Nick here. We apologize for the extreme delay in getting this issue out—specifically, I apologize, because we should’ve had this done a while ago, but instead of hammering this out over the Memorial Day weekend, I got extremely sick (but not with COVID!) and spent most of the past week in bed. Which isn’t exactly a choice I made or anything, but I’m the reason for the delay. Opinion Haver wrote almost all of this week’s issue, for which I am very grateful.
Pre-Primary FEC Reports (California & New Jersey)
CA-13: We keep banging the drum that the Gray-Arballo primary is the most consequential race that no one’s talking about. Despite conservative Democratic Assemb. Adam Gray’s near-coronation from party insiders, 2020 congressional candidate Phil Arballo is putting up a strong effort, and going straight for Gray’s jugular with multiple negative spots. Surprisingly, he’s even managed to outspend Gray in the final stretch. Maybe Gray wins by a 3:1 margin and we feel silly for taking this seriously, but we think Arballo could surprise some people on election night (or, given it’s California, two weeks after election night.)
CA-15: This race is humming along in stasis towards the Mullin-Canepa runoff everyone’s expecting. But Emily Beach, with help from the centrist With Honor PAC, is throwing everything she has at making the runoff, while Kevin Mullin and David Canepa are spending more conservatively so they’re not broke come the fall. So who knows, maybe what she’s doing will work.
CA-16: We’re not 100% sure what’s going to happen here, but we do think it’s something weird. A new crypto PAC has put a quarter million behind Greg Tanaka, while mildly progressive-presenting Ajwang Rading (also a crypto guy, by the way—something must be done about the Bay Area) is managing a six figure final push of his own. On top of that, Saratoga City Councilor Rishi Kumar has name recognition from his previous run against Rep. Anna Eshoo, as well as about as much money as Rading. Interestingly, all this activity, combined with the redistricting, has inspired Eshoo to spend a third of her cash reserves ahead of the primary. We’d love to know what concern motivated that decision.
CA-21: Ooof, yeah, Jim Costa’s getting reelected.
CA-29: This round of the election’s kind of a formality ahead of the inevitable Cárdenas-Dueñas runoff. That’s probably why Cárdenas isn’t even bothering advertising ahead of it.
CA-32: Brad Sherman’s also making a show of strength ahead of the primary. In his case, it makes a bit more sense. The district’s about ⅓ Republican, and there are two Republican candidates. If he can take substantially over half the Democratic vote, both his Democratic opponents likely miss the runoff and he doesn’t have to worry. He’s deliberately trying to boost one of those two Republicans, Lucie Volotsky, in order to avoid a runoff with a Democrat; mailers that frame Volotsky as the Republican candidate have been hitting LA mailboxes.
(In the initial version of this issue, we mistakenly entered data from an outdated FEC report for Aarika Rhodes; her contribution total of $42,547, her spending total of $88,471, and her cash on hand of $94,143 are the correct numbers for the pre-primary period of April 1 through May 18.)
CA-34: This race is similar to CA-29 in that it’s just a prelude to the fall runoff.
CA-37: We would not have expected Jan Perry to keep a spending pace with Sydney Kamlager a few months ago. Michael Shure is up there too, but the record of Youtube personalities running for office is…not fantastic.
CA-42: Trump took just over a quarter of the vote in this district, and there’s only one Republican running. It’s a heavy lift, but if Robert Garcia can get Cristina Garcia below that threshold, then he sails through the general. Evidently, he’s going for it.
CA-50: Scott Peters is also trying to lock out Democratic opponents from the runoff, and he’s throwing down crazy money to do it. If Kylie Taitano makes the runoff, it’s because of voter guides and word of mouth supporting a more progressive option.
NJ-08: Yeah, everyone knew there was no money to be found going against the Hudson County machine.
NJ-10: The big warning sign for Imani Oakley was not her ability to raise money—she consistently raised impressive sums of money for an outsider—but her burn rate, which is allowing Rep. Donald Payne Jr. to crush her in the home stretch.
Outside $ Tracker
CA-13
$94K of mailers for Adam Gray from California Real Estate Political Action Committee. Total CAREPAC spending: $212K
$60K of digital ads for Adam Gray from Center Forward (Blue Dogs). The ad touts his “independence”. That his independence is from the Democratic Party and not from business interests is left unsaid, though it’s hard to say they’re not being open about who he’ll be in Congress. Total CF spending: $60K
$24K of mailers attacking Adam Gray from the Voter Protection Project. Total VPP spending: $129K
$15K of digital ads supporting Adam Gray from Central Valley Jobs PAC. It was formed last month by a couple low-level political consultants from the Bay Area. Anyone could be behind this, and we won’t find out until after the primary. Total CVJ spending: $15K.
