Primary School 7/7
Happy Independence Day...week?
Results
New York City
In New York’s City Council races, every incumbent won but one: Charles Barron, the longtime leftist antagonist of the Brooklyn machine. Chris Banks, supported by the Brooklyn Democratic Party and Mayor Eric Adams, finally toppled Barron, who along with his wife had been fending off machine challenges by increasingly narrow margins. Adams suffered an embarrassing defeat in the only council race more high-profile than Barron’s; in Harlem, where socialist councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan bowed out of her reelection race at the last minute, Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated Central Park Five, defeated Assemb. Inez Dickens 50%-25%. Salaam’s ranked-choice voting alliance with Assemb. Al Taylor turned out to be unnecessary; he secured a narrow majority before the reallocation of votes for Taylor and Richardson Jordan, who remained on the ballot after her withdrawal. (On reallocation, Salaam beat Dickens 64%-36%.) Dickens, who represents most of Council District 9 in the state Assembly, had been backed by Adams and the Upper Manhattan-based machine helmed by Rep. Adriano Espaillat. Queens and Bronx DAs Melinda Katz and Darcel Clark easily won new four-year terms as well. The Brooklyn machine also lost a civil judicial race to reformer Linda Wilson, who defeated machine pick Turquoise Haskin 66%-33%.
Westchester County & Yonkers
In Yonkers, Mayor Mike Spano’s faction swept. Spano himself won renomination 68-21, and his ally, City Councilor Shanae Williams, defeated County Legislature Majority Leader Christopher Johnson for his seat in the legislature; Williams staffer Deana Robinson eked out a win over Johnson staffer Shatika Parker for Williams’s city council seat.
Syracuse
Syracuse progressives had a banner night. Maurice “Mo” Brown, a regional organizer for the Working Families Party supported by WFP and Syracuse DSA, won an open seat in the county legislature in a 2-to-1 landslide over Timothy Rudd, a staffer to Syracuse mayor Ben Walsh, a conservative independent. City Auditor Nader Maroun also lost renomination to Alexander Marion, a spokesman for state Senate Majority Leader Mike Gianaris endorsed by the WFP.
Schenectady
Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy called in a last-minute endorsement from Gov. Kathy Hochul, and it looks like he needed it: McCarthy only defeated City Council President Marion Porterfield’s challenge from his left 55%-45%.
Rochester & Monroe County
The Monroe County legislature has had a breakaway faction of conservative Democrats who caucus with Republicans since 2020. Most of its members lost primaries in 2021; one member, Sabrina LaMar, didn’t draw a primary challenger that year. LaMar was able to keep Republicans, who hold 14 seats out of 29, in control of the county legislature on her own, and she did so—on the condition that they make her the president of the legislature. This year, bewilderingly, the county party and other allies of that Republican-friendly faction attempted to get back at two of the primary challengers who ousted turncoats in 2021, Mercedes Vazquez-Simmons and William Burgess, and rid itself of two more progressive legislators, Rachel Barnhart and Carolyn Delvecchio Hoffman. All four progressive incumbents survived, and the lone remaining fake Democrat, County Legislature President Sabrina LaMar, lost to challenger Rose Bonnick. (In the only open race, party-endorsed candidate Santos Cruz beat leftist People’s Slate tenant organizer Oscar Brewer.) Thanks to LaMar’s defeat, Democrats may finally be able to run the county legislature in Monroe County, home to Rochester and its suburbs. The city of Rochester held elections for the four district-based seats on its nine-member city council; centrist incumbents LaShay Harris (South District) and Michael Patterson (Northeast District) and socialist incumbent Mary Lupien (East District) all won renomination, and former turncoat county legislator Frank Keophetlasy was soundly rejected in his comeback attempt as Northwest District voters gave 65% of the vote to city council staffer Bridget Monroe.
Buffalo Common Council
The Buffalo machine evidently learned from its mistakes after India Walton’s insurgent mayoral campaign caught them off guard in 2021. Machine-backed candidates swept the Buffalo Common Council; every incumbent won reelection, Walton herself lost to Zeneta Everhart in the open Masten district, and machine-supported Assembly staffer Leah Halton-Pope held the open Ellicott district.
