Primary School 7/15
everybody hates bill de blasio
Outside $ Watch
FL-23
$22K of TV ads for Jared Moskowitz from Moving Broward Forward PAC. Total MBF spending: $56K
HI-02
$257K of ads for Patrick Branco from Web3 Forward. Web3 Forward has generally gone for smaller ad buys, but they do have Sam Bankman-Fried funding, so their pockets are functionally bottomless. Total Web3 spending: $257K
MD-04
$310K of TV ads supporting Donna Edwards and attacking Glenn Ivey from J Street Action. The ad focuses on his acceptance of AIPAC support, but also mentions that a PAC he donated to supports Republicans, and the second half is focused on establishing Donna Edwards as a “true Democrat”. Total J Street spending: $310K
$1.7M of ads, yard signs, mailers, and calls attacking Donna Edwards and supporting Glenn Ivey from United Democracy Project (AIPAC). The only new ad we could find from UDP focuses on their previous themes of calling Edwards ineffective during her stint in Congress. Total UDP spending: $5.9 million
$142K of digital and radio ads for Donna Edwards from LCV Action Fund. Total LCV spending: $573K
$109K of ads for Glenn Ivey from Web3 Forward. Total Web3 spending: $109K
$90K of TV ads for Glenn Ivey from DMFI PAC. The ad is a typical positive spot saying he’ll deliver on some key Democratic issues. Total DMFI spending: $426K
$32K of mailers for Donna Edwards from the Working Families Party. Total WFP spending: $32K
MI-11
$811K of TV ads supporting Haley Stevens from United Democracy Project (AIPAC). Total UDP spending: $2.4M
$710K of TV ads attacking Haley Stevens from J Street Action. The ad focuses entirely on AIPAC’s ad campaign for Stevens, pointing out that they endorsed 109 Republicans who voted to overthrow the election, accusing her of accepting the money, and ending with the tagline “no campaign cash is worth abandoning our democracy”. Total J Street spending: $710K
$76K of mailers for Andy Levin from Greenpeace Action. Total Greenpeace spending: $76K
$64K of texts, phone calls, and mailers for Andy Levin from Vote Nurses Values PAC (California Nurses Association). Total CNA spending: $64K
$50K of TV ads supporting Andy Levin from Future Progress. Total FP spending: $231K
$33K of mailers supporting Andy Levin from Voices for Peace PAC. This group was created very recently. There’s no indication at the moment that it’s connected to the similarly-named Jewish Voice (singular) for Peace organization, which is supporting Levin, or various nuclear and/or foreign policy-focused organizations with similar names. Total Voices for Peace spending: $33K
$2,900 of ads (we’re guessing newspaper) supporting Haley Stevens from the Jewish Democratic Council of America. Notably, Stevens is not Jewish, while her opponent, Andy Levin, is. Total JDCA spending: $2,900
MI-12
$15K of TV ads supporting Rashida Tlaib from The Six PAC. The Six PAC has been around for a few years, and supports progressives with smaller ad buys. Total TSP spending: $15K
$10K of mailers supporting Rashida Tlaib from Friends of the Earth Action. Total FoTE spending: $10K
MI-13
$760K of TV ads attacking Shri Thanedar from VoteVets. The ad calls Thanedar out for voting “with every single Republican” on a key gun vote, voting with Republicans against Whitmer’s auto plan, and voting for Rick Santorum in 2012 (he claims it was done to encumber presumptive nominee Mitt Romney). Total VV spending: $760K
$555K of TV ads supporting Adam Hollier from United Democracy Project (AIPAC). Total UDP spending: $2.5M
$4,950 of digital ads supporting Adam Hollier from the Detroit Chamber of Commerce. Total DCoC spending: $4,950
MO-01
$50K of canvassing for Cori Bush from the Working Families Party. Total WFP spending: $50K
$10K of GOTV calls and texts supporting Cori Bush from Friends of the Earth Action. Total FotE spending: $10K
VT-AL
$59K of digital ads for Becca Balint from the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC. One spot focuses on abortion rights, another on gun control, and a third on the endorsements she’s received. Total CPC spending: $59K
$32K of mailers for Becca Balint from Equality PAC. Total Equality spending: $32K
Maryland Pre-Primary FEC reports
Maryland pre-primary reports don’t tell us anything too surprising. In MD-04, Glenn Ivey has a lot of money thanks largely to AIPAC bundling, but Donna Edwards has a healthy amount of it herself; in MD-05, Steny Hoyer has a ton of money while Mckayla Wilkes…doesn’t; and in MD-06, David Trone remains able to drop eight figures into his campaign account on a whim. The biggest surprise might be that former Del. Angela Angel is still running for MD-04.
