Primary School 8/3
Nashville preview included
Results
In Tucson, business interests and the local moderate establishment tried hard to oust leftist police skeptic Lane Santa Cruz, but Santa Cruz beat challenger Miguel Ortega 60%-40%. Establishment incumbent Paul Cunningham beat well-funded realtor Lisa Nutt by a much wider 77%-23% in the city’s only other contested primary.
In Seattle, results were very predictable: every candidate endorsed by either the Seattle Times or the Stranger (Seattle’s famed and well-read alt-weekly) advanced to the November runoff, and in the first batch of post-election night results, every progressive improved on their election night showing, following the usual pattern of late-counted ballots. We’ll give a fuller update when the results are closer to final; more than a quarter of the vote remains uncounted in King County.
In Whatcom County (Bellingham), Democratic county executive Satpal Sidhu advanced to November, where he’ll face Republican Dan Purdy. More moderate Democratic state Rep. Alicia Rule and more progressive Democratic County Councilor Barry Buchanan placed third and fourth, respectively. (Whatcom elections are technically nonpartisan, but candidates’ party affiliations are known and local party committees do get involved; this is the norm in Washington.) A similar matchup will come in the at-large county council race, where establishment-favored progressive Jon Scanlon and conservative antivaxxer Hannah Ordos advanced to November; progressive public utility commissioner Atul Deshmane fell a few points short of Ordos.
In Tacoma, we got District 3 wrong: we wrote off oddball criminal defense attorney Chris Van Vechten, but he’s headed to November. Van Vechten finished well ahead of every candidate except for leftist former mayoral candidate Jamika Scott, who leads by 5% and should have an even larger lead when all the votes are counted. Vice Mayor and At-Large Councilor Kristine Walker has a nice 69% of the vote for her reelection bid, well ahead of her nearest challenger, anti-homeless (not anti-homelessness, anti-homeless) crank Todd Briske.
In Snohomish County, north of Seattle, Democratic County Executive Dave Somers has an outright majority versus Republican Bob Hagglund’s 37%; County Auditor Garth Fell leads Cindy Gobel, who is backed by local Democrats and progressive groups, 41% to 32%. Both Fell and Gobel will advance to November, while the lone Republican candidate, Robert Sutherland, will not.
In Olympia’s Thurston County, labor-backed progressive Emily Clouse has 45% of the vote and an easy general election ahead of her in County Commission District 5, because more moderate Democratic Lacey City Councilman Michael Steadman trails right-leaning independent anti-environment crank Terry Ballard for the second-place spot by a few points he’s not going to make up.
News
MD-06
Montgomery County Councilmember Laurie-Anne Sayles has, somewhat unexpectedly, gone ahead and filed with the FEC to run for Congress. Sayles is a progressive, though thanks to her extended period of indecision, she will not be the first to enter the race should she officially run—Hagerstown Mayor Tekesha Martinez is also running in that lane, though Sayles is part of the Democratic powerhouse of Montgomery County politics and not the political island that is Hagerstown. Sayles is an ally of Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, for whatever that's worth in Upcounty.
In other news, the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund endorsed Del. Joe Vogel this week.
NJ-Sen
Kyle Jasey, the son of retiring South Orange Assemb. Mila Jasey, quietly filed to run for U.S. Senate earlier this month, and he’s now going public with his intention to challenge U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez after the departure of Roselle Park Mayor Joe Signorello III from the race. Jasey, like any sensible Menendez challenger, has a very simple case: look, the guy’s a crook. He has his mother’s support—normally we’d write that off as, you know, a family being a family, but the notoriously vindictive Menendez has a habit of promising retaliation against anyone who dares oppose him, so it does count for something. Jasey, a real estate lender who lives in Jersey City, also has experience working for the campaigns of former Gov. Jon Corzine and his mother’s Assembly seatmate John McKeon.
RI-01
After Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos had her very bad week, former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg had a very good one. It kicked off with an endorsement from Bernie Sanders, and he followed it up by going on the air with a $300,000 TV ad campaign touting his progressive platform. All’s not well for Regunberg on the progressive front, however; while he also has the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Rhode Island WFP in his corner in addition to Sanders, Regunberg has rubbed many people the wrong way, including some of his fellow Rhode Island progressives. Those tensions showed in an endorsement this week for one of Regunberg’s opponents. State Sen. Sam Bell, one of the most progressive members of the legislature, endorsed his colleague, state Sen. Sandra Cano. Cano is not a conservative by any stretch, and she has one of the better policy platforms in the race; however, she’s also on good terms with Rhode Island’s terrible, conservative state legislative leadership. (No candidate who’s served in the state legislature, including Regunberg, has clean hands on that matter.) Cano also joined the ad wars this week with an $85,000 TV buy, making her the fifth candidate with a presence on the air. And Matos, who is already on the air herself, got her own $300,000 TV buy from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s BOLD PAC this week. (Broadcasters are allowed to charge PACs a steep premium for ad time, but must give candidate committees their lowest price, so BOLD PAC’s $300k will not go as far as Regunberg’s $300k.)
