Primary School 5/23
The Squad gains a member, and the Blue Dogs (likely) lose one
Results
We had our first big multi-state primary night of the cycle here at Primary School. We’re going to address the big races of the night—congressional and gubernatorial primaries—first at the beginning of this section, then we’ll go through results further down the ballot state by state. Without further ado, here are the big ones:
KY-03: State Sen. Morgan McGarvey easily beat state Rep. Attica Scott 63% to 37%, which is less than we were expecting him to win by, given his bonkers financial advantage.
NC-01: Conservative state Sen. Don Davis won by a wide 63-31 margin over progressive former state Sen. Erica Smith.
NC-04: State Sen. Valerie Foushee won by a smaller 46-37 over progressive Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, aided (and in all likelihood elected) by an avalanche of $3.5 million in ads from AIPAC and Protect Our Future, on top of the majority of funding for Foushee’s campaign coming through AIPAC’s bundling.
OR-Gov: Former state House Speaker Tina Kotek beat more moderate state Treasurer Tobias Read, with a margin currently at 57% to 31%.
OR-04: Val Hoyle dominated the field with over 60% of the vote.
OR-06: State Rep. Andrea Salinas is currently at a similarly breezy 38% to her nearest competitor, Carrick Flynn—the AI researcher whose campaign was propped up by more than $11 million in outside spending from cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, all to get a meager 18% of the vote.
PA-03: Dwight Evans easily defeated leftist challenger Alexandra Hunt.
PA-12: As you have probably heard by now, state Rep. Summer Lee defeated attorney Steve Irwin. After a nerve-wracking election night that began with early votes putting Irwin ahead by a 20% margin, spectators got to watch as election day ballots slowly erased that lead and then put Lee ahead. Once Lee took a small but steady lead, it was clear she had won, though Irwin didn’t accept defeat until later in the week when the last uncounted election day ballots were counted, predictably widening Lee’s lead. The margin currently stands at 41.7% for Lee to 41.0% to Irwin, though Allegheny County has yet to tally provisional ballots, which our back-of-the-envelope math says should increase the margin by another .2% or so. Regardless, it was incredibly close, a result of over $4 million spent against Lee by centrist super PACs, but she beat them. Lee, who commands a powerful left-wing organizing network in Pittsburgh and was backed by just about every noteworthy national progressive group and politician, is the second likely new Squad member elected to Congress this cycle, the first being Greg Casar in TX-35.
OR-05 remains uncalled because Clackamas County, nearly half the district, had ballot problems and has counted very few ballots so far, and because Oregon’s all-mail elections generally take a few days to count anyway as later-arriving ballots are counted. The current margin is 60-40% for Jamie McLeod-Skinner over incumbent Kurt Schrader, and Schrader’s position is deteriorating in each of the district’s counties as later-arriving ballots are counted thanks to the persistent tendency of late-arriving mail ballots to lean further left than earlier-arriving mail ballots in all-mail states like Oregon, Washington, and California. News organizations are understandably hesitant to call the race given how much remains uncounted, but Schrader lacks a realistic path to victory, and the former leader of the Blue Dogs will soon be a former member of Congress. It turns out that an endorsement from Joe Biden doesn’t make up for blocking Biden’s agenda in the eyes of Democratic voters.
Oregon
Aside from the congressional and gubernatorial races above, we’re going to hold off on Oregon’s downballot elections, because between the persistent tendency of all-mail states to shift left over the course of the vote count, the inconsistent and shifting reporting schedules across Oregon’s counties, and the ballot problem in Clackamas County—the state’s third-largest county—so much remains undecided that we’d have to follow up next week with the results of the closest elections and everything in Clackamas County.
Kentucky
As expected, center-left Democrat Craig Greenberg won the Louisville mayoral primary with 41% of the vote, while progressive bail reform activist Shameka Parrish-Wright took second place at 22%, conservative David Nicholson took 17% for third, and pastor Timothy Findley Jr. rounded out the major candidates at 15%. State Rep. Pamela Stevenson held off democratic socialist Robert LeVertis Bell by a narrow margin of 54-46 in HD-43, while state Rep. Tom Burch lost to Jefferson County Commissioner Daniel Grossberg by an even slimmer 45-42 margin, ending Burch’s run as one of the longest-serving state legislators in the country. (He was first elected in 1972.)
