Primary School 6/17
everybody hates Shri
Outside $ Tracker
AZ-03
$60K in canvassing and $3,500 in texting supporting Raquel Terán from the Working Families Party
$65K in digital ads supporting Raquel Terán from Medicare for All (Pramila Jayapal’s PAC)
$100K in digital ads supporting Raquel Terán from the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC
$39K in mailers supporting Yassamin Ansari from the Save America Fund
MN-05
$1,628 in literature and $30K in canvassing supporting Ilhan Omar from TakeAction MN
MO-01
$10K in digital ads supporting Cori Bush from the Working Families Party
$1.03M in advertising supporting Wesley Bell from United Democracy Project (AIPAC). The ad focuses on Bell’s record as a prosecutor and argues that he’s a progressive reformer who could be trusted to act the same way in Congress.
NY-10
$140K in ads supporting Dan Goldman from Protect Progress
NY-16
$3.97M in TV ads, $545K in mailers, and $46K in phone banking opposing Jamaal Bowman from United Democracy Project (AIPAC). One of the new ads features the son of the late Elie Weisel accusing Jamaal Bowman of antisemitism, and telling voters to stand up to his antisemitism by voting for George Latimer. Total spending so far by UDP: $11.4M.
$708K in TV and digital ads and $111K in mailers supporting George Latimer from Democratic Majority for Israel. The TV version of this ad begins with Latimer’s record of cutting taxes before saying he’ll get results on Democratic priorities in Congress, and the digital-only version focuses on a single bill he signed protecting abortion clinics
$2.07M in TV ads opposing Jamaal Bowman from Fairshake, a cryptocurrency PAC. The ads do not mention cryptocurrency, but instead focus on Bowman’s dabbling in conspiracy theories.
$351K in TV ads and $55K in digital ads opposing George Latimer from the Working Families Party. One ad focuses on Republican and lobbyist support for Latimer, and another does much the same, but includes a clip of Latimer saying he’s “not worried about who gives me donations”. Total spending so far by WFP: $569K
$220K in digital ads and $40K in mailers opposing George Latimer from Justice Democrats PAC. The digital ads appear to be a joint effort with WFP.
$235K in ads supporting Jamaal Bowman from Courage to Change PAC (AOC’s leadership PAC). The ad highlights Bowman’s accomplishments and mentions he is endorsed by AOC.
$90K in TV ads opposing George Latimer from Emgage
$1,500 in phonebanking supporting Jamaal Bowman from Emgage
$33K in mailers and $2,800 in texting supporting Jamaal Bowman from the Working Families Party
$27K in lodging for canvassers supporting Jamaal Bowman from Progressive Victory PAC
VA-10
$171K in mailers and $1.2M in ads supporting Dan Helmer from Protect Progress; the ads all open with Helmer’s Washington Post endorsement and promote his military background
$350K in TV ads and $100K in digital ads supporting Dan Helmer from VoteVets; unsurprisingly, VoteVets’s ads also promote Helmer’s military background (and the Post endorsement, too)
$130K in digital ads and $266K in mailers supporting Suhas Subramanyam from The Impact Fund
$82K in mailers supporting Dan Helmer from With Honor Fund II
$5K in digital ads opposing Dan Helmer from Virginians Against Sexual Assault PAC
$55K in digital ads and $73K in mailers opposing Eileen Filler-Corn from Virginia Democratic Action PAC, which has so far been funded primarily by Clean Virginia funder and liberal megadonor Sonjia Smith
$30K in digital ads supporting Eileen Filler-Corn from Virginians United for Progress
$30K in digital ads opposing Eileen Filler-Corn from the Working Families Party
$28.5K in TV ads supporting Eileen Filler-Corn from Democratic Majority for Israel
$25K in digital ads supporting Jennifer Boysko from Repro Rising Virginia PAC
NY & VA Pre-Primary FEC Reports
Results
In DC, progressive, DSA-affiliated Councilwoman Janeese Lewis George cruised to the Democratic nomination for a second term, defeating Washington Post-backed, Muriel Bowser-aligned challenger Lisa Gore in Mayor Bowser’s own Ward 4. In New Mexico, progressives seeking revenge for the state House’s narrow defeat of a paid family medical leave program got three of their targets, with challengers Jon Hill, Michelle “Paulene” Abeyta, and Anita Gonzales defeating state Reps. Willie Madrid, Harry Garcia, and Ambrose Castellano, respectively. State Sens. Bill O’Neill and Daniel Ivey-Soto also lost renomination to more progressive challengers Debbie O’Malley and Heather Berghmans, though Ivey-Soto’s landslide defeat was clearly the result of sexual