CA-15
$25K of digital ads supporting Kevin Mullin and attacking David Canepa from DMFI PAC. Total DMFI spending: $25K
CA-16
$121K of mailers, $66K of calls/texts, and $12K of digital ads for Greg Tanaka from DAO for America (cryptocurrency). Total DAO spending: $266K
CA-37
$116K of mailers for Sydney Kamlager and $115K of mailers and digital ads attacking Daniel Lee from DMFI PAC. Total DMFI spending: $231K
$100K of mailers for Sydney Kamlager from DAO for America. Total DAO spending: $100K
$113K of mailers for Sydney Kamlager from Protect Our Future PAC. Total POF spending: $501K
$73K of digital ads supporting Michael Shure from Californians for Good Government PAC. This new PAC is, so far, solely funded by lawyer Andrew Weissman, best known for prosecuting Enron executives and working on the Mueller investigation. Total CFGG spending: $73K.
$25K in mailers and $34K in digital ads for Sydney Kamlager from Urban Empowerment PAC. This is a new group, see below for more information on them. The ad itself is a half-assed rush job with text saying she supports a couple basic things, because the entire reason it exists is to make it look like this PAC doesn’t exist for a single race. Total UEP spending: $60K
CA-42
$232K of web(?) ads for Robert Garcia from Web3 Forward. Total Web3 spending: $232K
$21K of phone calls and $120K of mailers opposing Cristina Garcia from United Democracy Project (AIPAC). The digital ads, first reported last week, that UDP are running attack Cristina Garcia for her previous bigoted outbursts, including the infamous “punch the next Asian person I see in the face” quote. Total UDP spending: $515K
$66K of digital ads attacking Cristina Garcia from DMFI PAC. The ads mirror UDP’s in tone and in which controversies they single out, though they’re more vague in the details. Total DMFI spending: $66K
$50K of mailers supporting Robert Garcia from Protect Our Future PAC. Total POF spending: $1.0M
$35K of mailers supporting Robert Garcia from Californians for Safe and Healthy Communities. Pre-primary filings revealed the source of this money to be a collection of local unions: SEIU, IBEW, IUOE, firefighters, and police. Total CASHC spending: $105K
CA-44
$100K of mailers for Nanette Barragán from America United. Barragan has only the most trivial of primary or general election opposition, so we can only assume this is some sort of exercise in box-ticking. Total AU spending: $100K.
IL-03
$428K of TV and digital ads for Gilbert Villegas from VoteVets. Total VoteVets spending: $428K
$65K of mailers for Delia Ramirez from Women Vote! (EMILY’s List). Total WV! spending: $131K
$30K of TV ads for Delia Ramirez from Medicare for All (Pramila Jayapal’s PAC). Total MFA spending: $30K
An update on last week’s WFP digital ad buy for Delia Ramirez: The ad copy is now public, and it takes an interesting attack angle against Villegas—that he spent COVID relief money on the police, and that he has the Fraternal Order of Police endorsement.
IL-06
$463K in TV and digital ads attacking Marie Newman from Democratic Majority for Israel. The ad’s focus is on the ethics investigation facing Newman, relitigating all the gory details through headlines and stock footage. Total DMFI spending: $463K
IL-07
$125K of digital ads supporting Danny Davis from the Opportunity for All Action Fund. This group is entirely shrouded in mystery, and isn’t even registered as a PAC for us to attach any names to. All that’s known about them is that they've been trying to influence the NJ-05 GOP primary to pick an easier opponent for Josh Gottheimer. The ads here are images saying Davis supports gun control and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Total OFAAF spending: $125K
IL-17
$308K of TV and digital ads for Eric Sorensen from 314 Action Fund. Total 314 spending: $308K
NJ-08
$250K of digital ads for Robert Menendez Jr. from Protect Our Future PAC. Total POF spending: $250K
NJ-10
$20K of calls and texts and $50K of digital ads for Donald Payne Jr. from Opportunity for All Action Fund. The ads are simple images saying Payne fights for gun control and has the Planned Parenthood endorsement. Total OFAAF spending: $70K
NV-01
$32K of digital ads supporting Dina Titus and opposing Amy Vilela from Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI). The ad’s a quick hit saying Titus voted for the infrastructure bill and Vilela wouldn’t have. Total DMFI spending: $32K
$27K of mailers for Dina Titus from Opportunity for All Action Fund. Total OFAAF spending: $177K, all apparently without setting off any alarm bells. They’ve been running digital ads touting Titus’s support of reproductive rights since at least May 14
$1,700 of mailers for Dina Titus from Workers Vote, paid for by the Culinary Union (which represents Las Vegas casino workers and can play kingmaker in Nevada Democratic nominating contests.) Total WV spending: $1,700
Results
Oregon (5/17)
Because of the tendency of late ballots to meaningfully shift results in universal vote-by-mail states like Oregon, and because of a ballot-counting problem in Clackamas County (a heavily populated county containing Portland’s southeastern suburbs), we didn’t cover the results of downballot contests in Oregon’s May 17 primary in our last issue. Now that Clackamas County has sorted itself out and the vast majority of late ballots have been counted, every race we highlighted in our downballot preview but one has a clear winner, and we finally have a complete picture of the first incumbent loss of the 2022 Democratic primary cycle in OR-05.
