Issue 7

Primary School

— 9 min read

Issue 7

July 7, 2025

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AZ-07

News

AZ-07

Pre-primary fundraising reports are in, and they paint a picture of a competitive three-way race. Frontrunner Adelita Grijalva leads the pack in money raised, thanks to strong support from both large and small donors, with more than $824,000 raised since entering the race in April. The race’s biggest spender is former state Rep. Daniel Hernandez, a centrist who previously ran for AZ-06 (the other Tucson-based congressional district, held by Republican Juan Ciscomani); Hernandez spent just over $900,000 in the second quarter of 2025 and raised more than $643,000, leaving his bank account depleted while both of his opponents have six figures in store for the final stretch. And Gen Z Democratic operative and activist Deja Foxx rounds out the field with a quarterly haul of just under $600,000, with a large majority of her money coming from unitemized donations of less than $200—meaning that, while Foxx raised the least of the three major Democratic candidates, she raised the most by far from small donors. If one thing is clear from this, it’s that the Democrats’ small-dollar fundraising base is energized for young candidates.

David Hogg’s PAC, Leaders We Deserve, is spending big for Foxx, throwing down $150K in digital ads, while Grijalva continues to benefit from a steady flow of independent expenditures from more mainstream progressive groups loyal to her late father.

CA-Gov

Another poll is out indicating that former Vice President Kamala Harris could be the favorite to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom if she decides to run. The poll from UC Irvine tests a number of current and potential candidates, and Harris leads 24% to 9% over the next-strongest candidate, conservative Democrat Rick Caruso (who pulls most of his support from self-identified Republicans, and who, like Harris, may or may not run.) Former Rep. Katie Porter is in third with 6%, and she’s the highest-polling of all the candidates who've actually declared campaigns; former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former HHS Secretary and state AG Xavier Becerra, and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis are each stuck below 5%.

CA-12

State Sen. Scott Wiener is growing increasingly impatient with Nancy Pelosi’s retirement deliberations, and he’s now filed a campaign committee with the FEC to begin raising money (for 2028, but any money raised for 2028 could be seamlessly converted to a 2026 campaign.) Pelosi, who does appear to be running again, already faces a challenge from former AOC chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti.

CO-01

Attorney and PhD student Melat Kiros has filed with the FEC to run against Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette, a 67-year-old who has represented Denver in Congress since the 1990s. Kiros was fired from a previous job at the major law firm Sidley Austin for an open letter she wrote urging leaders not to crack down on viewpoints which question Israel’s legitimacy in non-bigoted ways; though her letter expressly condemned both antisemitism in general and the October 7 attacks in specific, she was fired anyway when she refused to take the letter down.

CT-01

76-year-old John Larson has represented the Hartford area in Congress since the 1990s, and while he once chaired the House Democratic Caucus a little over a decade ago, he’s settled comfortably into life as a backbencher on the powerful Ways and Means Committee in his later years. Due to Connecticut’s unforgiving ballot access laws, Larson has never faced a primary; former congressional staffer Muad Hrezi tried in 2022, but was struck from the ballot. Hartford school board member Ruth Fortune is seeking to change that next year.

Fortune, a trusts and estates lawyer and the mother of three Hartford Public Schools students, is a first-time candidate (the Hartford school board has both elected and appointed members, and Fortune is an appointee of Democratic Mayor Arunan Arulampalam.) Arulampalam tells the Connecticut Mirror that Fortune did not consult him about her decision to run, and added that he found out about her candidacy when someone else texted him about her filing with the FEC. Fortune, for her part, is currently striking a positive tone, and says her campaign is unrelated to anything Larson has or hasn’t done. Even without going negative, Fortune, a 37-year-old formerly undocumented immigrant from Haiti, still provides a sharp contrast to the incumbent, a septuagenarian white man with a coiffed head of white hair who recently had a complex partial seizure on the House floor.

FL-23

Political consultant and progressive activist Oliver Larkin has launched a primary challenge to conservative Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, the former leader of Ron DeSantis’s COVID response and congressional Democrats’ biggest DOGE fan. Moskowitz’s district lurched right in 2024, but still ultimately voted for Kamala Harris, and Larkin is arguing that the district can afford a representative who takes fewer gratuitous shots at his own side and holds the line against the increasing racist extremism of the Republican Party.

