Primary School 5/13
the Yassification of anti-Helen Gym attack ads
Results
Before we get into the week’s news, we have to wade through the results of Texas’s May 6 municipal elections. Check out our preview for a more in-depth discussion of the stakes.
Brownsville
Republican City Commissioner John Cowen won handily, garnering more than 56% of the vote against SpaceX Democrat Jessica Tetreau and Republican former school board member Erasmo Castro. (Texas Democrats and fumbling a technically nonpartisan municipal race in a blue Rio Grande Valley city, name a more iconic duo.)
Dallas
Every incumbent won outright, though Chad West (District 1), Jaime Resendez (District 5), Omar Narvaez (District 6), and Adam Bazaldua (District 7) had close calls; Kathy Stewart easily won open District 10. District 3 is headed to a runoff between Harlan Crow’s pick, Zarin Gracey (46.2%), and repeat candidate Joe Tave (25.8%), a retired teacher and radio host.
Fort Worth
Incumbents Gyna Bivens (District 5), Jared Williams (District 6), and Elizabeth Beck (District 9) all cleared 50%, the latter two fending off opponents backed by Republicans hoping to take back control of the Fort Worth City Council after losing it in 2021. In the open District 11, conservative and NIMBY hardliner Rick Herring (34.1%) will face moderate Democrat Jeanette Martinez (36.3%); progressive Tara Maldonado-Wilson placed third with 17%.
Irving
District 3 incumbent Mark Zeske is the underdog in a rematch with Abdul Khabeer, who he beat for this seat in 2020; Khabeer led Zeske 48-33, a near-perfect reversal of 2020’s first round, when Zeske led Khabeer 46-33. The remainder of the vote went to right-winger Paul Bertanzetti, whose voters are unlikely to flow to Khabeer in a runoff, but Khabeer is even closer to 50% than Zeske was in 2020. The open District 5 seems headed in the wrong direction; liberal Heather Stroup did make it to the runoff with 27.5% of the vote, but conservative favorite Mark Cronenwett led with 40.7%, and fellow conservatives Matt Varble and Jesse Koehler combined with Cronenwett for 70% of the first-round vote.
San Antonio
Conservatives worked overtime to deal a landslide defeat to Proposition A, a criminal justice reform measure backed by progressive activists, but the Proposition A backlash didn’t translate into coattails for conservative city council candidates staking their campaigns on opposition to Proposition A. This was partly because those candidates were often seeking to unseat councilors who already opposed Prop A and generally supported the policing status quo (like moderate liberal councilors Phyllis Viagran and Melissa Cabello Havrda, and conservative Democratic councilor Manny Pelaez), but the council’s two DSA members, Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and Teri Castillo, also coasted to reelection. District 1’s Mario Bravo was the odd councilor out; not only is he headed to a runoff, he placed second with just 26% behind challenger Sukh Kaur, who (much like him) is a vaguely progressive-sounding but generally squishy candidate, not a right-wing freakshow. Unlike Bravo, Kaur is not laden with personal baggage. Her 34% is a long way from the majority she’ll need in a runoff, but incumbents rarely survive runoffs after first-round performances as weak as Bravo’s.
News
Pennsylvania’s May primaries have snuck up on us. The state votes on Tuesday, so we’re leading with Philly and Allegheny County.
Philadelphia Mayor
Former state Sen. and Lt. Gov. Mike Stack weighed in on the mayoral contest, endorsing Allan Domb. Earlier this year, Stack maintained that he was going to enter the race for about a month, until he gave up on that particular fantasy. Stack's endorsement represents even more Northeast Philly consolidation for Domb, whose best hope next week is to ride the moderate white vote to victory over a divided field by relieving grocery magnate Jeff Brown's collapsing campaign of its last remaining voters.
For weeks, Helen Gym has been the target of attack ads from a mysterious PAC going by the name The Coalition for Safety and Equitable Growth. Campaign finance reports have finally come in, less than a week before the election, and it’s as many suspected: the man funding these attacks is Jeffrey Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, and a perpetual source of funding for attacks on progressives in Philadelphia. Yass wasn’t the only donor, though, even if he’s responsible for most of the funding. Rich guy Josh Kopelman, who is a part owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the city’s largest paper, also chipped in. Incidentally, the Inquirer recently took the unusual step of publishing an editorial, authored by the Editorial Board, denouncing the “confrontational” “troublemaker” Gym, who “doesn't play nice” and was responsible for a “shabby treatment of Comcast”. (Oh no, poor Comcast.) Also contributing to the PAC were the General Building Contractors Association, the Laborers District Council (which has endorsed Cherelle Parker) and ex-Mayor Michael Nutter (who has endorsed Rebecca Rhynhart).
