Primary School 5/5
who thought we'd ever hear John Delaney's name again
Results
Indianapolis
Incumbent mayor Joe Hogsett held off state Rep. Robin Shackleford 58-38. Hogsett correctly calculated that he could win without needing to bother campaigning, but it's still a weak showing for a scandal-free incumbent with an underfunded challenger. At the council level, however, incumbents had a rougher night. DSA member Jesse Brown ousted incumbent Zach Adamson 56-44 in District 13, and non-DSA progressive Andy Nielsen defeated incumbent David Ray by a similar 57-43. In District 2, moderate incumbent Monroe Gray was crushed by somewhat more liberal challenger Brienne Delaney 67-33, but the actual effect of that victory is complicated by the context of Delaney being a member of the white establishment defeating a 30-year Black incumbent. Unfortunately, charter school lobbyist and health insurance executive Ron Gibson will be returning to the Council thanks to a 56-44 victory in the open District 6.
Akron Mayor
Councilmember Shammas Malik is going to be the next mayor of Akron after taking 43% of the vote, well ahead of Dan Horrigan staffer Marco Sommerville's 26%, and Councilmember Tara Mosley's 17%. The election was racially polarized, with Malik earning commanding majorities in the city's white wards, while Black voters largely split between Sommerville and Mosley.
Massachusetts-HD-10th Suffolk
Establishment-backed moderate Bill MacGregor defeated progressive Robert Patrick Orthman 46-34 in 10th Suffolk, a West Roxbury-based district. (There was also a technically-contested primary in the 9th Suffolk district, but winner John Moran’s only opponent had dropped out of the race before election day.)
Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, District 14
Republican Angel Sanchez was dispatched with ease by Democrat Caroline Gómez-Tom in this nonpartisan election. The 66-33 margin stands in stark contrast to the miniscule 41-40 lead she had in the first round last month.
News
Allegheny County Executive
Pittsburgh Works Together, a collaboration between Allegheny County’s Chamber of Commerce, building trades unions, and industry trade groups, just put out another poll of the Allegheny County Executive election. It finds that state Rep. Sara Innamorato has surged into first, taking 32% of the vote to County Controller John Weinstein’s 20% and Pittsburgh Controller Michael Lamb’s 20%. WESA’s Chris Potter, who first reported the poll, also includes commentary from pro-Weinstein/Lamb forces who speculate that this poll was being released to boost Innamorato to help the Republican nominee in the general election, a level of spin more desperate than we’ve seen from anyone in a while. Not only is the chance of a Democrat losing in Allegheny County, which voted 59-39 for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, basically zero, but Pittsburgh Works is a joint venture between business and labor interests, and all the labor interests involved have already endorsed John Weinstein. It’s ludicrous, and demonstrates that the Allegheny County establishment still isn’t ready to reckon with the popularity of progressive politicians like Innamorato, who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders on Wednesday in her bid to become chief executive of the county of 1.25 million.
Philadelphia Mayor
Committee of Seventy, a nonprofit good-government group in Philadelphia, released the only public, nonpartisan poll of this election last week. They found Controller Rebecca Rhynhart in the lead with 19% of the vote, Councilmember Cherelle Parker in second at 17%, Councilmember Helen Gym at 16%, Councilmember Allan Domb at 15%, and rich guy Jeff Brown at 12%. This confirms what the internals that have been released have shown, which is that any of Rhynhart, Parker, Gym, or Domb could take it, but the wheels are coming off the Jeff Brown campaign. Brown’s most recent setback comes from two sanitation workers’ unions, Local 427 and Local 403, which—despite being member unions of DC 33, which is backing Brown—announced they were backing Cherelle Parker instead. While Charles Carrington, president of Local 427, claimed that it was a result of comments Brown had been making about how he would “pick up the trash”, Brown’s dwindling chances probably have something to do with it.