IL-Gov, IL-Lt. Gov.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has chosen former Deputy Gov. Christian Mitchell as his running mate for 2026, replacing incumbent Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who is running for Senate with Pritzker’s support. Mitchell, a former state representative from Chicago and trusted Pritzker adviser, doesn’t add geographic diversity to Pritzker’s ticket (the governor is also from Chicago), but he does add experience and relationships with lawmakers.

IL-09

State Rep. Hoan Huynh, a progressive from Chicago’s North Side, is the latest candidate to enter the crowded primary to succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky. He joins Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, journalist and influencer Kat Abughazaleh, state Sen. Laura Fine, Skokie school board member Bushra Amiwala, civil rights attorney Howard Rosenblum, and activist Miracle Jenkins.

NH-01

This past week, attorney Christian Urrutia became the fourth Democrat to enter the race for this light-blue district based in Manchester and New Hampshire’s Seacoast region, open thanks to the Senate campaign of Rep. Chris Pappas. A former Biden administration official and a captain in the New Hampshire Army National Guard, Urrutia is framing himself as an outsider—which, considering his background (he’s also an executive at Airbnb), can only be read as an implicit shot at former Portsmouth City Councilor Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Also in the race are Hampton select board member Carleigh Beriont and state Democratic Party vice chair Maura Sullivan; I missed this until now, but state Rep. Alice Wade, a 24-year-old aerospace engineer who would be just the second openly trans member of Congress, has also formed an exploratory committee.

NYC Mayor

After democratic socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s shocking victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, the Democratic establishment is split on how to react. Some key players, like Manhattan U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, Brooklyn Democratic boss and Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, and major labor organizations, are quickly coming around to Mamdani, while others...are not (though even some of his louder critics, like Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres, are nevertheless defending Mamdani from some of the more racist and Islamophobic attacks.)

After a brief period where it looked like Cuomo might not contest the general election, it’s now being reported that the disgraced ex-governor is trying to convince wavering allies to stick with him as he pursues a third-party bid, with limited success (Al Sharpton, for example, went from criticizing Mamdani before the primary to calling on Cuomo to drop out after it.) Already running on an independent ballot line is Mayor Eric Adams, who like Cuomo is running on a bespoke, candidate-specific ballot line created to contest this year’s election; while New York does have a strong minor party that thrives under its unique fusion voting system, that party is the left-wing Working Families Party, which is backing Mamdani. And the moneyed donors who are most afraid of Mamdani can’t seem to agree on which candidate has a better shot at upsetting Mamdani, who is now a strong favorite to win the general election—which is good news for Mamdani, because the general election, unlike the primary, is first-past-the-post, and Republican Curtis Sliwa and center-right independent Jim Walden are also on the ballot.

NY-Gov

Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, who’s running a long-shot primary challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul, didn’t need long to decide that tacking to the left was the smart move after Zohran Mamdani’s win. He’s already criticizing Hochul for being a roadblock to Mamdani’s plans to tax the rich (presumably based on Hochul’s opposition to efforts in the legislature to do the same at the statewide level, as the legislature would have to sign off on major NYC tax hikes.)

Meanwhile, we can cross one candidate’s name off the list: Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres won't be running for governor in light of Mamdani’s win. (According to a recent Siena poll, Torres polled in third with 10% behind Delgado with 12% and Hochul with a commanding 49%, so he may just be recognizing the inevitable—though Delgado would surely disagree with that assessment.)

NY-10

One of the most egregious holdouts in endorsing Zohran Mamdani is Rep. Dan Goldman, a centrist Levi Strauss heir who bought himself a House seat in 2022 and got a weak 65% in the 2024 primary against a pair of no-name challengers. Goldman’s district takes in Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan neighborhoods that went for Mamdani by lopsided margins, and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander—a longtime resident of Park Slope who earned the admiration of many on the left during his mayoral campaign for his cross-endorsement with Mamdani and burning hatred for Andrew Cuomo, and who did particularly well in the 10th congressional district—is not saying no to a potential bid. (However, many expect Lander to have a high-profile role in a now-likely Mamdani administration.)

