2026-07-20 Regular Issue and Primary Season Recap
What a primary season it’s been already, huh? So much has happened that I think a recap is in order.
(Note: the initial version of this recap omitted the results of DC's mayoral and congressional delegate contests. The error will additionally be corrected in the next regular issue of Primary School.)
First, some housekeeping: in lieu of the normal independent expenditure tracker item, this issue will be followed by a new and improved PAC Tracker issue; I'm experimenting with changing how I track independent expenditures to make it more readable and comprehensive, and I'm also toying with making the PAC Tracker a standalone item, though it would still be included in all subscription tiers. When it comes out, please let me know what you think of the new look if you prefer it (or if you prefer the old way.) As another housekeeping note, I was informed of some billing issues for old subscribers attempting to upgrade to the new subscription price, and think I have resolved them. If you are a returning reader who wants to sign up at one of the new tiers, you should now be able to do so consistently; please let me know if you can't.
With that out of the way, let's take a look back at what primary season has brought us since I last wrote.
Since my last regular issue, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a November general election that was highly acrimonious but ultimately not that close, much like June’s primary, in which the same two men were the leading candidates. On that same night, moderate Rep. Mikie Sherrill was elected governor of New Jersey in a landslide, leaving her wealthy, light-blue suburban North Jersey seat open and triggering a February special primary election. Candidates piled into the field to replace her, including former Rep. Tom Malinowski, a moderate like Sherrill, but one who was mildly critical of the Israeli government—which was enough to provoke AIPAC to spend millions bashing Malinowski on the airwaves, even as AIPAC’s preferred candidate, outgoing Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way, struggled to gain traction, and the local machine backed a third candidate, Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill. While AIPAC succeeded in knocking Malinowski out of first place, by doing so they paved the way for the upset victory of Analilia Mejía, a veteran progressive organizer notable for previously heading the New Jersey Working Families Party and serving as Bernie Sanders’s 2020 national political director. Mejía would follow up her surprise February primary win with landslides in the April general election and the June regular primary for a full term, and progressive candidates energized by her victory built on it by winning municipal and county offices in parts of Mejía’s Essex County turf over the course of the spring.
Mejía’s win alarmed AIPAC and other centrist-to-conservative lobbying groups and PACs, and the broader universe of anti-progressive PACs dumped seemingly endless money into March’s primaries. It mostly worked: while AIPAC was unable to elect state Sen. Laura Fine in IL-09 (or even put up a respectable showing, considering they got smoked by leftist influencer Kat Abughazaleh in addition to the actual winner, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss), they got their picks in IL-08 (former Rep. Melissa Bean) and IL-02 (Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller). The tech industry also successfully defended erstwhile AIPAC Dem Rep. Valerie Foushee from her rematch with progressive Nida Allam in NC-04, and sort-of-centrist Texas Rep. Julie Johnson lost renomination to even-more-centrist former Rep. Colin Allred. With no primaries in April, the center could rest easy for a bit—right?
May was light on Democratic primaries, but May was nevertheless the first sign that March might not have been the end of the story. Democratic socialist state Rep. Chris Rabb overcame a flood of money to win the Democratic nomination for Philadelphia’s open PA-03—the bluest seat in the nation, so blue that Republicans did not bother contesting it this year. And Rabb won handily, defeating state Sen. Sharif Street 45%-29%. With PA-03 wrapping up the May calendar, everyone steeled themselves for a packed June.
June started off with a bang, as leftist Army veteran Dr. Adam Hamawy, a surgeon who entered politics after risking his life on a humanitarian aid mission to Gaza, easily won retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman’s NJ-12, handing a second high-profile victory to Justice Democrats. (Rabb was their first of the cycle, though the organization technically also won the seat of outgoing Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett with the Rev. Frederick Haynes III—Haynes just escaped notice because he faced minimal opposition in the primary and had Crockett’s support.) On the same day, in a pair of swing-district House races, progressives beat establishment favorites for the Democratic nominations in CA-22 with Randy Villegas and MT-01 with Sam Forstag, and quite a few Democratic primary challengers advanced to the general election under California’s (ridiculous) top-two primary system as well, among them Justice Democrats-backed Sacramento City Councilor Mai Vang (who actually got more votes than Rep. Doris Matsui in the first round), self-funding tech guy Eric Jones (challenging Blue Dog Rep. Mike Thompson), and Justice Democrats-backed activist Angela Gonzales-Torres (challenging Rep. Jimmy Gomez). The next week, the alliance of the three most progressive Maine gubernatorial candidates worked like a charm, as former state House Speaker Hannah Pingree used support from her defeated rivals to leapfrog more centrist opponent Nirav Shah in ranked-choice tabulations and clinch the Democratic nomination. The week after, democratic socialist DC Councilmember Janeese Lewis George trounced the opposition to win the Democratic nomination for mayor of DC, as DC progressives swept every contested race from congressional delegate to local party committee. (To be fair, centrists did get a bit of good news out of Maryland and Utah later in June with the victories of Del. Adrian Boafo in the open seat of retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer and former Rep. Ben McAdams in a new Salt Lake City-based district; even California wasn’t a total bust for them, as they did get Xavier Becerra as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee via the elimination of all the other, better Democrats.)