Other endorsements this week include:
City Councilmember and former mayoral candidate Maria Quiñones Sánchez for Cherelle Parker
Bernie Sanders, U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Andy Kim (whose New Jersey district borders Philadelphia), and Northwest Philadelphia state Rep. Tarik Khan for Helen Gym
Former U.S. Rep. and Philadelphia mayor Bill Green, who was last on a ballot in 1979, for Allan Domb
Helen Gym spent the week putting out a small fire. The PAC Coalition for Safety and Equitable Growth, a mystery group likely funded by one local rich asshole or another, put up a flight of ads accusing Gym of making a pro-pharma vote because her husband worked in the pharma industry. Gym’s campaign sent a cease and desist to TV stations airing the ad, arguing it was “false and defamatory”. Unlike candidate ads, which TV stations cannot refuse to air, PAC ads are not legally protected, so stations can be held legally liable for defamation.
CA-Sen
U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar both endorsed Barbara Lee for Senate. Both are in the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, of which both Lee and fellow candidate Katie Porter are members. Outside of the CPC, House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn also weighed in for Lee.
MD-Sen
Ben Cardin is going to retire instead of running for reelection next year. The announcement was largely expected, and a flood of potential candidates are already jostling to replace him.
The first to officially enter is Montgomery County Commissioner Will Jawando. Jawando is in his second term as an at-large member of the commission, which does most of the work of governing Montgomery County’s million-plus residents, and has a solid geographic base to work from. However, if U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin enters, that changes: Jawando and Raskin both hail from the vote-rich southeastern edge of Montgomery County, and Raskin, who is publicly considering a campaign, is far more established there than Jawando. In 2016, then-state Sen. Raskin beat a crowded field of candidates for MD-08, a seat left open by Chris Van Hollen’s ultimately successful campaign for Maryland’s other Senate seat; the field of candidates he beat included Jawando, then a first-time candidate. It also included Total Wine gazillionaire David Trone, whose $13 million in self-funding set the record for the most self-funding in a congressional campaign; it’s a record Trone broke two years later in his successful $17 million purchase of MD-06, the district he actually lived in all along but didn’t run in until John Delaney left it behind to run for president. (Lmao remember John Delaney?) Trone is running for Senate now as well, and he reportedly plans to spend a whopping $50 million to buy himself a promotion.
David Trone hasn’t already ran against all of his likely opponents, mind you, but he’s stepped on a lot of toes throughout his brief career in politics. Gov. Wes Moore’s administration includes two more former Trone foes: 2016 MD-08 candidate Kumar Barve, now a Public Service Commissioner, and 2018 MD-06 runner-up Aruna Miller, now the lieutenant governor. (He also ran against Kathleen Matthews, wife of MSNBC host Chris Matthews, in 2016; she later chaired the Maryland Democratic Party from March 2017 to December 2018, but we mostly bring it up to emphasize how cursed that MD-08 primary was.) Despite his money, connections, and underwhelming centrist politics, it’s vanishingly unlikely that Trone will become the unified establishment choice; he’s simply made personal enemies of too many fellow politicians for that to happen, even in a world where Raskin doesn’t run and Jawando fails to get any traction outside of Montgomery County. That’s part of the pitch for Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, who is expected to announce her candidacy next week. Alsobrooks is a somewhat moderate Democrat who’s fought with progressives before, but she has generally played nice with others, because politicians who can’t just buy their way into office tend to learn not to make people hate them. She also has strengths Trone doesn’t have: a strong base in a massive, 90% Democratic county, and deep connections to Annapolis power players through her role in the powerful Prince George’s County party machine. She’s also the only woman known to be looking at a run; Maryland currently sends zero women to Congress. Maryland has also never elected a Black senator, and either Alsobrooks or Jawando would be the first.