Los Angeles City Council District 6
Los Angeles’s city council has been rocked by a series of scandals in recent years. One member of the council is currently under indictment; another is an interim caretaker serving out the term of a different councilman who was convicted of corruption; this seat is vacant because Council President Nury Martinez was one of three councilmembers caught on tape making racist remarks, and the only one who bowed to pressure to resign. (One of those three remains on the council; his predecessor recently pleaded guilty to corruption charges himself.) This special election was one giant missed opportunity: the two candidates who emerged from a crowded and varied field were both status quo choices. Marisa Alcaraz, a staffer for indicted District 9 Councilman Curren Price, and Imelda Padilla, a former staffer to Nury Martinez and Nury Martinez’s nonprofit, advanced from a low-turnout first round in April; Padilla won the runoff, which had turnout scarcely better than Round 1, 56%-44%. Late votes are still being tallied, but Padilla’s win is clear enough that the council has already appointed her in the interim.
Early fundraising numbers
While fundraising numbers aren’t due to the FEC until the 17th, the wide breadth of candidates in RI-01 creates an incentive for anyone who has raised a semi-respectable amount to announce it early for press attention, and to convince other donors that they’re a viable candidate. That’s our explanation for why most of the early announcements are RI-01 candidates, anyway.
CA-Sen: Rep. Adam Schiff: $8.1 million
CA-Sen: Rep. Barbara Lee: “just over $1 million”
MD-Sen: Prince George's County Exec. Angela Alsobrooks: $1.73 million
CA-30: State Department staffer Jirair Ratevosian: $100,000 in one month
DE-AL: State Sen. Sarah McBride: $413,750
RI-01: Businessman Don Carlson: “$900K+”, $600K of which is self-funded
RI-01: Ex-state Rep. Aaron Regunberg: “over $470,000”
RI-01: White House aide Gabe Amo: “over $460,000”
RI-01: State Sen. Sandra Cano: something near $250,000
RI-01: Former Gina Raimondo staffer Nick Autiello: “Six figures cash on hand”
TX-32: State Rep. Julie Johnson: “$410K+” in 11 days
TX-32: Trauma surgeon Brian Williams: "$360K+”
CA-34
2024 is the year of the threematch: Mckayla Wilkes in MD-05, Angelica Dueñas in CA-29, and now David Kim in CA-34. David Kim. Kim is a lawyer who has run for Congress against Jimmy Gomez twice before. While Gomez is generally seen as a progressive in the House, CA-34 is one of the most progressive districts in the country, and Gomez is far from a movement guy. Kim showed real strength with both progressive and Korean voters in both elections, but lost narrowly, 53%-47% in 2020 and 51-49% in 2022. It’s unclear what Kim is going to do differently, or would even need to do differently, except fundraise a bit better and hope that local progressive field organizations (such as Ground Game LA) have grown a bit stronger in the last two years.
IL-11
When results came in for the 2020 Illinois primary, people were shocked. Then-Will County Board Member Rachel Ventura finished with 41% of the vote in IL-11 to incumbent Bill Foster's 59% after running a campaign on a shoestring budget that received almost no media attention. That result demonstrated the strength of Ventura as a campaigner and Will County progressive organizations, as demonstrated by Ventura’s election to state senate two years later, but also Bill Foster’s weakness as an incumbent. Foster was first elected in a swingy district during the Bush years, a time and place where moderation was useful. In 2023, in a Biden+15 district, his dry centrism and membership in the New Democratic Caucus makes much less electoral sense.
Foster was unopposed in the 2022 primary, but that won't be the case in 2024. Lawyer and author Qasim Rashid has launched a primary campaign for IL-11, and though he doesn't mention Foster by name in his launch video, Rashid's intentions to primary him from the left are clear. Rashid has been a public figure for over a decade, first as one of the most prominent faces of Muslim activism in America. He has a large online following—over 350K followers on Twitter and 150K on Instagram—and knows how to raise money, as evidenced by a successful book Kickstarter campaign, as well as a his last Congressional campaign, which he raised over $1.5 million. Oh, right, he’s ran for Congress before, we probably should have mentioned that first. Actually, what we should have mentioned first was that it was in Virginia, as was the state senate district he ran for in 2019. Rashid’s going to have residency issues—that much is easy to foresee. What’s less clear is how bad those issues are going to be. On the one hand, Rashid did grow up in the Chicago suburbs and went to college in Illinois, and his kids attend school in the district. On the other, Rashid left the state as a young adult, and didn’t return until his political ventures in the DC exurbs failed, not even getting certified to practice law in his new state before launching his Congressional campaign.
