Primary School 6/9
let's go robert mueller and the rule of law
Results
Denver was a wash for progressives: Mike Johnston, the less disastrous candidate, won 55%-45%, and progressives began and ended the runoff with one district councilmember. It was a different councilmember, though: Candi CdeBaca lost by over 20% to centrist Darrell Watson in CD-9, but Shontel Lewis managed a narrow victory in CD-8. In CD-10, incumbent Chris Hinds beat progressive challenger Shannon Hoffman 55%-45%.
New Jersey was…murky? Party-endorsed candidates definitely swept outside of Hudson County (the usual outcome), but some off-the-line candidates beat expectations—particularly state Sen. Nia Gill, who won her hometown of Montclair by such a gargantuan margin that she may have been able to defeat fellow state Sen. Dick Codey to win another term had her campaign activity not petered out in the final weeks of the race. In Hudson County, we don’t yet know whether the machine managed to keep up its winning streak; it appears likely that they did, and the Hudson County Democratic Organization has already declared victory, but in county commission districts 4 and 5, incumbents Yraida Aponte-Lipski and Anthony Romano aren’t ahead by quite enough to rule out upsets when a large batch of lost-then-found election day ballots are counted later today.
AZ-03
U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly endorsed state Sen. Raquel Terán for Congress this week. Terán is one of several progressives running to succeed Ruben Gallego, but unlike Phoenix City Councilor Yassamin Ansari or local school board member Héctor Jaramillo, Terán was chair of the Arizona Democratic Party throughout the 2022 election cycle, overseeing the party’s successful efforts to reelect Kelly and take the governor’s mansion.
Phoenix City Councilor Laura Pastor announced her campaign just hours after our last issue, in which we noted her filing with the FEC, went live. We love when that happens. (We don’t.) Pastor is the first candidate to enter who’s clearly a moderate; the daughter of former Rep. Ed Pastor, Laura is an ally of centrist Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego on the council. (Ansari, on the other hand, is frequently at odds with the mayor.)
CA-Sen
Sacramento-based Rep. Ami Bera endorsed Adam Schiff for Senate. While Bera is a Northern California politician, and most of those have backed Barbara Lee, he is even more importantly a centrist, and those are naturally in the Schiff coalition. Schiff also recently hired Lis Smith, best known as the hatchetwoman for Andrew Cuomo and the IDC, before a national star-making turn on Pete Buttigieg’s campaign.
CA-Lt. Gov.
California state Treasurer Fiona Ma has announced that she is going to be running for Lt. Governor in 2026. This makes her the most prominent name so far (for an election that’s 3 years away) and takes her out of contention for the governor’s office, which she was speculated to be running for. Incumbent Eleni Kounalakis is term-limited and has already announced a 2026 gubernatorial run.
MD-Sen
Rep. Jamie Raskin is deciding whether or not to run for Senate, and has now given a firmer date for making that decision: July 4. The further he pushes it off, the lower the odds of him actually running are, given how fast various factions of the state party are lining up behind their candidates. (Every faction’s candidate seems to be Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks so far; Rep. David Trone’s most notable supporter is his own pocketbook, though he did manage to snag the endorsement of Ed Burroughs III, a Prince George’s County Councilmember who leads a faction of progressives opposed to Alsobrooks.)
MD-06
State Rep. Lesley Lopez has officially jumped into primary with a launch video clearly made on a lower budget then we'd expect from a comms professional who's been in politics for over a decade. As we said when she first showed interest in the seat, Lopez is not only a former high-level Henry Cuellar staffer, she’s also been actively hostile towards progressives in the state, taking part in an effort to primary out her seatmate Gabriel Acevero last year.
There may be better news on the horizon—Montgomery County Councilmember Laurie-Anne Sayles is considering entering the race. Sayles was elected to an At-Large seat in 2022, in what was seen as a major victory for progressives. Before she entered county politics, she was a city councilmember in Gaithersburg, which is actually in the district, something that isn't required but is nice to have. Also looking at the seat is Mia Mason, who was the 2020 Democratic nominee… for MD-01, on the Eastern Shore. While Maryland is generally less fussy about residency, moving across the state and running for Congress there two years later isn't easy. Mason would have been the first trans member of Congress had she won, but she raised almost no money and was doomed from the start in a district as red as the old MD-01.
Also considering is Hagerstown (pop. 44,000) Mayor Tekesha Martinez, who was appointed to the position from city council a few months ago. Martinez would be the only candidate in the race who hails from Western Maryland instead of Montgomery or Frederick County, the two main sources of Democratic votes in the district.
RI-01
State Rep. Nathan Biah is the first candidate to drop out of the unsustainably large field contesting the RI-01 special election. He will instead run in the special election to succeed state Sen. Maryellen Goodwin, who passed away in April.
