Primary School 8/12
who the hell is dean phillips again
Results
Nashville
Assuming they don’t botch the runoff, Nashville voters chose the good outcome in the mayoral race last Thursday, sending progressive Metro Councilor Freddie O’Connell to a runoff with Republican operative Alice Rolli. It’s a matchup O’Connell is heavily favored to win, because Nashville is just too Democratic for a Republican to win under normal circumstances, even in a technically nonpartisan election. O’Connell is benefiting from partisan consolidation already: Democratic state Sens. Jeff Yarbro and Heidi Campbell, who respectively placed fourth and fifth in the mayoral election, have already endorsed O’Connell for the runoff. In the likely event he wins, O’Connell will have a friendly face in charge of the Metro Council after his progressive Council colleague Angie Henderson defeated moderate Vice Mayor Jim Shulman; the vice mayor presides over Council meetings and makes committee assignments. The makeup of the council is still unclear; only one at-large council candidate, liberal incumbent Zulfat Suara, won enough votes to clinch one of the five at-large seats in the first round, so the next eight candidates—three labor-aligned progressives, four business-aligned moderates, and one unaligned populist—will square off for the other four at-large seats in the runoff. Many district-based seats also went to a runoff. In addition to Henderson and O’Connell, Nashville progressives notched a third big win: progressive activist Aftyn Behn defeated appointed interim state Rep. Anthony Davis in the special primary election for HD-51. Behn embraced the more confrontational tactics of the Tennessee Three legislators expelled or nearly expelled by the GOP majority earlier this year, and also promised to devote her efforts to breaking the GOP supermajorities in the Tennessee Legislature.
Seattle City Council
Last week we declined to report the specifics of the Seattle City Council election results given how early it was. With functionally all the results in (a few hundred votes remain to be counted, at most) the outcome is set:
District 1: Maren Costa 33.2%, Rob Saka 24.1%
District 2: Tammy Morales (i) 52.5%, Tanya Woo 42.8%
District 3: Joy Hollingsworth 37.0%, Alex Hudson 36.6%
District 4: Ron Davis 44.9%, Maritza Rivera 31.9%
District 5: Cathy Moore 30.8%, ChrisTiana ObeySumner 24.5%
District 6: Dan Strauss (i) 52.0%, Pete Hanning 29.5%
District 7: Andrew Lewis (i) 43.6%, Bob Kettle 31.6%
Obviously incumbents Tammy Morales and Dan Strauss, who took above 50%, are favored in November, while Andrew Lewis is in trouble, so much so that Council President Debra Juarez felt comfortable endorsing Kettle after the results were in. In the open races, progressives took more votes than moderates in District 3, while the reverse was true in District 4. Districts 1 and 5 are murkier.
Outside of the city Council, results were more conclusive. Jorge Barón in County Council District 4, Teresa Mosqueda in CCD8, and Fred Felleman in Port of Seattle District 5 all took majorities of the vote and are strong favorites in November against Sarah Reyneveld, Sofia Aragon, and Jesse Tam, respectively.
News
CA-12
The Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC made its first endorsement of the 2024 cycle, backing frontrunner Lateefah Simon in the Oakland-based CA-12. Simon faces two opponents, Jennifer Tran and Tim Sanchez, who are running somewhat to her right with the Bay Area’s customary focus on crime, though both are still framing themselves as progressives. (It’s Oakland.)
MA-04/06
The Boston Globe caught a lot of heat for its choice to endorse Jake Auchincloss in 2020; it seemed clear to everyone but the Globe editorial board that the endorsement was the result of Auchincloss’s powerful parents’ friendship with the owners of the Globe, and the Globe even had a member of the editorial board publish a scathing counter to its own endorsement. The backlash was so severe not because of the apparent improper influence of the Globe’s ownership, but because Auchincloss, an ex-Republican fiscal conservative and sometimes-social conservative, was a downright bizarre fit for the liberal inner suburbs of Boston. (It’s not like Joe Kennedy III’s old district has a problem with nepo babies.) In his first term in office, Auchincloss took those critics seriously and voted like a normal, if underwhelming, House Democrat. With his first reelection under his belt and higher office widely assumed to be his eventual goal, Auchincloss is drifting back to his roots as a Quran-burning-curious, Confederate flag-defending anti-anti-racist. House Republicans offered a series of culture war messaging amendments to the latest NDAA, and most House Democrats were smart enough to vote against every one of them. Those that broke ranks were mostly swing-district representatives—but on an amendment offered to prohibit “race-based education” in the military, a pair of Democrats from liberal Massachusetts districts also crossed over to support an amendment that is, in both intent and effect, a DeSantis-style book ban meant to punish the discussion or acknowledgement of racism. One was Seth Moulton, a frustrating moderate who’s also kind of an all-around weirdo and possesses the peculiar species of brain worms which leads junior congressional backbenchers to mount hopeless presidential campaigns. The other was Auchincloss, and that was enough for the Globe to finally take its controversial endorsee to task. Calling the vote “counterproductive,” the Globe shamed Moulton and Auchincloss for their vote to fuel Republican culture-war hatred. A letter to the editor in response to the Globe’s denunciation of the NDAA amendment asked a simple question of the Globe (and MA-04 voters): “Any regrets?”
