NJ-7: Businessman Brian Varela, despite starting a "no negativity" campaign as a Democrat, actually tried to convince his primary opponents to orchestrate a smear campaign against Rebecca Bennett, the arguable frontrunner in the primary. He also has a connection to a cosmetics company currently being sued.
Five months *should* be enough time to get over any hurt feelings. Mills and Platner need to pledge to endorse each other regardless of the primary outcome.
Are Mills and Platner going after each other, or is most of the nastiness among primary voters duking it out with each other? My impression is that it's the latter, though I don't know much about what's happening on the ground.
people forget that despite outrunning Trump by a ton in 2020, Collins bled a lot of support vs. 2014 and earlier. and RCV tabulation likely would've eroded some of her margin. Plus, she's never faced a heavily Dem-leaning electorate post-Trump - she's not favored in any universe in the fall
I hope she loses big time. I don't care if she loses to Mills or Platner. Sick and tired of her so-called moderate Republican schtick.
Both Mills and Platner need to pummel her with ads featuring her holding that red MAGA hat in the Oval Office as betraying Mainers and putting TACO first instead of them.
This gave me a thought. Do you know if people ever run ads attacking the incumbent as a way of winning over primary voters? I think that could work, since it would show that you're the one taking the fight to the "enemy", so to speak, in an era when voters are motivated more by negative partisanship than anything else.
Good. They need to drag her on this first and foremost. It’s an effective attack that cuts across both party lines. I don’t know why Gideon abandoned it so quickly in 2020.
Interesting that Destiny Wells is challenging Representative Andre Carson in the 7th Indiana Congressional District. She previously ran for secretary of state and two years later for AG with 41.2% of the vote to Rokita's 58%. I was sorry that she did not become state party chair because she understands tough campaigns. The Democratic party establishment in Indiana needs shaking up, and so far, I'm not overly impressed with the current chair.
There are now two Democrats and an Independent who have filed to oppose Rudy Yakym III in the 2nd Congressional district. I do not yet know enough about them to comment. Both of the Democrats filed close to the deadline. The Independent may have filed earlier, as he has filled out the information on Ballotpedia and has a developed website. Part of what Democrats need to win in the 2nd district is someone willing to campaign not just in the urban areas but in the large swarths of rural areas.
Part of the problem that candidates in Indiana have is that if they run and lose, they never run again. However, it is important to get your name out statewide. In the nomination for the Democratic candidate for AG, Wells was the only declared candidate, and she started early. Near the end of that period, before the Democratic state convention where the candidate for that office would be chosen, another candidate jumped in, who was rather weak but had some support amongst the established party. Wells had to divert some resources from the statewide battle against Rokita to fend off one from her own party.
Bottoms seems to be in the lead but is stuck at a hard ceiling of 40. That doesn't bode well for her chances of winning a runoff, though it does for leading round 1.
"Abundance has a new 501(c)(4) group to help push its deregulatory message according to reporting by Axios. "Next American Era" will be headed up by former DCCC chair and current OpenAI/Oracle lobbyist Cheri Bustos, further integrating data center construction with abundance"
Yuck. Democratic Party leaders need to disavow this group ASAP. Support for government regulation is a major reason why I'm a Democrat, and we can't allow these anti-regulation groups to hijack our party.
Abundance seemed to be a new approach at first but beyond YIMBYism and NEPA reform, it just seems to be reheated neoliberalism or a New "New Democrat" philosophy of the 1990s. No wonder why neoliberals are trying so hard to push the narrative that Kamala was far-left and trying to draw parallels to failed liberal politicians like McGovern and Carter. Bustos is also a big booster of Dems are "Weak and woke" and "far-left" narrative. Their attempt to combat "the [liberal] groups" has been to create a new centrist group every 3 months.
I actually read the book a few months ago. The general ideas of it are sound - if we want to create the chip factories, clean energy farms, communities, etc. that bring our supply up and our prices down we need to cut red tape for them. With data centers, I think, that breaks down. They take more from our water and power than they give back, and it's completely fair to tax those negative externalities out.
Well done regulation is necessary to a properly functioning market economy. The main problem we’ve got is that we’re doing a shitty job at regulation. Laissez faire isn’t the answer but the status quo isn’t either.
