Issue 8

A housekeeping note: the AZ-07 preview, including a final update of the independent expenditure tracker, will be out tomorrow, followed by the Q2 FEC roundup later this week.

News

CO-01

I noticed attorney Melat Kiros’s FEC filing and had a hunch that she might be a candidate to watch, so you heard about her last week. She’s now out with a polished launch video, framing herself as a working-class Democrat’s Democrat—she now works as a barista to pay the bills—who’s ready to take on big money. Incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, 67, has held office since before Kiros, 28, was born, so the generational argument is obvious. Given the themes of Kiros’s launch and given her background—she was fired from a major law firm for refusing to withdraw an Israel-critical call for peace and equality in Israel and Palestine, inspired by her own background as a Tigrayan refugee—I wouldn’t be surprised if she took things in a more ideological direction as well.

CT-Gov

You either die the progressive challenger or live long enough to become the centrist incumbent. That’s now the story of Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, the wealthy businessman who made a name for himself when he upset conservative Sen. Joe Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic Senate primary; this week, state Rep. Josh Elliott became the first notable Democrat to launch a campaign against the second-term governor—from the left. (While this is a role reversal for Lamont, “progressive challenger” is a role Elliott is comfortable playing—it’s how he got into the state House in 2016.)

At the root of the anger is Lamont’s testy relationship with the more liberal (but by no means radical) Democratic-controlled legislature; it came to a head this year with Lamont’s recent vetoes of bills to increase affordable housing supply and make striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits. Those vetoes got Elliott and colleagues talking about getting rid of Lamont—state Sen. Saud Anwar also wrote an op-ed calling on the governor to step aside for a more reliably liberal Democrat. Now, Elliott is taking the plunge himself, at least until someone stronger enters, and some of his colleagues are on board (including Anwar.) State House Speaker Matt Ritter is pointedly noncommittal when asked about Elliott’s run—rather than the customary support for an incumbent governor you’d expect—and state Rep. Anne Hughes sounds supportive.

CT-03

Immigration attorney Damjan DeNoble is challenging Rep. Rosa DeLauro the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, for her New Haven-based seat, which she has held since 1991. DeNoble, a naturalized citizen born in the former Yugoslavia, has worked on a variety of ventures assisting undocumented workers and other immigrants in obtaining legal status, and now works as an immigration attorney assisting domestic workers and their employers. DeNoble cites age as a motivator for his challenge, and it’s not hard to see why: DeLauro, 82, is more than twice the age of DeNoble, a 40-year-old father of three. DeLauro, an ally of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and a reliable liberal, is otherwise not an obvious primary target compared to many more conservative House Democrats—but if you sort the House Democratic caucus by age, she is near the top.

IL-02

We’ve heard your calls, America. You wanted generational turnover, you wanted less Democratic cronyism and nepotism, you wanted a party that can credibly attack Republican corruption. So we have…disgraced former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who resigned in November 2012 amid a federal corruption investigation and pleaded guilty in February 2013 to a conspiracy to make numerous personal purchases with campaign funds, including a Michael Jackson fedora and autographed guitar. (His wife, a Chicago alderman at the time, pleaded guilty to tax fraud at the same time for her role in attempting to conceal the scheme.) Jackson Jr., the son of civil rights leader and former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and the brother of 1st District U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, represented this district until his 2012 resignation, after which he was succeeded by Rep. Robin Kelly, who's leaving this Chicago-to-Danville seat behind to run for Senate. Now, he’s considering a comeback, and he's filed an exploratory committee with the FEC. Jackson Jr. would have name recognition, fundraising ability, and relationships across the district—but he also comes with baggage that his opponents would most certainly exploit, and he’s more than a decade out of the game at this point. A more…normal candidate is also taking a look at the race: state Sen. Willie Preston, the chair of the Illinois Senate Black Caucus, tells Politico he’s worried about funding for safety-net hospitals, a topical concern in light of the Big, Beautiful Bill taking direct aim at the finances of American hospitals.