Rounding out the known field of potential candidates is Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, a generally progressive Democrat whose path lies not in being a progressive (Raskin and Jawando also comfortably inhabit that lane) but in being the only candidate from the Baltimore media market, which covers about half the state’s population. Most of the rest of the state is in the DC market, as are all of Olszewski’s fellow Senate hopefuls, who will have to introduce themselves to Baltimore-area voters for the first time.
MD-06
Now that David Trone and his massive fortune are gunning for Senate, MD-06 is open once again. This makes the third time in 12 years that this safely Democratic West Maryland district won’t have a Democratic incumbent, which is for the best, because the last two picks were less than stellar–moderates John Delaney and David Trone, both of whom lasted three terms before deciding to run for higher office (hopefully Trone does as well as Delaney did in his presidential bid). Frederick and Montgomery County both have a solid bench of Democratic officeholders, and in Maryland almost no state and local offices are up for election in presidential years, meaning it would be a free shot for just about everyone. Expect, like in 2018, a large field.
So far, only one candidate is confirmed for the seat: Del. Joe Vogel. Vogel hasn’t officially announced yet, but he has filed for office and hired staff, so we’re counting that. He lives outside of the district, in southern Rockville, but in Maryland politics, everything north of Bethesda gets lumped together, and we won’t be facing carpetbagging allegations. The allegations he will be facing, from us, is that he’s fucking annoying. Vogel used to be a member of the student senate at George Washington University, but he stopped showing up to meetings after he started working on Ralph Northam’s campaign, and when he was impeached and removed for that by 22 of the other 29 senators, he declared the whole thing to be a conspiracy by BDS supporters. (The Senate had voted down a BDS resolution by one vote in the previous year, which careful readers will notice means that impeaching Vogel was more popular than BDS.) His blatant disinterest in the resume padding activity he’d signed up for was too much for a school full of resume padders, and when facing consequences for that, he blamed the radical left. Every aspect of his career is basically what you’d expect after that, including how he was elected to the House of Delegates last year on a platform of being young, how much he loves bipartisanship, and that he had a long #StillWithHer phase.
Maryland Matters’s Josh Kurtz drops some other potential candidates:
Del. Lesley J. Lopez: Lopez has represented Montgomery Village and Gaithersburg in the Assembly since 2019, and was president of the legislature’s Women’s Caucus for the 2022 legislative session. She was also Henry Cuellar’s press secretary, so hard fucking pass. More specifically to Maryland, she worked with the other incumbents of District 39 to primary out progressive Gabriel Acevero in 2022 by slating with moderate Clint Sobratti. Somehow, she’s worse than Vogel.
Ex-Frederick County Executive Jan Gardner: Gardner as a candidate in the current MD-06 would make a lot of sense: she has sky-high name recognition in Frederick County, which used to be Republican territory in the early 2010s, so there aren’t a ton of Democrats with a base there. Even better, it’s been unified in the new Congressional map, and cast 41% of the district’s primary vote in 2022 - more than Montgomery County. Gardiner has a two decade career in Frederick County politics, most famously as its first ever County Executive, elected in 2014 and 2018–in a county that didn’t go blue on the presidential level until 2020. She’s on the older side for a congressional freshman, but being 68 at the time of election isn’t so old to be utterly disqualifying. Still, the last class of freshmen had only three older than her, and Gardner, who always seemed happy to stay at the local level, strikes us as what is known as a “normal person” who might be looking forward to spending her 70s in retirement. She even explicitly said she wouldn’t be running for office again as she left the County Executive in December. Still, she was willing to serve on a state board as recently as a couple weeks ago.
State Sen. Brian J. Feldman has been in the state Senate since an appointment in 2013, and before that served in the House, from 2003-2013. He represents Upcounty Montgomery County, which was swingy territory when he was first elected, and is now solidly Democratic. Feldman is a reliable party foot soldier with few enemies - he’s the kind of boring politician that makes a lot of sense for a district like this. He’s put in enough time to get a committee chair, but is still a go-with-the-flow kind of guy, which can be a problem when lobbyists are directing the flow, but at least he’s not going to stand in the way of any Democratic priorities.