Also, those deregulation advocates fail to understand that regulation Democrats want in place are not meant to be anti-business or anti-growth but rather to make the economy more healthy + public safety being taken into account.
I would go further and argue that the Democratic position is more pro-business. Why? Because it is anti-monopoly and anti-exploitation. We want to level the playing field – remove obstacles for entrepreneurs and small companies. Fact is that America’s most important value creation happens in small and medium-sized business.
As far as public safety is concerned, the true Democratic Party view should be that ensuring everyone's safety (including children) does not mean we want to put any business out of operation.
I want tech companies to be regulated but thrive as long as there's compromise on how they can run their business. Being anti-business means you just want to shut them down and no questions asked.
Doesn't seem like any of the special losers will be running again. With Gill behind Mejia and Malinowski staunchly against AIPAC, Mejia will make short work of Bagolie in the primary.
I am not a PAC or Super PAC guy but if I were an advisor to AIPAC on where they should spend more of their time, energy and money, it should be with other races.
If AIPAC made a fail (which they did) in the special election, why get worked up over it? It’s one damn election.
I'm still waiting for the DCCC to add Boebert to this list. (if Ogles is there, why not?), but it's insane her old seat that she almost lost is not on the target list either. Was within 10 for president and 5 for congress in 2024.
They also seem to be having cold feet on adding NJ-02, FL-04, NE-01, NY-02, and the newly open NV-02. Plus a few more in the 15-20 range with F-tier GOP incumbents (IN-05, AZ-08, etc.)
Regarding my comment yesterday, it seems like the consensus of this community is that discussion of Israeli elections is fine, so long as we are all very careful not to push the conversation toward the forbidden topic and don't make value judgments about party platforms. Since the moderators didn't add any input of their own, I'll go with that consensus.
Several times in the past, I have complained about how election authorities present election data to the public (for use in research or by election nerds like us). Today, I'm going to do that again - with Israel. My goal was to be able to calculate the results of the most recent election for each of Israel's districts and subdistricts. In order to simplify things, I grouped Israel's political parties into three categories - the right-wing currently-governing coalition, the center-left opposition, and the Arab parties.
It didn't take me long to find a spreadsheet on Israel's elections website that contained the vote totals for every place in Israel. So this project was easy, right? Wrong! The first issue became immediately noticeable when I opened the spreadsheet - it was written entirely in Hebrew. And it didn't just use the Hebrew script - everything was written in the traditional way, i.e. with no vowels. The spreadsheet contained more than 1,200 places, and since I knew only a tiny fraction of them, I've had to use Google to translate almost every single one. (Even knowing Hebrew script, it's still tough - would you be able to identify Cnsd, Scndd, Snt, L Cjn, and Mprl Bch?) So that is taking a long time.
After a significant amount of staring at the spreadsheet, I realized that one of the columns that I had previously ignored contained the "election committee" of each place, and that these election committees corresponded to the subdistricts of Israel. This made my job much easier, right? Again, not so fast. Upon closer investigation, these election committees don't correspond exactly to the subdistricts - there are some exceptions. I first realized that, annoyingly, the West Bank settlements didn't have their own election committee and were instead lumped in with the adjacent subdistricts in (for lack of a better term) Israel proper. This made my job more difficult because I wanted the settlements to be an entirely separate category, and now I had to remove them from the subdistricts they were attached to. In addition, for reasons I have not figured out yet, the Acre subdistrict in northern Israel actually contains two election committees.
Because of these complications, I have not yet completed this project. I hope to do a similar project after the election this fall. In addition, I did find some really interesting patterns with the parties that different demographic groups voted for, but I'll leave that for another comment, since this one is quite long already.
I guess the Israeli elections website assembles data just to record it for their own purposes and isn't trying to really help researchers. Either that, or they haven't thought that part through. Either way, I salute you for working through all of that and look forward to what you come up with!
Modern Hebrew is usually not written with the diacritics, btw. If you go to any Israeli newspaper, it will be just Hebrew characters, no pronunciation marks.
