Primary School 6/17
because we needed another self-funding tech executive in politics
AZ-03
Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel is the leading journalist on the DMFI/UDP beat. He’s generally on the “pro-” side for those groups’ spending, which can make him a useful barometer of sorts; after both DMFI and UDP (AIPAC’s super PAC) established themselves as major spenders in Democratic congressional primaries over the 2020 and 2022 cycles, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye out for early signs of the two super PACs’ potential involvement. Kassel recently published an article about former state Sen. Raquel Terán, bluntly entitled “Phoenix congressional candidate Raquel Terán faces scrutiny for voting record on antisemitism” quoting a centrist Democrat unhappy with Terán for voting against a bill adopting a controversial definition of antisemitism which includes characterizations of Israel as racist as one of many things which constitutes antisemitism. (No, the article does not discuss anything other than that one vote.) The article bears some resemblance to Kassel pieces published before AIPAC began spending against Summer Lee, for Kevin Mullin, and for Dan Goldman. The unspoken subtext here is that if Kassel’s hearing about this race, at least one of UDP and DMFI is probably considering spending on it, even if they don’t eventually go for it; if he doesn’t have an inside source at one of the PACs feeding him tips, those articles are an incredible series of coincidences. Of course, floating a race via a friendly article doesn’t mean they’ll follow through (see: Kassel’s articles on Maxwell Frost and Jamaal Bowman, who we’ve heard were going to be targets before the groups eventually decided to focus elsewhere.)
CA-Sen
The field for Senate in California appeared set in early spring; Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, and Barbara Lee had each announced campaigns, and every other rumored candidate had taken themselves out of contention. A late entrant is seeking to shake up the race: Lexi Reese, a former Google and Facebook executive and venture capitalist. Reese is hiring experienced, top-dollar campaign consultants and plans to self-fund to some degree if she runs; she would be the second Bay Area candidate, along with Lee, and the first candidate who seems like a natural choice for Silicon Valley’s donor class. It’s the latter that really matters; the Bay Area’s increasingly reactionary tech elite has a lot of political clout and bizarre politics that don’t gel with progressives like Lee and Porter nor with Fox News liberal boogeymen like Schiff.
Another poll of the race dropped this week, this one from Emerson College, showing Schiff and Porter virtually tied at 14%, Lee in third with 6%, and no individual Republican with more than 4%. Schiff and Porter have been close in every poll, with Lee behind them, but polling has been less consistent on whether a Republican will take one of the two general election spots; this poll indicates that one won’t unless Republican voters coalesce behind a single candidate. Unsurprisingly, nearly half of voters polled are undecided, including 60% of Republicans and 58% of independents.
CA-30
We have yet another candidate for Adam Schiff’s House seat: Miss Iraq 2017, Sarah Idan. Idan, who left Iraq shortly after competing on the country’s behalf in Miss Universe, is running on a platform of ardent Zionism and left-punching. That pitch might be construed as a bid for AIPAC support after a 2022 cycle in which AIPAC’s super PAC emerged as a major spender in Democratic primaries; AIPAC unsurprisingly makes Israel policy a litmus test, but also expects conservatism on unrelated policy matters from the Democrats it supports, and has spent handsomely to defeat progressive candidates who identify as Zionists. Since one of her first public appearances as a candidate was on Fox & Friends to discuss the “woke agenda” (to be fair, Fox’s words, not hers), a cynic might assume she’s really just aiming for a gig as a token Democrat pundit in the right-wing media ecosystem, or for the votes of rank-and-file Republicans in California’s all-party top-two primary. In any event, Idan has plenty of competition in the center lane of this primary. She may prove a stronger moderate candidate than Boy Meets World actor turned failed WeHo city council candidate Ben Savage, who’s struggling to break through, but LAUSD board member Nick Melvoin and state Sen. Anthony Portantino are also running well-funded campaigns.