Commerce Department official April McClain-Delaney: Yes, that “Delaney” in her name is because she’s married to John Delaney. Just when we thought we were free of the Delaneys…
NY-Sen
Kirsten Gillibrand never seemed like a great target for a primary challenge, but the resurgence of the left in New York means that speculation was inevitable. This week, Politico’s Holly Otterbein and Brittany Gibson actually went to the effort of asking some of the names who’d been floated—AOC and Mondaire Jones—which at least finally got their declinations on record. Just as impactfully, they asked the Working Families Party about a potential challenge, and were told no one was really looking to do that.
TX-32
The worst kept secret in Dallas is finally out in the open: Colin Allred is indeed running for Senate. We wish him the best of luck, but that election’s outside the scope of this newsletter. More up our alley is the House seat he’ll be leaving behind. Texas’s 32nd District is a majority-minority, heavily Democratic district mostly contained within the city of Dallas, but its bizarre, squiggling shape means that it heads into the suburbs of Richardson, Plano, Mesquite City, Garland, Balch Springs, Addison, and Carrollton, and has parts of three counties. As an open, safely Democratic district that seemingly anyone in the DFW area could have a claim to, we suspect there will be a crowded primary.
As of yet, only two potential candidate has been making noise about running. The first was state Rep. Julie Johnson. Dallas can do better. Johnson flipped a Carrollton district blue in 2018, and has never gotten over the swing district mindset. Johnson supported Mike Bloomberg in the 2020 primary because they “are aligned on important policy issues,” in her words. Surgeon and healthcare policy specialist Brian Williams is also considering. Williams is a Dallas native who rose to prominence for treating police officers who were shot in the 2016 shooting of police officers by Micah Xavier Johnson, and who recently moved back to the city after working in Chicago as an ER doctor and speaking out about the racial disparities of the pandemic. His ideological leanings are unknown.
WA-Gov
Gov. Jay Inslee announced he would retire instead of seeking a fourth term, teeing up an open gubernatorial race and, presumably, a cascade of other offices opening up as officeholders decide to run for governor. The first domino fell immediately: state AG Bob Ferguson, generally one of the more progressive figures in Washington state politics, announced he was running the day after Inslee’s announcement. (Technically, he announced an exploratory committee, but he’s so clearly running that this song and dance just looks like a shrewd decision to give himself a second round of good press when he “officially announces.”) He also rolled out early endorsements from five of Washington’s eight Democratic US representatives (including CPC chair Pramila Jayapal), state Treasurer Mike Pelliciotti, several major Washington labor unions, and a long list of state legislators and local and tribal officials. He’s already established himself as the Democratic frontrunner, and it’s going to be very hard for anyone to displace him, particularly because he’s cultivated support across the ideological spectrum of the party.
State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz is publicly interested in trying anyway; like Ferguson, she’s on the progressive side of things as far as statewide officials go. (Also like Ferguson, her “interest” in running is a pretty clear intention to run for governor.)
Whether anyone else is interested isn’t clear yet; the only statewide officials who’ve made their interest or lack thereof known are Ferguson, Franz, Pelliciotti, and retiring, scandal-tarred Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler—which still leaves four statewide officials, all Democrats, who could plausibly run. On the bright side, King County Executive Dow Constantine, a centrist Democrat long expected to make a bid for higher office, took himself out of the running before Inslee even announced his retirement.
WA Insurance Commissioner
After 50 years, Mike Kreidler’s political career is finally ending. A year ago, several reports of racist behavior and staff mistreatment by Kreidler surfaced. While Kreidler refused to resign, it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to run for reelection, and now he’s officially letting everyone know he won’t be running for reelection. As of yet, no candidates have announced for this office.