misconduct allegations made by numerous women, including one of Ivey-Soto’s own state Senate colleagues. In open races in both chambers of the legislature, progressives also fared well; the next New Mexico legislature should be far friendlier to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s priorities and perhaps to even bolder policy proposals like the Green Amendment. In New Jersey, the machine largely held, and saved Rep. Rob Menendez from a strong challenge by Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla—but Menendez’s atrocious performance in Jersey City should concern party bosses hoping to elect machine loyalists in the city’s nonpartisan municipal elections next year. In Maine, one of the state’s last anti-abortion Democrats, state Rep. Bruce White, lost by double digits to Planned Parenthood-backed challenger Cassie Julia. And finally, in Nevada, the battle between the powerful Culinary union and their usual allies the Nevada Democrats ended in a draw, as Culinary’s candidates—including member and leader Linda Hunt, a longtime food server and union shop steward at a Las Vegas casino—won a pair of Assembly races while Nevada Democrats’ preferred candidates won the four state Senate races where Culinary picked an opposing candidate, including SD-03, where state Sen. Rochelle Nguyen fended off Culinary-recruited priority candidate Geoconda Hughes.
News
DE-AL
There’s one less contested House primary to watch this year. State Sen. Sarah McBride was already a strong favorite to take Delaware’s lone House seat, but after state Housing Secretary Eugene Young Jr. suspended his campaign, the path is completely cleared for McBride. After Young’s withdrawal, McBride was endorsed by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, Delaware’s likely next senator; in the very likely event that McBride wins the general election, she will become the first openly transgender member of Congress.
FL-HD-14
Jacksonville state Rep. Kim Daniels is one of the Democratic Party’s worst elected officials at any level. An evangelist by trade, she bills herself as an exorcist and “demonbuster.” She has pushed for Bible study in public schools; she has purported to exorcise gay people of their demons; she is lukewarm at best on abortion rights; she has said the deadly hurricanes which regularly strike Florida are divine retribution; she is an ethical mess; she has said “Jews own everything.” She’s actually been primaried out once before already; in 2020, union organizer and Bernie Sanders alum Angie Nixon unseated Daniels, beating her 60%-40%. Unfortunately, redistricting gave Daniels another chance in 2022, and she won an open seat with 48% of the primary vote. In 2024, she’ll thankfully face a primary again, and it might be harder than her last two due to a quirk of Florida election law. In Florida, if all candidates for a given office are of the same party, that party’s primary for that office is opened to voters of all parties, but once a candidate of any other party files, only voters registered with a party may vote in that party’s primary. In Daniels’ last two primaries, no other candidates filed, allowing Republicans and independents to vote in the primary (presumably for Daniels, the conservative candidate); this time around, independent write-in candidate Briana Hughes has filed for the November general election, which closes the August Democratic primary and means that Daniels will have to convince an all-Democratic electorate to choose her over pastor Lloyd Caulker or retired teacher turned entrepreneur Theresa Wakefield-Gamble.
Jersey City Mayor and Council
In Jersey City, the 2024 primary showed a machine out of touch with its constituents. While Rep. Rob Menendez won by about 15 percentage points districtwide, he lost Jersey City by a painful 61%-30% margin, and he even lost outside of the normal progressive hub of downtown Jersey City. In particular, Menendez decisively lost the normally machine-friendly Jersey City Heights, contained within Ward D on the city council; Ward D voted for Ravi Bhalla by more than 20 points, and had a higher-than-average share of its voters vote Uncommitted in the presidential primary. In 2025, North Jersey DSA is looking to capitalize on the machine’s weakness, which they already demonstrated four years ago by coming close to winning Ward B’s council seat. Union organizer Jake Ephros announced for Ward D with the DSA chapter’s support shortly after the primary, and he’ll likely be challenging incumbent Councilman Yousef Saleh. (Saleh quietly supported Menendez this year.)