Oregon SoS/Oregon Treasurer
Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan resigned from office this year after it was revealed she'd taken a side gig consulting for a marijuana company while her office was conducting an audit of the state’s cannabis regulator, one of the most inexplicable and needless political downfalls we've ever seen. Regardless, the seat is going to be functionally open next year, and there's now a declared candidate. Oregon Treasurer Tobias Read announced last week that he will be running for Secretary of State next year instead of for reelection to a third term as Treasurer. Read ran for governor last year but lost the primary to then-Speaker of the Oregon House Tina Kotek 56%-32%. Though the raw margin was disappointing but not embarrassing, Read, who ran as a moderate, pro-business alternative to Kotek, put together a coalition which was the inverse of the Democratic coalition: winning in red rural Oregon, losing solidly in the suburbs, and getting absolutely shellacked in the cities. That could spell trouble for Read if and when a more progressive candidate emerges. Accordingly, the Treasurer's office will now also lack an incumbent, but no candidates are running for it as of yet.
Berkeley Mayor
Berkeley City Councilmember Rigel Robinson has opened a campaign account with the state to run for mayor of Berkeley, the first candidate to make any public steps towards running since Jesse Arreguín decided to run for state senate instead of reelection. Robinson, first elected in 2018 at the age of 22, is probably best known for his efforts to turn traffic enforcement in the city into a non-police function, or for the time he called Tucker Carlson a “white supremecist goblin”. Rigel is likely to be supported by the urbanist/YIMBY faction in Berkeley politics, but could potentially make a play for progressive support if no other obvious candidates appear.
Boston City Council
Boston DSA has endorsed two candidates for city council, District 6 Councilor Kendra Lara and District 3 candidate Joel Richards. Lara was Boston DSA’s biggest success story of the 2021 cycle, and has been a loyal member of the progressive faction on the city council; her reelection bid is now endangered as she faces charges over her crashing an uninsured, unregistered car into a Jamaica Plain home in June. Richards got some good news this week when the residency challenge against her was dismissed. Her opponent, IT professional William King is vague on policy but has the early support of the city’s AFSCME local, and labor and employment lawyer Ben Weber has the connections to be a tough opponent for Lara as well. Richards, who ran for District 4 in 2021, is seeking the open seat of retiring conservative Frank Baker after redistricting moved more of Dorchester, including his home, into District 3, which also lost its portion of affluent, conservative South Boston.
District 7 Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, another first-term progressive like Lara, admitted to ethics violations and paid a fine for her hiring of relatives for jobs in her city council office; Boston’s conflict-of-interest law prohibits officeholders from engaging in official activity in which their immediate family members have a financial interest. Fernandes Anderson can breathe easier than Lara and Ricardo Arroyo, her embattled District 5 colleague, because unlike them, her challengers are amateur hour. Perennial candidates Althea Garrison and Roy Owens, phantom candidate Jerome King, and anti-vaxxer Padma Scott are all that stand between Fernandes Anderson and a second term.
In District 8, progressive Sharon Durkan coasted to a landslide 70%-30% victory in the July 25 special election to succeed Kenzie Bok, a progressive ally of Mayor Michelle Wu who resigned to take a job in the mayor’s administration. Durkan will face the same opponent, prosecutor Montez Haywood, in November’s regular election.
Connecticut Mayors
Connecticut’s city Democratic parties have announced their endorsements for this year’s mayoral contests.
In Bridgeport, the state’s largest city, incumbent Joe Ganim scored the endorsement. Despite Ganim’s extreme corruption, which has resulted in a prison sentence and multiple FBI probes, he still controls the party infrastructure in Bridgeport. The election is shaping up to be a rematch with state Sen. Marilyn Moore, who Ganim defeated by just 3% in 2019.
In New Haven, incumbent Justin Elicker was overwhelmingly endorsed over cop Shafiq Abdussabur and former McKinsey consultant Tom Goldenberg. Elicker is expected to be reelected easily. Goldenberg wound up winning the Republican endorsement this week, which means he’ll be on the ballot in November as a Republican regardless of whether he wins the Democratic primary, a possibility that the Republican endorsement just made even more remote.
In Hartford, incumbent Luke Bronin isn’t running for reelection, making the party endorsement an especially high stakes matter. With a majority of delegates in a three person race, the party chose Arunan Arulampalam, CEO of the Hartford Land Bank. Days after he became the party pick, Bronin endorsed Arulampalam. Also running are state Sen. John Fonfara, who is campaigning on an income tax cut he engineered, and Judge Eric Coleman, who is campaigning as a progressive with a history of criminal justice reform legislation and a plan to create a city-owned utility company.
