He’s gonna get attacked either way. If Wahls is labeling him as a conservative, maybe it helps Turek’s positioning as the moderate in the general election.
Oof, that NY-15 poll does not look good for Michael Blake. It's an internal too. Damn, I really don't like Torres. Ah well.
Anyway, Plummer's win was a pretty big upset in the Harris County Judge race. Parker led by quite a bit in the one poll I saw. It's also yet another left victory, as Parker was more of a centrist, while Plummer was a progressive backed by outgoing Judge Lina Hidalgo. The question now is: can she win in November, given how close Hidalgo's races were? (In this environment, I'd say probably.)
Unrelated, but on Bluesky there's been a lot of sudden energy and interest in Darializa Avila Chevalier's primary bid against Espaillat. The DSA is backing her, I've heard her canvassers are out in force, and the one poll done showed Espaillat ahead by a lot, but not cracking 50 in the poll (and he previously underperformed even lesser-known challengers). Could an upset be brewing? Or is Espaillat safe? Curious to know people's thoughts.
Finally, I'm curious to know what people here think of Menefee beating Green. Good news, or bad news? They are both progressives from what I've heard (albeit with crypto backing Menefee), so it seems to be more of a generational challenge. Thoughts?
I’m very happy that Democratic voters are choosing the younger candidates. Al Green was a good Rep, nothing against him at all. But the idea that you should stay in office until you die needs to be cast aside, especially at a time when voters don’t trust the Party. How can you make the case for something new if you are running candidates who have been in office for decades?
Yeah in a head to head without age, I probably like Green more. And don't like how Menefee is awash with tech money. But I have so much agita about the risk of Green dying before January 2029 that I donated to Menefee.
I don't like tech money either but I think it's probably a net-positive for the party to have more people in office who tech isn't scared of. I don't think we lost 2024 because of the huge surge of donations to Trump, but it certainly didn't help.
That’s why I think Democrats need to 1) ban stock trading within the Senate and House caucuses without waiting for the GOP to move on it, 2) remove Schumer as Minority Leader (fair or unfair, 3 decades in office links him to everything that voter’s hate about Congress), and 3) like Peltola, attack corruption in a non-partisan way that links it to not addressing local concerns
Because getting Independents or anti-MAGA Republicans to believe Democrats are serious about corruption matters most.
I think it depends from office to office. Form letters are the least impactful for sure, they usually just get aggregated as one same comment with a note about volume. But something originally sent should get read more closely. And ofc making sure you're sending to their DC office (or perhaps leadership office if relevant), rather than their district/state offices.
The huge majority of self-described independents are (at least fairly) reliable voters for one party or the other. If they turn out, that's who they'll vote for. The goal is to turn out Dem voters, and corruption is a good lever for that.
James Talarico calling his race “The People vs Ken Paxton” is absolutely brilliant! It’s a terrific way to remind Texas voters of Ken Paxton’s impeachment and utter corruption! And it’s a great way to underscore that Talarico is the people’s choice – the real choice of Texans.
In Indiana, Diego Morales is hitting back at the Republican establishment's efforts to take him out of the race for The Republican nomination for Secretary of State:
It's a curious line of argument: that Republican supporters of redistricting are opposing him because he supported Republican redistricting. Of course, it is also curious that Republican leadership is going after him for supposedly having an illegal immigrant who voted in elections working in his office (which, the article tells us is untrue) rather than focusing on Morales' hiring of relatives and spending a lot of money on official cars and travel.
My based on nothing theories are that he has more substantive sexual assault allegations waiting in the wings, so they're making things up to push him out without Streisand-effecting it by saying it out loud, and/or there's a clear tinge of intra-party racism that Morales is getting kicked out for things that would not be as big a deal if he was just another venal, predatory white conservative guy.
I cannot understand Texan Republicans. Texans have always taken great pride in their independence and the state’s inner “grandeur” (everything is bigger in Texas). But now, they act as total puppets and ring kissers (very tempted to have them kiss something else) to a multiple felon, sexual predator, and general crook. What happened to Texas Republicans?