Menendez’s weakness in Jersey City—and Joe Biden’s, for that matter—are a warning sign for the Hudson County Democratic Organization’s chosen mayoral candidate, former Gov. Jim McGreevey. (Yes, the one who left office in disgrace amidst a gay sex scandal.) McGreevey—or someone aligned with him, as it’s unclear who paid—is out with a poll attempting to project strength, but look under the hood and you notice McGreevey is actually in quite a poor position. The former governor sits at 32% of the vote, well ahead of Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea (19%), Ward E Councilman James Solomon (16%), Council President Joyce Watterman (9%), At-Large Councilman Daniel Rivera (8%), and Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker (7%), which is a strong lead…but Jersey City has runoffs, and McGreevey has a measly 29%-26% favorable/unfavorable split, which makes him better known and less liked than the competition. Additionally, of the candidates polled (the poll left out former Jersey City Board of Education president Mussab Ali, another declared candidate) only O’Dea and Watterman have actually announced campaigns (though Solomon is seen by many as a likely candidate.)
MI-13
The Detroit political class’s dissatisfaction with Rep. Shri Thanedar runs deep. That’s the only possible takeaway from the way so many Detroit politicians endorsed At-Large Councilwoman Mary Waters shortly after their first pick, former state Sen. Adam Hollier, was disqualified from the ballot. Waters, a progressive with a spotty ethical record who has put a ceasefire in Gaza front and center in her congressional campaign, couldn’t be more different from Hollier, a polished moderate who was supported heavily by AIPAC in his 2022 bid for this seat. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan endorsed Waters’s congressional campaign shortly after Hollier’s disqualification, and brought along a majority of Detroit’s city council as well as a handful of state legislators to show support at his endorsement press conference. Waters and Duggan have historically butted heads, meaning Duggan views ousting Thanedar as more important than settling scores in municipal politics. Support for Waters also remains strong in the Muslim-majority city of Hamtramck, where there is anger with Thanedar’s support for Israel, and Hamtramck city officials allege that Thanedar pulled a pair of promised infrastructure grants from the city in retaliation for Mayor Amer Ghalib’s endorsement of Waters.
NJ-Gov
In a move that mostly prompted bewildered chuckles in New Jersey political circles, Montclair Mayor Sean Spiller announced his entry into the 2025 gubernatorial race. Spiller also heads the New Jersey Education Association, and the NJEA has been promoting Spiller with millions in ads for over a year now. On paper, the president of a powerful union with a mayoral term under his belt should be a strong candidate for statewide office, but Spiller has his own weaknesses. Along with most of Montclair’s council, Spiller bowed out of his reelection race earlier this year after a whistleblower accused the mayor and council of improperly taking state-funded health benefits, which are normally reserved for full-time government employees. (Montclair’s elected offices are part-time jobs.) The whistleblower’s lawsuit ended up costing the town over $1 million, and the town’s response reeked of a coverup—Spiller and several others pleaded the Fifth, and the town’s lawyers tried to keep the entire case as secret as possible, even seeking to hide a memo from a previous township attorney in which the attorney expressed a belief that the town officials were ineligible for the benefits. Compared to better-known opponents with less lurid baggage like Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, former state Senate President Steve Sweeney, and potentially Reps. Mikie Sherrill and Josh Gottheimer, it’s very hard to see Spiller going far even if the NJEA goes all in for him. (As an aside, it’s wild for NJEA to be spending more money and political capital on Spiller than on taking a hard line against recent Democratic proposals to introduce school vouchers in New Jersey.)
NJ-10
After surviving a challenge to her nominating petitions, Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver continues to consolidate establishment support as she seeks the seat of the late Rep. Donald Payne Jr., rolling out endorsements from state Sens. Teresa Ruiz and Renee Burgess and Assembs. Eliana Pintor-Marin, Shanique Speight, Cleopatra Tucker, and Garnet Hall. All six legislators represent parts of Newark, which anchors this congressional district.