North Carolina
The biggest news of the night downballot in North Carolina came from Fayetteville, where moderate state Sen. Kirk deViere’s 37-56 lost to Val Applewhite, who had Gov. Roy Cooper’s endorsement. Other results in the state Senate were also largely positive. Disability rights lawyer Lisa Grafstein scored a wide 66-34 victory over moderate Raleigh City Councilor Patrick Buffkin in SD-13, incumbent state Sen. Julie Mayfield easily turned back anti-homeless Asheville City Councilor Sandra Kilgore 68-20, and state Reps. Kandie Smith and Graig Meyer won their respective open seats, SD-05 and SD-23, with over 80% of the vote.
In the state House, incumbents fared well. Conservative bathroom bill supporter Michael Wray took 79% of the vote, Rosa Gill took 84% against a pro-gun challenger, and Marvin Lucas defeated progressive repeat candidate Dr. Naveed Aziz (though only by a 56-44 margin). Not-quite incumbent state Sen. Sarah Crawford only managed to win an overlapping state house district 47-45 over party activist Wesley Knott, and former state Rep. Tricia Cotham took her old House district back with 48% of the vote against a divided field. In Orange County, progressive County Commissioner Renée Price blew away Hillsborough town commissioner Matt Hughes with 72% of the vote, and Allen Buansi won Chapel Hill-based HD-56 51-49 over Jonah Garson. Finally, community activist Kanika Brown took Winston-Salem’s open HD-71 over the husband of the current incumbent.
Judicial results had a painful share of close losses: Wake County’s incumbent DA Lorrin Freeman beat challenger Damon Chetson 59-41 and Buncombe County incumbent DA Todd Williams has an apparent 34.7% - 34.3% lead over public defender Courtney Booth, though with only 123 votes separating the two, she’s not yet ready to talk about conceding until after provisional votes are counted, and perhaps until after a recount is held. In 2020, 175 provisional votes were counted in the Democratic primary, and Bernie Sanders won 100 of them while winning 38% of the vote county-wide. Other incumbents fared much better: Spencer Merriweather (Mecklenburg County) and Avery Michelle Crump (Guilford County) both won by over 30%.
Sheriff elections were also quieter. Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller got 86% of the vote over “sovereign sheriff” believer David Hurley, and Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead got 90% against his right-wing crank ex-cop opponent. Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers’s 58% was a much less impressive share of the vote, but a split field meant that 2nd place TJ Phipps only got 30%. Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden was the only incumbent who needed to sweat: he won a 51-38 victory over police union-backed opponent Gina Hicks, who dominated in the white suburbs. Wake County’s sheriff’s contest will be going to a runoff, after incumbent Gerald Baker, who brutally suppressed the coutny’s Black Lives Matter protests, managed just 24% of the vote, setting up a July 26 runoff with more progressive challenger Willie Rowe, who took 29% of the vote. (North Carolina requires runoffs if no candidate achieves 30% of the vote.)
Pennsylvania
In addition to Summer Lee’s victory, Pennsylvania progressives had some other wins to celebrate. Three state representatives lost to progressive primary challengers: Martell Covington lost to La’Tasha Mayes in HD-24 (downtown Pittsburgh), Brian Kirkland lost to Carol Kazeem in HD-159 (Chester), and Pam DeLissio lost to Tarik Khan in HD-194 (Northwest Philadelphia). Machine-backed challenges to progressive state representatives fell short across the board: Lee and her Pittsburgh-area colleagues Emily Kinkead and Jessica Benham, as well as her Philly colleagues Rick Krajewski and Elizabeth Fiedler, easily defeated their machine opponents, and progressive state Rep. Chris Rabb handily defeated more moderate, machine-friendly state Rep. Isabella Fitzgerald in the district the two shared as a result of redistricting. Progressives won open seats as well: Allentown city councilor Josh Siegel, Reading city councilor Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz, and Lancaster city councilor Izzy Smith-Wade-El all won open state House seats in the state’s smaller metro areas with the backing of progressive groups, and Larry Krasner staffer/progressive activist Ben Waxman won an open state House seat in Philadelphia, though progressive challengers Cass Green and Andre Carroll fell short against machine incumbents Amen Brown and Stephen Kinsey in Philadelphia and progressive challenger Dana Hamp Gulick lost to moderate incumbent Michael Sturla in Lancaster. The only state Senate primary of note, in SD-08, ended in a 60-40 defeat for DSA- and teachers’ union-backed public school teacher Paul Prescod—disappointing, but a respectable loss against a Philadelphia institution in Anthony Williams.