WA-Gov
State Sen. Mark Mullet has entered the gubernatorial contest. Mullet is an anti-tax warrior who represents a once-swingy district in the eastern suburbs of Seattle, and stood out for his fiscal conservatism even then. In 2020, he was challenged in a primary by progressive nurse Ingrid Anderson, and the election quickly became a pitched battle for the future of the state. Democrats needed another vote to pass a state-changing capital gains tax, and Mullet was the only hard no in a Democratic district who was up for reelection. Labor groups decided to go in big to promote Anderson to make sure the votes were there, and capital flocked to Mullet’s aid. Even though his district wasn’t so fully Democratic as to be hopeless for Republicans, the party chose to stand down, allowing their voters to be involved in the decision between Mullet and Anderson. If the election didn’t seem like a D vs. R proxy battle already, prominent Democrats like Jay Inslee weighing in for Anderson made it clear. Mullet won that election by just 57 votes—even under generous assumptions, more than ⅔ of his total came from voters who were otherwise voting for Republicans. Thanks to T'wina Nobles winning SD-28, Democrats had exactly enough votes for the capital gains tax, and passed it. Mullet has made no effort to patch things up with the party in the intervening two years.
Mullet is something beyond a moderate Democrat hoping to ride a lot of money and a split field to victory: he’s a Democrat who wants to be the de facto Republican nominee. Mullet is already out there pushing for Republican votes. Soeaking with Seattle’s best-known conservative radio host, Jason Rantz, Mullet explained that while he was still seeking Democratic votes, “it’ll be the same in a statewide race” as his Senate election, and he’ll be attracting Republican voters by broadcasting his agreement with them on issues of crime, taxes, and deregulation. Mullet is going to have a much harder time convincing Republican leaders to leave him uncontested for Republican votes like he did in 2020, but so far no big name Republicans have shown any interest in the race. If the Republican field truly becomes a large collection of no-names, the general election will be a D vs. D race, and that may be the scenario Mullet is envisioning for himself.
NY-AD-32
Progressives in Queens are inching closer to putting up a candidate against accused (and somewhat admitted) sex pest Juan Ardila. Ardila was elected to the 32nd Assembly district in 2022. Though no one's ever officially spoken on the matter, in what had all the markings of a deal between WFP and DSA, AD-37 District Leader Émilia Decaudin didn’t run for this seat in 2022, standing aside to allow the left to unite behind Ardila, WFP’s candidate against archconservative City Council Member Bob Holden in 2021. Ardila won in 2022 with the support of the fledgling progressive network that has quickly come to dominate western Queens politics—and then, after he won, he was accused of sexually assaulting two women in 2015. When Ardila’s accusers came forward, the area’s other elected officials (who had largely supported him in 2022) swiftly called for his resignation; Ardila responded by hunkering down and hiding from the press. This week, he tried a new strategy of lashing out—at the women who accused him, and at the women in elected office telling him to resign. Ardila hired a lawyer to investigate the women and attempt to refute their claims of assault, and sent an unhinged statement to the press not only slamming CM Julie Won but accusing her of repeatedly threatening him and his staff. (Why he chose to target Won is anyone’s guess, considering that Kathy Hochul, AOC, and area state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez have also called for his resignation.) Fortunately, a primary for Ardila seems certain in the event that he doesn’t resign; Decaudin, a DSA member and employee, has already filed a campaign committee with the state to begin raising funds for a challenge to Ardila.
VA-SD-13
In the closing weeks of the campaign, the Virginia Democratic congressional delegation has finally decided to come out swinging for Lashrecse Aird. Sen. Mark Warner, Rep. Bobby Scott, and Rep. Jennifer McClellan have all endorsed her as of today, joining Sen.Tim Kaine, who had endorsed her a couple weeks earlier.
VA-SD-32/35/37
Organized labor in Northern Virginia has been unusually friendly to progressives all cycle due to frustration with the Virginia Democratic establishment’s tacit support for the state’s anti-union right-to-work law, and that continued this week. Former Del. Ibraheem Samirah, running as a progressive for the open SD-32 against establishment-favored Del. Suhas Subramanyam, landed the endorsement of the carpenters’ union, his first union endorsement; businesswoman Heidi Drauschak was endorsed by ATU Local 689, which represents public transit workers, in her primary challenge to moderate state Sen. Dave Marsden; and Fairfax County Democratic Party official Saddam Salim got the endorsement of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers in his primary challenge to conservative Democratic state Sen. Chap Petersen in SD-37.
Baltimore Council 8
City Councilmember Kristerfer Burnett has decided to retire rather than seek election for a third term next year. Burnett, who represents Southwest Baltimore, is an ally of Mayor Brandon Scott and part of the progressive wing of the Council. He’s not leaving without a designated successor in place: his district coordinator, Paris Gray. Expect him to be the first of a crowded field.
