lalonde, whose voters are likely closer to Clay than Walz. DSA played a lot of offense this cycle, and this is their last, best chance to win one of them.
Ward 48: Moderate housing developer Joe Dunne got 26% of the vote and the first runoff spot. The second one, in a mild surprise, went to Indivisible activist Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth, not DSA- and labor-backed restaurant worker Nick Ward.
Ward 49: First-term progressive Ald. Maria Hadden won 73% of the vote in a sleepy reelection race.
Ward 50: Chicago DSA is probably sighing in relief a little bit in hindsight; their onetime endorsee who had a very public break with the organization, Mueze Bawany, lost 2 to 1 to moderate Ald. Debra Silverstein.
Madison, WI
In the Madison mayoral contest, incumbent mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway pulled in a strong 60% of the vote in the primary round. Since this was a Top 2 primary, she’ll still need to win in the April 2 runoff, in which she’ll be facing Gloria Reyes, who took 28% of the vote.
VA-SD-09
Virginia Democrats very technically held a primary for SD-09, the district Jennifer McClellan left just last week after winning her congressional special election, at which point the VADP announced a firehouse primary for SD-09 that weekend. Del. Lamont Bagby immediately picked up endorsements from just about everyone, quickly ran a TV ad, and won with 72% of the vote. Alexsis Rodgers took just 21% of the vote, and Del. Dawn Adams received the remaining 6%. Unless their plans are changed by these results, and they might be, all three are running in a newly constituted SD-14 in June; the district has substantial overlap with the current one, but drops the current district’s rural portions as well as some suburbs in exchange for more of the city of Richmond. (If we had to guess, that’s good for Rodgers, a progressive former Richmond mayoral candidate, and not as good for Bagby, a moderate from suburban Henrico County.)
News
AZ-03
State Sen. Raquel Terán, whose term as chair of the Arizona Democratic Party just came to an end, stepped down as state Senate Democratic Leader this week to “explore” a run for Congress, which she was already publicly considering. Somehow we doubt she’s giving up that job just to explore.
Terán is one of the biggest names interested in Senate hopeful Ruben Gallego’s House seat, but she’s far from the only one. State Sen. Catherine Miranda, former state Sen. César Chávez, and no less than three members of the Phoenix City Council (Betty Guardado; Laura Pastor, daughter of Gallego’s predecessor Rep. Ed Pastor; and Yassamin Ansari, who also serves as vice mayor) are all reportedly considering as well, and Glendale Elementary School Board member Héctor Jaramillo filed with the FEC last month but has not yet announced a campaign.
CA-Sen
Rep. Barbara Lee’s much-awaited announcement came pretty much right after we sent our last regular issue, and the Bay Area congresswoman piled up Bay Area endorsements at her launch. Those endorsements didn’t come just from Lee’s fellow progressives; San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who had earlier been mentioned as a possible candidate herself, was also among Lee’s early Bay Area backers. A regional contest would favor Lee, the only Northern California candidate unless Ro Khanna goes back on his promise not to run if Lee did, and the early slate of Bay Area endorsements for Lee is a step in that direction. Lee also scored a major coup from Adam Schiff’s LA-area home turf: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who served with both Lee and Schiff (as well as Khanna and Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, the third candidate already running) prior to taking office as mayor, endorsed Lee for Senate this week. Lee will need more endorsements and news cycles like this to make up for her name recognition deficit; according to a new poll from UC Berkeley and the LA Times, Schiff and Porter have a wide lead for the two November spots in California’s top-two system with 22% and 20%, respectively. Lee registers 6% and Khanna takes 4%.
CA-12
The House seats left behind by Barbara Lee’s competitors in the Senate race both developed crowded races in no time. By comparison, the contest for Lee’s seat is a very orderly affair. After Lee’s announcement of her Senate campaign, interested East Bay politicians began taking themselves out of the running: Assemb. Buffy Wicks, former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. That still left several big names considering—until Lateefah Simon announced her campaign. Simon, an elected member of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) board of directors representing portions of San Francisco and the East Bay, rolled out her campaign with the endorsements of Wicks, Schaaf, and two more high-profile area politicians who had been considering campaigns, Assemb. Mia Bonta and state Sen. Nancy Skinner. The only potential candidate we’d heard of before who hasn’t weighed in yet is former Oakland City Councilman Loren Taylor, who lost an extremely close race for mayor of Oakland to now-mayor Sheng Thao in November. Taylor was the preferred candidate of Oakland’s business community and moderate establishment in that race, while Simon is more aligned with the progressive wing of East Bay politics—but Schaaf is a moderate who backed Taylor last year, so it’s not clear he could count on his old backers in a congressional race against Simon. And if he’s still on the fence, Simon’s early fundraising can’t be too encouraging to him, or any other prospective candidate: according to a campaign press release, Simon pulled in an impressive $140,000 in her first 24 hours as a candidate.