OR-05: It’s official: Kurt Schrader was the first Democratic member of Congress to lose renomination in 2022. It’s a humiliating loss for the Blue Dog Coalition—Schrader is a former chairman of the rump caucus of annoying conservative Democrats—and for Joe Biden, who made the bewildering decision to endorse Schrader despite Schrader’s sabotaging of Biden’s legislative agenda and over the pleas of local Democratic Party officials, who never hid their disdain for Schrader. The county Democratic Party committees in four of the district’s six counties went so far as to endorse Jamie McLeod-Skinner, the progressive who dealt the congressman a punishing 55-45 defeat. Schrader and his allied PACs massively outspent McLeod-Skinner and her allied PACs, but it wasn’t enough to persuade primary voters that Schrader deserved an eighth term in Congress. Good riddance.
SD-13: Aaron Woods prevailed over Chelsea King, who had seemed like the frontrunner in a race with little apparent dividing lines between the candidates.
SD-18: Progressive freshman state Rep. Wlnsvey Campos easily won the nomination for this open state senate seat, defeating the same moderate, Alisa Blum, who she defeated two years ago to win her state House seat.
HD-19: Carpetbagging centrist state Rep. Brad Witt, who abandoned his northwestern Oregon district because it got a little redder in redistricting, failed so miserably in his attempt to swap it for a Salem district that he came in third place—behind not only the winner, Salem City Councilor Tom Andersen, but also behind Salem City Councilor Jackie Leung, who dropped out of the race in late April. Andersen seems decent, while Witt was backed extensively by a PAC seeking to defeat progressive state legislative candidates.
HD-27: State Rep. Ken Helm defeated Berniecrat Tammy Carpenter 60-39—a pretty good performance for Carpenter, we have to say, against a progressive incumbent in a suburban district.
HD-35: Wlnsvey Campos’s chosen successor, Farrah Chaichi, won over Zeloszelos Marchandt, 59-40.
HD-38: This race between Chamber of Commerce type Daniel Nguyen and progressive Neelam Gupta is still too close to call. Nguyen leads by just fourteen votes at the moment. A few dozen ballots are still outstanding in Clackamas, where Nguyen leads, and a handful of cures may still be left in Multnomah, where Gupta leads. A recount seems likely here.
HD-40: Annessa Hartman defeated Charles Gallia easily; the margin currently stands at a whopping 59-31. Gallia was a little more overtly progressive, but Hartman didn’t throw up any red flags.
HD-41: Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba deserves credit for running against Kurt Schrader in 2020 when nobody else would. While he didn’t win that race, he absolutely ran away with the nomination in this Portland/Milwaukie district, getting about 70% of the vote over his more moderate opponent Kaliko Castille.
HD-45: As expected, establishment favorite Dr. Thuy Tran easily defeated her more progressive opponent, Catherine Thomasson.
Washington County DA: Tough-on-crime incumbent Kevin Barton ended up holding on, but progressive challenger Brian Decker held him to a relatively weak 55-45 victory.
Alabama
SD-19: Anti-trans state Rep. Merika Coleman easily won 72-28.
SD-20: Incumbent Linda Coleman-Madison was easily reelected 87-13.
SD-23: Okay, we were way off here. This is going to a runoff between party activist Robert Stewart, who took 30%, and former SD-23 Senator Hank Sanders, who retired in 2018 to give his daughter a term in the office.
HD-52: Long-tenured and controversial incumbent John Rogers Jr. fended off party insider LaTanya Millhouse 67-33.
HD-54: Incumbent Neil Rafferty easily beat DSA-endorsed LGBTQ activist Brit Blalock 59-11.
HD-55: Anti-trans incumbent Rod Scott took only 25% against a crowded field of challengers and will be headed to a runoff. Fred Plump, a retired firefighter, led the pack of competitors at 22%.
HD-56: Once again, the top vote-getter was not on our radar. Ontario Tillman, a lawyer, took 42%, and will face a runoff with Tereshia Huffman, who took 24%. Both Bessemer City Councilors missed the runoff.
HD-74: Birmingham Mayor Steven Reed’s top policy guy Phillip Ensler won 66% to 34%.
Arkansas
HD-35: Moderate ex-cop Milton Nicks Jr. won reelection 74-26 over Earle City Councilor Demetris Johnson.
Georgia
GA-07: Rep. Lucy McBath demolished Blue Dog and Build Back Better saboteur Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, 63%-31%, in a district that’s more Bourdeaux’s than McBath’s. While McBath did outspend her, Bourdeaux still raised millions for this contest; there’s no way to spin this positively for Bourdeaux or the Blue Dogs.
GA-13: Blue Dog Rep. David Scott easily avoided a runoff after coming dangerously close to one in 2020. Scott won with 66% of the vote, while Bernie-endorsed challenger Vincent Fort placed 4th with only 10%. Scott’s most formidable challenger wound up being South Fulton City Councilmember Mark Baker, who took 13%.
SD-06: Atlanta Board of Education chair Jason Esteves eked out a narrow win over previous state House nominee Luisa Wakeman.
SD-07: The biggest race downballot outside of Texas also turned into the closest race outside of Texas. Progressive darling Nabilah Islam pulled it out after a long election night, winning 50.3% to 49.7% over moderate state Rep. Beth Moore.