Fairfax Commonwealth Attorney
Progressive prosecutor Steve Descano has moved into late-game campaigning with one consistent message against his tough-on-crime opponent Ed Nuttall: Nuttall is willing to prosecute women for having abortions. Virginia doesn’t have any laws currently on the books making abortion illegal, but the GOP is only two Senate seats away from having full governmental control, and passing laws making abortion illegal, like Glenn Youngkin was trying to pass last year. Though it's not the likeliest outcome, it is a possibility, and Nuttall’s adamant refusal to back down from that position is a weakness Descano is hitting him on repeatedly.
Nashville Mayor
The first poll of this election has been released, and we’re no closer to understanding what’s going on. A PPP poll shows:
10% - Metro Councilmember Freddie O’Connell
9% - state Sen. Jeff Yarbro
8% - state Sen. Heidi Campbell
8% - businessman and former city economic official Matt Wiltshire
7% - Metro Councilmember Sharon Hurt
4% - Republican political operative Alice Rolli
3% - retired Wall Street executive Jim Gingrich
PPP also tested individual candidate favorables, and found that most candidates were poorly known but well-liked enough, with the exceptions of Heidi Campbell, who a whopping 42% of the electorate knows; Alice Rolli, who is underwater 8% - 13%; and Jim Gingrich, down by a similar 11% positive - 15% negative.
Redistricting
Surprising everyone, the Supreme Court decided to let a piece of civil rights legislation stand, in a ruling today reaffirming Thornburg v. Gingles, a previous decision of theirs surrounding Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Functionally, if in redistricting, a racial minority group votes distinctly from a surrounding racial majority group, and a compact district where they constitute a majority can be drawn, it must be drawn. This is how the federal government has protected against racial gerrymandering for decades, which is why when the newly empowered 6 member GOP majority on the Supreme Court punted a handle of potential Section 2 violations lower courts found in 2022, until SCOUTS could rule on them all at one after the midterms in 2023, everyone expected the John “racism is over” Roberts court to kill Section 2 once and for all.
That they didn’t is shocking, and now means that at least two states need to redraw their Congressional districts: Alabama and Louisiana, both of which will draw majority Black districts that will feature new primaries. The new district in Alabama will probably contain the cities of Mobile and Montgomery, and the new district in Louisiana will probably be anchored in Baton Rouge, but the majority of the population will be found elsewhere, potentially in the River Parishes, or other small cities in the center of the state, including Lafayette, Alexandria, and Opelousas.
Additional states that have been mentioned as potentially getting new Black-majority congressional districts as knock-on effects of this ruling are Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas. In Florida’s case, this would mean the reestablishment of the old Jacksonville-to-Tallahassee district. Unfortunately, FL-05 was not established for reasons relating to the Gingles criteria, though there is a small chance it could be reinstated for a separate clause related to retrogression (dismantling majority-minority districts). Georgia’s problem is that there are only three Black majority districts in Atlanta as a result of packing a lot of Black voters in GA-13. A court ruling that a fourth Black district is necessary is plausible, but whether or not this would produce a competitive primary is up in the air. There already is another Democratic seat (GA-07) in the Atlanta area, and the net effect, if Georgia Republicans are diligent about protecting their gerrymander, would be making that seat majority Black. However, there’s no simple way to do that, and protecting all their own incumbents could mean totally scrambling the Democratic districts in the Atlanta area, potentially resulting in a double bunk, open seat, or incumbent running for a mostly new district.
Moving another state north, a lower court did find South Carolina’s Congressional map to be a racial gerrymander in the Charleston area, but it’s important to note that that case is being heard separately by the Supreme Court, and the lower court never ruled that a second Black majority district had to be drawn, only that the Charleston boundaries in particular needed to be reworked. The most likely outcome here is that even if SCOTUS upholds the lower court decision, all that will happen is GOP-held SC-01 gets a bit swingier. A new Democratic district is highly unlikely. Finally, in Texas, there is a web of semi-related lawsuits picking at packing, cracking, and diluting in various parts of the state. Odds of a totally new majority-minority district are low unless the DOJ gets their way in Houston and a new Latino-access district is added, but also on the table are cleaning up some of the horrendous districts Texas drew to shore up suburban incumbents, and un-whitening TX-15, a border district that the GOP flipped last year after cutting down the share of actual border residents.
Further effects could be felt on state legislative maps, especially in the South. Right now there are pending cases regarding racial gerrymandering at the state legislative level in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington. Now that Section 2 has been reaffirmed and Ohio and North Carolina are redrawing maps for entirely separate reasons (Republicans took over both states’ supreme courts in the midterms), even more lawsuits may be filed. If anyone wants to get on Virginia’s case about diluting the Black vote in two rural state house seats so badly they flipped Republican in 2021, and then “fixing” that by combining them into one district that still isn’t majority Black and would have voted for Glenn Youngkin, now would be a good time.