Morning Digest: A host of House Democrats could face trouble in California's primaries

Tuesday will offer a key test for incumbents facing calls for generational change

Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California (credit: Brad Sherman campaign site)

Leading Off

House

More than half a dozen House Democrats in California will face the first test of their popularity at the ballot box on Tuesday night in the face of widespread calls for new blood following the party’s defeat at the polls in 2024.

The Golden State’s top-two primary rules make it unlikely that any of these incumbents will lose on Tuesday. Many, though, will learn whether they can expect a serious fight for reelection in November from fellow Democrats, while others are hoping for easier battles against Republican opponents.

One Democrat who will be keeping a close eye on the race for second place is Rep. Ami Bera, who is running in a new 3rd District around Sacramento that includes only about one-third of his current constituents in the old 6th. Bera faces a trio of intraparty opponents who’ve argued the district deserves a more progressive representative who actually lives within its new borders.

Next door in the 4th District, Rep. Mike Thompson is trying to fend off wealthy venture capitalist ​​Eric Jones, who has put the 75-year-old congressman’s age front and center. A new commercial for an outside group backing Jones, 35, compares Thompson to a molding and forgotten jar of mayo in the fridge that may have “seemed fresh in the 90s” but is now “past his expiration date.”

And right nearby in the 7th District, Rep. Doris Matsui, 81, faces a tough battle of her own against Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang, an opponent four decades her junior. Matsui’s allies, though, are boosting a little-known Republican in the hopes of knocking Vang out of the second general election spot.

Similar battles are playing out in Southern California. Age and longevity are also factors in Rep. Brad Sherman’s race against former Biden administration official Jake Levine, who is almost three decades younger than the 71-year-old congressman, in the 32nd District in the San Fernando Valley.

Rep. Linda Sanchez’s top worry, by contrast, may be that not enough voters know her in the new 41st District in the southern part of Los Angeles County. Sanchez, whose old 38th District was home to less than half of the residents in the revamped constituency she’s now seeking, faces a rematch against former Assemblymember Hector De La Torre, whom she beat all the way back in 2002 during her first campaign for Congress.

These five aren’t the only potentially endangered House Democrats in the Golden State. Reps. Ro Khanna, Jimmy Gomez, and Maxine Waters all appear safer than their colleagues above, but they’ll also be watching Tuesday’s results for clues about whether any intraparty opponents could pose a threat to them in the fall.

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With behemoth California on the docket along with five other states, Tuesday’s primaries are utterly massive. To help you follow along with all the action, we’ve put together our latest preview of all the key races—more than 30 in all. Settle in with a jumbo iced tea at your elbow as you dive in!

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Senate

MN-Sen

A super PAC supporting Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig’s bid for Senate has released the first public poll of the Democratic primary finding the congresswoman ahead while also launching a new ad campaign targeting her top rival for the nomination

The survey, conducted by Global Strategy Group for North Star Dawn, gives Craig a slender 43-42 edge over Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who’d led in every previous poll of the race. The only one conducted recently, though, was a late April poll commissioned by Flanagan’s backers at the Democratic Lieutenant Governor’s Association, which put her up 44-33.

It’s the DLGA that’s the focus of North Star Dawn’s new attack ad, which charges that the organization—which Flanagan once led—”raised a staggering amount from corporate special interests: Big Pharma, oil and gas, tobacco” and “even accepted a donation from the private prison running ICE detention centers and separating families.”

Last month, the DLGA launched what it called a $2 million ad campaign hammering Craig for supporting the Laken Riley Act, a vote she later apologized for. So far, though, the group has reported spending under $130,000, while North Star Dawn has disclosed $300,000 in expenditures for its new anti-Flanagan effort.

Earlier this year in Illinois, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi similarly sought to thwart Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s Senate ambitions by airing ads critical of the DLGA. Those attacks, however, failed to gain much traction as Stratton defeated Krishnamoorthi 40-33.

Governors

AK-Gov

Former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker launched a bid to reclaim his old post right before Monday’s filing deadline, while Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom quit the race after campaigning for the job for over a year.

Walker, a former Republican, ran as an independent in 2014 and unseated GOP incumbent Sean Parnell after the Democratic nominee, Byron Mallott, dropped out and became Walker’s running mate.

Four years later, though, he faced a tough reelection campaign against Republican Mike Dunleavy—even before former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich entered the race, a move that cost the governor the chance to benefit from institutional Democratic support.

Walker wound up dropping out a week and a half before Election Day and endorsed Begich following Mallott’s resignation in the face of a sexual harassment scandal, but the late shakeup wasn’t enough to stop Dunleavy from winning.

Following his exit, Walker waged a comeback bid in 2022 after the state implemented a new electoral system but fell far short. In the ranked-choice general election, Dunleavy won outright with 50.3% of the vote, while Democrat Les Gara took 24% and Walker finished third with just 21%.

Dunleavy is now set to become the first Alaska governor to leave office because of term limits since 2002, prompting a massive field of candidates from all parties—and no party at all—to join the race to succeed him.

Dahlstrom, though, is no longer among that group. Elected on a ticket with Dunleavy in 2022, Dahlstrom sought to unseat Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola two years later. However, after finishing third in the top-four primary, she withdrew from the race in the hopes of boosting fellow Republican Nick Begich, who went on to narrowly oust Peltola.

Undeterred, Dahlstrom became one of the first major candidates to kick off a bid for governor in May of last year, but she pulled the plug on Monday without much in the way of explanation. As Alaska Public Media noted, though, her initial fundraising haul was feeble.