The chaos continued in Mamdani’s New York, as the new mayor endorsed a slate of leftist congressional candidates in hotly contested House primaries across the city. All three won: in Brooklyn and Queens’s NY-07, democratic socialist Assemb. Claire Valdez defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, the choice of outgoing Rep. Nydia Velázquez, in a humbling landslide; in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn’s NY-10, progressive former city Comptroller Brad Lander defeated Rep. Dan Goldman by a 2-to-1 margin; and, most shockingly, in Uptown Manhattan and the Bronx’s NY-13, democratic socialist and pro-Palestinian activist Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the boss of a Dominican-American political machine spanning two boroughs and all levels of government. Further down the ballot, NYC-DSA (and its allies in upstate DSA chapters in Buffalo and Syracuse) managed a near-sweep of its targeted state legislative primaries, doubling the size of Albany’s socialist caucus from 6 to 12 and sweeping several powerful, long-tenured lawmakers out of office. Valdez and Avila Chevalier were both backed by Justice Democrats and NYC-DSA, while Lander had neither organization but had Mamdani’s endorsement and his own strong personal brand.
For exactly one week, the narrative was that New York was sui generis. “Denver, Colorado, is not New York City,” said CO-01 Rep. Diana DeGette, as she projected confidence in the face of her own primary challenge from democratic socialist attorney-turned-barista Melat Kiros, a first-time candidate and Justice Democrats endorsee who was born a few months after DeGette was sworn into Congress for the first time. And indeed, Denver was not New York City—Adriano Espaillat, who only lost 49%-45%, fared much better than DeGette did, as Kiros demolished the congresswoman 53%-40%. Simultaneously in Colorado, Sen. Michael Bennet got absolutely thrashed by state AG Phil Weiser in the gubernatorial primary, Blue Dog-endorsed centrist former state Rep. Shannon Bird got crushed by state Rep. Manny Rutinel in swingy CO-08, and Sen. John Hickenlooper had a stunningly close call with underfunded and overlooked state Sen. Julie Gonzales, a progressive who sharply criticized his record of voting to confirm deranged Trump nominees but never quite had the resources or network to get her message out. Gonzales would only lose 53-47 when all the votes were counted, carrying the city of Denver and some of its suburbs while generally putting up a fight anywhere with a university or a large Latino population.
July is another lull in the primary calendar, with Arizona being the only primaries on offer all month. In August, we get crucial Senate races in Minnesota and Michigan, House primaries in each of those states as well as in Missouri, Connecticut, and Florida, and a gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin; in September, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Delaware finish off the primary calendar, then it’s on to November for Dem-on-Dem general elections and nonpartisan races like Los Angeles Mayor.
With Mejía, Rabb, Hamawy, Avila Chevalier, Lander, Valdez, Haynes, and Kiros, this is already the best cycle for the left, and the worst cycle for incumbent Democratic representatives, since “the left” as we conceive of it today became a coherent electoral project—and we’re barely past the halfway point.
HI-01
State Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, a progressive, is airing his first attack ad against Blue Dog Rep. Ed Case, marking a new escalation in the race for Honolulu’s House seat. The ad hits Case for his extremely long tenure in office, using a clip of Case—in 2006—saying “It is time for the next generation of leadership [...] We just need the courage to choose it,” before cutting to Keohokalole narrating direct-to-camera about the rising cost of living (a particularly salient issue in Hawaii, where the cost of living has long been higher than on the mainland.) The ad then closes with an adorable ukulele jingle to help viewers pronounce Keohokalole’s last name (“key-oh-hoe-ka-loh-ley”).