SD-10: Incumbent Emanuel Jones survived Henry County Commissioner Bruce Holmes’s challenge 70-30.
SD-33: Incumbent Michael Rhett won easily with 68% of the vote.
SD-35: Donzella James finally broke her streak of unimpressive primary wins, taking 71% against a crew of half-decent opponents.
SD-36: Atlanta institution Nan Orrock crushed the opposition with 75% of the vote.
SD-38: Progressives’ attempt to take advantage of Horacena Tate’s absenteeism failed badly. Tate defeated Melody Bray 63-24.
HD-39: The runoff here will be between renters’ advocate Monica DeLancy and prison lawyer (as in she was one of the prison’s lawyers, not working for the prisoners) Terry Cummings. DeLancy was only ahead 29-27 in the first round, and the runoff starts as a tossup.
HD-40: Ex-state Sen. Doug Stoner returned to elected office with a relatively unimpressive (considering how long he’s been in politics) 60-40 win.
HD-55: Keisha Waites’s former campaign manager Nate Green very nearly won a race of his own, but fell just short to Inga Willis, 47-53.
HD-56: First-termer and charter school enthusiast Mesha Mainor turned back more progressive challenger Keona Jones 65-28.
HD-59: Phil Olaleye beat serial candidate Toney Collins only 55-45.
HD-60: In yet another display of the power of incumbency, Sheila Jones crushed it with 89% of the vote.
HD-62: Attorney Tanya Miller just managed to avoid a runoff by getting 53% of the vote.
HD-90: Leftist Bentley Hudgins took third place with 14% of the vote, and missed the runoff, which will be between establishment favorites Saira Draper (43%) and Michelle Schreiner (34%).
HD-97: Progressive former CAIR Georgia communications director Ruwa Romman beat Carolyn Bourdeaux’s candidate JT Wu 58-42.
HD-106: The night’s only downballot incumbent-on-incumbent race saw Shelly Hutchinson beat Rebecca Mitchell 59-41.
Texas Runoffs
TX-28: Henry Cuellar apparently won renomination by 281 votes thanks to Jessica Cisneros totally collapsing on the border. There will be a recount here, and recounts can change things—in fact, Cuellar had apparently lost in 2006 by a similar margin until a recount gave him a 58 vote lead. But it’s rare, especially with modern optical scanning technology, for a margin that high to be overturned. Cisneros’s only chance at this point is, more or less, a box of uncounted votes being discovered in San Antonio. Cuellar survived, again, thanks to Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, and really the entirety of House leadership, who went all-in to defend an opponent to abortion rights and gun control as Roe was being struck down and mass shootings were once again ripping lives apart across the country. Sure, they had monetary help from AIPAC, Sam Bankman-Fried, and a whole host of small business tycoons on the border, but Cuellar couldn’t have pulled off that 281 vote win without House leadership. We’d like to congratulate them on what they fought so hard to accomplish.
TX-30: Progressive state Rep. Jasmine Crockett won easily over moderate former Biden primary campaign official Jane Hope Hamilton, 60%-40%. While Crockett had the support of outgoing Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, she’s very different from the departing congresswoman—Johnson is one of the more moderate members of the House Democratic caucus, and since the death of Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young in March she’s been the oldest member of the House. Crockett, at 41, is 45 years Johnson’s junior, and she’s one of the Texas House’s few progressive firebrands; she was first elected in 2020 by primarying out a more moderate Democrat, and she had unified support in her congressional run from progressive groups both local and national. Dallas just got a huge upgrade in Congress.
SD-27: It looks like progressives prevailed in the TX-15, which is great luck—we got the one that likely doesn’t matter, and lost the rest. In the biggest non-Congress border showdown of the night, progressive Sara Stapleton-Barrera lost 43-57 to conservative, barely-a-Democrat businesswoman Morgan LaMantia.
HD-22: Outgoing Rep. Joe Deshotel managed to get his aide over the line after all. Manuel Hayes, despite being 6% behind Joe Trahan in the first round, won 51-49.
HD-37: Eddie Lucio Jr. had his revenge. Sara Stapleton-Barrera, who challenged him in 2020, lost her runoff, and so too did his other opponent in that election, Ruben Cortez, who lost to Lucio’s aide Luis Villarreal Jr. 52-48.
HD-70: Progressives didn’t get their first choice into the runoff, but they did stop moderate Cassandra Garcia Hernandez from winning it, with Mihaela Plesa taking 55%.
HD-100: Weird, abstract, last-minute homophobia didn’t save Sandra Crenshaw from defeat to Venton Jones, who won by a wide 68-32 margin.
HD-114: The history of former members of Congress holding more local offices is always odd, and John Bryant is about to add to it after over 2 decades out of office, with his 57-43 win.
HD-147: Jolanda Jones, supported by progressives and boasting a quasi-incumbency after winning the special election for this district’s predecessor a few weeks ago, managed a 54-46 win, similar to that special.
State Board of Education District 4: Pro-charter school candidate Staci Childs came out of nowhere to take a 58-42 victory after teachers union-endorsed Coretta Mallet-Fontenot beat her 39-28 in the first round.