CA-18
Former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo was termed out from running for reelection last year. Even though he opted to exit public office rather than run for the open Assembly seat covering part of San Jose, few thought he was truly done with politics. Sure enough, he’s testing the waters for another campaign. Liccardo, according to multiple sources, wants to run for Congress, which puts him in a bind, as San Jose is split between two Congressional districts currently held by two Democrats who don’t want to give up their seats: Anna Eshoo in CA-16 and Zoe Lofgren in CA-18. Though Liccardo isn’t picky about which district he runs for, he’s apparently leaning towards the 18th, given that he just paid for a poll there and called Lofgren to tell her he was considering running.
Lofgren, and Eshoo for that matter, are unspectacular, older incumbents in districts that could probably do better, but could also do a lot worse. The South Bay has a centrist streak to its politics, and Liccardo embodies it through and through. If Liccardo were to run, he shouldn’t be counted out, even if he’d start from behind. He’s well known in San Jose, and, like most centrist big city mayors, could fundraise well if needed.
CA-30
West Hollywood Councilmember Sepi Shyne has announced her candidacy for Congress, swelling the field to 6 declared candidates, with more still in the considering phase. When we discussed Shyne two weeks ago, we noted that she was a progressive from West Hollywood, which is true: she was part of efforts to improve labor rights, and increase the city’s minimum wage to the nation’s highest.
Following Ben Kawaller’s article in LA Mag that focused on how Shyne clashed with WeHo’s old guard, but also mentioned her new-age healing business Soulillume, and the New Age nonsense contained within, we decided to pull on that particular thread. We encourage you to go to the website itself, because it is hilarious, but we absolutely have to highlight some of the products Shyne is selling for money from the site’s “Manifestation Store”.
For $125, she will communicate with a pet who has died (“crossed the Rainbow Bridge”), though that services is not available for dead humans. As she told Kawaller, “I have other things I need to focus on in life other than, you know, speaking to people that have passed.” For anyone feeling “vulnerable to other people’s negative energies”, she has created “a sacred Golden Light, the Violet Flame and an Ancient Protection Symbol” that can be used on people, animals, houses, and cars ($50). For $20, you can buy a ruby which she has charged with Reiki, allowing it to not only detoxify blood and stimulate reproductive organs, but also treat fevers and “infections disease” [sic]—though buyers should be warned that the crystal must be cleared by either placing it in the sunlight or moonlight for 20 minutes twice a week.
Curing your COVID and giving you a boner for only $20 is a deal, but real bargain hunters should know that $10 will get you an Angelite crystal that will allow you to—you guessed it—contact angels. But you shouldn’t underestimate this crystal. It also “enhances psychic healing and telepathic communication and enables astral travel and spirit journey,” “enhances astrological understanding and brings deeper understanding of mathematics,” “facilitates telepathic contact between minds,” “opens psychic channeling,” and “can act as a diuretic”. For only $10! Anyone doubting her skills should watch this video on her YouTube channel where she performs pendulum magic over a child's crotch because his chakras were misaligned by either toxins, bad thoughts, bad food, or wearing the wrong color. We know what you're thinking: but what about his third eye? Don't worry, she healed that too.
NJ-Sen
Roselle Park Mayor Joe Signorello announced a primary challenge to Sen. Bob Menendez, and we spoke to him about it. Signorello, the young mayor of a suburb of 14,000, has long odds, but quirky neophyte Lisa McCormick managed 38% of the vote against Menendez six years ago as the purest of protest candidates; granted, Menendez’s corruption trial was fresh in voters’ minds then, but he’s back under FBI investigation today. If that hard floor of anti-Menendez primary voters still exists, it’s a lot for a credible candidate to work with.
NY-Sen
According to unnamed sources in the Daily Beast, former Rep. Mondaire Jones is considering a primary challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, which is really out of left field. Jones represented the suburban NY-17 from 2021 to 2023; when DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney decided to run for NY-17 in light of redistricting moving his home from NY-18 to NY-17, Jones decided to run for another term in Manhattan and Brooklyn’s NY-10 instead of his own district north of the city, despite representing far more of the new NY-17 than Maloney ever had. (He came in third, behind Yuh-Line Niou, the favorite of New York progressives in the race, and the winner, now-Rep. Dan Goldman.) Since his loss, he’s been a CNN commentator and a Biden appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
Gillibrand has certainly seen her stature decline since her last campaign in 2018; she ran for president in 2020 and went nowhere despite high expectations. She also branded herself as one of the Senate’s crypto enthusiasts, and is one of very few Democratic members of Congress whose enthusiasm for crypto hasn’t been dimmed in the slightest by the collapse of FTX and other crypto ventures. Still, Gillibrand doesn’t exactly top the list of senators who we’d expect to attract a primary challenge, and while Jones was a progressive rising star before the redistricting debacle and bewildering move to Brooklyn cut his career short, his is definitely not a name we were expecting to hear.