A lot of the people here are commenters who have been active on other projects which has led to this site, some of them go back 10-15 years, to something called the Swing State Project, and then as part of Daily Kos Elections. The comments here and on the discord are much broader than the editorial focus of the Daily Digests and other staff posts here, if that helps.
We only stopped because we didn't have the bandwidth any longer. I'd love to get back to it one day.
Anyhow, I am going to keep a real, REAL short leash on Israel-related discussions, and if people don't behave themselves immaculately, they'll go away. But as a general rule, foreign elections are welcome in the comments.
India Walton is now politically the Carly Fiorina of New York State--each had one fabulous week as the designated running mate for the top elected office. May be worth knowing for a political trivia contest someday...
Malinowski concedes the special primary to Mejia and endorses her for the April special, and sounds like he won't run against her in the regular June primary while at a minimum opposing whomever AIPAC supports, if not fully endorsing her for a full term.
I generally like Malinowski as a foreign policy expert, I wouldn't mind him as like UN ambassador/deputy secretary of state or even NSA to avoid confirmation about his stocks all together.
Republicans think they can beat the “far left” Mejia in the special election since the district is only Harris +8, that “even Democrats and swing voters will be turned off and won’t accept a radical socialist as their Congress member” and since they’ve nominated a good Republican candidate who can win crossover voters the district can be flipped to their party in the special election.
My bet is that just like Democrats screamed the truth that Trump and his party are vehement racists that are unacceptable to American voters, this will go about as well as that for the GOP screaming the lie that she and Democrats are radical far left socialists that are unacceptable to American voters.
Can’t wait until they realize how much they’ve hurt themselves by actually radicalizing their opponents by electing Trump. They thought they hated the left before, but just wait until they see the New Democratic Party their choices created and the consequences they’ll now face from it.
I don’t how good the candidate is the Republicans nominated, but Mejia’s election is not a given in this type of a district. We’ll have to see what kind of financial commitment the Republicans make. She needs to make Trump her opponent and hammer it over and over again.
I agree, she'll most likely win.in this environment but she'll struggle in a normal year. This is not some blue urban district where a far left candidate doesn't have to sweat. We should be pushing district appropriate candidates.
This is the right analysis I think. She shouldn't have any problem in 2026 and is probably ok in 2028 (pending the R nominee for both prez and this district), but I'd consider this tossup at best in 2030 if it is a Presidem midterm.
And the reason why Giardino was kicked off the ticket is even more hilarious:
"Sheriff Giardino said that [running in the NH 2024 primary against Trump] had been mostly a lark. He ran, he said, to try to draw attention to law enforcement issues and fulfill a childhood dream, but pulled out before voting occurred. He said he had never opposed Mr. Trump, and had merely forgotten to relay the episode to those vetting his potential New York candidacy."
Across the board the amount of $$ raised is pretty paltry. $1M doesn't go very far in the Atlanta media market especially if you are trying to introduce yourself to voters. I wonder if a PAC is going to do the heavy lifting here for particular candidates.
With as much as Doc Jensen beclowned himself as the GOP gubernatorial nominee four years ago, I think he would hurt rather than help the Republicans' chances of picking up the auditor's office, which is otherwise likely their most winnable statewide race.
As for the MN-01 poll, Brad Finstad has in no way distinguished himself or developed a brand in MN-01. Voters in population centers like Rochester and Winona would have zero relationship with him and even closer to home in Mankato, I'd wager fewer people could "name their Congressman" than any time in my lifetime because Finstad is so invisible. The race is not in the top tier of Democratic pick-ups but I'll double down on my prediction months ago that it's a race to watch. It depends a lot on whether Jake Johnson is a good candidate who has any chance of raising decent money, which I can't speak to.
Most of the attention around ICE activity in MN has been focused on the Twin Cities, but every congressional district in the state has smaller cities and towns that are also dealing with this. Seems like to make MN-01 and -08 more attainable, unless enthusiasm to vote is tempered by fear of leaving one's house (which sounds like the GOP's midterm strategy).
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/10/congressional-candidate-made-no-negativity-pledge-after-failing-to-get-help-finding-dirt-on-rival-00771175
NJ-7: Businessman Brian Varela, despite starting a "no negativity" campaign as a Democrat, actually tried to convince his primary opponents to orchestrate a smear campaign against Rebecca Bennett, the arguable frontrunner in the primary. He also has a connection to a cosmetics company currently being sued.