They got entrenched in power and, like NC Republicans, started catering to billionaire PAC donors rather than do their effing jobs.
But TX Republicans are a different breed altogether. Paxton makes the slimy dealings by Berger, Moore and Hall look like child's play.
Paxton could very well be TX's Kari Lake/Herschel Walker this cycle. But TX voters HAVE to turn out to vote for Talarico. The thought of Paxton schlepping it up with Cruz in the U.S. Senate makes me sick.
Everything is nationalized now; regional independence is dead. Southern Louisiana voters also stayed independent until they suddenly didn't; now they're West Virginia 2.0
Very excited to see Plummer win, and she's also another rare thing: an elected Democratic dentist lol. They tend to be Republicans (currently: Mike Simpson, Paul Gosar, Brian Babin and party switcher Jeff Van Drew; so were Dan Crane, Drew Ferguson and Demi Kouzounas).
Paxton is not an anomaly, he’s par for the course in a state party that’s produced Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott. He’s also a proven vote getter. He won’t be easy to defeat. The logical next step for Texas Republicans will be to nominate a school shooter.
The entire GOP ecosystem has their talking points down already — Talarico is a Vegan, God is nonbinary, there are 6 genders. Heard this exact same schtick in that order seven times last night. Will it stick? How much energy and money will JT spend to defend/explain?
It'd be good for Talarico to have a little bit of Southern charm and be someone ladies swoon over rather than pinch the cheek of. I'm not sure that's totally compatible with the wholesome preacher thing, but a little bit of masculine energy could go a long way in Texas. Our successful politicians in the South (Clinton foremost among them, but also Beshear, Cooper, Ossoff, Warnock, Beebee, JBE) have pretty wives and deep voices.
It'd be pretty amazing if it somehow didn't stick. Talarico might be able to talk his way out of one Berkeley-coded position but all those early 2020s comments stacked on top of each other are gonna be hard to come back from....in Texas.
I dunno...any D running statewide in a red state is already going to be associated with those positions. I'm not sure it'll really have a huge impact. I'm not saying he's favored or anything, but I think he has a very real shot at winning this thing in the current political environment.
"He’s also a proven vote getter." Is this true? As far as I can discern he has underperformed every other statewide R candidate in every election since 2014, sometimes significantly.
Basically everything that could have went right for us in Texas went right. Jon Rosenthal is a very credible candidate who, in theory, should be able to take advantage of Bo French’s extreme racism if he is sufficiently funded. Might be worth the national party investing in a few of these downballot statewide races in Texas.
I really think public services/utilities commission candidates are such a clear area for the party to invest and grow their benches. I think they'll turn out to be real Dem springboards for higher office over the next decade if we can take more of them over and bring people's rates down. (Note: Tricia Pridemore just tried to escape hatch her reelection in GA for a Repub House primary and she couldn't make it past the first round.)
One of the underrated possibilities in Texas is circumventing a gerrymander by controlling a majority of the redistricting board. It's probably our most plausible path to getting fair, or even dem-biased, maps there. You can make things really safe Dem really quickly in Texas b/c of the GOP's bad political distribution.
That basically means winning a combo of most statewide offices and/or flipping state leg majorities. The board is the LG, AG, comptroller, land commissioner and house speaker. Not impossible ofc, we have strong candidates for the first three (idk much Ben Flores for land commissioner) but not exactly an easy task. And ofc the gov+state leg trifecta can just override their work, as proven in December.
Yeah I don't think it'll happen this year. My point was that snagging three statewide offices + the governorship (to veto the leg passed maps) is a more feasible path than flipping a gerrymandered legislature. This is more of a 2030 or 2038 thing.
Love the outside the box thinking here, but is there any scenario in which we win this offices and the R's don't change the board's make up in the lame duck session? I doubt it...
The redistricting board only even meets unless the legislature fails to pass a map. So we either need to flip the House or Senate under maps that makes that almost impossible (especially the Senate) or the Governor. Either of those are very big challenges
Yeah that's what I said above. Winning the governorship + 3 row offices would allow us to draw maps. Tall order but probably 10 points of a lesser lift than .flipping the legislature.