NY-15

Ritchie Torres will not be running for governor, keeping a promise he made earlier in the year not to run in the event that Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race. That means he’s up for reelection in 2026—and one former mayoral candidate may have his eye on a primary challenge, if his unsubtle subtweets are any indication. Former Assemblyman Michael Blake didn’t break through at all in the mayoral race, but he did unlock a bunch of last-minute matching funds thanks to a strong debate performance in which he memorably said “the greatest threat to public safety in New York City” was Cuomo’s record of sexual harassment and nursing home deaths.

NY-SD-13

Some of the ripples from Zohran Mamdani’s win will take years to be felt, but others are going to be more immediate. Take Jessica Ramos, for example: the Queens state senator and failed mayoral candidate beclowned herself and betrayed her longtime progressive allies with her endorsement of Andrew Cuomo. Now, anyone who’s got a grudge with Jessica Ramos has a substantive excuse to go after her—and now looks like a great time, as Ramos’s district voted overwhelmingly for Mamdani over Cuomo. And progressives’ strongest possible candidate is already considering a run.

Queens Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas was one of several progressives who challenged then-incumbent Michael DenDekker in 2020 for a Jackson Heights Assembly seat, and she ended up easily defeating both DenDekker and the field. While redistricting has changed her district to drop some of Jackson Heights (which is in Ramos’s district) and add some of Astoria (which is not), González-Rojas herself still lives in Jackson Heights, a left-leaning, heavily immigrant neighborhood that helped power AOC’s 2018 upset of Joe Crowley. While she is not formally affiliated with DSA’s Socialists In Office program, she is a member of the organization, and she’s also on good terms with other progressive organizations like the Working Families Party. González-Rojas has previously criticized Ramos’s Cuomo endorsement, and she’s now looking at a primary challenge to Ramos—and if she runs, she can count on support from more than just her usual progressive allies (who might be enough on their own in a Jackson Heights-based district.)

At a small press conference, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who has yet to support Zohran Mamdani, offered his support for a potential González-Rojas primary challenge, saying he’d support her “Day 1.”

NY-AD-24

According to Politico, Mamdani campaign volunteer Mahtab Khan is thinking about capitalizing on his candidate’s surprising win in this sprawling Queens district, which stretches from Richmond Hill in south-central Queens to Hollis Hills in far eastern Queens. Powered by strong support from South Asian voters, Mamdani carried AD-24 47-42—likely to the dismay of Assemblymember David Weprin, an enthusiastic Cuomo surrogate and vocal Mamdani hater.

PA-03

As was rumored last week, Rep. Dwight Evans is indeed retiring, which opens up the bluest congressional seat in the United States. Contained entirely within the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s 3rd gave 88% of the vote to Kamala Harris and 90% to Joe Biden. The first candidate to throw his hat in the ring is a nightmare: charter school-loving state Sen. Sharif Street. Street is the chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, but don’t let that fool you into thinking he’s a loyal Democrat: he tried to get a Republican gerrymander of Pennsylvania’s congressional map passed in 2021 because the gerrymander would have cleared his path to Congress. Thankfully, he failed and had to wait for Evans to retire, but he wasted no time in announcing his campaign once Evans made his retirement announcement.

Also making early moves towards a run are physician Dave Oxman and progressive state Rep. Chris Rabb; both have donation pages up and running, though Rabb’s is labeled for an exploratory committee. Expect many, many more names to surface in the coming weeks and months.

Buffalo Mayor

Erie County Clerk Mickey Kearns, a Democrat who has mainly run on the Republican ballot line for various offices including his current one, is now mulling a run for mayor of Buffalo, citing his unhappiness with the victory of liberal state Sen. Sean Ryan over moderate Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon in the Democratic primary (and Scanlon’s subsequent decision not to contest the general election on a third-party line.) Kearns is a conservative with a particular focus on criminal justice (he’s a law-and-order tough-on-crime type.)

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