August recap and 8/24 regular issue

Before we get into the August recap, as promised, here's the regular issue; the recap is below, after a divider. A PAC Tracker and a Massachusetts pre-primary FEC roundup are also coming today.

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A renewed wave of sexual misconduct allegations reminiscent of 2017’s original #MeToo wave of sexual misconduct cases and allegations has rocked the House of Representatives this year, leading to the resignations of Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Tony Gonzales (R-TX) as well as the recent primary defeat of Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL). It now looks like a fourth member might be joining the ignominious ranks of the credibly accused: Los Angeles Rep. Jimmy Gomez. Last week, I reported that the House Ethics Committee had released a bipartisan statement confirming the existence of an investigation into Rep. Gomez for sexual misconduct; shortly after publishing, news outlets began picking up a bombshell statement from lawyers for one Gomez accuser. That statement contained two new pieces of information: one, that this accuser was not the only one speaking with the House Ethics Committee; and two, that this accuser’s allegation was of sexual assault, not just sexual harassment.

Gomez faces a general election runoff with a fellow Democrat, Justice Democrats-backed leftist organizer and neighborhood activist Angela Gonzales-Torres. It remains to be seen how much Gonzales-Torres will be able to capitalize on Gomez’s ethical troubles, but this can’t be welcome news for the incumbent, whose downtown Los Angeles district is one of the most left-leaning districts on the West Coast.

Los Angeles Mayor

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is just not ready for a runoff with progressive city councilor Nithya Raman, and is making baffling choices as she attempts to beat back Raman’s challenge (maybe by winning over voters who preferred Republican Spencer Pratt in June?) The mayor is now opposed to taco trucks (in Los Angeles???) and supportive of the noxiously unpopular and likely job-killing proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers.

Karen Bass, what are you doing?

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Seth Moulton seems destined to crash and burn according to polling, as Massachusetts voters initially curious about an alternative to 80-year-old Sen. Ed Markey seem to have decided Moulton is not the alternative they’re looking for. Anecdotes like this one don’t help: famed Boston sportscaster Mike Lynch shared a story of briefly encountering Moulton at Boston’s Logan Airport, shortly after suffering a stroke which left him in a wheelchair. At Logan, Lynch—one of the most recognizable voices and faces in Boston news—recognized Moulton’s face and called out a greeting; Moulton responded with, in Lynch’s telling, a glare. When Lynch, undeterred, called out a farewell upon passing Moulton a second time, Lynch says Moulton glared again before looking down at his phone.

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As I discuss in my forthcoming Massachusetts pre-primary FEC roundup, there was a fascinating little sequence of events revealed by Rep. Richard Neal’s most recent FEC filing.

On July 16, Neal paid $19,500 for a poll from DAPA Research. Shortly thereafter, Neal started spending big on his reelection. On July 21, he bought $200,000 in TV time, which he would later supplement with a total of $37,000 in additional buys in early August. That doesn’t paint a full picture of Neal’s post-poll panic: the incumbent also hired a pricey digital firm, Liftoff Campaigns, to the tune of $452,000 and change on July 31, and dropped $101,000 and change on mailers in early August. Previously, Neal had been spending next to nothing on advertising and voter contact; now, that's a total of more than $790,000 in new spending after receiving the results of a single poll. How bad was that poll?

We kicked off the month with one of the busiest primary days of the summer, with Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, Virginia, and Washington all voting on nominees for Congress and the former three also selecting nominees for state and local offices. The night worked out well overall for candidates striking a progressive and/or populist tone in Michigan—not just Abdul El-Sayed’s high-profile victory in the Senate race in the face of an onslaught of outside spending from AIPAC and other groups, but also victories for leftists like Will Lawrence in the swingy MI-07 and Donavan McKinney unseating Rep. Shri Thanedar in Detroit’s MI-13, and downballot progressive wins, most prominently the victory of Detroit DSA’s Chris Gilmer-Hill in a Detroit/Ferndale state House seat. Outside of Michigan, it was more of a mixed bag. While some progressives managed to make it to the general election against more moderate Democrats in Washington legislative races, the biggest anti-establishment upset on the map outside of Michigan was the victory of anti-data center populist Cindy Holscher, a state senator from suburban Kansas City who defeated outgoing Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s preferred successor, Holscher’s fellow state senator Ethan Corson. (Notably for 2028, Northern Virginia Rep. Don Beyer only managed 67% of the vote against a field of extremely underfunded challengers, signaling vulnerability to a stronger opponent in his Arlington-and-Alexandria district.)