Another complicating factor is Foster’s new district. Roughly half of the Democratic electorate of the 2012-2022 district lived in working class, diverse Will County, which was also where Ventura did best. The new 11th cuts out most of Will County and stretches up north to McHenry and Lake County, and is much whiter and wealthier as a result. By our calculations, Joe Biden won it over Bernie Sanders 61%-35% in the 2020 primary, which was a slightly better result for Biden than he got statewide. That election isn’t a perfect yardstick for progressive voter appetite, but it’s the best we have in suburban Chicagoland.
Foster made sure to get out in front of the potential challenge by nailing down every endorsement he could early. The list includes every statewide official except Gov. JB Pritzker, who generally stays out of primaries, and every Democratic member of the state’s congressional delegation except for Reps. Delia Ramirez, Lauren Underwood, and Nikki Budzinski. He also scored endorsements from most state legislative Democrats representing a significant portion of the district, which makes the four who didn’t endorse notable, especially since they all represent one of the two diverse, working-to-middle cities in the district: Aurora (Sen. Karina Villa and Rep. Matt Hanson) and Bolingbrook (Sen. Rachel Ventura and Rep. Dee Avelar).
NJ-Sen
The New Jersey machine has scored a victory: Roselle Park Mayor Joe Signorello, who had been challenging scandal-ridden U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, is planning a switch to the U.S. House race in the 7th congressional district, which borders Roselle Park and overlaps heavily with the state Senate district in which Signorello ran in 2021. NJ-07 is held by first-term Republican Tom Kean Jr. and is a top target for national Democrats. Menendez is once again set to coast to the Democratic nomination despite an active federal corruption investigation, just like in 2018; as Signorello told us in an interview back when he announced his short-lived campaign, this state of affairs is “just embarrassing.”
TX-32
State Rep. Julie Johnson not only produced a formidable fundraising total this week, she also produced a list of endorsers, including 22 state representatives, the Human Rights Campaign, the Equality PAC, and, incredibly the Texas chapter of the AFT. Julie Johnson, once again, wanted prominent charter school advocate and financier Michael Bloomberg to be president. The AFT is the only union supporting her, too. It’s weird, and probably wouldn’t have happened in a state with actual union strength.
Allegheny County Council District 10
Progressives mostly swept in May’s Allegheny County primaries, winning every big election, and losing only the massive longshot races they weren’t putting effort into…with the election of County Council District 10, the only one that got away. Incumbent DeWitt Walton squeaked by in a 38%-33% victory in the Black-plurality, deeply Democratic 10th district that is mostly contained within the city limits of Pittsburgh.
Luckily, the left can take one more crack at Walton before he gets locked in for another four year term: running an independent in the general election. While generally difficult to do, there’s a history of this being a viable option in Pittsburgh. City Councilmember Erika Strassburger won as an independent in a 2018 special election, and in 2019, her fellow Councilmember Rick Burgess was held to 41% by a pair of independents, while two other councilmembers had independent opposition that broke 30%. And of course, there was Lisa Middleman in 2019, who ran as an independent for county DA and held Zappala to a 57%-43% victory, which implies she got over 60% of Democrats. It can be done; it just requires a lot of effort. As opposed to a primary election where plenty of voters will, if they’re not familiar with the candidates, look them up, or just leave the race blank, every voter in this election is going to begin campaign season intending to vote for the Democrat, and will have to be persuaded to choose an independent instead.
This week, an independent candidate launched his campaign. Carl Redwood is a 70-year-old lifelong Pittsburgh resident, political organizer, and socialist. His campaign is focused on fighting gentrification, divesting from the police, and strengthening worker rights, including raising the minimum wage, something Walton voted against. He also would be a vote to ban fracking in the county, a contentious issue. He has day 1 endorsements from Carlos Thomas, who Walton narrowly beat in the primary, Pittsburgh DSA, Pittsburgh City Councilmember Barb Warwick, and Allegheny County Councilmembers Anita Prizio and Bethany Hallam.
Baltimore City Council President
District 1 City Councilman Zeke Cohen released an internal poll, conducted by GSG and Public Policy Polling from May 31 to June 1, showing him leading City Council President Nick Mosby 40%-24%. According to the Baltimore Banner, that’s not the only poll of the council president race going around right now; former District 13 City Councilwoman Shannon Sneed, who lost the primary to Mosby in 2020 and ran unsuccessfully as Tom Perez’s LG candidate in the 2022 gubernatorial primary, is mulling a run of her own, and a poll separate from Cohen’s has been asking Baltimoreans whether they’d vote for Sneed in 2024.
