Primary School 9/10/2026

Hi all - a reminder that primary previews and PAC Tracker issues are paywalled now. Regular issues and FEC roundups are going to go next, and everything will be paywalled by sometime in October. The final preview of the regular primary season, Delaware, will come out in advance of the First State's last-in-the-nation primaries on Tuesday.

Rhode Island and New Hampshire Results

In New Hampshire, results were as expected, with centrist Rep. Chris Pappas winning the Democratic Senate nomination by a wide margin, but with badly underfunded progressive medical scientist Karishma Manzur pulling a third of the vote in a reflection of voters’ appetite for something bolder. Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, narrowly won the Democratic nod for Pappas’s open NH-01, beating out even-more-moderate opponent Maura Sullivan while progressive Carleigh Beriont took an unexpectedly strong third and other candidates all collapsed into the low single digits. Rep. Maggie Goodlander won renomination by more than sixty points over all-but-broke primary challenger Paige Beauchemin, a state representative from Nashua.

In Rhode Island, state legislative incumbents won renomination across the board—meaning that progressive challengers came up short, but also meaning that the business-backed slate of right-wing Democratic primary challenges to liberal and progressive state legislators failed to notch a single victory. Incumbent Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos also survived her own tough primary—but Gov. Dan McKee did not, losing in a 25-point blowout to former CVS executive Helena Buonanno Foulkes, the challenger who had nearly unseated him four years ago and who now seems all but certain to be Rhode Island's next governor. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley also lost to democratic socialist state Rep. David Morales as progressives appear to have swept Providence City Council races (and picked up an open state House seat further south in Warwick.) To round out the night’s big races, Kim Ahern won the AG nomination, probably marking a slight shift to the right from retiring incumbent Peter Neronha, who backed runner-up Keith Hoffmann.

CA-04

After self-funding tech entrepreneur Eric Jones just barely made the general election by running to the left of Blue Dog Rep. Mike Thompson, Jones is now taking a different tack and chasing Republican votes, hoping that GOP voters can be persuaded to back a challenger. (Jones is squishy on policy and not a doctrinaire progressive, and he lacks support from many progressive groups, but it’s not very hard to be to the left of Thompson—while Thompson is probably the most liberal Blue Dog, he’s still a Blue Dog, with all the friendliness to industry and corporate influence that entails.)

Jones has already landed the endorsement of Raymond Riehle, the top-performing Republican in the June primary, and is now hiring Republican strategists to help him chase Republican voters alongside his existing team of Democratic strategists. Kind of gross, but Jones is also still very interested in voters to Thompson’s left: he later rolled out endorsements from two unsuccessful Northern California progressive congressional candidates, Audrey Denney (who ran in the sprawling CA-01) and Saikat Chakrabarti (who ran in San Francisco’s CA-11). There’s also precedent for California Republican voters opting for a more progressive Democrat they don’t know very well over a moderate Democrat they know and hate: in 2018, Republican voters strongly preferred Kevin de León, who was running to the left of then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein and attacking her as insufficiently progressive.

CA-07

Like Thompson, Rep. Doris Matsui also faces a younger Democrat running to her left, Sacramento City Councilor Mai Vang, in a district with a large Republican minority. Vang is a doctrinaire progressive backed by Justice Democrats and other major progressive groups, whereas Matsui is an unremarkably liberal backbencher. Her vulnerability is different from Thompson’s: Matsui is not a notably conservative Democrat, though she’s nobody’s idea of a progressive icon—she just turns 82 this month, in a year where several House Democrats younger than her have already lost their own seats to primary challengers for being seen as old and out of touch.

Matsui could try to do a version of Jones’s Republican-friendly strategy, modified to reflect her incumbency and voting record, but she doesn’t seem interested at the moment: her first ad of the general election, out this week, paints her as an anti-Trump fighter. However, with two months to go, there’s still plenty of time for Matsui to change her mind and chase Republican votes (or for Vang to try something similar.)

NJ-Lt. Gov.

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell is under investigation for allegedly improper behavior including some sort of sexual harassment and promises of state jobs—but it’s not clear who’s making the allegations, what the exact allegations are, or even how credible those allegations are, since the New York Times already has a partial rebuttal from at least one third-party witness, a North Carolina woman who an anonymous accuser alleged was improperly granted access to events by the lieutenant governor and who indignantly clarifies that everything was above board. But let’s back up a bit.

The existence of the investigation was first reported by the New Jersey Globe, the news blog run by disgraced Republican political fixer David Wildstein, whose role in the Bridgegate scandal ended his career in traditional politics and convinced him to return full-time to news blogging. (Unfortunately, Wildstein is very well-sourced, so Trenton still reads his stuff.) The Globe report was vague on most details, but said that the allegations included “inappropriate behavior with women and [...] the purported offer of state jobs.” 

The major law firm Lowenstein Sandler and former New Jersey Attorney General Christopher Porrino have been retained by Gov. Mikie Sherrill to conduct an independent investigation, which has been ongoing for some months now; Lt. Gov. Caldwell is lawyering up himself, bringing on former state AG Peter Harvey to advise him as he fights the nebulous allegations, which he reportedly (again, according to the Globe) called “a war with evil.” Sherrill’s administration has obliquely confirmed the existence of the investigation and offered no further comment, while Republicans in Trenton attack her from all angles for her handling of the allegations and Democrats in Trenton generally dodge questions on the matter. This seems like a mess all around, and it’s sure to develop further—though fuck if I know what direction those developments will take. All that’s certain is that New Jersey’s lieutenant governor is suddenly endangered, and the Sherrill administration has been thrown into public turmoil less than a year after winning a landslide from New Jersey voters.

New Jersey Legislature

The New Jersey Working Families Party is launching a statewide candidate recruitment effort ahead of the 2027 elections, when the entire state Assembly and state Senate will be up for the first time since the death of the county line. A number of Assembly incumbents narrowly survived underfunded primary challenges in 2025, an Assembly-only election year in which there wasn't much of a statewide effort beyond the paper-thin efforts of gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop's slate of Assembly candidates. As such, many incumbents already appear highly vulnerable to a more sustained primary effort after so many near misses in 2025—and the state Senate is up for grabs this time around, too. 2027 could be the perfect storm for a coordinated campaign of primary challenges, and NJWFP is now publicly making moves in that direction.