Bexar County Judge: Judge and establishment favorite Peter Sakai won 58-42.
El Paso County Commissioner Precinct 2: Incumbent David Stout turned back cop and tax cut worshipper Judy Gutierrez 54-46.
Harris County Commissioner Precinct 4: Despite a last-minute controversy over her campaign altering opponent Ben Chou’s face in a mailer, Lesley Briones won 54-46 as turnout fell by half.
News
FL-10
Pramila Jayapal and Jamie Raskin endorsed anti-gun violence activist Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the latest in the slow but steady trickle of support for Frost, who has thus far managed to walk the tightrope of attracting interest both from progressives and more establishment-tied groups, including the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Communications Workers of America, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s Protect Our Future PAC.
FL-20
Broward County state Rep. Anika Omphroy decided to challenge Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick for reelection. It’s a baffling decision on her part. Cherfilus-McCormick was already a favorite against Broward County Commissioner Dale Holness in her rematch, and any third challenger would help her even more—but Omphroy, specifically, shares a base with Holness in central Broward County. Outside of the central Broward region they both represent, Cherfilus-McCormick was the clear winner last year. It’s for the best. Between her running ethics problems and record of supporting a bizarre number of Republican bills, it’s better that she reduce both her and Holness’s chances of holding office come next year.
HI-01/WA-09
The National Education Association released a large batch of national endorsements. While most are safe, establishment-friendly choices, there are a few surprising moves. In HI-01, they endorsed against incumbent Blue Dog (and Unbreakable Nine member) Ed Case, backing his challenger Sergio Alcubilla. In WA-09, they chose both incumbent Adam Smith and his challenger Stephanie Gallardo, their only dual endorsement. Gallardo is a public school teacher and NEA organizer, which helps explain that endorsement—sure, she’s a fiery socialist running against a powerful Democratic incumbent, but she’s also very involved in the union. Alcubilla, on the other hand, has little connection to the education field. His endorsement makes more sense when you remember the Hawaii NEA routinely endorsed against Tulsi Gabbard for most of her tenure in Congress.
(Thanks to Karma Samtani for flagging the Alcubilla endorsement for us!)
IL-01
People are starting to take sides here, and the sides are instructive as to how different candidates will be in Congress. The Chicago Teachers’ Union endorsed Jonathan Jackson. The CTU is a generally progressive body, and probably the most powerful and combative antagonist to Lori Lightfoot. SEIU Healthcare workers, also a reliably progressive group, are backing state Sen. Jacqui Collins. Meanwhile, Matt O’Shea, the unofficial leader of the city council’s conservative wing, is supporting Pat Dowell.
IL-06
Sean Casten put out an internal poll showing him up 36% to 27% over Marie Newman. That margin is softer than we were expecting, especially after Newman released a poll showing them at a 37% tie in February. The synthesis interpretation is that Casten is up by a small margin after months of coverage over Newman’s ethics troubles, and much of the district undecided. That’s not where you want to be if you’re Marie Newman, but it’s very fixable, contrary to how some groups have been treating this race.
After Newman made it to air first last week with an ad focused on her own abortion (that also took time to hit Casten hard on abortion rights), Casten has followed with a spot reassuring voters that he supports abortion rights as well. Newman has put up a second ad continuing the contrast template of the first, highlighting that she’s always been a Democrat, while Casten has voted for Republicans before, and that she doesn’t take corporate money, while he does. It also features a dog shitting as the central setpiece of the ad, which may be a first?
MD-Gov
Progressive MD endorsed Tom Perez, continuing this election’s theme of progressives being split on whether to dejectedly settle for Perez or Wes Moore.
A new John B. King internal finds Comptroller Peter Franchot leading with 17%, King and Moore tied at 16%, Perez at 12%, Doug Gansler at 6%, and Rushern Baker at 5%. This poll mostly shows what other polls have—Franchot in a very weak lead with Moore not far behind—but it also elevates the previously single-digits King up to the same tier as Moore and Perez, which is probably why the King campaign decided to release it.
New York
Now that the new maps have had a week to percolate through the state’s political world, and now that the filing deadline is almost upon us (the deadline for already qualified candidates to pick which district they’re running in is today), it’s time to take a closer look at the New York clusterfuck:
NY-04
Nassau County Legislator Siela Bynoe dropped out of this now even safer blue district, because the slight eastern shift it took under the new maps was enough to cut her home out. This leaves progressives with no good options. Laura Gillen, who at least has the potential to be a kind of normal, background legislator, is now the best we can hope for.
NY-10
New York’s hottest new congressional district is the 10th. It has everything:
A former mayor: Bill de Blasio is de Back. While our tall boy may be mostly a punchline in news coverage at the current moment, he does have a 20 year record of succeeding at one thing—and only one thing—winning elections in New York City. He’s forged many alliances over his political career, and he may wind up being the candidate of organized labor.
A former impeachment lawyer: Daniel Goldman, who handled impeachment for House Democrats, is running. Okay, sure.