The fundraising leaders seem to be Tina Shah and Bennett. What are the differences in their platforms and who is likely to win?
Bennett will win, IMO.
bennet is the strongest pick imo, been to a few of her events and she commands the room and can beat kean
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/10/nation/susan-collins-reelection-campaign/
ME-Sen: Susan Collins is in for a 6th term
Let us all hope the Dem primary doesn’t fuck us over in the general.
Five months *should* be enough time to get over any hurt feelings. Mills and Platner need to pledge to endorse each other regardless of the primary outcome.
Are Mills and Platner going after each other, or is most of the nastiness among primary voters duking it out with each other? My impression is that it's the latter, though I don't know much about what's happening on the ground.
Mills has largely ignored Platner. Platner sometimes takes swipes at Mills. Both seem to focus mainly on Collins though.
I don't think it's hurt feelings (unlike TX), but more.. whose flaws are bigger?
Are you worried about one specific Dem candiate over the other?
I have issues with both, but we need to flip the seat so I honestly will support the winner regardless.
people forget that despite outrunning Trump by a ton in 2020, Collins bled a lot of support vs. 2014 and earlier. and RCV tabulation likely would've eroded some of her margin. Plus, she's never faced a heavily Dem-leaning electorate post-Trump - she's not favored in any universe in the fall
I hope she loses big time. I don't care if she loses to Mills or Platner. Sick and tired of her so-called moderate Republican schtick.
Both Mills and Platner need to pummel her with ads featuring her holding that red MAGA hat in the Oval Office as betraying Mainers and putting TACO first instead of them.
This gave me a thought. Do you know if people ever run ads attacking the incumbent as a way of winning over primary voters? I think that could work, since it would show that you're the one taking the fight to the "enemy", so to speak, in an era when voters are motivated more by negative partisanship than anything else.
Platner and Mills have both attacked Collins way more than each other and run ads to this effect
Susan Collins in 1996: “I have pledged that if I am elected, I will only serve two terms.”
Today: Collins just announced she’s running for a sixth term.
https://x.com/dscc/status/2021224943971623120?s=20
Good. They need to drag her on this first and foremost. It’s an effective attack that cuts across both party lines. I don’t know why Gideon abandoned it so quickly in 2020.
Interesting that Destiny Wells is challenging Representative Andre Carson in the 7th Indiana Congressional District. She previously ran for secretary of state and two years later for AG with 41.2% of the vote to Rokita's 58%. I was sorry that she did not become state party chair because she understands tough campaigns. The Democratic party establishment in Indiana needs shaking up, and so far, I'm not overly impressed with the current chair.
There are now two Democrats and an Independent who have filed to oppose Rudy Yakym III in the 2nd Congressional district. I do not yet know enough about them to comment. Both of the Democrats filed close to the deadline. The Independent may have filed earlier, as he has filled out the information on Ballotpedia and has a developed website. Part of what Democrats need to win in the 2nd district is someone willing to campaign not just in the urban areas but in the large swarths of rural areas.
Not a good look for her to run for four offices in four years.
I don't know if I would count seeking the party chairmanship as "running for office" but overall I agree.
Part of the problem that candidates in Indiana have is that if they run and lose, they never run again. However, it is important to get your name out statewide. In the nomination for the Democratic candidate for AG, Wells was the only declared candidate, and she started early. Near the end of that period, before the Democratic state convention where the candidate for that office would be chosen, another candidate jumped in, who was rather weak but had some support amongst the established party. Wells had to divert some resources from the statewide battle against Rokita to fend off one from her own party.
Also, I don't think Carson has any liabilities in the primary that I know of.
As a race whose result will shape the 2028 presidential primary, how's Georgia's gubernatorial primary on the Dem side shaping up?
Bottoms seems to be in the lead but is stuck at a hard ceiling of 40. That doesn't bode well for her chances of winning a runoff, though it does for leading round 1.