RI-01
Rep. David Cicilline stunned Washington and Rhode Island when he announced that he’d resign on June 1 to take over as president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, the state’s largest nonprofit funder. Cicilline co-chairs the LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus and is active in House Democratic leadership; he served as an impeachment manager and briefly challenged Jim Clyburn for the position of assistant minority leader, arguing for LGBTQ+ representation—and, implicitly, the total departure of the old Pelosi-Hoyer-Clyburn triumvirate which held the three highest-ranking positions in the House Democratic caucus continuously from 2007 to 2023. (Clyburn took a demotion from third- to fourth-ranking, but unlike Pelosi and Hoyer did not formally depart from leadership when the new Congress was sworn in.) He withdrew his challenge and accepted an appointment as parliamentarian of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, but his challenge to Clyburn ruffled some feathers even though Clyburn had gone back on his word (the entire triumvirate had promised to step aside in the new Congress.) Perhaps that’s why he’s making a surprise exit; Clyburn isn’t shy about holding personal grudges, and the general lack of opportunities for advancement within the House Democratic caucus has led ambitious leadership contenders to leave the House before.
Regardless, there’s going to be a special election, and you know what that means: clown car clusterfuck where every politician in the state has a free shot at Congress. There are an incredible twenty-two considering candidates. We’ll take the time to mention two notables: one for being the only one for actually declaring, and one because she has good odds of being the progressive choice if she runs:
Allen Waters, a repeat failed GOP candidate, including for RI-01 last year, is the only declared candidate. We doubt the early bird gets the worm here.
Former State Sen. Cynthia Mendes: Mendes was one of the biggest progressive victories in 2020, unseating a centrist incumbent in an elongated district stretching down the coast east of Providence. Mendes quickly became a big name among Rhode Island progressives. She then left that seat to run for lieutenant governor in 2022, on a ticket with RI Co-op leader Matt Brown. His campaign failed horribly, and hers did better but was still unsuccessful, coming in 3rd place at 19.8% statewide. We calculated her performance in RI-01, her home district; it was a slightly better 20.4%. Even if Mendes didn’t have a particularly good performance in 2022, she’s probably the left’s best bet here.
TX-32
Rep. Colin Allred is considering running for Senate against Ted Cruz in 2024. While his plans are far from firm, if he made the jump, he would absolutely clear the field unless one of the Castro twins decides it’s finally time to run. We’re not going to be covering the Senate election in a Republican-leaning state, but should Allred run, and stick with it through a primary, he’ll be opening up a now solidly Democratic Congressional district in Dallas. The only candidate currently known to be considering should Allred make the jump is state Rep. Julie Johnson, a frustratingly centrist white rep who doesn’t represent much of the district.
NJ-LD-14, Mercer County Executive
New Jersey’s party line system usually protects incumbents, the beneficiaries of the line are usually decided behind closed doors, and candidates rarely choose to run if they don’t get awarded the line. In the Mercer County Executive race, none of those statements are true this year: Assemb. Dan Benson beat longtime County Executive Brian Hughes in a landslide at the party’s open nominating convention, and Hughes plans to run off the line. Benson is a pretty unremarkable liberal Democrat, but he’s allied with progressives in addition to much of the local establishment, while Hughes is aligned with the more conservative South Jersey establishment based down in Camden and headed by wealthy party boss George Norcross. The Hughes-Benson war had at least one downballot ripple: moderate Assemb. Wayne DeAngelo backed Hughes and ran on a slate with him at the convention—placing third out of three candidates for LD-14 despite being the only incumbent running (Benson is giving up his seat to run for county executive.) However, even though only two candidates are elected per district and DeAngelo placed third, he didn’t lose the line. Under Mercer County Democratic Party bylaws, if a race like this is close enough, all three candidates are awarded the line (confusing voters and leading many to cast invalid ballots by voting for all three candidates.) Since DeAngelo didn’t get booted off the line like Hughes, he only has to outpace one of the two other Democrats, Tennille McCoy and Rick Carabelli. DeAngelo is openly angry with Benson’s camp for his loss, and unsure whether he’s going to continue on; LD-14 also includes parts of Middlesex County, which has yet to award its line, which may impact DeAngelo’s thinking.
VA-SD-32, VA-HD-27, VA-HD-26
State Sen. John Bell announced his retirement due to a treatable cancer diagnosis; we wish him a speedy recovery.