CA-31
Grace Napolitano has been in Congress since the 90s. She’s 86 years old, and after she declined to retire in the 2018 cycle, not long after she’d had a small stroke and lost her husband, and declined again in 2022 during the mass exodus from Congress, we just assumed she wanted to leave Congress feet first, but a recent FEC filing has us wondering. Mary Ann Lutz has filed to run for CA-31. Lutz is the former mayor of Monrovia (pop. 38,000), and, more relevantly, a former staffer to Grace Napolitano from 2015-2017. Lutz considered a run for this district in 2018, saying that she would run if Napolitano retired. Napolitano didn’t, and Lutz never attempted to make the ballot. Lutz didn’t enter the same preliminary campaign state in 2020 or 2022, but she just did for 2024. It’s far from a concrete sign, but Napolitano is worth keeping an eye on. State Sen. Bob Archuleta and Baldwin Park Planning Commissioner Ricardo Vazques have also filed with the FEC.
MD-05
Mckayla Wilkes is seeking a rematch with Steny Hoyer in MD-05. Wilkes challenged Hoyer in 2020 and 2022. COVID hampered her 2020 campaign by functionally ending canvassing, but she performed better than a lot of people expected, losing 64%-27%. Hopes were higher for her 2022 campaign, but the district lost College Park, hurting her volunteer base, and fundraising difficulties undercut her; she lost 71%-19%.
RI-01
The first public poll of this September 5 primary comes courtesy of the Sabina Matos campaign. Their internal, fielded by Expedition Strategies over June 5-8, shows Matos on top, with a healthy 22% of the vote. Former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg has 9% in the poll, good enough for second. State Sen. Sandra Cano also registers above the crowd, at 6%, as do Providence City Councilor John Goncalves at 5% and state Rep. Marvin Abney at 4%, but the other six candidates tested scored between 0% and 3%. The results support the conventional wisdom about this election, that Matos is the favorite, but it's still anyone's race. (State Sen. Ana Quezada's name was misspelled as Ana Quazada, which the Quezada campaign took issue with.)
Recent endorsements in this race include:
Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien for Sandra Cano. Cano represents Pawtucket in the Senate.
Providence City Councilor Justin Roias and Lincoln Town Councilor Pamela Azar for Ana Quezada. Azar had been running for Congress as of last month, but we guess this serves as an announcement she isn't any longer.
Communication Workers of America Local 1400 for Aaron Regunberg. Local 1400 represents technology workers throughout New England and is the first labor union to endorse in this race.
Pamela Azar apparently exited the race this week, but a different candidate may soon be entering. Shortly after David Cicilline announced his impending resignation from Congress, conservative Speaker of the Rhode Island state House Joe Shekarchi said in no uncertain terms he wasn't going to be a candidate to replace him. But with the filing deadline fast approaching, his terms have gotten much less certain. Responding to questions from the Providence Journal's Katherine Gregg regarding chatter from some political insider that he was in fact planning to announce a campaign soon, the speaker was much less forthright, saying both that "nothing has really changed" and that "I never like to rule anything out". If he runs, Shekarchi would immediately be a top candidate, but could be limited in appeal to the conservative white voters who may have a lot of power within the party in Rhode Island, but don't necessarily comprise much of the electorate.
The field is still fluid and the election is still months away, but one candidate is already advertising on TV—technically. Former Gina Raimondo staffer Nick Autiello released a 30-second introductory spot and paid $20,000 to air it statewide for a week, which is enough in a mid-sized market like Providence (particularly in the political advertising off-season) that we can’t dismiss it as a nominal buy, even though dropping $20,000 on a weeklong flight months before the primary clearly serves the same purpose as a nominal ad buy would (getting press attention for cheap.) In a wide-open field of largely unknown candidates, an early ad salvo this small might still be enough to make Autiello a contender.