Another formidable candidate actually launched this week: Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, an ally of Kelly and past board chair of Planned Parenthood Illinois. Miller, the great-granddaughter of a Pullman porter, says she’s carrying her grandfather’s legacy forward; “he helped build the Black middle class,” and that’s also Miller’s pitch—a smart one in this district, where the median primary voter is a middle-class Black suburbanite.

IL-07

As Rep. Danny Davis continues to play coy about his reelection plans, former Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin is the latest notable Democrat to tire of waiting and file with the FEC. Boykin, a conservative Democrat, was last seen losing a 2022 primary challenge to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, a progressive who runs a formidable Chicago-based political machine who had chased Boykin off the county board in 2018 by backing a challenger: future Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. Boykin is most notable for his apocalyptic, unmoored-from-data rhetoric about Chicago’s gun violence epidemic—he once went to the UN to pull a stunt where he asked for a peacekeeping force to be sent to Chicago—and the 90s-flavored tough-on-crime politics you’d expect from someone who pulled such a stunt. He’s not the only person who’s either planning on challenging Davis or betting on a retirement: real estate heir Jason Friedman is running whether or not Davis retires, and he’s already raised $1 million. And state Rep. La Shawn Ford, an ally of Davis, has filed a committee of his own.

IL-09

State Sen. Mike Simmons and former FBI agent Phil Andrew are the latest entrants into this clown-car primary. Notable candidates already running are Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, state Sen. Laura Fine, journalist and influencer Kat Abughazaleh, Skokie school board member Bushra Amiwala, state Rep. Hoan Huynh, activist Miracle Jenkins, and civil rights attorney and disability activist Howard Rosenblum. I’ll introduce each new candidate in turn.

Simmons was a career Democratic staffer in the offices of Barack Obama, Dick Durbin, and Rahm Emanuel before going into political consulting, and he surprised the world of Chicago politics by winning an appointment to the Illinois Senate in 2021, becoming the first openly gay Illinois state senator. He was reelected in 2022 and 2024, and his candidacy has been something of an open secret for a little while—he’s even been going to candidate forums. This campaign is a free shot for Simmons, who is not up for reelection until 2028. Simmons, the son of an Ethiopian immigrant, is a Chicago resident like Huynh and Abughazaleh; Biss and Jenkins are from Evanston, and the other contenders are from the suburbs.

Andrew, a resident of the affluent suburb of Wilmette, survived a mass shooting as a college student in 1988, then became a gun safety activist before joining the FBI in 1997. After leaving the FBI in 2018, he founded a consulting group focused on violence prevention and crisis resolution; now, he’s turning his attention to the electoral arena. Andrew says he’s “ready for the fight” and that we are in a “moment of crisis.”

NH-01

Sarah Chadzynski, a former teacher and state House candidate who now serves as a director for the American Coalition for Ukraine, became the fifth Democrat to enter the race for Chris Pappas’s open seat this week. Chadzynski launched her campaign outside the Strafford County Jail, the lone ICE detention site in New Hampshire, and said her campaign was about “basic human rights [...] being stripped systematically from our nation.” Chadzynski joins Hampton Select Board member Carleigh Beriont, former Biden administration attorney Christian Urrutia, state party vice chair and 2018 NH-01 candidate Maura Sullivan, and former Portsmouth city councilor Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (who is busy voting to confirm Trump’s pick to deregulate the airline industry on her way out of office.) State Rep. Alice Wade has also formed an exploratory committee, but has not officially announced whether she’s in or out.