IL-03
It looks like democratic socialist Chicago Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez and former Latino Victory Fund executive director Mayra Macías will have to go to court if they want to make the ballot against retiring Rep. Chuy García’s chief of staff, Patty Garcia (no relation), as Illinois election judges recommended that both Sigcho-Lopez and Macías be removed from the ballot, pending a final review by the Illinois State Board of Elections. Rep. García retired at the last possible minute to ensure that candidate Garcia would be the only person who had the heads-up to collect signatures to get on the ballot, and Sigcho-Lopez and Macías are both running independent campaigns in the hopes of short-circuiting the circumvention of the ordinary Democratic primary process here. Sigcho-Lopez, for his part, says he is willing to take it all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court.
MA-01
Challenger Jeromie Whalen is out with his first TV ad, a positive introductory spot that lets viewers know he's a longtime public school teacher who believes in "healthcare over warfare, people over profits, and community over corporations." The ad also frames longtime Rep. Richard Neal as an absentee representative. No word yet on the size of the buy.
ME-Sen
Our long national nightmare may finally be over, as former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson appears to have secured the Democratic Senate nomination in that state. After the withdrawal of previous nominee Graham Platner due to a rape allegation (but only after a Nazi tattoo and multiple not-quite-rape allegations somehow didn’t do the trick), the Maine Democratic Party hastily threw together an online caucus-and-convention system to choose a new nominee, and a quartet of candidates announced: Jackson, the former state senate president and a progressive from Maine’s rural and conservative north; Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state and nominee against Collins in 2014; Nirav Shah, who led the state’s pandemic response; and Jordan Wood, a Democratic consultant who is married to the man responsible for Mothership Strategies, the firm which pioneered the fundraising slop you and I both hate. (All but Wood had mounted unsuccessful gubernatorial primary bids; Wood unsuccessfully sought the nomination for Jared Golden's open ME-02.) Caucuses were held on July 18 and 19 to elect delegates to a July 25 convention—and the first day of caucuses, which included the counties home to Bangor, Augusta, and Portland, was such a landslide for Jackson-aligned delegates that Bellows actually dropped out before the second day of caucuses could begin, even though Jackson still technically needed a few more delegates to clinch the nomination. (York County’s vote on Sunday afternoon is what seems to have clinched it for Jackson; after Jackson clinched it, Shah dropped out and endorsed Jackson.)
Assuming he wins at the convention, as seems all but certain, Jackson will face Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November, and we all hope and pray he’ll finally be the one to send her packing.
MI-Sen
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied for Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Detroit on Saturday, as the left and the center both throw the proverbial kitchen sink at this race in the hopes of setting a national narrative and adding (or, in the center’s case, keeping) an ally in the Senate. Just days earlier, outgoing Sen. Gary Peters endorsed centrist favorite Rep. Haley Stevens, who is also, by the numbers, AIPAC’s favorite candidate this cycle, benefiting from about $20 million (and counting) in spending from the organization’s super PAC, United Democracy Project. Elizabeth Warren also weighed in to endorse El-Sayed this morning; while Warren's first choice had been state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, McMorrow dropped out after she stalled out in the polls and saw no path to victory.
MI-13
State Rep. Donavan McKinney notched a couple more endorsements early this morning as he attempts to dislodge Rep. Shri Thanedar from the Detroit district he has held since 2022. Pittsburgh Rep. Summer Lee, who was elected with the support of Justice Democrats in 2022, endorsed McKinney, joining Detroit's other U.S. Rep., Rashida Tlaib, an early backer of McKinney’s campaign; McKinney already has the bulk of support from state and local elected officials in the district, a rare feat for a Justice Democrats-backed candidate and a sign of how much the local establishment dislikes Thanedar’s weird persona and notoriously awful constituent services. McKinney was also endorsed by the national arm of the Democratic Socialists of America; the Detroit chapter, which also helped elect Tlaib, had already endorsed McKinney, a prerequisite for the national endorsement.
WI-Gov
As democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong and progressive former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes lead in polls of the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Gov. Tony Evers, their opponents can’t get their act together. Barnes’s successor as LG, Sara Rodriguez, had seemed like moderates’ best shot—until her campaign imploded in the wake of revelations of financial mismanagement that left her campaign near-broke, and Rodriguez dropped out. In a panic, opponents of Hong and Barnes scrambled for a replacement alternative, landing on Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley—who himself had just dropped out of the race and endorsed Rodriguez in light of his own failure to gain traction in the polls. However, this time around, Crowley has Evers’s endorsement, which his allies are hoping is enough to power a surge. If not, either Barnes—who narrowly lost the 2022 Senate race to Republican Ron Johnson after the DSCC controversially (and, in hindsight, disastrously) triaged his candidacy—or Hong, a loud-and-proud democratic socialist, will lead the Democratic ticket in this critical swing state. Republicans have coalesced around U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a staunch conservative who represents a rural and deep-red northern Wisconsin district.