Virginia Legislature
Final pre-primary fundraising reports have been filed in Virginia. You can read them here. Overall, primaries that look competitive from the outside also have competitive fundraising from both candidates, which is a break from the past, when incumbents have easily trounced competition in the money race. One exception is SD-13, where incumbent Joe Morrissey has been outraised by a margin of over 10:1 by former Del. Lashrecse Aird, taking in less than $98,000 to Aird’s $980,000. Another challenger pulling far ahead of the incumbent she’s challenging is Heidi Drauschak of SD-35, who raised $540,000 to Dave Marsden’s $140,000, though their cash on hand figures are roughly the same. On the flipside is Barbara Favola of SD-40, who is far ahead ($229,000 to $56,000) of challenger James DeVita, who is now absolutely out of money, though that race always looked like one of the least competitive primaries in the state.
The House primary reports are less exciting, though they do reaffirm the idea that Kannan Srinivasan in HD-26, Katrina Callsen in HD-54, Rae Cousins in HD-79, and Kim Sudderth in HD-92 are the frontrunners in their respective races, since they’ve raised multiple times as much as their opponents. In the Commonwealth Attorney primaries, incumbents are out-raising challengers by modest amounts, except for Loudoun County, where challenger Elizabeth Lancaster is barely raising anything: $7,400 plus $3,300 of self-funding, compared to incumbent Buta Biberaj’s $54,000 plus $110,000 of self and family funding.
VA-SD-13
As his election prospects dim, Joe Morrissey is getting increasingly desperate to hold onto his Senate seat. His latest tactic? Convincing Republicans to save him in the Democratic primary. He already has endorsements from some rural Republican officeholders, but the explicit calls for Republicans to pull a Democratic primary ballot (allowed in party registration-free Virginia) are more recent. Two businessmen with connections to the VA GOP have started sending out similar text messages to regular Republican primary voters urging them to vote for Morrissey because he, unlike his opponent Lashrecse Aird, works with Republicans. One set of text messages also warned voters that they should vote for Morrissey because Aird is “pro-abortion”.
Morrissey, an ex-Republican politician himself, denies that he orchestrated the mass texting (which would be a campaign finance violation, as they lack a paid-for disclaimer), but does admit to asking both businessmen to write letters in support of him, and has been, himself, inviting Republicans to vote in the primary during radio appearances. The Republican primary isn’t contested for this Senate district, nor are any of the Republican primaries in overlapping house districts. While there may be some contested local contests, the opportunity cost for GOP primary voters would be low in taking a Democratic ballot. That doesn’t mean automatic success for Morrissey’s GOP GOTV efforts. These kinds of operations take a lot of work, in voter education if nothing else, and Morrissey’s approach has an air of too little, too late.
Cook County State’s Attorney/Clerk of Circuit Court
The Cook County Democratic Party is in the early stages of selecting its favored candidates for the 2024 Democratic primaries, which gives us an early glimpse of two contested countywide races. One, the race for State’s Attorney, was already guaranteed a competitive race; two-term Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx shocked the Chicago political world in April when she announced she would retire instead of seeking another term in 2024. Appellate Judge Eileen O’Neill Burke, Lyft lobbyist and former Chicago port official Clayton Harris, and former Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson all applied for party support. We have a pretty good guess at Harris's politics from the fact that he’s a Lyft lobbyist; no thanks. In his time as Chicago’s top ethics watchdog, Ferguson clashed with Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot, released several investigative reports sharply critical of the Chicago Police Department, and eventually got forced out by Lightfoot for being too committed to the watchdog thing, all of which are promising signs. In the Clerk of Circuit Court race, incumbent Iris Martinez is in trouble because of her consistent support for conservative candidates, even ones running against party-endorsed opponents; particularly egregious was her support of Republican, cop, and Trump enthusiast Erin Jones in her doomed Democratic primary challenge to state Sen. Robert Martwick in 2022. (Martinez was also a vocal supporter of Paul Vallas’s mayoral campaign.) Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioners Mariyana Spyropoulos and Eira Corral Sepúlveda are both looking to unseat Martinez.