News
FL-22
Jared Moskowitz is the consensus choice for Broward County Democrats to succeed Ted Deutch. It’s a little surprising how quickly the behind-the-scenes action was over and done with. Still, Fort Lauderdale Vice Mayor Ben Sorensen hasn’t given up, and as the only other serious candidate on the ballot, he knows what he has to do to have a chance: go negative. He’s chosen to do this by throwing the kitchen sink at Jared Moskowitz over Ron DeSantis. Moskowitz was appointed to serve as Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management by DeSantis in 2019, serving through April 2021; among other things, this meant he oversaw Florida’s COVID response. Ron DeSantis’s COVID response. Sorensen has used his time at a LGBTQ forum to make the case that Democrats need to oppose DeSantis’s policies, not enable them, like, he says, his opponent did. At a Jewish forum a few days later, he made a similar case. Sorenson has also run digital ads calling Moskowitz “a Ron DeSantis Democrat”. He’s also taken to highlighting positive things Moskowitz has said about DeSantis while working under him. The whole thing is kind of funny given the lack of any real indication Sorensen would actually govern differently in Congress; both he and Moskowitz are bland moderates. Nevertheless, Moskowitz deserves every ounce of shit he gets for running Ron DeSantis’s COVID response, and we’re always in favor of bashing turncoat Democrats who selfishly give far-right lunatics like DeSantis a cheap sheen of bipartisanship.
MD-Gov
Final fundraising numbers are in. Thanks to Maryland’s late reporting deadline and long early voting period, these tell us less than you might see in congressional races. Wes Moore leads the pack with $810,000 left to spend, followed by Tom Perez with $645,000, Peter Franchot with $632,000, John B. King with $210,000, and Doug Gansler with $550,000 (all due to a personal loan.)
Other last-minute campaign news: Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger endorsed Wes Moore, and Oprah cut an ad for Wes Moore. Realistically, the latter is going to move more votes.
MI-12
Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey may have name recognition and wealthy donors—including a $1 million spending commitment from Bakari Sellers's Urban Empowerment PAC—working in her favor, but she still faces an uphill climb to unseat Rep. Rashida Tlaib in the rapidly-approaching August primary. Tlaib has solidified her reputation over nearly two decades in politics as a phenomenal retail politician who simply shows up too often and delivers too much to be effectively cast as an unproductive ideologue. This week Tlaib was endorsed by the Detroit Free Press, making that case even harder to make. Read the Free Press endorsement if you want to see a centrist editorial board struggle mightily to find something to dislike about a leftist politician; in the end, the editorial board gives up and admits that Tlaib’s attention to constituent service and local issues is simply exceptional.
According to a new report from the Detroit Inspector General's office, Winfrey-world’s solution to these hurdles has been to illegally abuse the power of her office by instructioning Clerk employees to vote for her. The report found that one of her top deputies, Ruben Washington, “abused his authority by using city resources and city property for political activities during work hours by telling trainees that current city clerk Janice Winfrey was running for congress in Michigan’s newly drawn 12th district. Washington also passed out nominating petitions to election trainers at that session.” Winfrey claims she wasn’t aware of this happening, and the Inspector General can’t prove that she did. Whether or not you believe her is up to you.
MI-13
The Detroit Free Press also endorsed Portia Roberson, the chair of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission. Roberson is a first-time candidate, so endorsements like this (she’s also got retiring Rep. Brenda Lawrence and a number of prominent local politicians on her side) are especially helpful for her as she works to get her name out there.
MO-01
First off, state Sen. Steve Roberts’s campaign put out a new ad starring the candidate, and it contains some of the most stilted, awkward line deliveries we’ve ever seen a candidate willingly put out. The content’s not important—it’s the same complaints as before about Bush’s vote against the infrastructure bill—we just thought it was funny.
More substantively, there’s now a poll of this race, courtesy of the semi-competent Republican firm Remington Research. (Remington’s 2020 presidential poll of Missouri: Trump+5. Actual result: Trump+15). Remington finds incumbent Cori Bush beating Steve Roberts 40-20. A lead’s a lead, especially one by 20%, but any incumbent polling under 50% should be showing an amount of concern that isn’t zero. Roberts has less room for growth than most challengers, however. While he comes from a powerful family and has the support of Lacy Clay and some very online centrists, the local establishment has been tepid at best towards his congressional bid. Abortion rights group Pro-Choice Missouri (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri) instituted a policy of refusing to endorse any of his supporters, stemming from the rape allegations against him, and they only had to turn away two applicants, one of which claims she was only signed up to a fundraiser for his state senate campaign. St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones has been campaigning with Bush and has spoken out against Roberts’s run in public.
