Issue 12

CA-Gov

According to a new Emerson College poll, with former Vice President Kamala Harris and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis both freshly out of the race, it’s now former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter’s race to lose. Porter’s 18% support is enough for first place, ahead of conservative pundit Steve Hilton at 12%, Republican San Bernardino County Sheriff Chad Bianco at 7%, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at just 5%, with other Democrats—including former California AG and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, former state Senate President Toni Atkins, billionaire Steve Cloobeck, billionaire Rick Caruso, former state Controller Betty Yee, and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond—all mired below 5%.

IL-Sen

Pro-crypto centrist Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi appears well on his way to conning the voters of Illinois into voting for a capitulator, as a new poll from the Krishnamoorthi-supporting Indian American Impact Fund shows him leading Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and Rep. Robin Kelly by a margin of 38%-17%-7%, with his lead growing to 51%-28%-13% when undecided voters are asked who they’re leaning towards. It’s a grim sign for national progressives, who have two somewhat acceptable candidates here in Stratton and Kelly and one candidate who might actually be a downgrade from disappointing Sen. Dick Durbin.

MI-06

It’s all a fucking game to these people.

Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, the third Dingell to represent Michigan in Congress in an unbroken line since 1933, announced the happy nuptials of her chief of staff, Meg Makarawicz, to another congressional chief of staff, Mike Rorke. All fine and dandy, right?

Would you like to guess who Mike Rorke is chief of staff to?

If you had a birther who fervently praised Uganda’s anti-gay president and his signature law criminalizing homosexuality as punishable by death, said Gaza “should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima,” and conspired with Trump to overturn the 2020 election, you’d be right—and you’d be horrified, too. Rorke is chief of staff to far-right Republican Rep. Tim Walberg.

Dingell should move considerably higher on people’s list of primary targets—and Makarawicz is someone to keep an eye on if you’re looking for a promising contender for a future third-string “Why I Left The Left”-ass pundit. What a bizarre fucking marriage that must be, man. How the fuck do they talk about work? “Hi, honey, how many deportations of single mothers and cancer patients have you praised today?” “Only a few, but I did sign off on a statement questioning whether women should be allowed to vote.” Fucking hell.

MN-02

The Daily Agenda reports that state Rep. Kaela Berg is leaning towards a run for the seat left behind by Senate candidate Angie Craig. Berg, a 2016 Sanders delegate who is a former flight attendant and union organizer, has reportedly met with EMILY’s List, and would add a third candidate to a primary currently between former state Sen. Matt Little and current state Sen. Matt Kline, both of whom are centrist Democrats.

NV-03

Nevada’s 3rd is a swing district that lurched from a 6.6% Biden victory in 2020 to an 0.7% Trump victory in 2024, as Trump’s strength in the state proved a bit too much for the aggressive Democratic gerrymander of Las Vegas to hold. However, moderate Democratic Rep. Susie Lee managed to hang on to her seat, which she has held since 2019—and she immediately started voting to aid this administration after winning reelection, most notably by voting for the Laken Riley Act, which gave ICE dramatically expanded powers to go after anyone merely accused of a crime, much less convicted. Lee’s vote greatly empowered the same jackbooted thugs terrorizing the people of Los Angeles and DC, and led to greater local collaboration with ICE in Las Vegas in specific. The Laken Riley vote is unforgivable on its own, and, alongside Lee’s steadfast support for Israel’s criminal war on Gazan civilians, it has motivated local cardiologist Dr. James Lally to make his first foray into electoral politics. Lally takes Lee to task over the Laken Riley vote and her vote to sanction the International Criminal Court for its case against the Israeli government, and accuses her of failing to oppose the rapidly-escalating authoritarianism of the second Trump administration.

NJ-09

Paterson is New Jersey’s third-largest city, home to over 150,000 people and serving as a hub for diverse, purple, working-class Passaic County. The city, which anchors Rep. Nellie Pou’s swingy NJ-09, is heavily Latino, Black, South Asian, and Arab, as are its surroundings; prior to 2024, NJ-09 was dark blue, but Kamala Harris’s unprecedented collapse with non-Black voters of color turned NJ-09 narrowly red in the presidential race. Thankfully, Republicans seem likely to run QAnon-curious wacko Billy Prempeh for the third time in a row, instead of someone serious, which means the Democratic primary may still be the race to watch here. And Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh is already considering a run, as I told you last week. But a new flashpoint in the race has arisen: Paterson and its surrounding suburbs have been beset by a water crisis for a week now, as water main breaks have threatened or actually stopped service to over 200,000 people in the past week and change, and tens of thousands remain without water. Sayegh and other local mayors of both parties have been working around the clock to isolate and repair the breaks—and a joint letter from Sayegh and three other local mayors took Pou to task for her absence from the district during the crisis, prompting an indignant response from the congresswoman’s office. Pou says her office took “an all-of-government approach” to distributing water and aiding emergency services, but how believable is that when you’re abroad in Israel, nonspecifically asking Israel to maybe be nicer to Palestinians while touring IDF facilities?

NY-Gov

According to a new poll from Siena College, Gov. Kathy Hochul is a strong favorite for renomination as she seeks a second full term, perhaps buoyed by her combative stances towards Donald Trump. Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, Hochul’s erstwhile running mate with whom she’s had an ugly falling out, pulls just 15%—while Hochul reaches 50% for the first time in a Siena primary poll.

TX-18

A new internal poll from former Houston City Councilor Amanda Edwards finds her in the lead in the all-party special election to replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner. Edwards gathers 18% of the vote in the poll, conducted in July, while Republican Carmen Montiel, Democratic state Rep. Jolanda Jones, and Democratic Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee get 12%, 11%, and 10%, respectively; George Foreman IV, the son of the famous boxer, gets 6%, and Gen Z influencer Isaiah Martin is at 3%. Edwards has money and name recognition built up from her unsuccessful challenge to then-Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in 2024, and that could be giving her the edge here.