MD-Sen
Rep. David Trone has never had to learn to play politics like most politicians do. When you’re the gazillionaire Total Wine magnate, you can just write your campaign very large checks and keep writing them until your opponents have been suffocated under a mountain of cash. He’s learning the hard way that running for Senate is a wee bit tougher than running to represent Frederick, Maryland in the House. His profligate self-funding and apparent inability to make friends have rubbed just about everyone in Maryland politics the wrong way, allowing Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks to become the runaway favorite and unanimous establishment choice by default. The fact that he’s never needed to develop basic political instincts is coming back to bite him in new and exciting ways seemingly every week; this week, Time Magazine ran a piece examining Trone’s business empire’s political giving, and—surprise, surprise—they found that while Trone’s personal donations to Republicans abruptly ended when he decided to run for office for the first time, his businesses have kept the money flowing to anti-abortion and anti-democracy Republicans with no signs of stopping.
MD-06
Montgomery County Councilmember Laurie-Anne Sayles spent the last couple months publicly weighing a Congressional run. This was the week she finally made up her mind and announced that she’ll indeed be running. Sayles’s entry may be late compared to the spring launches of Dels. Joe Vogel and Lesley Lopez, but there’s no guarantee she’ll be the last. Not only is April McClain-Delaney, a National Telecommunications and Information Administration official and the wife of former MD-06 Rep. John Delaney, still a looming possibility, but the sheer presence of more candidates is a positive feedback loop. The more candidates who enter, the lower the threshold becomes to win, and the more of a chance other politicians are going to feel like they have.
For her part, Sayles’s path to victory is straightforward—consolidating the progressive vote—if not particularly easy. She’ll need to win out over Hagerstown Mayor Tekesha Martinez when it comes to appealing to outside progressive groups like the Working Families Party and potentially Justice Democrats, and potentially secure the support of Maryland’s notoriously establishment-aligned labor unions as well.
MN-03
If you watch cable news, you may have heard of Dean Phillips for the first time recently. The Minnesota congressman, an heir to a liquor distilling fortune who previously co-owned Talenti Gelato and currently co-owns Penny’s Coffee, has toured the Sunday news shows recently with a message. He’s floating the idea of a primary challenge to Joe Biden from the center—a No Labels bid in the Democratic primary rather than a general election candidacy that could throw the race to Donald Trump. Phillips has been meeting with donors, ostensibly about nothing more than his desire for a seriously contested presidential primary, but the candidate Dean Phillips has in mind if he can’t get someone of a higher stature seems to be Dean Phillips. Like many House Democrats who first won by taking a seat from the GOP, Phillips is a member of No Labels’s noxious Problem Solvers Caucus, which exists to cause problems for Democrats. However, Phillips’s suburban Twin Cities district stopped being a swing district as soon as he took down popular moderate Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen, and redistricting made it even bluer (not that challenging Joe Biden from the right in a Democratic primary is a good idea in a swing district.) Running your mouth about maybe taking on your own party’s president is a good way to annoy your friends within said party, and right on cue, the Minnesota political press started hearing whispers of a potential primary challenge this week, with former DFL Senate leader Melisa López Franzen’s name coming up most often. When it comes to his fellow Democratic members of the Minnesota delegation, Phillips has butted heads with Ilhan Omar, and Betty McCollum’s record is decent enough that it would be out of character for her to have any interest in a No Labels-style campaign like this, but all of Phillips’s fellow Minnesota Democrats in Congress have publicly told him to shove it at this point, even Amy Klobuchar and Angie Craig. The anger at Phillips’s presidential preening goes beyond progressives; if he keeps it up, he’s putting his job on the line.