PA-03

Two candidates whose ActBlue pages I noticed last week formally launched campaigns this week. Physician Dave Oxman is a first-time candidate, but he says he’s already raised $300,000 from his personal network (and I’m immediately skeptical based on the seeming support of 314 Action, an ostensibly pro-science PAC that functions as a conduit for conservative Democratic donors.) State Rep. Chris Rabb, on the other hand, is, as the Philly Inquirer notes, a progressive with a history of beating the establishment—unseating an incumbent who was backed by the full force of the Democratic establishment in a 2016 primary, then easily defeating a fellow incumbent in a redistricting-induced primary in 2022, once again with the establishment backing his opponent. He’s striking a familiar, progressive tone in his congressional campaign. State Rep. Morgan Cephas has also said she’s considering a run, and many others are likely to take a look at entering the Democratic primary for the bluest House seat in the country.

Already in the race is state Sen. Sharif Street, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party and an all-around terrible Democrat. (He loves charter schools and tried to help Republicans gerrymander the state’s congressional map for his own personal gain.) Street announced immediately after Rep. Dwight Evans announced his retirement last week; now, just a week into his congressional campaign, Street rolled out a slate of early union endorsements, most of them coming from the more conservative building trades. It’s a serious show of force from Street—one that’s unlikely to deter Rabb or Oxman, but one that could easily scare off weaker or more cautious candidates.

Minneapolis Mayor and Council

Democratic socialist state Sen. Omar Fateh is gaining momentum as he challenges Mayor Jacob Frey, an ostensible liberal known for his widely unpopular response to the George Floyd protests and his generally poor relationship with anyone to the left of Mitt Romney in Twin Cities politics. This week, Fateh was endorsed by the SEIU, a powerful union primarily representing healthcare workers. His momentum is making some in the Frey camp nervous: the chairman of the DFL in Congressional District 5, which includes Minneapolis, is now pushing to ban DFL endorsements of candidates endorsed by the DSA—even as two DSA-backed candidates, Council Members Jason Chavez and Aurin Chowdhury, have already been endorsed by the ward-based DFL organizations in their reelection campaigns. (The DFL is Minnesota’s Democratic Party affiliate, and its activist-driven primary endorsements are quite powerful; progressives and socialists have gotten very good at competing at the endorsement conventions in recent years.)

NYC Mayor, NY Legislature

As some prominent New York Democrats—looking at you, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries—continue to withhold their support from Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, their local establishment allies are increasingly coming around to Mamdani. On primary night, Brooklyn Democratic boss Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, an assemblywoman from Flatbush and an influential Cuomo backer, backed Mamdani as the primary winner, and she was joined by Manhattan Rep. and power broker Jerry Nadler later that week. While Cuomo, Mayor Eric Adams, and former prosecutor Jim Walden all attempt to garner support (and collect donations) from Mamdani-skeptical New Yorkers, Mamdani added a number of influential supporters to his column this week: first, there was the Manhattan Democratic Party and Harlem boss Keith Wright, who backed Cuomo in the primary; then, the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers’ union, which sat the primary out; and finally, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a Cuomo backer who runs a powerful machine in Upper Manhattan (where Mamdani crushed Cuomo) and the Bronx (where Cuomo crushed Mamdani.) It can't hurt that Cuomo is now scrambling—appearing to commit to an independent run, but conditioned on the other non-Mamdani candidates agreeing to drop out by September if an independent poll shows Cuomo has the best shot at defeating the Democratic nominee.

One impact of Mamdani’s win is already clear: Bed-Stuy Council Member Chi Ossé has pre-endorsed an unnamed challenger to Assemb. Stefani Zinerman, two years after staying neutral as DSA’s Eon Huntley challenged Zinerman for Bed-Stuy’s Assembly District 56. Huntley lost that race by about 500 votes. Huntley is expected to run again, and quoted Ossé’s anti-Zinerman endorsement with the 😈 emoji. Mamdani, also a DSA candidate, won a whopping 64% of the first-round vote in Assembly District 56, according to preliminary results from the New York City Board of Elections. This comes as other Mamdani-critical legislators in Mamdani-voting districts already face rumors of primary peril: Queens Assemblyman David Weprin, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos, and NY-10 U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman have all been the subject of primary chatter since Mamdani's shocking win.