TX-35/37

As a wave of anger sweeps the Democratic Party rank-and-file and voters clamor for change, yet another Democratic representative would like to make it clear he’ll be having no part in that. Lloyd Doggett has represented Austin, Texas since the mid-1990s, and will be 80 on Election Day 2026—an obvious candidate for retirement even without Texas’s impending mid-decade gerrymander, which will force Doggett into the same district as his fellow Austinite Greg Casar, the 36-year-old chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. But Doggett is making it clear that he’s not interested in retirement under any circumstances—by smarmily and publicly encouraging Casar to abandon his Austin home, which is set to be moved into Doggett’s 37th district, to run for the 35th district, which will shed most of Casar’s current constituents and turn into a district Donald Trump won by double digits. To do anything other than retire at this moment is irresponsible enough at Doggett’s age, but to preemptively try to shove a younger member out of the House just so you can get another term or two in is so selfish that Doggett dsmeserves a vigorous primary challenge even if the Texas gerrymander improbably does not pass. (Casar, for his part, responded to Doggett’s statement by saying he will be running in the Austin district no matter what.)

VA-08

Former Alexandria City Councilman Mohamed “Mo” Seifeldein launched a primary challenge to Rep. Don Beyer this week. Seifeildein, 41, served one two-year term in an at-large seat on the city council in Alexandria, a wealthy and lopsidedly Democratic city of 160,000 across the Potomac River from DC, before stepping back from politics at the end of 2021. However, he’s getting back in the arena out of anger at the incipient rise of American fascism. A former attorney with the US Department of Labor, Seifeldein resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s policies and consequently has the ability to focus on his congressional campaign full-time. On the council, he supported policies such as tenant protections and civilian police oversight; in his congressional run, he says the moment demands “moral clarity” and “rejecting platitudes.” (Hopefully we’ll get a website and more public statements soon to judge what he means by that.)

Beyer, 75, recently announced a run for reelection, shortly after supporting the installation of cancer-stricken Rep. Gerry Connolly as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee—just months before Connolly’s death. (Old House Democrats are unwilling to learn and must be taught, it seems.) This district, which takes in Arlington, Alexandria, and inner Fairfax County, may also be particularly fertile ground for a primary challenge in light of the military occupation of neighboring DC, where many residents work and socialize, and the high concentration of current and now-former federal employees.

DC Council Ward 1

Metro DC DSA is looking to win another seat on the DC Council, after electing Janeese Lewis George to represent Ward 4 in 2020, then Zachary Parker in Ward 5 in 2022. (Lewis George easily won a second term last year as well.) Aparna Raj, the communications manager at the progressive electoral organization Local Progress, an organizer for DC’s Initiative 82, and a chapter leader in MDC-DSA, launched her campaign for Ward 1, currently held by progressive Brianne Nadeau. (Rumors of Nadeau’s potential retirement have circulated for a couple months now.) Ward 1 is the most left-wing in DC, taking in a collection of trendy young professional neighborhoods with large immigrant populations such as Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan. The ward is also at the epicenter of Trump’s military occupation of DC; checkpoints have been set up along U Street and ICE has publicly promoted its harassment of the residents of heavily Latino Mount Pleasant. Raj raised more than $30,000 in her first 24 hours as a candidate, a very formidable start for a ward-based DC Council seat.

LA City Council

DSA-LA has launched its first round of endorsements for Los Angeles’s 2026 municipal elections. They’re backing two of their elected officials for reelection—District 1 councilor Eunisses Hernandez and LAUSD School Board District 2 member Rocío Rivas—as well as two challengers. In South Los Angeles’s District 9, where incumbent Curren Price faces a wide-ranging corruption indictment filed in 2023 and updated this year by the LA County District Attorney, DSA-LA is backing Estuardo Mazariegos, co-director of the progressive nonprofit ACCE-LA, and in the Westside’s District 11, they’re backing tenant attorney Faizah Malik against conservative incumbent Traci Park.

NJ-LD-22

ICE is terrorizing innocent Americans. The military is occupying American streets. International aid, scientific research, and academia are all being systematically destroyed. A Democratic member of Congress, New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver, is facing transparently bullshit charges for exercising her oversight authority at an ICE facility. And New Jersey Democratic Senate President Nick Scutari is…meeting with the illegally-installed Trump lackey who’s trying to imprison her. Illegitimate Acting US Attorney Alina Habba, the president’s personal lawyer who was previously counsel to her husband’s parking lot empire, met with Scutari and Republican Port Authority Chairman Kevin O’Toole at Ristorante da Benito in Union, NJ, a few miles from Scutari’s Clark home. (I am, unfortunately, a constituent.) I can only assume Scutari, a conservative Democrat who I previously reported using campaign funds to pay the IRS, was negotiating with Habba over which of my neighbors to sell out to the federal government.

NYC Mayor

To stop Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, Gov. David Paterson is endorsing a conservative ex-Democrat backed by big money for mayor of New York City…and it’s not disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but disgraced and noxiously unpopular current Mayor Eric Adams. Paterson had backed Cuomo in the Democratic primary, but after Cuomo’s surprise blowout loss, he’s evidently no longer keen on his successor as governor, even though Cuomo continues to poll higher than Adams.

Speaking of polling, the above-mentioned Siena poll also took a look at the mayoral race and found Mamdani in a strong position to win: 44% of registered voters back the socialist assemblyman from Queens, to just 25% for Cuomo, 12% for Republican street vigilante Curtis Sliwa, and just 7% for Adams.