NY Assembly
New York’s primary elections have officially begun, with early voting opening around the state today. The big news of the cycle is once again NYC-DSA (and the broader left coalition) being on the offensive, making plays against three incumbents: embattled sex pest Juan Ardila in AD-37 (Queens), establishment cog Stefani Zinerman in AD-56 (Brooklyn), and old-school outer borough Democrat Michael Benedetto in AD-82 (Bronx). The Democratic establishment in New York, like in the last two election cycles, is fighting back through big-money PACs. While PACs are generally known for independent expenditures, this year’s big player is being a little more direct.
The hilariously-named Solidarity PAC, founded in late March as a joint venture between a GOP operative, a Democratic operative, and a random real estate investor, and termed “a State-Level Mini-AIPAC”, has chosen their targets in a predictable way—targeting DSA and WFP-affiliated candidates specifically because of those organizations’ position on Palestine—but is trying something unique: dancing around campaign limits by reaching a small collection of mega-donors who stand to personally benefit if progressive economic policy is blocked, and convincing them to split their contributions between several candidates Solidarity PAC has identified as important to defeating the left, thereby avoiding the normal contribution limit for PACs.
While the actual endorsement list of Solidarity PAC includes a few candidates running in open races against WFP-but-not-DSA-endorsed candidates, and a couple random candidates who are strong favorites against no-name opponents (itself another AIPAC tactic), the bulk of their weight is being thrown against seven candidates. As of last week, Solidarity PAC had sent around $40,000 each to:
Johanna Carmona: AD-37, Queens, running against DSA/WFP-endorsed Claire Valdez (and incumbent Juan Ardila)
Anathea Simpkins, AD-50, Brooklyn, running against DSA/WFP-endorsed incumbent Emily Gallagher
Stefani Zinerman (i), AD-56, Brooklyn, running against DSA-endorsed Eon Tyrell Huntley
Micah Lasher, AD-69, Manhattan, running against WFP-endorsed Eli Northrup
Jordan Wright, AD-70, Manhattan, running against tenant organizer Maria Ordoñez
Gabi Madden, AD-103, Hudson Valley, running against DSA/WFP-endorsed incumbent Sarahana Shrestha
Didi Barrett (i): AD-106, Hudson Valley, running against WFP-endorsed Claire Cousin
The outside-spending IE committee-fans in the audience shouldn’t worry that this election season is leaving you out. New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, funded entirely by $2.25 million from two billionaires, Michael Bloomberg and Jim Walton, is playing in primaries too, primarily focused on reelecting Stefani Zinerman, but also spending on the open 6th Senate district in Long Island, attempting to elect moderate Assemblymember Taylor Darling over less moderate County Legislator Siela Bynoe. Left out of both groups’ focus is Michael Benedetto, who, though he is endorsed by Solidarity PAC, is clearly not their focus, as he received only about $20,000 from them. His big money benefactor is instead charter school PAC Moving New York Families Forward, which is also spending considerably on Zinerman and Simpkins. A zombie PAC, New York Women Lead, resurrected this year with an infusion of real estate money, is boosting Zinerman and Barrett to the tune of tens of thousands each.
Centrists obviously have their hands full trying to stop the left’s advance on multiple fronts while also trying to flip a couple of seats back. While the latter attempts sound futile to us (at the state legislative level, at least—the millions AIPAC is spending every week in NY-16 is obviously making an impression), the former is what led to a disappointing 2021 and 2022 for the left, who picked some tough battles and only managed to win a couple of the easier ones. It also doesn’t escape our notice that every PAC we’ve mentioned is making saving Zinerman a top priority. The Huntley-Zinerman contest has clearly taken top symbolic priority for the center.