"Abundance has a new 501(c)(4) group to help push its deregulatory message according to reporting by Axios. "Next American Era" will be headed up by former DCCC chair and current OpenAI/Oracle lobbyist Cheri Bustos, further integrating data center construction with abundance"
https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/new-abundance-group-ai-lobbysits/
https://x.com/revolvingdoorDC/status/2020947247769559506
Exclusive: Centrist Dems strike back with new group
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/08/centrist-democrats-new-group-abundance
Yuck. Democratic Party leaders need to disavow this group ASAP. Support for government regulation is a major reason why I'm a Democrat, and we can't allow these anti-regulation groups to hijack our party.
Abundance seemed to be a new approach at first but beyond YIMBYism and NEPA reform, it just seems to be reheated neoliberalism or a New "New Democrat" philosophy of the 1990s. No wonder why neoliberals are trying so hard to push the narrative that Kamala was far-left and trying to draw parallels to failed liberal politicians like McGovern and Carter. Bustos is also a big booster of Dems are "Weak and woke" and "far-left" narrative. Their attempt to combat "the [liberal] groups" has been to create a new centrist group every 3 months.
In case anyone else forgot or didn't know what NEPA is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Environmental_Policy_Act
Carter was more "New Democrat" than liberal.
calling carter a democrat is generous. the man was great after being president but stood in the way of universal healthcare humphrey hawkins etc
Abundance is basically “DINOs for trickle down.”
I actually read the book a few months ago. The general ideas of it are sound - if we want to create the chip factories, clean energy farms, communities, etc. that bring our supply up and our prices down we need to cut red tape for them. With data centers, I think, that breaks down. They take more from our water and power than they give back, and it's completely fair to tax those negative externalities out.
Well done regulation is necessary to a properly functioning market economy. The main problem we’ve got is that we’re doing a shitty job at regulation. Laissez faire isn’t the answer but the status quo isn’t either.
Correct on both counts. Regulations written by people whose income comes from lawsuits are… unhelpful
Yeah. It’s insufficient regulation.
Also, those deregulation advocates fail to understand that regulation Democrats want in place are not meant to be anti-business or anti-growth but rather to make the economy more healthy + public safety being taken into account.
I would go further and argue that the Democratic position is more pro-business. Why? Because it is anti-monopoly and anti-exploitation. We want to level the playing field – remove obstacles for entrepreneurs and small companies. Fact is that America’s most important value creation happens in small and medium-sized business.
Couldn't have said it better myself!
As far as public safety is concerned, the true Democratic Party view should be that ensuring everyone's safety (including children) does not mean we want to put any business out of operation.
I want tech companies to be regulated but thrive as long as there's compromise on how they can run their business. Being anti-business means you just want to shut them down and no questions asked.
"groups for me, not for thee"
My problem with Abundance as a movement is that they're enthusiastically welcoming people like Richard Hanania into their tent.
Among other things Hanania has done lately is dismiss the Epstein Files as a nothingburger for the most disgusting reasons out there.
NJ-11: Malinowski concedes.
https://www.insidernj.com/malinowski-congratulates-mejia-on-her-hard-won-victory/
Finally
I’m hearing on Bluesky that AIPAC is planning to run State Assemb. Rosy Bagolie against Mejia later. Hope Mejia can pull it off again.
EDIT: Paywalled Politico article:
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/02/bagolie-emerges-as-potential-moderate-democrat-for-sherrills-house-seat-00772897
“She is not representative of the moderate Democrats in this district…” says Bagolie. Blech. Mejia it is.
Doesn't seem like any of the special losers will be running again. With Gill behind Mejia and Malinowski staunchly against AIPAC, Mejia will make short work of Bagolie in the primary.
I am not a PAC or Super PAC guy but if I were an advisor to AIPAC on where they should spend more of their time, energy and money, it should be with other races.
If AIPAC made a fail (which they did) in the special election, why get worked up over it? It’s one damn election.
DCCC adds five seats to its Districts in Play offensive targets program:
-CO-05 (Jeff Crank)
-MN-01 (Brad Finstad)
-MT-01 (Ryan Zinke)
-SC-01 (Nancy Mace/open)
-VA-05 (John McGuire/pending redistrict)
https://dccc.org/dccc-announces-second-expansion-of-the-house-battlefield-for-2026-cycle-with-5-new-offensive-targets/
I'm still waiting for the DCCC to add Boebert to this list. (if Ogles is there, why not?), but it's insane her old seat that she almost lost is not on the target list either. Was within 10 for president and 5 for congress in 2024.