Im sad about Marcos Velez's loss, I dont have very much trust in Goodwin turning the tide on Dan Patrick but Velez had a really compelling background and set of endorsements.
Obviously he really fumbled the runoff despite that so maybe he wouldnt have ran the best campaign, but I hope he is able to continue to organize and either him or another "blue collar union organizer" can get through in Texas.
This is a huge year for Texas because we have essentially every role of higher office up for election. It seemed like there was hesitance from lots of larger state figures to run for these positions still, because no one has proven turning Texas blue actually possible, so this couldve been a great year for alt/non establishment figures to secure nominations in the primaries. I worry that if we win in 2028 the landscape in Texas wont be as friendly when these positions come back up in 2030.
Nonetheless, really pulling for Hinojosa and Talarico to pull it off, maybe swing AG and some state senate/rep seats. As much as Beto has made so many mistakes he's made a huge effort to change the party here and what it looks like to campaign here. The party is still in many ways a huge flophouse, two of our largest cities elected democratic mayors who have either switched parties (Eric Johnson) or are obstructionist and conservative (Whitmire). 40 some years of one party rule will create an inexperienced opposition, and national democrats have been no example of effective leadership, but things are finally starting to look up.
Just thinking optically, the statewide slate of big offices is almost all white aside from Gina Hinjosa for Governor (James Talarico for Senate, Vicki Goodwin for LG, Nathan Johnson for AG, Sarah Eckhardt for Comptroller). Farther down has Ben Flores for Land Commissioner.
The SC nominees are one Latina and four white women (Marilyn Zayas, Maggie Ellis, Kristen Hawkins, Chari Kelly and Gisela Triana), while the Criminal Appeals Court nominees are 2/3 Black (Okey Anyiam and Audra Riley plus Holly Taylor).
For some reason, I'm not able to like posts right now, but thank you for the link! The question of how lagging rating changes by Cook affected donor decisions in a previous cycle and may have cost Democrats a House seat is covered near the end of the article.
Could be a phone reset or a cache dump will solve that, but I'll like MPCs comment for you (not that I wouldn't have anyway). Timely in that we were just discussing this among the 500 comments over the weekend.
Yep, and it’s not just the House. They still have Ohio and Alaska’s Senate races as Leans Republican and Texas and Iowa as Likely Republican. The current Sabato ratings say that Wisconsin’s governor race is a tossup, that Republicans are more likely to win the Senate race in Minnesota than Democrats are to win the Senate race in Kansas, and that Iowa’s gubernatorial race leans Republican. None of that reflects the current D+7 environment or the expected midterm wave environment in November. If the forecasters aren’t trying to accurately predict what the result in November will be, then what on earth is the point of them?
Just wondering if anyone noticed interesting things in the Massachusetts candidate filing deadlines yesterday? I couldn't easily find a registry of candidates on the Secretary of the Commonwealth website.
Can I just say thank you to the authors of The Downballot? You guys, Primary School, and Bolts Magazine got me into really down-ticket elections, and are part of why I’m a big political/election junkie now. Thanks for your high-quality reads - and thanks to this community for being so calm and rational, unlike some other sites I’ve been on where people are the opposite of that.
Sadly, Missouri voters will probably see "eliminate income tax" on Amendment 5 and immediately vote yes even though they are actually voting for a sales tax increase. Amendment 4 will be rejected, I think, but politicians tried to put ballot candy in it by claiming the amendment will "prohibit foreign contributions" in ballot measure elections which, of course, is already illegal. So it might be close. But 4 really needs to fail so the Respect Missouri Voters amendment can pass in the fall.
Also missed in my congressional caucus PAC update of endorsements and spending last night that the Repub Women's Caucus also recently endorsed Barb Regnitz (IN-01 nominee) and Carrie Buck (NV-01 candidate).
Suffice to say, running for Governor of Arizona in the GOP primary is a much different beast than running for Congress, especially with a fellow House Republican like Andy Biggs in the race.