CA-13
$117K for radio ads supporting Adam Gray from the California Real Estate Political Action Committee. Total CARE PAC spending: $117K
$53K in mailers attacking Adam Gray from the Voter Protection Project. Total VPP spending: $104K
CA-15
$56K of digital ads supporting Emily Beach from VoteVets. The ad mentions her time in the military and says she’ll fight for reproductive rights. Total VoteVets spending: $56K
CA-16
$48K in mailers for Greg Tanaka from DAO for America. DAO for America is yet another cryptocurrency PAC. Total DAO spending: $48K
CA-37
$317K in ads for Sydney Kamlager from Web3 Forward. We recently learned that Sam Bankman-Fried, the billionaire cryptocurrency tycoon who funds Protect Our Future (officially related to cryptocurrency) also mostly funds Web3 Forward (explicitly about crypto). His PACs are spending together here. How cute. Total Web3 spending: $317K
$31K in mailers for Sydney Kamlager from Protect Our Future PAC. Total POF spending: $389K
CA-42
$50K of mailers promoting Robert Garcia from Protect Our Future PAC. Total POF spending: $903K
$158K of cable and digital ads supporting Robert Garcia from CHC BOLD PAC. The ad focuses on Garcia’s time as mayor of Long BEach. Total CHC spending: $158K
$80K of mailers opposing Cristina Garcia from Equality PAC. Total EPAC spending: $80K
$35K of mailers for Robert Garcia from Californians for Safe and Healthy Communities. CFHC was created in January and given $45K in at the beginning of March, $20K from SEIU Healthcare, $20K from Long Beach Hotel Properties LLC, and $5K from former Long Beach mayor Bob Foster. Total CFHC spending: $35K
$108K in mailers attacking Cristina Garcia from the Voter Protection Project. Now that CHC BOLD PAC is spending here, it’s looking like a good bet that BOLD is putting their name on the positive stuff and using VPP for the negative. Total VPP spending: $104K
$18K in phone calls attacking Cristina Garcia from United Democracy Project PAC (AIPAC). Total UDP spending: $18K
GA-07
$1.07M in TV and digital ads for Lucy McBath from Independence USA (Mike Bloomberg). The ad focuses on gun control, the issue that drew Bloomberg to first support McBath in 2018. Total Bloomberg spending: $1.07M
$1.00M in TV ads and $80K in mailers for Lucy McBath from Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund. Total Everytown spending: $1.87M
$25K of mailers supporting Lucy McBath from Black Progressive Political Action Coalition. We attributed a round of mailers from the Black Progressive Political Action Coalition to the Black Political Action Coalition last week. Total BPPAC spending: $74K
$6K in digital ads attacking Lucy McBath from Democrats Serve. The ad accuses her of abandoning her previous district and “[giving] her vote in Congress to Rich McCormick, an extremist anti-abortion Republican”. Total Democrats Serve spending: $6K
IL-06
$50K for digital ads supporting Sean Casten from New Democrats Action Fund. One ad says he’s endorsed by Planned Parenthood, and the other says he’s good on green issues. Total New Dems spending: $50K
TX-28
$528K in TV ads against Henry Cuellar and $19K in mailers for Jessica Cisneros from Women Vote! (EMILY’s List). Total EMILY’s List spending: $721K
$510K in TV ads for Henry Cuellar from Mainstream Democrats PAC (Reid Hoffman). This is the ad from last week that claimed Cuellar opposed an abortion ban. Total MD spending: $751K
$447K for TV ads, $20K in digital ads, $39K in GOTV phone calls, and $27K of mailers boosting Henry Cuellar and hitting Jessica Cisneros from the United Democracy Project (AIPAC). The TV ad, once again, attacks Jessica Cisneros’s for wanting to cut border security positions. Total UDP spending: $1.81M
$50K in digital ads for Jessica Cisneros from JStreet PAC. The ad encourages voters to vote to “Defeat Henry Cuellar, the Last Anti-Choice House Democrat.” and throws in “Don’t miss this election, your voting record is public,” a controversial turnout tactic. Total JStreet spending: $50K
$41K of mailers for Jessica Cisneros from Justice Democrats. Total JD spending: $142K
$20K in digital ads and $1,800 of texting for Jessica Cisneros from Indivisible Action. Total Indivisible spending: $22K
$70K of radio ads and $12K of digital ads for Henry Cuellar from America United. Total AU spending: $241K
$7,400 in canvassing for Jessica Cisneros from the Working Families Party National PAC. Total WFP spending: $564K
$3,200 in phone calls for Jessica Cisneros from the American Federation of State and Municipal Employees. Total AFSCME spending: $17K
TX-30
$254K of TV ads and $76K in mailers for Jasmine Crockett from Protect Our Future PAC. Total POF spending: $452K
$11K of phone calls for Jasmine Crockett from the Working Families Party. Total WFP spending: $17K
Redistricting
New York
Remember how New York was going to have a ruthless Democratic gerrymander of its congressional map? Fun times. Anyway, the lawsuit over New York’s congressional and state Senate maps finally produced a definite congressional map (interactive version here), and it changes a lot.