A member of Congress from the suburbs: Mondaire Jones. Yup, that Mondaire Jones. The one who currently represents Rockland and Westchester County. He’s running in this Manhattan-and-Brooklyn district, to the bafflement of many. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, who endorses all their members for reelection, confirmed that they’ll be extending that policy to Jones.
A member of Congress from the 70s: Elizabeth Holtzman had, in many ways, a pioneering career in the 70s as a member of Congress and 80s as Brooklyn DA, but she is going to be 81 on election night. That’s the same age as the 50-year incumbent she beat in 1972, partly for overstaying his welcome. Her last appearance on a ballot was her badly botched reelection attempt for City Comptroller in 1993. What is she thinking?
A failed borough president candidate: Assemb. Jo Anne Simon has represented Gowanus, Boerum Hill, DUMBO, and part of Park Slope since 2014. Simon, a quiet, party establishment type, has popularity in her own district, but as shown in her borough president election last year, it doesn’t extend to anything else in NY-10.
A failed council speaker candidate: Carlina Rivera was the progressive choice for speaker, though she wasn’t of the left, and in fact she endorsed against multiple DSA-backed candidates in 2021. But she was about as progressive as it seemed one could be while still having a chance at getting a majority of the Council to back her, and she’s been on the right side of most of the issues. She’s also the only Hispanic candidate in a district that’s ¼ Hispanic. She started her campaign with a bevy of endorsements, and also by noting that her opponents weren’t born in the district, which charitably could be considered a comms fuckup when one of your strongest opponents is an immigrant.
A failed person in general: Oh, fuck off, Maud Maron.
A total rando with a ton of money: Elizabeth Kim had been challenging Jerry Nadler in the old NY-10 on a platform of ??? and ???, with allies such as ??? and ???, but she pulled in nearly a quarter of a million dollars in the first three weeks of her campaign, so she can’t be counted out in the new NY-10.
Probably the left’s choice: Yuh-Line Niou. Yuh-Line Niou was already planning on leaving the Assembly to run for state Senate, challenging Brian Kavanagh in a Lower Manhattan district that more-or-less lines up with the Lower Manhattan portion of NY-10. She occupies an odd space within New York politics, more aligned with self-identified progressives like the Working Families Party rather than the socialist left of DSA—but unlike many progressive-not-socialist politicians in New York City, she’s still on good terms with DSA types and acts as a bridge between the two factions. Niou says she sees opportunity in the existence of an open district that’s ⅕ Asian, saying “I feel like it would have almost been like a disservice not to run”.
PIX11 commissioned an Emerson poll of this race immediately after the first few candidates announced. The winner? Chaos. A whopping 77% of voters are undecided, and no candidate cracks double digits. Mondaire Jones was in first (because somebody has to be) at 7%, with Bill De Blasio following at 6%, Niou at 5%, and Rivera at 2%. That’s a terrible sign for de Blasio, who has almost universal name recognition. Additionally, 64% of the poll’s respondents had a negative opinion of him. That would spell doom in most races, but in a situation where the winning candidate may not even crack 25% of the vote, he still has wiggle room.
NY-12
Despite endless protests from their politicians that the Upper East Side and Upper West Side represent very different factions of New York politics (old money and new money, respectively), they have been combined into a single Congressional district for the first time in any living person's memory. Incumbents Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney are, after an initial backroom attempt at a peaceful resolution, running against each other. It’s a clash of titans, in that both of them are immensely powerful and older than time itself. They are joined by Suraj Patel, who is continuing his campaign out of what at this point can only interpreted to be a love of running for office. Rana Abdelhamid, who found herself in another borough entirely, officially ended her campaign instead of continuing in a district that didn’t make much sense for her.
Who the advantage lies with here is hard to say (besides that it’s not Patel, that part’s easy). Maloney represents more of the new district than Nadler—61% to his 39%. But the Upper East Side contains less of the primary electorate than its population share, owing to its unusual concentration of insanely rich social liberals who didn’t start voting Democrat until this decade. Just how recent the UES’s Democratic turn is can be shocking—the first Democratic mayoral candidate to win there since the 80s was Bill de Blasio…in 2017. Party registration in the UWS is 70% Democratic, but it’s only 56% in the UES. On top of that, there’s the Hamptons factor. We have to emphasize that we’re not kidding when we say that multiple political reporters have confirmed that people are worried about turnout in this race because so many of the residents of the district are expected to have left for their summer homes by the time voting starts. Manhattan! Try to parody it! You can’t!
News station PIX11 commissioned Emerson for the first poll of the race, just days after the lines were set. Carolyn Maloney leads 31% to 21% over Nadler. Abdelhamid has a surprisingly decent 6% for a candidate in another borough who announced she wasn’t even going to run just days later, and Suraj Patel languished at 4%.
Nadler isn’t a movement progressive, but he’s plainly preferable to Maloney, whose various controversies (racism, islamophobia, anti-vaccine statements) are well known. What’s less known is their clear divide on foreign policy—Nadler came down on the right side of, for instance, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, and the Iran Deal (opposing the first two and supporting the last one) while Maloney didn’t. The Working Families Party has already recognized the ideological stakes of the race and endorsed Nadler, who in response called himself “the only true progressive” in the race. It also suggests that Abdelhamid’s more ideologically progressive support may come down on the side of Nadler rather than Maloney, despite Maloney’s district being the one Adbdelhamid was campaigning in.