You'd think he would have a little more name recognition than Biggs as his career has been longer and he's represented a wider array of territory, though. Schweikert actually represented a lot of what is now the safely Democratic 4th before moving to the 1st in 2012.
True although Trump, Turning Point USA, etc. have endorsed Biggs. I'm not sure how long ago they announced their support but this may be a large reason why Schweikert can't get traction in the polls.
He’s gonna get attacked either way. If Wahls is labeling him as a conservative, maybe it helps Turek’s positioning as the moderate in the general election.
You shouldn't let it bother you. Leftists have been told that we're voting for Joseph Stalin for anyone to the left of Bill Clinton for decades.
Take recent criticism of Brad Lander on this site for example, with some labeling him as "Soviet socialist".
Oof, that NY-15 poll does not look good for Michael Blake. It's an internal too. Damn, I really don't like Torres. Ah well.
Anyway, Plummer's win was a pretty big upset in the Harris County Judge race. Parker led by quite a bit in the one poll I saw. It's also yet another left victory, as Parker was more of a centrist, while Plummer was a progressive backed by outgoing Judge Lina Hidalgo. The question now is: can she win in November, given how close Hidalgo's races were? (In this environment, I'd say probably.)
Unrelated, but on Bluesky there's been a lot of sudden energy and interest in Darializa Avila Chevalier's primary bid against Espaillat. The DSA is backing her, I've heard her canvassers are out in force, and the one poll done showed Espaillat ahead by a lot, but not cracking 50 in the poll (and he previously underperformed even lesser-known challengers). Could an upset be brewing? Or is Espaillat safe? Curious to know people's thoughts.
Finally, I'm curious to know what people here think of Menefee beating Green. Good news, or bad news? They are both progressives from what I've heard (albeit with crypto backing Menefee), so it seems to be more of a generational challenge. Thoughts?
I’m not in Texas.
I’m very happy that Democratic voters are choosing the younger candidates. Al Green was a good Rep, nothing against him at all. But the idea that you should stay in office until you die needs to be cast aside, especially at a time when voters don’t trust the Party. How can you make the case for something new if you are running candidates who have been in office for decades?
Yeah in a head to head without age, I probably like Green more. And don't like how Menefee is awash with tech money. But I have so much agita about the risk of Green dying before January 2029 that I donated to Menefee.
Makes sense to me.
I don't like tech money either but I think it's probably a net-positive for the party to have more people in office who tech isn't scared of. I don't think we lost 2024 because of the huge surge of donations to Trump, but it certainly didn't help.
If Dem candidates' #1 message this year isn't corruption, it should def be #2.
This is a big, fat softball coming in, low, slow, and over the plate.
It’s still a major problem that needs to be addressed, whether or not it’s a campaign issue.
That’s why I think Democrats need to 1) ban stock trading within the Senate and House caucuses without waiting for the GOP to move on it, 2) remove Schumer as Minority Leader (fair or unfair, 3 decades in office links him to everything that voter’s hate about Congress), and 3) like Peltola, attack corruption in a non-partisan way that links it to not addressing local concerns
Because getting Independents or anti-MAGA Republicans to believe Democrats are serious about corruption matters most.
Banning stock trading through caucus rules is a really good idea, I like that a lot.
I regularly write my senators and house member asking them to do it. I think I need to call more since I’ve read it’s much more impactful.
I think it depends from office to office. Form letters are the least impactful for sure, they usually just get aggregated as one same comment with a note about volume. But something originally sent should get read more closely. And ofc making sure you're sending to their DC office (or perhaps leadership office if relevant), rather than their district/state offices.
To clarify, I email in my own words. I think it has some value, but probably not as much as a call.
The huge majority of self-described independents are (at least fairly) reliable voters for one party or the other. If they turn out, that's who they'll vote for. The goal is to turn out Dem voters, and corruption is a good lever for that.
Bingo. Trump's whole message was "sure I'm corrupt but the system is corrupt" and indie and low-info voters ate it up.
Yes, and the way to make that less salient is to take action against corruption.