NY-16
It’s been a rollercoaster for Rep. Jamaal Bowman since we last wrote. The embattled Squad member received some good news: he was re-endorsed by NYC-DSA, which had withdrawn its support for him in 2021, once again giving him access to the organization’s dedicated volunteer base to knock doors in the Bronx. He also raised an objectively impressive $1.6 million from April 1 to June 5, with a full million coming just in the month of May. And a collection of allies have shown up to defend him on TV, at the doors, in mailboxes, and online, from the Working Families Party to AOC to Justice Democrats and many more. Then there was the bad news: Westchester County Executive George Latimer still easily outraised Bowman by half a million dollars, AIPAC (and a few other PACs, including the cryptocurrency PAC Fairshake) poured millions more into negative ads and mailers, an Emerson poll showed Bowman trailing Latimer 48%-31%, and former Rep. Mondaire Jones surprised just about everyone by betraying his former progressive allies to endorse Latimer. (That endorsement set into motion a chain of events that included the withdrawal of WFP and Congressional Progressive Caucus support for Jones in his race for NY-17, the revelation that Jones was never actually pushed out of NY-17 in 2022 as many had thought, the revelation that Jones had considered a primary to Bowman in 2022, and the revelation that Jones’s first choice in 2022—or his second, after a Bowman challenge which he decided was unviable—had been to move to Brooklyn and hope nobody in NY-10 noticed he was the congressman for Rockland County, which remains one of the most baffling things we’ve seen in five years of this newsletter.) Things look dire for Bowman, and he’s looking like an underdog in his own reelection. If there’s hope for him, it’s because of Latimer’s flaws as a candidate—or, really, just the one flaw. George Latimer simply cannot stop saying racist shit in public.
The worst Latimer comment is probably an old one—one where he compared calls for Andrew Cuomo’s resignation to the lynching of Emmett Till. That was posted to Facebook in the midst of the wave of sexual misconduct allegations against Cuomo which ultimately brought him down in 2021 (allegations which were later found to be credible after an exhaustive investigation by the office of New York Attorney General Tish James.) He tepidly kind of apologized for that one eventually, saying it had been “offensive to some,” only after much backlash. There was also the time he said Bowman only won his 2020 primary against then-Rep. Eliot Engel because the murder of George Floyd “galvanized” Black voters. And the time he blew up unprovoked at a local Black blogger and journalist at a Black History Month event. There were several eyebrow-raising comments at a recent debate, too: Latimer claimed Bowman only cares about constituents who are Black or brown, and said his base is “Dearborn and San Francisco.” (Love the little side helping of homophobia! Get bent, George.) And when he went on WNYC reporter Brian Lehrer’s radio show, he blew up at a caller who asked him about the Till comment, claiming she was targeting him because he’s white and touting his unrelated endorsements from local Black politicians. (Lehrer actually had to intervene to keep Latimer in check. It was a disastrous interview.) To add to Latimer’s racism-related woes, Jacobin came out with a deep dive into Latimer’s history with housing segregation, and found that Latimer had consistently slowed or obstructed desegregation efforts in highly-segregated Westchester throughout his long political career; if you’ve ever seen Show Me A Hero or otherwise know about the 1980s/1990s Yonkers desegregation fight, just know that Latimer was on the wrong side of it as a county legislator and his more recent record is not much different.
VA-10
Del. Dan Helmer was, and perhaps is, the favorite to win this seat on Tuesday. He’s been endorsed by the Washington Post, and he’s been the beneficiary in millions of super PAC spending, far more than all his opponents combined. There’s one big problem: he now stands accused of groping a woman in 2018, and the woman, who remains unnamed at this time, has a lot of people coming forward to back her up. The alleged incident in question apparently led the Loudoun County Democratic Committee to write and implement its first sexual harassment policy, according to three former chairs of the LCDC as well as the committee’s current deputy chair, and two additional notable Loudoun Democrats—the chair of the 10th Congressional District Democratic Committee and the county’s Democratic former DA—have come forward to say that they were made aware of this allegation prior to Helmer launching his congressional campaign, contradicting Helmer’s claim of a well-timed political hit job. Several of Helmer’s opponents have called for him to drop out, including former state House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, Del. Michelle Maldonado, former Defense Department official Krystle Kaul, and former state education official Atif Qarni; so has Manassas Mayor Michelle Davis-Younger, whose city is located wholly within VA-10. Helmer is already telling the press he won’t be dropping out, and he faces a scattered field of opponents (we didn’t even mention state Sens. Suhas Subramanyam and Jennifer Boysko, or Del. David Reid, who each released statements expressing concern without directly calling for Helmer to drop out); it’s entirely possible that he’s able to win with a plurality of voters who are unaware or unmoved. (The Washington Post has, predictably, refused to mention the story thus far.)