NY-16
Despite being drawn out of the district, Westchester County Legislator Vedat Gashi has said he's still challenging Jamaal Bowman. It's a rational move from Gashi—even if northern Westchester County may be more familiar with him, and losing it hurts his chances, the net effect of the redraw was still to cut out most of the district's Bronx voters, who favored Bowman by lopsided margins in 2020, and replace them with suburban Westchester County, which was evenly split in 2020 (outside of Yonkers and Mt. Vernon). But if Gashi saw any opening appear from redistricting this week, it was quickly snatched away by Catherine Parker’s last-minute decision to run here. Parker will be a familiar name to longtime readers. She ran for the open NY-17 last cycle with a vaguely progressive tone that we were skeptical of, though she left us with an overall favorable impression when she dropped out at the last minute for fear she could split the vote in favor of a more moderate candidate, urging voters to choose Mondaire Jones. Her presence in this race is hard to explain, and she's not really trying to so far.
NY-17
Very attentive readers may have put together that if the NY-17 incumbent is running for reelection in Manhattan, then something weird probably happened in the suburbs. That weird thing is Sean Patrick Maloney. Weird? Not weird. Selfish, malicious, infuriating, ridiculous, Machiavellian, corrupt: all much better adjectives. Maloney, who represents most of the new NY-18 (which at Biden+8 is friendlier turf than his current district) is abandoning it for NY-17, which he technically lives in but represents only a small part of and is clearly a not successor district to his old district. In doing so he not only opened up NY-18 during a Republican wave year, but pinned Mondaire Jones between one of two incumbent-on-incumbent contests, which eventually resulted in him decamping for Manhattan instead. This choice is elevated from merely self-interested douchebaggery to outright scummy behavior by Maloney chairing the DCCC. He is the single person in the party most charged with getting House members elected, and he has access to an immense donor network through his position. There’s plenty to criticize about predecessor in that role, Cheri Bustos (and we did. repeatedly.) but she at least had the decency to perform in that role, even to the detriment of her own reelection chances, even as she was holding down a legitimately difficult district for Democrats. Maloney can’t even live up to her low bar.
Faced with a tough, but, in our opinion, very winnable primary contest, Jones chickened out. For a brief and nauseating moment, it looked like Maloney’s gambit was going to work as well as he could have hoped. Thankfully, that will not be the case. State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi found herself in a tougher spot than anyone but Rana Abdelhamid after redistricting: a Westchester County politician who suddenly found herself cut out of the district she was running for, the now-Long Island only NY-03, and living in Jamaal Bowman’s NY-16. Instead of either of those districts, she’s running in NY-17. It is technically carpetbagging, though to a lesser degree than Jones is engaging in. She lives in and represents Pelham, a mostly white, affluent town that resembles NY-17’s upper Westchester County and Rockland County, even though it borders the city. It’s certainly less of a leap than going from the outer suburbs of Rockland County to Lower Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn. Biaggi is taking a big risk here, but she’s not going it alone. Jamaal Bowman has voiced support for her campaign. Biaggi only has a few months to make her case, and is going directly after Maloney, calling him, among other things, “a selfish corporate Democrat who clearly only cares about himself.”
Speaking of NY-03, we don’t really cover districts that are clearly going to be competitive in the general election, and a Biden+8 district on Long Island in a Democratic midterm unfortunately qualifies. But we did want to mention that Biaggi’s exit from NY-03 allows the left to more fully consolidate behind another progressive here, Melanie D’Arrigo, who was endorsed by the Working Families Party the day after Biaggi left the race. Longtime readers might remember that D’Arrigo ran a spirited primary campaign against Rep. Tom Suozzi in 2020, which might be one of many reasons Suozzi chose to give up his seat in 2022 to run an extremely doomed primary campaign from the right against Gov. Kathy Hochul. D’Arrigo gives Long Island Democrats an opportunity they rarely get: the chance to nominate someone decent who doesn’t sound like a Republican half the time.
VT-AL
Kesha Ram Hinsdale dropped out of the race this weekend and endorsed state Senate President Becca Balint. The news is unexpected—Ram Hinsdale, Balint, and Lt. Gov. Molly Gray were nearly tied in the only public poll, and had similar fundraising numbers. There was no reason to suspect that she was falling behind, and she even had the state's AFL-CIO chapter behind her. For lack of other plausible explanations, our best guess as to what happened here is behind-the-scenes consolidation from the state party's larger, more progressive wing aimed at preventing Gray, the choice of the smaller, business-friendly, centrist wing, from winning with a plurality, eventually coming down hard enough on the side of Balint that Ram Hinsdale saw the writing on the wall.
This makes it easier for the Vermont Progressive Party, who seemed torn between Ram Hinsdale, Balint, and Sianay Chase Clifford.