NY-01 and NY-11 are tough breaks for Democrats, both becoming Republican-leaning swing districts once again. NY-03 and NY-22 are also no longer safely Democratic, though both still lean towards Democrats (Biden won NY-03 by 8% and NY-22 by 7%), and NY-17 is on the edge of being competitive. NY-18 Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney made the bizarre and selfish decision to run in NY-17 rather than his own slightly redder NY-18 (which still leans Democratic under the new map, something that wasn’t true of the old district.) His home is technically in the new NY-17, but most of his old constituents are in NY-18; as DCCC Chair he absolutely shouldn’t be giving up Democrats’ incumbency advantage in a winnable swing district. His decision prompted an even more bizarre one: NY-17 Rep. Mondaire Jones’s decision to run in NY-10, a newly-created district in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn two hours away from his current Rockland-Westchester district. And that brings us to Manhattan, where the most consequential changes were made.
The court-appointed special master who drew New York’s new maps decided to unite affluent white upper Manhattan into one district, a change with many second-order consequences. In addition to setting up a battle between two senior House Democrats in Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney in NY-12, it leaves Justice Democrats’ Rana Abdelhamid without a district to run in—she’s now in Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s NY-07—and turns Nadler’s district into something entirely new. The new NY-10 attaches lower Manhattan to the Brooklyn waterfront, broadly speaking a stronghold for the left. There are three confirmed candidates so far: Jones, Assemb. Yuh-Line Niou, and…former mayor Bill de Blasio. (Council Member Carlina Rivera is publicly considering, and state Sen. Brad Hoylman has opted against a run after initially considering it.) Niou, who had been challenging state Sen. Brian Kavanagh, will have the support of much of the New York left (which is especially strong in this district) and will most likely be the only Asian candidate for a district that is ¼ Asian (including Niou’s base in lower Manhattan’s Chinatown as well as the large Chinatown in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.) de Blasio, as ridiculous as he is, will still be a formidable opponent for Niou (though in this race he’ll be playing the role of the machine foil to younger, more progressive opponents, which he’s never actually had to do in a previous campaign.)
News
FL-10
Maybe cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is cautious about appearing too aligned with any one wing of the Democratic Party, or maybe he just has incoherent beliefs and essentially random candidate preferences. Either one could help explain why his personal super PAC, Protect Our Future, has pledged $1 million in ads to help activist Maxwell Alejandro Frost, after spending exorbitant amounts in races in North Carolina, Ohio, and Oregon to stop progressive candidates like Frost. Or maybe it was just that Frost formed a cryptocurrency advisory council, and billionaires are easily pleased by cheap appeals to their egos.
GA-13
Ahead of Tuesday’s runoff, Blue Dog Rep. David Scott and progressive former state Sen. Vincent Fort each landed a major supporter. For Scott, it was Senator Raphael Warnock, who endorsed all of the state’s incumbent congressional Democrats except for Reps. Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux, who are running against one another due to redistricting. for Fort, it was a $5,000 donation from SEIU-COPE, the political arm of the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s largest labor unions.
HI-02
Honolulu City Council Chair Tommy Waters decided against running for Congress. Given the tight schedules involved here—filing closes June 7, and the primary is on Aug 23—this makes the primary a lot likelier to be a 2-way contest between ex-state Sen. Jill Tokuda and state Rep. Patrick Pihana Branco.