Bell’s retirement set off a game of musical chairs. Del. Suhas Subramanyam quickly announced his candidacy for Bell’s Senate seat, opening up HD-26. Former Del. Ibraheem Samirah, a progressive who represented an overlapping district before losing a primary to a moderate in 2021, quickly announced he’d run for HD-26, and HD-27 candidate Kannan Srinivasan quickly switched over to HD-26—with establishment support to spare, as the local establishment wasn’t shy last time about wanting the progressive Samirah’s ouster. Now Samirah is switching races, challenging Subramanyam for the state Senate nomination.
Philadelphia Mayor
Former LG Mike Stack announced that he’s ending his mayoral campaign after only a couple weeks. Okay, well, goodbye then.
Jeff Brown’s campaign has released a poll that shows Jeff Brown winning. Specifically, Brown’s poll has him at 22%, with progressive favorite Helen Gym at 16%, moderate Allan Domb at 9%, and state Rep. Amen Brown in 4th place with an unspecified vote share. That last bit is what led some to cast doubt on the poll to KYW Newsradio; Brown’s campaign has been a slow-motion disaster. It’s very likely that at least one of the of the Black candidates in this race is in the top tier with Jeff Brown, Helen Gym, and Allan Domb—it’s just quite unlikely that candidate is Amen Brown, rather than at-large councilor Derek Green or District 9 councilor Cherelle Parker. Parker, in fact, has been consolidating support from some powerful labor unions lately; the conservative building trades unions and the more middle-of-the-road SEIU 32BJ both backed her this week.
CA-SD-07
There was clearly a lot of backroom negotiation going on among East Bay politicians regarding the open CA-12, as evidenced both by Lateefah Simon seemingly fully clearing the field once she entered, and by the mad scramble for the overlapping state senate district, SD-07, immediately after. Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín, who we discussed a couple weeks ago, as considering, finally made it official and began a campaign. Oakland City Councilmember Dan Kalb has also indicated he’ll be running. Kalb is part of the progressive faction of Oakland politics, and thus far is the only candidate from Oakland, which makes up nearly half the district, but he’s likely to suffer from not being the candidate of business, the left, or labor. Still, he’s a strong candidate—he nearly made the runoff from the 2018 election to AD-15, and that district barely had any Oakland. The woman who beat him out for that runoff spot was AC Transit Director Jovanka Beckles, and she may also be running. Beckles was the left’s candidate in that election, and came within 7% of winning even though Barack Obama had endorsed her opponent, Buffy Wicks. That election was one of the earlier battles in the California Housing Wars. Seriously, we really hope we don’t have to relitigate that one. The final running candidate is AFSCME Local 3299 leader Kathryn Lybarger. Lybarger leads the union for University of California non-academic workers. Labor leaders generally make good legislators, and there’s no reason not to think she’d be one, as a generally progressive leader for a generally less progressive union.
Allegheny County, PA
At this cycle’s endorsement caucus for the Allegheny County Democratic Committee—the notoriously conservative party org known for bestowing their endorsement on any Trump-supporting open bigot willing to ask for it, provided they’re running against an even vaguely progressive opponent—something magical happened: They kind of, sort of, voted like they were in some way aware they’re Democrats. The change was likely the result of progressive County Council Bethany Hallam’s efforts to elect some ACDC members who are at least liberal-to-progressive.
For County Executive, County Treasurer John Weinstein received the endorsement, with 40% of the votes, ahead of state Rep. Sara Innamorato, who 32% of the members voted for, and Pittsburgh City Comptroller Michael Lamb (uncle of Connor) at 28%. The District Attorney endorsement went to progressive challenger Matt Dugan over carceral incumbent Stephen Zappala, 59% to 41%. Hallam won endorsement for reelection by a similarly strong 60% to 40% over challenger Joanna Doven. The final two endorsements of note were the very expected victory of establishment choice Corey O’Connor over O’Hara Township Auditor and progressive activist Darwin Leuba 75% to 25% in the County Controller race, and the barely less expected 56% Rachael Heisler took for Pittsburgh City Controller, ahead of Tracy Royston’s 30% and Kevin Carter’s 14%.
St. Louis Board of Aldermen
Tomorrow, St. Louis will be voting in the first round of their 2023 Board of Alderman elections. These are the first elections under not just new district lines, but a new district size. The city, after decades of population loss, dropped its number of Alders from 26 to 14, nudging the average ward size just north of 20,000. Incumbents will be double-bunked, and St. Louis continues to be the site of a battle between progressives and moderates, but you should expect turnout to remain abysmal, especially with nothing else on the ballot. With electorates that small, we’re not going to dwell on individual races just yet, but we’d like to pass along the 8 endorsements made by progressive Board President Megan Green:
Anne Schweitzer (Ward 1)
Shane Cohn (Ward 3)
Bret Narayan (Ward 4)
Daniela Velázquez (Ward 6)
Alisha Sonnier (Ward 7)
Shameem Clark Hubbard (Ward 10)
Tashara Earl (Ward 12)
Rasheen Aldridge (Ward 14)