Too bad it’s not you, but the other Mike Johnson, who is Speaker of the House!
James Talarico calling his race “The People vs Ken Paxton” is absolutely brilliant! It’s a terrific way to remind Texas voters of Ken Paxton’s impeachment and utter corruption! And it’s a great way to underscore that Talarico is the people’s choice – the real choice of Texans.
In Indiana, Diego Morales is hitting back at the Republican establishment's efforts to take him out of the race for The Republican nomination for Secretary of State:
https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2026/05/26/morales-lashes-back-over-loss-of-indiana-secretary-of-state-race-support/?emci=2d04a2f6-3459-f111-8fcb-000d3a18905c&emdi=bbc13267-bf59-f111-8fcb-000d3a18905c&ceid=630426
It's a curious line of argument: that Republican supporters of redistricting are opposing him because he supported Republican redistricting. Of course, it is also curious that Republican leadership is going after him for supposedly having an illegal immigrant who voted in elections working in his office (which, the article tells us is untrue) rather than focusing on Morales' hiring of relatives and spending a lot of money on official cars and travel.
My based on nothing theories are that he has more substantive sexual assault allegations waiting in the wings, so they're making things up to push him out without Streisand-effecting it by saying it out loud, and/or there's a clear tinge of intra-party racism that Morales is getting kicked out for things that would not be as big a deal if he was just another venal, predatory white conservative guy.
I cannot understand Texan Republicans. Texans have always taken great pride in their independence and the state’s inner “grandeur” (everything is bigger in Texas). But now, they act as total puppets and ring kissers (very tempted to have them kiss something else) to a multiple felon, sexual predator, and general crook. What happened to Texas Republicans?
They got entrenched in power and, like NC Republicans, started catering to billionaire PAC donors rather than do their effing jobs.
But TX Republicans are a different breed altogether. Paxton makes the slimy dealings by Berger, Moore and Hall look like child's play.
Paxton could very well be TX's Kari Lake/Herschel Walker this cycle. But TX voters HAVE to turn out to vote for Talarico. The thought of Paxton schlepping it up with Cruz in the U.S. Senate makes me sick.
Schlepping? I don't think that word can be used this way.
Everything is nationalized now; regional independence is dead. Southern Louisiana voters also stayed independent until they suddenly didn't; now they're West Virginia 2.0
political independence is like judicial independence, it's dead for Republicans but a cherished civic value for Democrats.
Very excited to see Plummer win, and she's also another rare thing: an elected Democratic dentist lol. They tend to be Republicans (currently: Mike Simpson, Paul Gosar, Brian Babin and party switcher Jeff Van Drew; so were Dan Crane, Drew Ferguson and Demi Kouzounas).
It's been a while since I've heard about Dan Crane. I thought Kouzounas was never elected, though?
She was elected as a nominee for Senate, so felt in the same vein.
Dentists and car dealers are usually the quintessential Republican candidate background.
Paxton is not an anomaly, he’s par for the course in a state party that’s produced Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott. He’s also a proven vote getter. He won’t be easy to defeat. The logical next step for Texas Republicans will be to nominate a school shooter.
The entire GOP ecosystem has their talking points down already — Talarico is a Vegan, God is nonbinary, there are 6 genders. Heard this exact same schtick in that order seven times last night. Will it stick? How much energy and money will JT spend to defend/explain?
it's not authentic to him so it probably wouldn't work but he'd benefit from a little bit of Bill Clinton's big dawg energy.
What is big dawg energy? I’m curious and would love an explanation, perhaps with examples.
(And I presume you’re not referring to Blue Dawg...)
It'd be good for Talarico to have a little bit of Southern charm and be someone ladies swoon over rather than pinch the cheek of. I'm not sure that's totally compatible with the wholesome preacher thing, but a little bit of masculine energy could go a long way in Texas. Our successful politicians in the South (Clinton foremost among them, but also Beshear, Cooper, Ossoff, Warnock, Beebee, JBE) have pretty wives and deep voices.