Two new polls have been released in the last week. The first was an internal poll from the Gym campaign, fielded by Data For Progress. In it, Gym and Rebecca Rhynhart tie for first at 21%, Cherelle Parker is just behind at 19%, Allan Domb is significantly behind at 13%, and Jeff Brown rounds out the pack at 9%. The second came from Emerson, not working for any campaign. They find a similar picture: Gym in first at 21%, Parker and Rhynhart tied for second at 18%, Domb at 14%, and Brown once again last among the major candidates at 10%. Taken together, these polls suggest that the top tier of candidates has finally shrunk to three, with both Domb and Brown slipping.
Philadelphia Register of Wills
Register of Wills is one of those offices that’s absolutely pointless to elect, but plenty of East Coast states do anyway. Normally, the office doesn’t see much intrigue, but in 2019, neighborhood activist Tracey Gordon unseated incumbent Ron Donatucci. She’s facing another contested primary now, and has found herself in hot water after an employee alleged he was fired after refusing to contribute to her reelection campaign. This week, a second employee made the same allegation. The one fucking thing you want from someone in this kind of needless elected office is for them not to be corrupt. She’s facing three opponents in the primary, establishment choice John Sabatina, Jim Kenney staffer Rae Hall, and ghost candidate Elizabeth Hall Lowe.
Allegheny County Executive
Somewhere inside the campaign headquarters of Allegheny County Treasurer John Weinstein, a switch was flipped. Maybe the precipitating event was the release of a public poll showing progressive state Rep. Sara Innamorato leading; maybe it was private polling that showed much the same. Maybe it was just a gut feeling from some advisor who just woke up—we'll never know. What we do know is that the Weinstein campaign chose this week to go absolutely nuclear on Innamorato.
The evening of May 3: The Weinstein campaign begins sending out mass texts calling Innamorato "DIVISIVE", "INADEQUATE", and "EXTREME", the elaboration of their final claim being that she "is bankrolled by radical progressives."
Morning of May 6: The Weinstein campaign ups the text-banking ante by sending a picture of Innamorato with her face crossed out, and text warning voters that, among other things, that "Sara Innamorato is an unapologetic democratic SOCIALIST" and not to "Allow Sara's FAILED EXTREME PROGRESSIVE AGENDA to destroy Allegheny County". Based on conversations we've had, these texts appear to have been sent out either indiscriminately to all Democrats, or targeted so poorly that they may as well have been.
Morning of May 9: The Weinstein campaign drops its latest ad, a jaw-dropping attack ad that brings up Innamorato being a socialist at two separate points, and ends on a warning that "we can't allow the failed progressive agenda that's destroying our city to destroy our county." The ad looks quickly thrown together, and scans as something a Republican campaign team would put together, to the point where several Twitter users appear to be genuinely mistaken that this is a general election ad against the Democratic nominee. (We also question the wisdom of running against Pittsburgh in a Democratic primary where Pittsburgh is going to be a large share of the electorate, but that’s almost beside the point.)
Evening of May 12: A user on Twitter reports receiving text messages imploring "Socialist Comrades" to vote for Sara Innamorato in a clumsy red-baiting attempt to make it look like the groups backing her have problems with Weinstein such as the latter "allowing businesses to grow". The texts had none of the paid-for language official campaign communications require, and so we can't actually say who is sending these out—though we can make a pretty good guess about who would want to promote Weinstein and scare voters away from Innamorato and Pittsburgh City Controller Michael Lamb. We reached out to the Weinstein campaign for comment about these messages but haven't received a response.
While the Innamorato campaign has technically stayed positive, the Working Families Party hasn’t, releasing a negative ad going after both Weinstein and Lamb in one spot, mostly focusing on the donors to both campaigns—Republicans in Weinstein’s case and business interests in Lamb’s case. Lamb took major umbrage at a small comment from this ad which categorizes his campaign as “run by a banker,” and gave an entire press conference seemingly for the purpose of pointing out that while the person they’re talking about is a VP at PNC Bank, they used to work in the government before taking that job, so the criticism is out of bounds? We think? It was very bizarre.