They also seem to be having cold feet on adding NJ-02, FL-04, NE-01, NY-02, and the newly open NV-02. Plus a few more in the 15-20 range with F-tier GOP incumbents (IN-05, AZ-08, etc.)
Laubacher is a good candidate with lots of money, not sure the Boebert district needs to be on the DCCC's list in order to flip
Regarding my comment yesterday, it seems like the consensus of this community is that discussion of Israeli elections is fine, so long as we are all very careful not to push the conversation toward the forbidden topic and don't make value judgments about party platforms. Since the moderators didn't add any input of their own, I'll go with that consensus.
Several times in the past, I have complained about how election authorities present election data to the public (for use in research or by election nerds like us). Today, I'm going to do that again - with Israel. My goal was to be able to calculate the results of the most recent election for each of Israel's districts and subdistricts. In order to simplify things, I grouped Israel's political parties into three categories - the right-wing currently-governing coalition, the center-left opposition, and the Arab parties.
It didn't take me long to find a spreadsheet on Israel's elections website that contained the vote totals for every place in Israel. So this project was easy, right? Wrong! The first issue became immediately noticeable when I opened the spreadsheet - it was written entirely in Hebrew. And it didn't just use the Hebrew script - everything was written in the traditional way, i.e. with no vowels. The spreadsheet contained more than 1,200 places, and since I knew only a tiny fraction of them, I've had to use Google to translate almost every single one. (Even knowing Hebrew script, it's still tough - would you be able to identify Cnsd, Scndd, Snt, L Cjn, and Mprl Bch?) So that is taking a long time.
After a significant amount of staring at the spreadsheet, I realized that one of the columns that I had previously ignored contained the "election committee" of each place, and that these election committees corresponded to the subdistricts of Israel. This made my job much easier, right? Again, not so fast. Upon closer investigation, these election committees don't correspond exactly to the subdistricts - there are some exceptions. I first realized that, annoyingly, the West Bank settlements didn't have their own election committee and were instead lumped in with the adjacent subdistricts in (for lack of a better term) Israel proper. This made my job more difficult because I wanted the settlements to be an entirely separate category, and now I had to remove them from the subdistricts they were attached to. In addition, for reasons I have not figured out yet, the Acre subdistrict in northern Israel actually contains two election committees.
Because of these complications, I have not yet completed this project. I hope to do a similar project after the election this fall. In addition, I did find some really interesting patterns with the parties that different demographic groups voted for, but I'll leave that for another comment, since this one is quite long already.
Thank you for doing this heavy lifting
I guess the Israeli elections website assembles data just to record it for their own purposes and isn't trying to really help researchers. Either that, or they haven't thought that part through. Either way, I salute you for working through all of that and look forward to what you come up with!
Modern Hebrew is usually not written with the diacritics, btw. If you go to any Israeli newspaper, it will be just Hebrew characters, no pronunciation marks.
You're right. It's still annoying though.
I've no idea why we should talk about foreign elections. the Downballot covers American elections.
We've always talked about foreign elections.
The website does not cover foreign elections. I guess y'all in the comments can do whatever tho.
A lot of the people here are commenters who have been active on other projects which has led to this site, some of them go back 10-15 years, to something called the Swing State Project, and then as part of Daily Kos Elections. The comments here and on the discord are much broader than the editorial focus of the Daily Digests and other staff posts here, if that helps.
We used to cover foreign elections extensively: https://www.dailykos.com/users/daily%20kos%20elections%20international?filter=stories
We only stopped because we didn't have the bandwidth any longer. I'd love to get back to it one day.
Anyhow, I am going to keep a real, REAL short leash on Israel-related discussions, and if people don't behave themselves immaculately, they'll go away. But as a general rule, foreign elections are welcome in the comments.
NY-Gov: Delgado drops out.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/binghamton/news/2026/02/10/antonio-delgado-india-walton-new-york-governor-campaign-suspended
Whoa!