CA-AD-57
Greg Akili, a leader in the NAACP and president of the Fannie Lou Hamer Institute, launched a campaign this week for Assembly on a progressive platform that includes single-payer healthcare and on a progressive platform that includes singe-payer healthcare. Akili has been involved with civil right groups for decades, and has also worked with powerful figures in Los Angeles and California politics. The 57th district is mostly contained in the city of Los Angeles, stretching from Downtown to South LA, and represented by Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who is term limited this year. Akili ran for this seat in 2012, but placed in a close third in the first round. He has the support of Dolores Huerta and city Controller Kenneth Mejia.
VA-SD-13
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney endorsed Del. Lashrecse Aird in her primary against state Sen. Joe Morrissey. Stoney himself beat Morrissey in the 2016 mayoral election. While the 13th doesn’t contain any of the city of Richmond, it does have a lot of voters in the suburbs, and the district even abuts the city.
VA-SD-37/Fairfax County Sheriff/Fairfax County CA
Fairfax County, meet the Common Sense Team. State Sen. Chap Petersen, Sheriff Stacey Kincaid, and Ed Nuttall, a go-to attorney for police officers after they’ve shot someone who’s running a reactionary, tough-on-crime primary challenge against reformist Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano, have decided to weld their campaigns together going into the home stretch of the primary. Petersen’s Facebook post announcing the team says they’re going beyond a cross-endorsement—he claims they’re going to be campaigning together, united by shared beliefs, such as “we must be willing to enforce the law or it has no meaning”. This isn’t just an informal alliance—they have a website and a Youtube channel complete with a professionally produced introductory video, though the Fairfax Common Sense PAC is a joint venture between Petersen and Kincaid, dating back to 2021. Most of that PAC’s funding comes from Clean VA, the PAC face of hedge fund billionaire couple Michael Bills and Sonja Smith, who support challengers to pro-Dominion Energy candidates, and also, obviously, terrible incumbents so long as they don’t take Dominion money.
This alliance makes sense for Nuttall, an underdog struggling to establish his Democratic bona fides, but Kincaid and Petersen are taking risks here—Kincaid is facing an underfunded progressive challenger in Kelvin Garcia. She’s probably going to be fine as long as people don’t focus on her election and she doesn’t establish herself as the kind of tough-on-crime type that hasn’t been faring too well in Democratic primaries recently. And Petersen is already in enough of a fight for his own renomination—he doesn’t need this distraction, especially when the district he’s running in voted for Steve Descano in the 2019 primary election (by a margin of roughly 5%, according to our calculation—basically tied with SD-34 for the distinction of most Descano-friendly district), and especially now that he has one primary challenger instead of two after Erika Yalowitz dropped out and endorsed Saddam Salim’s campaign.
Denver Mayor
Our impression of the Denver mayoral runoff, in case we didn’t make it clear enough: both Kelly Brough and Mike Johnston suck, but Brough sucks worse. We’d like to thank the Denver FOP for confirming our impressions by endorsing Brough. The candidates have also managed to find another area of disagreement: natural gas. Johnston wants to ban new natural gas hookups from construction in the city, while Brough, a supporter of fracking, doesn’t.
Queens DA
In our last issue, we originally described new Queens DA candidate Devian Daniels as a public defender based on other outlets doing the same. She is not; she is a solo practitioner in private practice who occasionally takes pro bono defense cases. Considering multiple outlets described her as a public defender, we’d hazard a guess that she deliberately misrepresented her occupation to news outlets in her announcement press release. We’d like to thank our readers for quickly bringing this to our attention. Something else flew under our radar—and the radar of everyone else who covered Daniels’s announcement, it seems: Daniels is apparently running in tandem with notorious convicted crook and domestic abuser Hiram Monserrate, who simply refuses to go away. Monserrate’s political outfit was collecting petition signatures for Monserrate’s planned city council candidacy, Daniels’s DA campaign, and judicial candidate John Ciafone back in March. Under no circumstances should you vote for a Monserrate stooge.