Allegheny County District Attorney
The Pennsylvania Justice and Safety PAC, a long-standing arm of George Soros’s effort to elect progressive prosecutors, has spent roughly $734,000 on ads for Matt Dugan. Can you guess what the headlines have been? “Soros-backed PAC spends big to install liberal criminal defense attorney as Pittsburgh's next DA” (Washington Examiner) “George Soros is funding almost all of Matt Dugan's campaign for Allegheny County DA” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who we’re not linking to until the strike ends), “Soros-Backed PAC Is Almost Exclusively Bankrolling Left-Wing DA Candidate” (The Daily Caller) “Soros-backed PAC spending big to install progressive PD as DA in Allegheny County” (Hot Air). Incumbent Stephen Zappala has leaned into this angle of the race, alleging that Dugan will be “taking orders” from Soros, that “Dugan has no say in his own campaign”, and that Soros will “have complete control of his office if he’s elected.” The Zappala campaign has also released an ad claiming Dugan is “selling us out” “behind closed doors”.
AZ-03
We noticed Glendale Elementary School Board member Héctor Jaramillo’s filing for this seat back in February—he was actually the first Democrat to file with the FEC after incumbent Ruben Gallego announced a Senate campaign. Despite his February filing, Jaramillo stayed silent on the race, reporting no fundraising to the FEC in the first quarter of 2023 and making no public moves towards a run. Now, however, he’s officially in. Based on what we can tell from his public statements and electoral track record, moderates are still without a candidate in AZ-03: Jaramillo, 26, was elected to the school board last year as a pro-worker, anti-charter school candidate, he wants a Green New Deal, and he’s not a fan of centrist Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego. The other two declared candidates, state Sen. Raquel Terán and Phoenix City Councilwoman Yassamin Ansari, are likewise on the left side of the Arizona Democratic spectrum.
CA-Sen
Quick, quarantine California, Ro Khanna Syndrome is contagious. This week, California Attorney General Rob Bonta endorsed two of the three Democratic candidates for the Senate seat currently held by Dianne Feinstein’s chief of staff. Katie Porter rolled out Bonta’s endorsement—and so did Barbara Lee, who unlike Porter also rolled out endorsements from several other statewide elected officials. Lee’s endorsers reflect her main strength in this race: Porter and Adam Schiff have more money and name recognition, but Lee is the only candidate from the Bay Area, traditionally the center of Democratic Party politics in the state and a dominant force in statewide elections. Bonta, an Oakland resident, made a dual endorsement of Orange County’s Porter and his own congresswoman Lee, but three of his fellow Bay Area statewide officeholders—state Controller Malia Cohen, Treasurer Fiona Ma, and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond—endorsed Lee alone.
IL-07
Danny Davis is apparently running for reelection. Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin had filed an exploratory committee back in April and gave conflicting signals as to whether she’d run if Davis didn’t retire. Conyears-Ervin, referring to her exploratory campaign, now says “that process continues” and says to expect a decision “in the coming months,” overall sounding like a politician rather disappointed that the 81-year-old Davis, who narrowly survived a primary with Justice Democrats’ Kina Collins last year, isn’t going quietly.
Another challenger filed with the FEC: charter school teacher and former principal Nikhil Bhatia, who serves on the Local School Council of his daughter’s school. Per his LinkedIn, Bhatia teaches at Noble Schools, a Chicago-based charter chain notorious for cruel, abusive, and racist policies, and previously was a middle school principal in Massachusetts with Uncommon Schools, a Northeastern charter chain known for the same horrifying shit.