KS-Gov

Former Gov. Jeff Colyer abandoned his bid to reclaim his old job by failing to file paperwork by Monday’s deadline, a day that also saw other candidates make last-minute moves in the race to succeed term-limited Democrat Laura Kelly.

Colyer, who’d been elected lieutenant governor on a ticket with Sam Brownback, was elevated to the top job in early 2018 when the extremely unpopular Brownback resigned to take a post in the Trump administration. The new governor, though, almost immediately faced a difficult primary.

Colyer ultimately lost a seven-person nomination contest to Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who had Donald Trump’s endorsement, by a 40.6 to 40.5 margin—a difference of just 343 votes. Colyer then watched from the sidelines as Kelly scored an upset victory over the disastrous Kobach in the general election.

Three years later, Colyer launched a comeback bid but dropped out after just a few months on the trail, citing a diagnosis of prostate cancer. This time around, he faced a large field of rivals for the Republican nod. Once again, though, he wound up on the wrong side of a Trump endorsement, as MAGA’s master just gave his backing to state Senate President Ty Masterson last week.

Meanwhile, one minor Republican, businesswoman Joy Eakins, also dropped her campaign for governor and instead signed on as the running mate for financial services executive Philip Sarnecki.

There was also late action on the Democratic side, as Overland Park Mayor Curt Skoog jumped into the Aug. 4 primary on Monday.

Skoog was first elected to the City Council in Overland Park, a populous suburb of Kansas City that’s the second-largest city in the state, as a Republican in 2005. However, he switched parties ahead of his successful bid for mayor in 2021 and won reelection four years later.

Now, though, he joins a race that features two other Democrats who’ve both been on the campaign trail for nearly a year: state Sens. Cindy Holscher and Ethan Corson. There’s been no recent polling, but Corson sports an endorsement from term-limited Gov. Laura Kelly and also led Holscher in fundraising when disclosures were last filed in January.

House

UT-01

State Sen. Nate Blouin’s efforts to convince a pair of his rivals to drop out of the Democratic primary for Utah’s 1st District and unite behind his candidacy ran aground on Monday after neither of his opponents was persuaded by a new poll he commissioned.

Last week, Blouin, an outspoken progressive, announced that he was conducting a survey and was “calling on all but the leading progressive candidate in this upcoming poll to drop out and consolidate against Ben McAdams,” a moderate former congressman.

Blouin told the Salt Lake Tribune that he had sought to reach a private agreement with two other left-leaning candidates, Michael Farrell and Liban Mohamed, but decided to go public because of “foot-dragging from the other campaigns,” as the paper put it.

Both Mohamed and Farrell reacted with hostility at the time, and they emphasized their intention to stay in the race after Blouin made his poll public on Monday.

The survey, conducted by Upswing, found McAdams leading with 37%, while Blouin took 27, Mohamed 13, and Farrel 7. The remainder were undecided—though Mohamed and Farrell were not.

“I’m not surprised that Nate came out second in a poll funded by him with questions he drafted,” Farrell told Bryan Schott of Utah Political Watch. “People know Nate, and his support is capped around 25-27%.”

Mohamed, who edged out McAdams 51-49 at a late April convention to earn the Democratic Party’s endorsement, was similarly defiant. In a statement, he said, “I will not abandon the thousands of people who organized, participated, and earned that victory.”

McAdams, meanwhile, is getting the first major infusion of outside support in the race. Punchbowl reports that the political arm of the centrist New Democrat Coalition is spending $1 million on an ad campaign to boost the ex-congressman ahead of the June 23 primary.

The group’s new spot praises McAdams for, among other things, voting to impeach Donald Trump during his lone term in Congress. A recent ad from McAdams’ own campaign emphasized the same vote.

Poll Pile

• CA-Gov (top-two): SurveyUSA for KGTV-TV and the San Diego Union-Tribune:

  • Tom Steyer (D): 20, Steve Hilton (R): 20, Xavier Becerra (D): 17, Chad Bianco (R): 11, Katie Porter (D): 7, Matt Mahan (D): 6, other candidates 4% or less.

  • Early May: Hilton (R): 20, Steyer (D): 18, Bianco (R): 12, Becerra (D): 10, Porter (D): 8, Mahan (D): 7.

• CA-Gov (top-two primary): University of Southern California/California State University Long Beach/Cal Poly Pomona:

  • Becerra (D): 29, Hilton (R): 23, Steyer (D): 18, Bianco (R): 11, Porter (D): 8, other candidates 4% or less.

• CA-Gov: USC/CSU Long Beach/Cal Poly Pomona:

  • Hilton (R): 34, Bianco (R): 15.

  • Steyer (D): 55, Hilton (R): 34.

  • Becerra (D): 58, Hilton (R): 35.

  • Becerra (D): 37, Steyer (D): 26.

  • Becerra (D): 42, Porter (D): 22.

  • Steyer (D): 31, Porter (D): 30.

• PA-Gov: Bravo Group for PennLive:

  • Josh Shapiro (D-inc): 53, Stacey Garrity (R): 29.

• NJ-07 (D): Tavern Research:

  • Rebecca Bennett: 32, Tina Shah: 16, Brian Varela: 15, Michael Roth: 12.

• WY-AL (R): Fabrizio, Lee & Associates for Chuck Gray:

  • Chuck Gray: 21, Reid Rasner: 14, Steve Friess: 10, Jillian Balow: 8, Bo Biteman: 7, Kevin Christensen: 5, other candidates 1% or less, undecided: 33.