Finally, in Waterbury, the town committee chose Ald. Paul Perenewski, a tough on crime type who could be the only Democrat on the ballot depending on whether nonprofit manager Keisha Gilliams can collect over 1,000 signatures in the next two weeks. Gilliams is running as a sort of populist progressive type and took 4% of the vote when she ran for mayor in 2019 as an independent.
Cook County DA
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, a leader in the progressive faction of Chicago and Cook County politics, is already supporting Clayton Harris III’s bid to succeed Kim Foxx, and Preckwinkle is as good a barometer as any of who the institutional left will back. Harris has since staffed up with alums of the campaigns of Brandon Johnson and progressive County Assessor Fritz Kaegi. Now we have our first hint of an answer as to who the more conservative elements of the Chicago machine are behind: IBEW Local 9 and Roofers Local 11 have endorsed former appellate court justice Eileen O’Neill Burke. Local 9 supported Paul Vallas in this year’s mayoral election, and Local 11 supported Lori Lightfoot; both are building trades unions, which tend to be more conservative and machine-aligned.
Harris County DA
Attorney Sean Teare reported roughly $748,000 in campaign contributions for the campaign finance period ending in June, compared to only $56,000 for Houston’s incumbent DA, Kim Ogg. While that total is impressive, $600,000 came from only two sources, legal services company owner Scott Freeman and retired veterans services company owner Linda Turek, and large early contributions don't necessarily repeat themselves.
Houston Mayor
The University of Houston released its first poll of the upcoming Houston mayoral contest last week, and the results are troubling for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. Jackson Lee trails state Sen. John Whitmire only 34% to 32%, but Houston has runoffs and those undecideds do not like her at all. When presented only those two candidates in the scenario of a runoff, Whitmire leads 51% to 33%. Additionally, while only 10%-20% of voters say they would not vote for most candidates, 44% say the same of Jackson Lee. It’s tempting to compare the Houston mayoral contest to Los Angeles’s, where a Democratic member of Congress had to fend off another Democrat running as the de facto Republican. That comparison is deeply flawed, given that Rick Caruso had shamelessly joined the Democratic Party for the sole purpose of running for mayor, while Whitmire, despite increasingly finding himself at odds with the party mainstream, has been an elected Democrat for the last 50 years. While the Democratic establishment lined up behind Bass, they’re split in Houston, and given that Republicans make up over a third of voters in off-year Houston elections, Jackson Lee will have to do very well with Democrats to pull this thing off.
San Francisco Mayor
Supervisor Ahsha Safaí’s mayoral campaign is off to a great start. The campaign had to redo the promotional materials for one of its first fundraisers after someone in the media noticed that the headlining names listed were contractors John Pollard and Annabel McClellan, the former of which pleaded guilty to criminal tax fraud, and the latter of which was convicted on a charge relating to an insider trading scheme. Oops!
NY-SD-06/NY-AD-18
State Sen. Kevin Thomas is running for the 4th Congressional district. Somehow, Democrats managed to fumble that one during the midterms, so we're not going to be covering that in this newsletter, but Thomas's Senate district is well and truly impossible for Democrats to lose, which means Hempstead is going to have to choose its next state senator. The top name mentioned is Taylor Darling (née Raynor), who represents Hempstead in the state Assembly, and is a staunch ally of Nassau County party boss, anti-progressive zealot, and all-around asshole Jay Jacobs. Darling running would open up her district, the most Democratic on Long Island. While Long Island isn’t the best territory for progressives in the state, every open seat is an opportunity, and someone’s already brought up the name Jeremy Joseph to City & State’s Rebecca Lewis as a possibility. We…doubt there’s much serious thought of putting resources behind a guy who got 14% last year, and in a different district, but we don’t doubt progressives are looking at it seriously. Nassau County Legislators Siela Bynoe (progressive by Long Island standards) and Carrié Solages (domestic abuser) are apparently also considering running for either chamber depending on the circumstances.
We have a special primary preview today for Tennessee’s unique Thursday primaries, including Nashville’s municipal elections and a special primary election for a vacant state House seat (coincidentally also in Nashville.)
Nashville Mayor
Natisha Brooks vs. Fran Bush vs. Heidi Campbell vs. Bernie Cox vs. Jim Gingrich vs. Sharon Hurt vs. Stephanie Johnson vs. Freddie O'Connell vs. Alice Rolli vs. Vivian Wilhoite vs. Matt Wiltshire vs. Jeff Yarbro
While the size of this race is massive, and the actual has been a dizzying mess of personalities, we do think we can identify one of the candidates who is going to make the runoff: Metro Councilor Freddie O'Connell. O'Connell is generally pretty progressive, but is first and foremost an urbanist, and seems like the only candidate running who wants to seriously reckon with the infrastructure and housing challenges of a booming city like Nashville. Two indicators signal that O'Connell is the only sure presence in November. The first is O'Connell leading in all four polls taken since June, most recently by a margin of 25%-19%, and the second is that he's the one everyone else is going after the most. Random business owners are just airing TV ads against him; it's weird.