IL-01
State Sen. Jacqui Collins released an internal poll showing herself and Ald. Pat Dowell tied at 14%, Jonathan Jackson (son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson) leading at 19%, businesswoman Karin Norrington-Reaves (endorsed by outgoing Rep. Bobby Rush) at 5%, and businessman Jonathan Swain at 3%. It’s unclear if the poll asked about other candidates, however—and there are a lot of other candidates. The poll more or less confirms what we already suspected—in a race this crowded, name recognition is everything, at least early on, and Collins (who as a legislator has made tighter regulation of financial institutions one of her signature issues and who has support from many Chicago progressives) gives progressives a clear path to take this seat.
IL-03, IL-17
The Illinois Education Association endorsed in a pair of open House primaries, backing state Rep. Delia Ramirez in IL-03 and Rockford Ald. Jonathan Logemann in IL-17. Ramirez, a progressive, is in a two-way contest with moderate Chicago Ald. Gilbert Villegas, while Logemann is (according to multiple polls, including a newly-released internal poll for meteorologist Eric Sorensen) far behind the leading candidates, Sorensen and former state Rep. Litesa Wallace, in his contorted Downstate Illinois district.
IL-06
The Illinois Education Association also endorsed in this incumbent-vs-incumbent race, backing Sean Casten over Marie Newman. Newman, meanwhile, released her first ad, and it’s unusually hard-hitting for an opening ad. The ad opens with Newman discussing her own abortion at age 19, and Newman narrates throughout, speaking directly to the camera as she tells viewers that Casten has admitted to voting for anti-abortion Republicans in the past. (Sure, the commerical might be letting the viewer interpret the George Bush she mentions was W, while Casten only voted for HW, but one of the votes to overturn Roe came from Bush 41’s star nominee Clarence Thomas, so it’s fair game.) She then compares him to Dan Lipinski, the anti-abortion, anti-gay Democrat she unseated in 2020. It’s a good ad, and the unorthodox choice to have Newman deliver her attacks on Casten directly on camera instead of leaving the dirty work to a professional narrator might make it stick in voters’ minds.
IL-07
In the wake of Summer Lee’s victory, The Strokes announced a concert to benefit the campaign of Kina Collins, another Justice Democrats candidate. Collins, unlike most Justice Democrats-backed candidates, has struggled with fundraising thus far. Incumbent Danny Davis has also done terribly with fundraising, but this weekend Nancy Pelosi hosted a fundraiser for him to fix that.
MA-Gov
AG Maura Healey was endorsed by Rep. Katherine Clark, who represents liberal suburbs north and west of Boston, and by EMILY’s List—an eyebrow-raising choice with state Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz, another pro-choice woman running to Healey’s left, as Healey’s only primary competitor.
MD-Gov
Wes Moore released an internal poll showing him trailing Peter Franchot 19% to 13%, with Rushern Baker at 11%, Tom Perez at 6%, John B. King at 4%, and Doug Gansler at 3%. At this point, we’re intrigued by the lack of movement towards or away from any candidate, despite Moore and Perez collecting endorsements for months now and despite ads beginning to air. (Perez was endorsed this week by the state AFL-CIO and the Washington Post editorial board.) And Rushern Baker, who has staked his candidacy on crime in Baltimore to the point of promising to use state troops to arrest squeegee boys, is having money troubles. A recent mid-period campaign finance filing asking for public funds shows he only has $15,440 left in the campaign coffers.
MD-04
Donna Edwards’s campaign released an internal showing her up 45-24 on Glenn Ivey, and that’s basically all it shows, because it’s just toplines, and an assurance that she leads in all demographics (we’re going through crosstabs withdrawal and we need our fix). Still, the toplines make sense. She’s the known quantity in this race and Ivey is much less so. If she is actually that close to 50%, it means Ivey will need to go negative in addition to just getting his name recognition up, something he may soon have help with, if AIPAC’s bundling efforts and promise to play in more races mean anything. The AFL-CIO endorsed Edwards this week.
MD-AG
Rep. Anthony Brown released an internal poll showing him leading 44% to 25% over Katie Curran O’Malley, a former Baltimore judge married to former Gov. Martin O’Malley. Brown was endorsed by the AFL-CIO this week.