MD-Sen
Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks launched her campaign with an impressive slate of endorsements, concentrated in her Prince George’s backyard but with noteworthy backers from outside the county as well. Baltimore U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman, and Baltimore City and Montgomery County State’s Attorneys Ivan Bates and John McCarthy were some of the biggest non-Prince George’s names on her early endorsement list. An especially notable absence is Prince George’s County U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey: his wife Jolene, a Prince George’s County Councilmember, and his son Julian, a state delegate, both threw their support behind Alsobrooks. The presence of quite a few Montgomery County and Baltimore notables is cause for concern for would-be candidates Johnny Olszewski, the Baltimore County Executive, and Jamie Raskin, the congressman for most of Montgomery County, as well as already-declared candidate Will Jawando, a Montgomery County Councilmember. The other declared candidate, Montgomery County resident and western Maryland congressman David Trone, is less likely to be perturbed, since his game plan is to use his personal wealth to buy the seat. Trone is extremely wealthy as the co-founder and co-owner of Total Wine & More, and he has shamelessly used his money to get elected in every campaign he’s ever run.
MD-06
Del. Joe Vogel followed up his FEC filing with a quick official launch, which he buttressed with endorsements from all over the Gen Z Electoral Nonprofit-Industrial Complex. Running on a platform of “did you know I’m Gen Z?” is not going to save him from the fact that Gen Z’s politics are substantially to the left of a former Bloomberg staffer, but it was enough to get him into the state legislature, so we see why he’s sticking to that message. Vogel remains the only declared candidate on the Democratic side, but there was plenty of movement behind the scenes.
Montgomery County Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe, former Montgomery County Councilmember Craig Rice, Gaithersburg Mayor Jud Ashman, former Hagerstown mayor+current Wes Moore administration official Emily Keller, and Frederick Mayor Michael O’Connor all took themselves out of the running. Del. Lesley Lopez, a mercenary Hill staffer turned standard Democratic backbencher, admitted her interest in the race without giving a timeline for a decision; so did 2018 gubernatorial candidate Krish Vignarajah and 2022 Trone primary challenger Ben Smilowitz, two candidates we hadn’t heard mentioned before. One last new name was added to the mix by Maryland Matters’s Josh Kurtz: Del. Lily Qi.
NJ-Sen
Subpoenas have been issued in the federal criminal investigation into Sen. Bob Menendez. This investigation is the senator’s second run-in with federal prosecutors; the first ended in a hung jury after the Supreme Court effectively legalized all but the most brazen public corruption in the middle of Menendez’s criminal trial with its decision in McDonnell v. United States. The subpoenas are not related to the originally stated reason for the investigation, which related to potential improprieties in Menendez’s role in halal meat export contracts; these subpoenas, one of which was issued to state Sen. and North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco, relate to “certain legislative changes in New Jersey.” (Probably unrelatedly, Sacco pushed for the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for public corruption offenses, twice adding public corruption offenses to a bill meant to eliminate mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenses; a Sacco spokesperson, veteran Hudson County machine flack Phil Swibinski, quickly released a statement saying Sacco had been assured he was not a target of the investigation.) Menendez is the most powerful product of the Hudson County machine; if anyone has the dirt prosecutors need to convict him, it’s Hudson County machine functionaries and bosses like Sacco. In 2018, the lingering ethical cloud created by the mistrial and just-dropped corruption charges led Menendez to a very weak primary performance against obscure gadfly and future alleged election fraudster Lisa McCormick; 2024 is shaping up to be similar for the senator, who this time faces at least one non-gadfly challenger in Roselle Park Mayor Joe Signorello, who is staking his campaign in large part on Menendez’s persistent ethical lapses.
WA-Gov
After Jay Inslee’s retirement last week, the first candidate to enter the race was Attorney General Bob Ferguson. Ferguon’s launch was a success at the time, given that he did so with the endorsement of most powerful Democrats in the state, and the last week has only confirmed that—Ferguson raised $1.5 million in that time. As we said then, Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz was still considering, but likely to get in. This week, she did just that, in a video that focuses on the environmental and housing challenges of Washington, as well as the need for “epic” responses. We discussed Ferguson and Franz in more depth in March, when talk about this race was heating up.
Axios’s Melissa Santos reports that there may be a third high-profile Democrat joining them in the race soon: state Sen. Mark Mullet. If true, that would be a bizarre career move on his part. Mullet is an anti-tax hardliner whose consistent attempts to undermine the Democratic agenda earned him a Democratic challenger in 2020. He won by a margin so close a recount was necessary, in a light blue suburban district, which means he lost the Democratic vote badly and was mostly supported by Republicans. Pulling off that same feat in the gubernatorial race would involve not having any Republicans in the primary, which is plainly ludicrous. And as much as Washington has a particularly bad case of frustrating centrists in leadership, even they find him exasperating. He’s going to be the only Democrat telling other Democrats to vote for him.