Chicago Mayor
We’re being spoiled with a wealth of mayoral candidates, who all decided this was the week to join the race. Former Chicago Schools CEO Paul Vallas was the first. Vallas stepped down from that position in 2001 to run for governor, and very nearly won the primary of the strength of the suburbs. He went to work for the city after that, reemerging in 2014 as Pat Quinn’s running mate, only for Quinn to bungle that election and leave Vallas with nothing to do until he ran for mayor in 2019. In that race Vallas only took 5%, doing best in the more suburban, less Democratic northwest of the city. He’s a spent force, as his halfhearted fear-mongering on crime shows.
Alderman Roderick Sawyer has also joined the field to challenge embattled Lori Lightfoot for reelection in 2023. Sawyer, who has represented the South Side since 2011, is best known as the son of former mayor Eugene Sawyer, who was appointed to the office in 1987 by the Board of Aldermen after the death of Harold Washington, and was badly defeated for his first full term in 1989. Normally it’s unfair to just define a politician by what their family has done, but in Roderick’s case, he’s had a decade to make his own name, and doesn’t seem much interested in it.
Though she’s not officially joined yet, Ald. Sophia King’s entry is imminent, according to NBC5 reporter Mary Ann Ahern. King was appointed to the Board in 2016, and is a member of the Progressive Reform Caucus, antagonists of both Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot. She’s also personal friends with little-known Chicago ex-state Sen. Barack Obama, who endorsed her for reelection in 2019.
Former governor Pat Quinn also said he’d be making a decision in the next couple months, something no one on earth was asking for. He’s been running for (and usually winning) statewide offices since the mid 1980s, and he still only got 23% of the primary vote in Chicago when he ran for AG in 2018. He’ll be 74 by the election.
Finally this week, we heard from Ald. Brian Hopkins, who isn’t sure if he’ll run for reelection or for Mayor, and has been polling to make his decision. Hopkins represents a bizarre, tendril-y district broadly on the North Side. He’s the former chief of staff to John Daley, a member of the powerful Daley family, though not one of the ones who managed to get elected mayor. Accordingly, Hopkins is on the moderate side, and realistically has little hope of getting elected mayor.
PAC Watch
Urban Empowerment Action PAC
This PAC, which bills itself as “a broad coalition of Black and Jewish business, political and civic leaders”, though the only names attached to it at the moment are political operatives Bakari Sellers, Henry Greenidge, and Deanna Hamilton, made its debut this week, announcing “a 7-figure independent expenditure effort..across five Democratic congressional primaries: Nikema Williams in GA-05, Sydney Kamlager in CA-37, Nykea Pippion-McGriff in IL-01, Janice Winfrey in MI-12, and Randolph Bracy in FL-10.” The Williams primary is already over, and they spent a whopping $55,000 on the effort, though she was the only candidate on that list without serious opposition.
They also announced their top race will be MI-12, where they’ll “spend upwards of $1,000,000 on TV, digital, mail, radio, and print advertising to support Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey”. Evidently, after millions in centrist money failed to dislodge Ilhan Omar in 2020, the major project of wealthy anti-left funders will be going after Rashida Tlaib instead.
America United
This originally mysterious group, which helped reelect Henry Cuellar and is currently spending hundreds of thousands to defeat progressive challengers in other races under the ostensible guise of electing Hispanic members of Congress, is starting to look a lot less mysterious. In a Newsweek interview in April, the man officially in charge, former Hillary Clinton staffer Jorge Neri, described the funding as coming from “"high net worth individuals and companies I have worked with throughout the years”. Nope, turns out that’s a total lie. The entirety of the funding as of mid-May ($1 million) has come from Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency billionaire behind Protect Our Future.
Justice Unites Us PAC
Here's a throwback. Remember that PAC that mysteriously popped up in April to spend nearly $900,000 on canvassing for Carrick Flynn, a ludicrous amount of money for a house primary? At the time we assumed it was also the work of Sam Bankman-Fried, because who else could it be. They finally filed their disclosure, and yup, it was all him (by way of Protect Our Future, another one of his PACs.)
House Majority PAC
Did you think this wasn’t going to be about Sam Bankman-Fried, just because it's Nancy Pelosi's PAC, which has been around for years, and is the unofficial Super PAC arm of the House Democrats? Guess again, motherfucker! This is still a Sam Bankman-Fried story! You know that $1 million ad buy for Carrick Flynn that HMP made the same week Justice United Us was created? The insanely out-of-place one that surprised everyone because HMP doesn't do primaries, and pissed off a large number of actual House members who are theoretically served by this PAC? That one? Yeah, it was also funded by Sam Bankman-Fried. In this case, he gave $6 million to the group, right before they started their Carrick Flynn ad buy. Sure, it’s not possible to officially link his massive donation to HMP immediately spending some of it on exactly what he wanted, but does anyone actually believe one event isn’t related to the other?
DMFI
Oh god Sam Bankman-Fried also gave $250K to DMFI. Of course, why wouldn’t he? After all, DMFI’s top 2 donors are a fossil fuel billionaire and a multi-level-marketing billionaire. Why wouldn’t someone who made his billions through a dressed-up pyramid scheme that does nothing but contribute to global warming be interested in DMFI?