MN-05
AIPAC is undertaking a dedicated effort to take out three Black members of the Squad: Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, and Summer Lee. The pro-Israel, pro-January 6th group, which doubles as a general-purpose conduit for conservative and centrist donors, already devoted significant sums to unsuccessful efforts to beat Omar and Lee in 2022 (as well as 2020 in Omar’s case.) Against Omar, AIPAC is hoping the third candidate’s the charm. While former Minneapolis city councilor Don Samuels is considering a rematch after nearly beating Omar in 2022, AIPAC is trying to recruit current city councilor LaTrisha Vetaw instead. Vetaw, like Samuels, is a Black moderate who represents north Minneapolis, but she lacks Samuels’s Republican ties, harrowing personal scandals, and characteristic…er…bombast. It’s not hard to see why AIPAC prefers her. Vetaw has a minor hiccup to get past before she can run—she’s up for reelection this year. However, criminal justice reform activist Marvina Haynes’s campaign hasn’t taken off, and the other candidate, Angela Williams, is an open conservative. Vetaw is safe to consider a campaign on her own timeline, but the longer she waits, the likelier it is that she won’t be Omar’s only challenger in the event that she does run.
NY-16
AIPAC’s dogged efforts to recruit Westchester County Executive George Latimer to run against Jamaal Bowman make perfect sense from their perspective. Latimer is the strongest challenger to Bowman they could hope to find, and he might be able to clear the field of other challengers. According to Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel, a cleared field is far from certain; when reached for comment, Chance Mullen, the mayor of the village of Pelham, confirmed to Kassel that he’s Mullen a run of his own, stating that “there’s nothing progressive about [Bowman’s] position on Israel.” A split field is what allowed Bowman to coast to a second term without breaking a sweat; Westchester County Legislators Vedat Gashi and Catherine Parker split the non-Bowman vote nearly down the middle in 2022, so Bowman’s 54% showing amounted to a blowout. Another factor to keep in mind is the potential imminent redrawing (again) of New York’s congressional maps—any redraw to benefit Democrats would have to benefit Bowman by swapping affluent Westchester suburbs where Bowman struggles in primaries for more of Bowman’s stronghold, the Bronx; more of swingy outer Westchester and the Hudson Valley, which would cast fewer votes in a Democratic primary than the bluer Sound Shore burbs; or both. In addition to being Bowman’s weak spot, those Sound Shore suburbs include Mullen’s Pelham and Latimer’s home of Rye, so which district they end up in really matters.
PA-12
Summer Lee overcame a whopping $4 million in AIPAC attacks to win her first term, and she only won with a narrow plurality. Edgewood Borough Councilor Bhavini Patel briefly ran against her in 2022, but dropped out after attorney Steve Irwin won the backing of the party establishment. After Irwin’s painful loss to Lee, Patel is looking for a second shot at PA-12, and according to Jewish Insider, she’s actively courting the area’s pro-Israel donor community, which backed Irwin to the hilt in light of Lee’s criticism of Israeli apartheid. (It’s not clear whether AIPAC is trying to get her to run like it is with LaTrisha Vetaw and George Latimer.)
RI-01
The ad wars are in full swing, and while most of the Democrats in this absurdly crowded primary have invested in TV to some extent, four stand above the rest in terms of total spending: Gabe Amo, Don Carlson, Sabina Matos, and Aaron Regunberg. While Carlson has self-funded his ad presence, the other are relying instead on PACs to keep them in the top tier of advertising. Amo has this far kept his hands cleanest given that his only PAC backer, Democrats Serve, is hovering at under $50,000 in ads for him. Close to $100,000 has been spent by Progress Rhode Island, the PAC Regunberg's in-laws set up to support his candidacy. Neither touches the $400,000 that CHC BOLD PAC has spent on scandal-tarred Sabina Matos. Breaking from the CHC are progressive Reps. Greg Casar and Delia Ramirez, who are supporting Regunberg.
Not affecting the race this week are the SEIU, who have announced they'll be staying out, and the RI BOE, which is going to do a surprise petition review of every Matos signature in light of extensive petition fraud apparently uncovered by the media and local authorities, just not in time to affect the ballot.