Of the eleven other candidates still in the running (the twelfth, Jim Gingrich, dropped out after the ballots were printed), five could plausibly join O'Connell:
Alice Rolli, the Republican: While the race is technically nonpartisan, no "I'm barely a Republican, I swear" candidate is going to hug the party as closely as Rolli does. This would be fantastic news for O'Connell, since it means he's practically guaranteed to win in November.
Heidi Campbell, the also-pretty-good: Campbell is a state senator and perfectly normal liberal Democrat, who, after running for Congress last cycle, should be doing a lot better than she is. She has no real campaign message, and in-depth looks at her plans make her feel a lot like O'Connell, except with a bit less strength in her convictions and lacking O’Connell’s signature opposition to public subsidies for sports stadiums (a defining issue in Nashville, a tourism hotspot, especially in light of the Metro Council’s recent approval of a $2.1 billion deal for a new stadium for the Tennessee Titans.) An O'Connell/Campbell runoff means the next mayor will be at least decent.
Jeff Yarbro, the whatever: Yarbro is a state senator who isn't really known for anything, and is running for mayor out of a lack of better options, we think? If he makes the runoff it's because Jim Cooper (brother of John) endorsed him at the last minute. One big red flag—he was the education policy director for pro-charter school ex-mayor Karl Dean.
Sharon Hurt, the underrated: We don't mean that in a policy sense, of course—Hurt, the only Metro Councilor besides O'Connell running, embodies much of the status quo—but electorally. Polls have Hurt hovering under #2, but as the leading Black candidate in a splintered Democratic electorate, she's well positioned. This wouldn't be the first election where late Black consolidation really changed things.
Matt Wiltshire, the establishment: Wiltshire is the living embodiment of Nashville's centrist, pro-business consensus. While most of the worst aspects of the Nashville politics want Rolli, the conservatives and businesses with any sense see Wiltshire as the furthest right candidate with a chance, and that includes the Fraternal Order of Police, as well as most of the moderate members of the Council.
Also…
Vivian Wilhoite, the enigma: We didn't want to leave off Wilhoite, a real candidate who's raised money and not totally flatlined in the polls, but she's never really defined herself for voters (being County Assessor feels like trivia at best) and feels like an afterthought by now.
Nashville Vice Mayor
Jim Shulman (i) vs. Angie Henderson
Wait, there are only two candidates running? Is that even possible? We're pretty sure Tennessee law stipulates the presence of at least eight nearly identical candidates in every election. The race for Vice Mayor is disarmingly straightforward: Jim Shulman is one of the many unspectacular centrist white guys floating around Nashville politics, and Angie Henderson is a Metro Councilor who generally falls in with the progressives in the Council. Most importantly, she opposed the Titans deal, the largest flashpoint in Nashville politics currently.
Nashville Metropolitan Council
The Nashville Justice League, a joint project of the Central Labor Council of Middle Tennessee and progressive community groups, has endorsed a slate of candidates for four at-large Metro Council seats and many of the council’s districts (there are far too many of the latter for us to cover in a city of Nashville’s size.) The Nashville Justice League at-large slate consists of three newcomers, Quin Evans Segall, Arnold Hayes, and Olivia Hill, as well as District 29 Councilwoman Delishia Porterfield, already a leading voice among the council’s progressives. Pro-business PAC A Better Nashville has its own at-large slate: at-large incumbents Zulfat Suara and Burkley Allen, District 15 Councilman Jeff Syracuse, and District 25 Councilman Russ Pulley. There are many more candidates in the at-large race; given that there are five seats, not four, up for election, it’s a little odd that both A Better Nashville and the Nashville Justice League only endorsed four. There’s also Howard Jones, a local pastor and anti-tax crusader; Chris Crofton, a hyper-online left-leaning comedian and musician; police union-endorsed hot sauce magnate Chris Cheng; military veteran Stephen Downs; and police union-endorsed Cooper administration staffer Marcia Masulla, among others.
TN-HD-51
Anthony Davis (i) vs. Aftyn Behn
This special election technically has an incumbent, given that Anthony Davis was appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Bill Beck, but it is in practice a very open seat. Davis, a former Metro Councilor, says that owning a business keeps him from getting too liberal, whereas progressive activist Aftyn Behn says she'll fight against business interests controlling the legislature and is supported by both the Middle Tennessee DSA and Tennessee Three state Rep. Gloria Johnson.