RI-Gov
Months into campaign season, though still almost four months away from the September 13 primary, the Rhode Island gubernatorial race has its first independent poll, courtesy of 12 News/RWU. They found incumbent Dan McKee ahead of Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea only 25% to 23%, with Matt Brown at 7% and Helena Foulkes at 6%. This confirms the general state of play that a prior Gorbea internal showed: for the moment at least, this is a two-way race between her and McKee, with minor but extant support for Foulkes and Brown. Brown’s plan to fix this is grassroots outreach, while Foulkes’s is just plain cash. (She is, after all, a former Fortune 500 executive who sits on one of the governing boards of her alma mater—Harvard.) She already has more of it than anyone else running, and this week she used it to be the first of the field on TV. Like many intro spots, Foulkes’s covers her personal struggles and accomplishments. Notably, it also focuses on her time at CVS, an era that could potentially be either a strength or weakness depending on how she plays it.
RI-02
Michael Neary finally ended his campaign over a month after his arrest in Ohio for menacing a strange couple on the highway.
As for the real candidates, this race has its first real poll, sort of. As part of the 12 News/RWU poll for governor (see below), they oversampled RI-02 voters, and asked 250 of them about the congressional race. That's beyond just having bad small sample size, it's pushing into the territory of only being useful for the broadest of strokes. With that in mind, Seth Magaziner was in first with 33%, followed by David Segal at 5%, Joy Fox and Sarah Morgenthau at 4%, and everyone else at 1% or less.
TX-28
With the most anticipated primary of the cycle nearing its end, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal endorsed Jessica Cisneros this week, and Bernie Sanders went to San Antonio to hold a rally for Cisneros. Allies of Henry Cuellar are looking desperate: a mysterious sleazy billboard calling Cisneros a “home wrecker”, referencing a Daily Mail story in which a married teacher allegedly preyed on Cisneros when she was a teenager, was paid for by a firm Cuellar’s campaign has previously hired and whose owner is a major Cuellar donor to whom the congressman has steered federal grant money. That’s not all: an attack mailer, designed to look like a (fake) newspaper, is circulating in the district falsely claiming Cuellar has been cleared in the federal corruption investigation that became public knowledge when the FBI raided Cuellar’s home, and directly mentioning the events of the Daily Mail story. The mailer is—in addition to everything else wrong with it—lacking the legally required disclaimer stating who paid for it. But never fear, House Democratic leadership always holds their caucus to the highest ethical standards!
Ah, wait, never mind, Nancy Pelosi recorded a robocall for Cuellar. Lol. Lmao.
Cuellar’s campaign claims they weren’t “contacted for comment” by the South Texas Reporter, and denounces the supposed article containing the Daily Mail trash—but the South Texas Reporter doesn’t appear to even exist at first glance. The domain name attached to the email address listed on the mailer was registered anonymously just last month, and the domain itself isn’t live.
While it’s probably likelier that an ally of the congressman did this without authorization, we’ll note that nothing in this statement provided by Cuellar’s campaign to HuffPost reporter Daniel Marans constitutes a denial that the campaign knew about this or even did it themselves.
VT-AL
Alt-weekly Seven Days VT analyzed Lt. Gov. Molly Gray’s FEC reports and found that corporate lobbyists love her, from Verizon and Amazon to defense contractors and the pharmaceutical industry; one lobbyist, Nathan Daschle (son of the former Democratic Senate leader), says he “appreciated that she wasn’t running as the candidate of the far left,” which says it all, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile, state Senate President Becca Balint landed the endorsement of the Vermont Building Trades Council, which represents workers across the state, and state Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale was endorsed by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal. Ram Hinsdale is organized labor’s favorite overall (already carrying the endorsement of the state AFL-CIO and several of its constituent unions.)
Los Angeles Mayor
City Attorney Mike Feuer dropped out of the race this week, less than a month before the primary. After more than two years of campaigning for the office, he says a recent internal poll convinced him he couldn’t win, and it was time to support Rep. Karen Bass. This further narrows the field down to only three candidates polling above 2%: Bass, City Councilor Kevin de León, and conservative billionaire Rick Caruso. Two polls this week suggest the runoff will be between Bass and Caruso: a Bass campaign internal that showed her leading Caruso 34% to 32%, with de León at 7%, and an internal from Bass allies showing Caruso leading Bass 37% to 35% and de León at 6%. Both make the case that Bass will be stronger in the runoff, though in different ways: the former poll by noting the contrast of her 54-24 favorable rating to his 43-40 rating, and the latter by straightforwardly polling a runoff, which she wins 48% to 39%. The Bass campaign poll also sort of polled a runoff by asking non-Bass, non-Caruso voters who they’d prefer between the two, and the results were “nearly two thirds” for Bass, 15% for Caruso, which some quick math says is a 53-36 margin for her.