TX-07
One progressive primary challenger is adjusting to the rise of pro-Israel PACs as anti-progressive spending juggernauts in a unique way: he’s daring them to take him on. Pervez Agwan, an engineer and climate activist, has managed two consecutive six-figure fundraising quarters in his challenge to Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, a moderate white Democrat whose Houston swing district became a Democratic vote sink under Texas Republicans’ fine-tuned 2020s gerrymander. Agwan contends that Fletcher is out of step with her new constituency, a majority-minority urban district which includes much of Houston’s burgeoning Muslim community—and since AIPAC et al. are likely to come after him the moment they perceive him as a threat regardless of his stance on Israel (see their heavy spending to defeat pro-Israel progressive candidates like Andy Levin and Donna Edwards), he’s choosing to frame that on his own terms and address Israel’s human rights abuses head-on. According to Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch, Agwan is attracting the notice of local politicos because he already has a ground game and in-person campaign events quite early in the election cycle. (We’ve heard the same from our own sources, incidentally.) Democratic Majority For Israel, one of the major pro-Israel anti-left super PACs, tells Deutch that Agwan is already on their radar, and an unnamed organizer who has worked for Justice Democrats candidates also told Matthew Kassel in a separate piece that he expected Justice Democrats to endorse Agwan.
Baltimore Mayor
After Brandon Scott won as the progressive candidate in Baltimore’s 2020 mayoral election, he proceeded to govern as a very run-of-the-mill big-city Democratic mayor, which is to say…ah…not progressive. On its face, it’s good news for Scott that City Comptroller Bill Henry has taken his name out of contention; Henry was also elected as progressives’ favorite in 2020, but has maintained a good relationship with them and generally won plaudits for his performance as comptroller, while Scott has burned goodwill with progressives and butted heads with half of Baltimore’s political world. Other than Henry, no potential Scott challenger would have a hope of poaching Scott’s progressive base, and now he’s out of the race—but the fact remains that progressives were among those who tried convincing Henry to run, as well as business tycoons who disdain Scott but don’t like their chances with more conservative former mayor (and corruption convict) Sheila Dixon. Henry’s decision to stick to reelection allowed a domino to fall for Dixon, too: Henry’s fundraising firm, Adeo Advocacy, formed a super PAC to support Dixon a few days before Henry made his decision public.
Boston City Council At-Large
Henry Santana, an aide to Mayor Michelle Wu, was endorsed by newly-elected District 8 Councilor Sharon Durkan in his bid for one of Boston’s four at-large city council seats. Durkan, a progressive aligned with the mayor and a Wu alumnus herself, isn’t a surprising endorsement for Santana, who is also a progressive running as a Wu ally—but she just got sworn in on Monday following her victory in a July 26 special election. (The endorsement actually came before her swearing-in.)
Houston Mayor
State Sen. John Whitmire is, like many a moderate/conservative-aligned municipal politician, running as the cops' candidate, and he hasn't been shy about it. Even still, his new crime plan is raising eyebrows. Whitmire wants to send in 200 officers from the state police to take back the streets, which uncomfortably mirrors what Gov. Greg Abbott does periodically to Austin when they pass a law he doesn't like.
NYC Mayor
Eric Adams’s insane clusterfuck of an administration is too much for us to adequately summarize in a newsletter item. It’s got corruption probes, Mob connections, unexplained mayoral disappearances, claimed prophetic visions, the works. A city famous for hating its weird freak mayors may have outdone itself by putting Adams in Gracie Mansion, and a single question has been the go-to conversation topic in NYC political circles for months: will anyone try to save New York from four more years of this?
The hum of behind-the-scenes chatter about an Adams primary has grown louder in recent weeks, reaching a volume loud enough for Politico’s Jeff Coltin, formerly of City and State NY, to hear about it and dive in, reporting out a story on the nascent progressive effort to retire Mayor Cop in 2025. We recommend the entire article—it’s great—but a few things are particularly relevant to this newsletter. First, that progressives have one candidate especially in mind: Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who is well-positioned to neutralize Adams’s strength in his home borough, has been the subject of recruiting efforts, including a private July 17 dinner attended by Reynoso and many progressive political operatives which was convened with the intention of taking Reynoso’s temperature on a run. Second, that Reynoso is seen as unlikely to run, though he is considering it. And third, that other candidates are considerably likelier to run than Reynoso—namely state Sens. Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, who are both seriously considering runs. Former Comptroller Scott Stringer, who frankly would not pose a serious challenge to Adams but would make it impossible for anyone else to do so, is also considering a run, and if the Biden administration has any open ambassadorial positions on the other side of the globe we encourage them to appoint him to one. (Stringer was last seen vowing to appeal the dismissal of his defamation suit against a former employee who accused him of sexual harassment; he has become persona non grata with many former allies since the dramatic collapse of his 2021 mayoral campaign after said accusation, and his attempts to retaliate against erstwhile allies.)