Houston Mayor
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo endorsed Congressmember Sheila Jackson Lee for mayor. County judge is Texas-speak for “county executive”, making Hidalgo the most powerful person in Harris County government. (Almost all of Houston is in Harris County.) Hidalgo herself is a young progressive who won tough contests in 2018 and 2022 has been talked about as a potential statewide candidate in the future. Recently, the Protect and Serve PAC, connected to law enforcement unions that have endorsed state Sen. John Whitmire for the office, put out a poll, conducted all the way back in March, that found Whitmire beating Jackson Lee 20%-19% in the first round, and 45%-33% in a hypothetical runoff. That same poll found Hidalgo with a 48%-37% approval rating among potential Houston voters.
NYC-CD-9
The most political excitement you’ll find in this sleepy Council election season is in Harlem. The surprise retirement announcement of incumbent socialist Kristin Richardson Jordan has only exacerbated the political fractures at play, which increasingly looks like Assemb. Inez Dickens and the city's moderate establishment vs. Assemb. Al Taylor and exonerated Central Park 5 member Yusef Salaam. Taylor and Salaam made a cross endorsement of each other early in the week. Given that there are only three candidates still running, the message was clear: keep Inez Dickens out of the Council. Dickens, raised in a family of politicians, has been in politics since the 70s, though she didn't run for public office until 2005. She’s one of the wealthiest members of the legislature, and a slumlord who has thus far managed to get elected despite that (she won reelection by a 60-30 margin against a housing advocate in the primary last year), but last year she wasn’t attempting to evict a tenant during the election. Dickens held a rally of her own only a couple days later to unveil a brand new Eric Adams endorsement. The rally included such hits as ex-Rep. Charlie Rangel saying that Harlem-born Yusef Salaam had "a foreign name", and Dickens bizarrely claiming that Manhattan Democratic Party president Keith Wright had wanted Salaam to "be his Nelson Mandela".
NYC-CD-23/29
Real estate magnate Jeff Leb’s super PAC spending has been a definitive feature of New York politics for the past few years, and he’s keeping up the pace in 2023. His super PAC, Future NYC, polled Council District 23, an eastern Queens seat, and found centrist liberal Linda Lee in danger of losing her June 27 primary to Steve Behar, a machine guy who was a top aide to Lee’s predecessor Barry Grodenchik. Behar has some serious issues with women, which surfaced in his 2021 run for this seat; it’s something he has in common with his old boss, who resigned as chairman of the council’s Parks and Recreation Committee after admitting to sexually harassing an employee. Community activist Rubaiya Rahman is also running, but Leb himself says it’s Behar he’s worried about, and it’s Behar who’ll be the target of the $100,000 that Future NYC plans to spend in this district. Nearby, in Council District 29, Future NYC plans to spend another $100,000 defending incumbent Lynn Schulman, who like Lee is a centrist liberal facing an unexpectedly strong challenge; in Schulman’s case, Ethan Felder, who ran unsuccessfully for state Assembly last year, and Sukhi Singh, who ran unsuccessfully for district leader last year. Both Felder and Singh are well to Schulman’s right.
Sacramento Mayor
Ex-state Sen. Richard Pan is going to run for mayor of Sacramento next year, making him the third current or former elected official in the race, after Assemb. Kevin McCarty and ex-Councilmember Steve Hansen. Pan, a pediatrician, was first elected to represent the Sacramento suburbs in the Assembly in 2010, and then the city proper in the Senate four years later. He’s best known as the man who wrote bill after bill tightening California’s vaccine mandates in response to outbreaks of measles, polio, and, of course, COVID, but his 12 year legislative tenure paints a more well-rounded picture of a liberal Democrat solidly in the party’s mainstream, liked by labor, but also by business, and with little desire to take on the big fights. His willingness to be the face of the vaccine standards, even when it meant him being physically assaulted, speaks to the issue being close to his heart (Pan is a physician by training, and continued to practice medicine while in office) rather than how he generally operates in office. Even if voters can’t expect exciting new direction from Pan, a city like Sacramento, routinely responsible for electing some of the most centrist members of the legislature, could do much worse.