Issue 19

DC-AL (correction)

Last week, I incorrectly listed DC Shadow Rep. Oye Owolewa as a candidate for DC’s lone nonvoting delegate seat in the House of Representatives (not to be confused with the shadow representative, who is essentially an elected lobbyist for statehood.) Owolewa is running districtwide for a new office in 2026; however, that office is an at-large seat on the DC Council, not the delegate’s seat. I regret and apologize for the error.

CA-Gov

EMILY’s List backed former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter for governor, if nothing else as recognition of the fact that she is now the sole viable female candidate for governor of California with the exit of Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and former state Senate President Toni Atkins, and the decision not to run by former Vice President Kamala Harris. (As if on cue, Porter’s campaign immediately hit a speed bump, as separate videos of Porter losing her cool with a reporter and a staffer went viral on social media.) Porter looks like a clear frontrunner for California’s top job, and this endorsement only reinforces that apparent state of affairs. However, another candidate may be looking to make a late entry: billionaire former presidential candidate Tom Steyer, whose $12 million investment in California Democrats’ redistricting ballot measure got Golden State politicos talking. While Steyer is publicly silent, his intermittent political ambitions are no secret; while the 2020 presidential race is the only time he’s pulled the trigger, Steyer has mulled runs for various offices before.

CT-01

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy backed Rep. John Larson for a fifteenth term over the weekend, arguing that the 77-year-old was “the organizing force” in the all-Democratic Connecticut congressional delegation. Larson currently faces challenges from former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, Hartford Board of Education member Ruth Fortune, and Southington Councilman Jack Perry, but Murphy refrained from attacking them in his endorsement of Larson, offering praise of both Bronin and Gilchrest.

IL-02

This week, former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. announced the comeback campaign nobody asked for (immediately making the campaign of another returning Chicagoland has-been, former IL-08 Blue Dog Rep. Melissa Bean, look worlds better by comparison.) In 2013, Jackson Jr. resigned and pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges for redirecting $750,000 in campaign funds to personal use. Now, after serving a 30-month prison sentence, he’s back, potentially upending a field already crowded with formidable candidates. Hopefully nobody bites; state Sen. Robert Peters is an excellent progressive leader, and County Commissioner Donna Miller, state Sen. Willie Preston, and local Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Yumeka Brown are, at least, normal politicians who have not been convicted of spending campaign funds on furs and Michael Jackson memorabilia.

IL-08, Chicago Mayor

Chicago Ald. Bill Conway endorsed attorney Dan Tully for Illinois’s 8th congressional district this week. Conway is a center-right type who represents Chicago’s affluent downtown Loop, far from this northwestern suburban district—but he is a potential 2027 mayoral candidate, and this is a chance for him to throw his weight around in the more conservative outer neighborhoods that will be necessary to his mayoral hopes—neighborhoods that are partly in this district, which does briefly dip into far northwestern Chicago. It’s also perhaps a sign that Tully is one of the Chicago center-right’s candidates of choice (bad news for former Blue Dog Rep. Melissa Bean, the natural choice for that ideological lane.)

IL-09

Former Rep. Marie Newman has waded into this exceptionally crowded primary, backing Skokie school board member Bushra Amiwala to succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Amiwala is one of several progressives competing for this progressive-leaning seat, along with (among others) Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, state Rep. Hoan Huynh, and influencer Kat Abughazaleh. Newman spent one term representing what was then numbered the 3rd congressional district after unseating anti-abortion Blue Dog Rep. Dan Lipinski in 2020 (after narrowly losing to Lipinski in 2018), then lost a redistricting battle with fellow Rep. Sean Casten after the post-2020 Census maps placed them both in a redrawn 6th congressional district; she still has some goodwill with the Chicago activist set remaining from her defeat of Lipinski, and she has remained involved in Chicago politics since her loss.

NY-08

Of all the potential primary targets in the nation, few are as valuable as House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Other than Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (who isn’t up until 2028), no primary defeat would make it clearer that the old Democratic ways aren’t cutting it anymore. And progressives, reformers, and those who want the Democratic Party to fight might actually get their dream candidate next year, because Bed-Stuy Council Member Chi Ossé is reportedly considering a challenge to Jeffries.