It'd be pretty amazing if it somehow didn't stick. Talarico might be able to talk his way out of one Berkeley-coded position but all those early 2020s comments stacked on top of each other are gonna be hard to come back from....in Texas.
I dunno...any D running statewide in a red state is already going to be associated with those positions. I'm not sure it'll really have a huge impact. I'm not saying he's favored or anything, but I think he has a very real shot at winning this thing in the current political environment.
"He’s also a proven vote getter." Is this true? As far as I can discern he has underperformed every other statewide R candidate in every election since 2014, sometimes significantly.
Basically everything that could have went right for us in Texas went right. Jon Rosenthal is a very credible candidate who, in theory, should be able to take advantage of Bo French’s extreme racism if he is sufficiently funded. Might be worth the national party investing in a few of these downballot statewide races in Texas.
I really think public services/utilities commission candidates are such a clear area for the party to invest and grow their benches. I think they'll turn out to be real Dem springboards for higher office over the next decade if we can take more of them over and bring people's rates down. (Note: Tricia Pridemore just tried to escape hatch her reelection in GA for a Repub House primary and she couldn't make it past the first round.)
One of the underrated possibilities in Texas is circumventing a gerrymander by controlling a majority of the redistricting board. It's probably our most plausible path to getting fair, or even dem-biased, maps there. You can make things really safe Dem really quickly in Texas b/c of the GOP's bad political distribution.
That basically means winning a combo of most statewide offices and/or flipping state leg majorities. The board is the LG, AG, comptroller, land commissioner and house speaker. Not impossible ofc, we have strong candidates for the first three (idk much Ben Flores for land commissioner) but not exactly an easy task. And ofc the gov+state leg trifecta can just override their work, as proven in December.
Yeah I don't think it'll happen this year. My point was that snagging three statewide offices + the governorship (to veto the leg passed maps) is a more feasible path than flipping a gerrymandered legislature. This is more of a 2030 or 2038 thing.
Love the outside the box thinking here, but is there any scenario in which we win this offices and the R's don't change the board's make up in the lame duck session? I doubt it...
The redistricting board only even meets unless the legislature fails to pass a map. So we either need to flip the House or Senate under maps that makes that almost impossible (especially the Senate) or the Governor. Either of those are very big challenges
Yeah that's what I said above. Winning the governorship + 3 row offices would allow us to draw maps. Tall order but probably 10 points of a lesser lift than .flipping the legislature.
Im sad about Marcos Velez's loss, I dont have very much trust in Goodwin turning the tide on Dan Patrick but Velez had a really compelling background and set of endorsements.
Obviously he really fumbled the runoff despite that so maybe he wouldnt have ran the best campaign, but I hope he is able to continue to organize and either him or another "blue collar union organizer" can get through in Texas.
This is a huge year for Texas because we have essentially every role of higher office up for election. It seemed like there was hesitance from lots of larger state figures to run for these positions still, because no one has proven turning Texas blue actually possible, so this couldve been a great year for alt/non establishment figures to secure nominations in the primaries. I worry that if we win in 2028 the landscape in Texas wont be as friendly when these positions come back up in 2030.
Nonetheless, really pulling for Hinojosa and Talarico to pull it off, maybe swing AG and some state senate/rep seats. As much as Beto has made so many mistakes he's made a huge effort to change the party here and what it looks like to campaign here. The party is still in many ways a huge flophouse, two of our largest cities elected democratic mayors who have either switched parties (Eric Johnson) or are obstructionist and conservative (Whitmire). 40 some years of one party rule will create an inexperienced opposition, and national democrats have been no example of effective leadership, but things are finally starting to look up.
Just thinking optically, the statewide slate of big offices is almost all white aside from Gina Hinjosa for Governor (James Talarico for Senate, Vicki Goodwin for LG, Nathan Johnson for AG, Sarah Eckhardt for Comptroller). Farther down has Ben Flores for Land Commissioner.
The SC nominees are one Latina and four white women (Marilyn Zayas, Maggie Ellis, Kristen Hawkins, Chari Kelly and Gisela Triana), while the Criminal Appeals Court nominees are 2/3 Black (Okey Anyiam and Audra Riley plus Holly Taylor).