NY-10
A new Data for Progress poll told us a few things. One: the top tier of this race consists of progressive Council Member Carlina Rivera, even more progressive Manhattan Assemb. Yuh-Line Niou, and MSNBC fixture Dan Goldman. Two: suburban Rep. Mondaire Jones’s attempt to adopt Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn as his new political home is off to a rocky start, though he could use his campaign’s sizable bank account to change that. And three: nobody likes Bill de Blasio, not even Democratic primary voters in the district he’s called home since his first election to the city council in 2002.
The poll shows Rivera with 17%, Niou with 14%, and Goldman with 12%. Long-ago former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, somewhat surprisingly, comes in fourth with 9%, essentially tied with Brooklyn Assemb. Jo Anne Simon at 8% and Jones at 7%. de Blasio placed seventh with 5% of the vote, leading only Maud Maron, a failed city council candidate running an unabashedly right-wing and transphobic campaign. (Maron got 1%.) Even sadder than de Blasio’s pitiful 5% support is another number: 72%. That’s how many of the poll’s respondents (who, again, are likely Democratic voters) reported having a negative opinion of the former mayor. In a field this crowded, the 28% of voters who don’t dislike de Blasio might be enough to win, but he’d have to convince them all to vote for him instead of any of his six credible opponents, all of whom are well-liked by the voters who know enough about them to have an opinion either way. There are some other interesting findings as far as name recognition goes: Jones’s problem isn’t name recognition at the moment, even though he’s currently the congressman for a district located well outside of New York City; in fact, he’s better-known than several of the candidates he trails, namely Niou, Goldman, and Simon. Niou is actually the least-known of the candidates, which makes her second-place showing all the more impressive. When taken in combination with the fact that the poll was conducted only in English, we have to wonder if this poll might be undersampling Niou’s base in Chinatown and Rivera’s base on the Lower East Side, as well as the heavily Asian and Hispanic neighborhood of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where neither candidate is from but where we’d expect both to do well.
On Monday, a Yuh-Line Niou interview with Jewish Insider went up where the candidate discussed a few different issues, but the focus wound up being the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement and her stance on it. She was clear on her belief that it should be allowed without penalties from the US or New York government (New York currently makes all contractors sign a pledge to not participate in the movement), but consistently vague on her own feelings towards BDS, leading to a lot of quotes like this:
“Um, do I personally support the BDS movement?” she said. “I mean, obviously, I think that it’s important for us to be able to have any kind of criticism of our own government. So I think that that is the part that is the most important.”
She needn't have bothered being so evasive—she did say at one point in the process that “I believe in the right to protest as a fundamental tenet of western democracy, so I do support BDS,” so “ I do support BDS” is all anyone took away from it. Vocally pro-Israel Rep. Ritchie Torres immediately issued a statement rebuking her, and Assemb. Brian Cunningham rescinded his endorsement of her a few hours later. Yuh-Line Niou hasn’t said anything about that interview since it went up, though she has campaigned in the heavily Haredi Orthodox Jewish neighborhood Borough Park, despite a near-zero chance of getting the Borough Park bloc vote.
RI-02
Our Revolution’s national organization endorsed David Segal this week. Though this race has received minimal attention from national media, Segal has slowly been picking up progressive groups, and Rhode Island’s late primaries give this race plenty of time to develop.
WA-09
Socialist schoolteacher and union leader Stephanie Gallardo’s challenge to Rep. Adam Smith got endorsements from a pair of politicians representing parts of WA-09. State Sen. Yasmin Trudeau represents most of Tacoma, including all of WA-09’s (small) section of the city; Seattle City Councilor Kshama Sawant represents a central Seattle district split between WA-09 and WA-07. Sawant, an avowed socialist and member of Socialist Alternative, a socialist third party, isn’t too surprising; Trudeau, who worked for plenty of well-known Washington state Democratic politicians prior to her 2021 appointment to the state Senate, is. Trudeau is the first state legislator to endorse Gallardo, though a number of local elected officials have already done so. Smith, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has a consistently hawkish, pro-war record; while he’s not the worst House Democrat on foreign and military policy by any means, he’s definitely not someone you want leading Democrats on those issues.