Boston City Council At-Large
Longtime City Councilor Michael Flaherty has abruptly decided against running for reelection this year. Flaherty is the last remaining politician from the conservative Irish neighborhood of Southie to still wield considerable power in Boston. He was the top vote getter in the at-large seat in 2021, and even at their most optimistic, progressives never really thought they stood a chance of unseating him. This announcement changes that calculus.
Nashville Mayor
The Nashville mayoral election is sneaking up on us; it’s now less than a month away. This milestone has been marked by the first negative ad of the campaign. Surprisingly, it wasn’t paid for by any candidate, unofficial candidate PAC, or even an anonymous billionaire-funded SuperPAC named “Music City Jobs and Homes PAC” or something similar. Instead it’s just Steve Smith, a conservative bar and restaurant mogul who apparently really hates Councilor Freddie O’Connell. The ad mostly consists of photographs of homeless Nashville residents who almost certainly have not given their permission to be featured, with a voiceover warning about O’Connell. Smith, who is a friend of Donald Trump, has a long history of anti-homeless agitation. He’s accused the city’s homeless population of being drug mules and called “the bums” the only negative development in Nashville, while O’Connell is a strong supporter of a housing-first model who opposes blanket criminalization and dehumanization of the homeless.
Portland Mayor, Portland City Council
The moment that we became convinced Portland was on the road to full San Francisco-ization was when cop-backed Mingus Mapps not only unseated progressive incumbent Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, but did so by over 10%, while adamantly defending his right to be financed mostly by developers and landlords. It was a crushing and decisive defeat of the minor moment progressives had been having in the city, and it happened in 2020. Since then, business owner Rene Gonzalez easily defeated the final progressive on the commission, Jo Ann Hardesty. Now Mapps is running for mayor. Ted Wheeler remains very unpopular, so big money needs someone else to continue his policies without the baggage of unpopularity the consequences of those policies have caused, and big money in Portland already loves Mapps. It also means that he won't be running for one of the newly implemented district seats during next year’s, high-turnout inaugural elections. If the left wants to rebuild in Portland, that begins in 2024. Fortunately, the seats are no longer citywide, but the structural reason the left is shut out of city government, that in the last few elections there has been a durable anti-left majority in the electorate, won't be changed by electoral reform.
Sacramento Mayor, CA-AD-06
Prosecutor and former Planned Parenthood counsel Maggy Krell is dropping out of the race for Sacramento Mayor to run for state Assembly District 6, which is now an open race thanks to Assemb. Kevin McCarty’s entry into the mayoral field. Krell is the first candidate to declare for that Assembly seat, but she was from the first to declare for mayor, and even without her the field still includes McCarty, former state Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, former Councilmember Steve Hansen and public health specialist Dr. Flojaune Cofer.
Seattle
The Seattle Times, the leading press organ of the city’s moderate establishment, has issued its endorsements for the August 3 primary elections. The Stranger, generally in line with progressive voters in the city, generally puts out its endorsements two weeks from election day. The endorsements for races we care about are as follows:
City Council District 1 (open): Rob Saka
City Council District 2 (Tammy Morales): Tanya Woo
City Council District 3 (open): None
City Council District 4 (open): Maritza Rivera
City Council District 5 (open): None
City Council District 6 (Dan Strauss): Pete Hanning
City Council District 7 (Andrew Lewis): Bob Kettle
King County Council District 4: Jorge Barón
King County Council District 8: Sofia Aragon
Port of Seattle, Commissioner Position No. 5 (Fred Felleman): Fred Felleman
Everything on here is as expected—the Seattle Times endorsed the moderate opponent to every incumbent one the City Council. The two open seats they weighed in on (it’s unusual for them to not include half the open districts) are also mostly expected. Rob Saka is the leading business community choice for District 1, though moderates as a whole are split between him and Preston Anderson, and business owner Stephen Brown is also running in that lane. Meanwhile in District 4, most of the business community is behind Maritza Rivera, though mainstream Democratic groups are mostly on board with progressive choice Ron Davis, and the only other candidate running is a cryptocurrency weirdo. King County Council District 8 is simple, as the only three choices are progressive (Teresa Mosqueda), moderate (Sofia Aragon), and crazy (GoodSpaceGuy). District 4 is murkier. All three candidates are presenting themselves as left-of-center Democrats, and ideological organizations are split. Seattle Times-endorsed Jorge Barón even has endorsements from Pramila Jayapal and some progressive state legislators, but if he told the Seattle Times something that would make them endorse him, he’s worth some suspicion.