Thanks for this, do you know what comparable is for the reps?
I don't, sorry. There's only so many nominees I can keep track of haha.
I don't think the runoff was ideological, Goodwin was a staunch progressive in the Texas House.
You mentioned Florida’s new 22nd is now open. Is Lois Frankel running in a new district?
FL-23. It’s believed Jared Moskowitz will jump into FL-25.
I’ll be curious to see who we run in FL-22 now. I’ve heard Lauren Book be floated as a contender.
Thanks for the info. I don’t know if he has a real chance but I liked Oliver Larkin in FL-25 if only for his DSA background
Pia Dandiya is also running in FL-22.
This Substack article is a good dive into how Cook Report and Sabato can cost Dems winnable House seats due to their outdated polling model.
https://decalibrate.substack.com/p/by-august-cook-will-move-a-third?r=8glhm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
For some reason, I'm not able to like posts right now, but thank you for the link! The question of how lagging rating changes by Cook affected donor decisions in a previous cycle and may have cost Democrats a House seat is covered near the end of the article.
Could be a phone reset or a cache dump will solve that, but I'll like MPCs comment for you (not that I wouldn't have anyway). Timely in that we were just discussing this among the 500 comments over the weekend.
It's weird: I was able to like some comments but not others. But anyway...
Yep, and it’s not just the House. They still have Ohio and Alaska’s Senate races as Leans Republican and Texas and Iowa as Likely Republican. The current Sabato ratings say that Wisconsin’s governor race is a tossup, that Republicans are more likely to win the Senate race in Minnesota than Democrats are to win the Senate race in Kansas, and that Iowa’s gubernatorial race leans Republican. None of that reflects the current D+7 environment or the expected midterm wave environment in November. If the forecasters aren’t trying to accurately predict what the result in November will be, then what on earth is the point of them?
That's one reason I subscribe to G. Elliott Morris' Strength in Numbers. He was spot on for the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey.
Just wondering if anyone noticed interesting things in the Massachusetts candidate filing deadlines yesterday? I couldn't easily find a registry of candidates on the Secretary of the Commonwealth website.
Can I just say thank you to the authors of The Downballot? You guys, Primary School, and Bolts Magazine got me into really down-ticket elections, and are part of why I’m a big political/election junkie now. Thanks for your high-quality reads - and thanks to this community for being so calm and rational, unlike some other sites I’ve been on where people are the opposite of that.
Ditto. I've been following this blog since I had to track an election in 2008 and I'm still here (Steve Stivers vs. Mary Jo Kilroy).
2006 for me!
Thank you, that means a lot!
Sadly, Missouri voters will probably see "eliminate income tax" on Amendment 5 and immediately vote yes even though they are actually voting for a sales tax increase. Amendment 4 will be rejected, I think, but politicians tried to put ballot candy in it by claiming the amendment will "prohibit foreign contributions" in ballot measure elections which, of course, is already illegal. So it might be close. But 4 really needs to fail so the Respect Missouri Voters amendment can pass in the fall.
There's a piece of the repubs who doesn't care about a corrupt background. The dirtier the better. Look around 🤔🤔
Also missed in my congressional caucus PAC update of endorsements and spending last night that the Repub Women's Caucus also recently endorsed Barb Regnitz (IN-01 nominee) and Carrie Buck (NV-01 candidate).
David Schweikert not cracking double digits in a statewide poll after being in Congress for 16 years is something.
Suffice to say, running for Governor of Arizona in the GOP primary is a much different beast than running for Congress, especially with a fellow House Republican like Andy Biggs in the race.
You'd think he would have a little more name recognition than Biggs as his career has been longer and he's represented a wider array of territory, though. Schweikert actually represented a lot of what is now the safely Democratic 4th before moving to the 1st in 2012.
True although Trump, Turning Point USA, etc. have endorsed Biggs. I'm not sure how long ago they announced their support but this may be a large reason why Schweikert can't get traction in the polls.