Ossé, a progressive and a close ally of Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, has represented the bustling neighborhoods of Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights since 2021, and in that time has built a brand as a plain-spoken young progressive with a knack for social media. Now, though he publicly denies it, Axios reports that Ossé is engaged in serious conversations with potential supporters about a run against Jeffries. (Jeffries’s district voted for Mamdani over Andrew Cuomo by a double-digit margin in the primary, powered by monster margins in Ossé’s home turf.) Jeffries has stubbornly refused to endorse the Democratic mayoral nominee thus far, and has generally been a disappointing leader for Democrats in Congress (though miles better than his Senate counterpart, because the bar is real fucking low right now, man.) Should Jeffries continue to hold out or only tepidly endorse Mamdani—who is certain to carry NY-08 over Cuomo by a considerable margin—Ossé will have a ready-made argument against the House Democratic leader: is he really that much of a Democrat these days?

NY-09

Investment analyst and financier Michael Goldfarb announced a campaign against Rep. Yvette Clarke this week, and he quickly raised six figures to fund his bid to represent Central and South Brooklyn. So far, Goldfarb hasn’t taken much of an ideological tone either way, instead sticking to more generic themes of anti-corruption and generational change—while Clarke, at 60, is not particularly old, she is a dynastic politician as the daughter of local former Council Member and party boss Una Clarke.

NY-12

Former TV journalist Jami Floyd and West Side Council Member Erik Bottcher jumped into the race for Manhattan’s open House seat this week, joining a field that already includes Upper West Side assemblyman Micah Lasher and Gen Z nonprofit founder Liam Elkind. Floyd positions herself as a “no-nonsense moderate and centrist,” which strikes me as a hilarious misread of what voters want in 2026; Bottcher, a mainstream liberal who represents Manhattan’s gayborhoods, raised a whopping $683,000 in his first day as a candidate, so Micah Lasher’s planned coronation is going to have to be put on hold for now. Lasher, the protégé of outgoing Rep. Jerry Nadler, is already backed by the Upper West Side establishment, which has traditionally dominated this seat—but Bottcher and his fundraising haul show that Midtown won’t give up this seat without a fight.

TN-09

Rep. Steve Cohen, a long-tenured, eccentric liberal who has represented Memphis since winning his first race in 2006, will face a challenge from his left next year, joining an ever-growing number of his colleagues. As the National Guard descended on Memphis Saturday, state Rep. Justin Pearson announced he would oppose Cohen in the Democratic primary, and he launched his campaign with the support of major progressive PACs including the Squad-affiliated Justice Democrats and David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve, the latter of which plans to spend $1 million to elect Pearson.

In 2023, Pearson, along with his colleagues Justin Jones of Nashville and Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, made national headlines by joining a protest on the state House floor against gun violence and the state’s lax gun laws in response to a rash of shootings, including one at a private school in Nashville just days before. As punishment for their protest, the three, quickly termed the Tennessee Three, were moved for expulsion for violating the chamber’s rules—but when it came time to vote, Johnson, a 63-year-old white woman, survived the expulsion attempt by a single vote. Meanwhile, Pearson and Jones, both young Black men, received the votes necessary for expulsion. (The expulsion was ultimately a giant waste of everybody’s time, because Pearson and Jones both ran for and won their just-vacated seats in the subsequent special elections.) The episode gave Pearson, Jones, and Johnson a national profile—one which prompted Johnson to run for and win the Democratic Senate nomination last year, and one which inspired further action in-state as well; state Rep. Aftyn Behn, now the Democratic nominee in the December special election for Tennessee’s 7th congressional district, cited the Tennessee Three as an inspiration and a model in her own successful campaign for a vacant Nashville state House seat, winning on the same night that Jones and Pearson won their seats back. That national profile has helped Pearson raise a quarter of a million dollars in his first few days as a candidate, and he’ll surely have the resources to compete.

As race almost certainly played a role in the expulsion vote, race will also almost certainly play a role in this primary. Cohen is the only white representative of a Black-majority congressional district, and has previously been challenged (from the right) by Black candidates who made Cohen’s race an issue. But age will also be a factor in a way it hasn’t been before: Cohen, now 76, has never faced an opponent more than forty years his junior. (Pearson is 30.)

Minneapolis Mayor

Rep. Ilhan Omar has finally taken a side in the heated Minneapolis mayoral race. Surprising nobody, she has listed democratic socialist state Sen. Omar Fateh as her first choice, continuing her long-running feud with centrist Mayor Jacob Frey, a longtime foe of Minneapolis’s progressive congresswoman. Omar’s endorsement, while not unexpected, is just the latest boost for Fateh, who received the endorsement of the Minneapolis DFL (before the Frey-friendly state DFL revoked it) and has forged an alliance with his fellow Frey challengers under the city’s ranked-choice voting system. Omar, for her part, is gamely pretending it has nothing to do with her and Frey having a long-running rivalry, offering nothing but praise of Fateh’s legislative record advocating for rideshare drivers and other low-income Minnesotans.