WA-Atty. Gen.
Much like the governorship, the AG’s office hasn’t been open since 2012. State Sen. Manka Dhingra, who chairs the state Senate’s Law and Justice Committee, is the first candidate to enter the race. Dhingra, who represents Seattle’s liberal eastern suburbs, is likely to be on the progressive side of the race; she’s used her committee gavel to fight against efforts to roll back criminal justice reforms, drawing bipartisan ire for her opposition to rolling back restrictions on dangerous high-speed police chases and her support for the decriminalization of simple drug possession.
NY-AD-106
Looks like New York is getting started early on 2024 primary challenges. Hudson-Catskill Housing Coalition director Claire Cousin is running against incumbent Didi Barrett, who has represented this rural but Democratic-leaning Hudson Valley district for eleven years. Barrett has taken a handful of votes against gun control in her tenure, but Cousin is focusing more on environmental and housing issues. Barrett opposes good cause eviction requirements, and recently attempted to loosen the state’s greenhouse gas emissions standards. Cousin says that she was approached by the Working Families Party to run against Barrett in 2022, which suggests they’ll be willing to back her this year. DSA mounted a successful primary challenge in a neighboring Assembly district in 2022 with WFP’s support, replacing incumbent Kevin Cahill with climate organizer Sarahana Shrestha.
Arlington-Falls Church, Fairfax, & Loudoun Commonwealth Attorneys
The Washington Post editorial board has made its picks for the Commonwealth Attorney elections in Northern Virginia. The notoriously anti-criminal justice reform editorial board did as we expected in Loudoun and Fairfax Counties, picking challengers Elizabeth Lancaster in the former and Ed Nuttall in the latter (and in fact specifically mentioning Nuttall getting a while police officer off scot free after on charges of excessive force against a Black man as a reason to support him), but surprised us by recommending Arlington voters reelect progressive prosecutor Parisa Dehghani-Tafti.
Baltimore City Council President
Baltimore City Comptroller Bill Henry endorsed City Councilmember Zeke Cohen in his bid for City Council President. The endorsement came in the form of a professionally-produced video, and you can expect Henry to be a visible part of the Cohen campaign. Henry was a councilmember himself for over a decade, and primaried out longtime incumbent Joan Pratt for the Comptroller position in 2020, as part of a mini progressive wave in Baltimore. Cohen is challenging incumbent Nick Mosby, who has clashed with progressives on the council, the mayor’s office, the news media, the city’s ethics board, and the IRS since his election as council president in 2020. The ethics board’s ruling that Mosby violated city ethics laws is far from the only ethical issue endangering the council president’s political career; Nick’s wife Marilyn Mosby, who lost reelection as the city’s top prosecutor last year, is set to stand trial on federal perjury charges in the fall.
San Francisco Mayor
San Francisco, we would like you to please start having elections that don’t crush our souls. We know there’s going to be an open Congressional seat there at some point in the not-too-distant future, and it’s going to be, just, terrible, so could you please give us a break before then? We ask because Mayor London Breed—a politician who so cartoonishly hates the left that she recently claimed even-year city elections were a socialist plot, who appointed a DA to start a new self-described “War on Drugs” under her supervision, who boycotted last year’s pride parade because the cops were also boycotting it—is finally getting a challenger. From her right.
Supervisor Ahsha Safaí has officially entered the mayoral race, after months of all-but-confirming his intentions to the press. He disagrees with Breed on issues like police funding. She thinks it needs large increases every year; he thinks it needs even larger increases every year. A rare positive move from the Breed mayoralty was closing JFK Drive to cars, so naturally he opposed it. Breed wants to crack down on fentanyl users, Safaí wonders why she won’t also shutter the harm reduction treatment centers. Incidentally, he made those comments at a rally organized by conservative media personality and opponent of “wokeism” Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities and several entries in the Twitter Files. London Breed despises the homeless, and—okay, no one’s going to run to her right on that particular issue, but otherwise the trend is pretty clear. We’re looking forward to a better candidate for mayor than either of these ghouls, and, if not, we’re looking forward to pretending San Francisco doesn’t exist for a little while.