We then took mid-week detours to Tennessee and Hawaii; in the former, there weren’t many Democratic primaries of note to begin with, and in the latter, incumbents broadly survived a slate of serious primary challenges (mostly from the left, but occasionally from the right), including Blue Dog Rep. Ed Case’s easy victory over progressive state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole in HI-01.

On August 11, the surging campaign of democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong managed to dominate the headlines leading up to primary night—and for good reason, as it turned out to be the closest race of the night, with more moderate Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley eking out an extremely narrow win on the strength of Black voters in Milwaukee and rural voters, while Hong comfortably won non-Black Milwaukee voters and generally won Wisconsin’s cities, even smaller ones like Green Bay, Wausau, and Oshkosh. Hong likely would have won if she had been able or willing to advertise on TV more, given Crowley’s fearsome TV advertising advantage. But that wasn’t the only story of the night: in Connecticut, longtime Rep. John Larson got less than a third of the primary vote against a field including former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who successfully argued the incumbent was too old and out of touch. (Bronin is no progressive, but I can’t find it in me to be upset that an unremarkable Democratic backbencher lost on account of being way too old to do the job.) Moderate Gov. Ned Lamont fended off his primary challenge from progressive state Rep. Josh Elliott by a 2-to-1 margin. And in Minnesota, progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan overcame a huge financial disadvantage to absolutely crush moderate Rep. Angie Craig for the Senate nomination left open by the retirement of Sen. Tina Smith, by a margin of 20 points statewide. (Meanwhile, progressive Matt Little easily won Craig’s open congressional seat in the rapidly-bluing suburbs south of Minneapolis.)

The biggest story in Florida ended up being one I didn’t bother previewing, which is on me: democratic socialist state Rep. Angie Nixon, a SEIU organizer from Jacksonville who raised and spent less than a million dollars, resoundingly defeated establishment favorite and financial leader Alex Vindman, whose whistleblowing was key to the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Nixon did so by uniting Black, Latino, and young white voters, limiting Vindman—who had raised more than $15 million and spent close to $10 million—to a coalition of older white Democrats, tipping most of the state’s largest and most urban counties to Nixon and producing a 56-44 victory for the underdog. (Nixon will go on to face appointed Sen. Ashley Moody in November, where she will face very daunting odds—but no more daunting on its face than flipping Texas or Kansas in the abstract, and we’re already talking about both of those to some degree.)

Further down the ballot, democratic socialist Oliver Larkin honestly did better than I expected against conservative Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz in FL-25, pulling 37% of the vote in a district redrawn to hug the wealthy South Florida coast from Miami Beach to Boca Raton. In FL-20, Debbie Wasserman Schultz won with a 45% plurality against a field of four fairly weak opponents, each with a distinct geographic and demographic base, revealing that a single strong opponent could potentially unseat Wasserman Schultz in her newly-adopted, Black-majority Broward County district. And in FL-24, outgoing Rep. Frederica Wilson unfortunately got her pick to succeed her: Republican-curious Miami-Dade County Commissioner Oliver Gilbert III.

Ostensibly on the same night (but functionally later due to the glacial pace of California vote-counting), AIPAC took another bruising loss. After losing to El-Sayed in Michigan, the organization turned its attention to the special election to succeed disgraced ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell, where they hoped to stop state Sen. Aisha Wahab, an Afghan-American Muslim aligned with national progressives (but not particularly focused on the issue of Israel-Palestine, unlike many candidates AIPAC spends to oppose.) The organization poured more than $2 million into the race in the space of two weeks, supplementing the work of other groups that had already been supporting BART Board Member Melissa Hernandez and attacking Wahab prior to El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan. Unfortunately for AIPAC, Wahab won anyway; while she only led narrowly on election night, the first post-election night update dramatically expanded Wahab’s lead and convinced news outlets to call the race for Wahab, who will be the first Afghan-American member of Congress. Wahab also represents a move to the left in CA-14; Swalwell, ideologically, had been a moderate Democrat.

To sum up the month, two more Democratic members of Congress, Thanedar and Larson, joined their June-loser colleagues (New York Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat and Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette), and moderate, establishment-oriented Democrats lost key statewide primaries in Michigan, Minnesota, Kansas, and even Florida. We’ll close out the primary season in September with Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Delaware, then it’s on to November.