Doesn't surprise me given his polling and party support
Someone on Bluesky was accusing Delgado of using ChatGPT to write policy positions — apparently one of his tweets had all the hallmarks of AI.
India Walton is now politically the Carly Fiorina of New York State--each had one fabulous week as the designated running mate for the top elected office. May be worth knowing for a political trivia contest someday...
In an alternate timeline she's been mayor of Buffalo for 4 years and just got re-elected
Why did he run at all? It makes no sense to me. A moderate Upstate Democrat trying to unseat his fellow moderate Upstate Democrat boss in a primary?
Malinowski concedes the special primary to Mejia and endorses her for the April special, and sounds like he won't run against her in the regular June primary while at a minimum opposing whomever AIPAC supports, if not fully endorsing her for a full term.
https://bsky.app/profile/reginageorgebush.bsky.social/post/3mejbo42yuc2w
I’m glad he lost, but really love his statement.
I generally like Malinowski as a foreign policy expert, I wouldn't mind him as like UN ambassador/deputy secretary of state or even NSA to avoid confirmation about his stocks all together.
Republicans think they can beat the “far left” Mejia in the special election since the district is only Harris +8, that “even Democrats and swing voters will be turned off and won’t accept a radical socialist as their Congress member” and since they’ve nominated a good Republican candidate who can win crossover voters the district can be flipped to their party in the special election.
My bet is that just like Democrats screamed the truth that Trump and his party are vehement racists that are unacceptable to American voters, this will go about as well as that for the GOP screaming the lie that she and Democrats are radical far left socialists that are unacceptable to American voters.
Can’t wait until they realize how much they’ve hurt themselves by actually radicalizing their opponents by electing Trump. They thought they hated the left before, but just wait until they see the New Democratic Party their choices created and the consequences they’ll now face from it.
I don’t how good the candidate is the Republicans nominated, but Mejia’s election is not a given in this type of a district. We’ll have to see what kind of financial commitment the Republicans make. She needs to make Trump her opponent and hammer it over and over again.
I agree, she'll most likely win.in this environment but she'll struggle in a normal year. This is not some blue urban district where a far left candidate doesn't have to sweat. We should be pushing district appropriate candidates.
This is the right analysis I think. She shouldn't have any problem in 2026 and is probably ok in 2028 (pending the R nominee for both prez and this district), but I'd consider this tossup at best in 2030 if it is a Presidem midterm.
The link to the bookmarkable elections calendar just takes you to yesterday's digest.
For added humor re: NY LG, Laura Loomer was apparently the reason Blakeman backed off.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/nyregion/bruce-blakeman-new-york-governor.html
And the reason why Giardino was kicked off the ticket is even more hilarious:
"Sheriff Giardino said that [running in the NH 2024 primary against Trump] had been mostly a lark. He ran, he said, to try to draw attention to law enforcement issues and fulfill a childhood dream, but pulled out before voting occurred. He said he had never opposed Mr. Trump, and had merely forgotten to relay the episode to those vetting his potential New York candidacy."
GA Gov: From the AJC, here are the amounts the Democratic candidates raised July 1-Jan. 31 and their COH as of Jan. 31 (rounded):
Keisha Lance Bottoms. Raised $1.1 million; COH $810K.
Geoff Duncan. Raised $1.1 million; COH $600K.
Jason Esteves. Raised $1.1 million; COH $1.2 million.
Michael Thurmond. Raised $725K and loan himself another $300K: COH $700K.
Ruwa Romman. Raised $250K; COH $40K.
A lot of parity but I'm please to see that Esteves has enough COH to make a solid push for the run-off.
I hope the anti-KLB vote coalesces enough around him to push him at least into 2nd place. I think he can beat her in a runoff. I doubt Duncan can.
Agreed. KLB getting the nomination here would be not good.
I doubt Duncan can make into the runoff, tbh.
My edit was to correct a typo in the end date. Money is through and as of Jan. 31.
Remarkable how even the main candidates are (factoring in Thurmond's self-loan)
Wish more Democrats would back Esteves. In a perfect world we'd get Romman but she'd be DOA in a general.
Across the board the amount of $$ raised is pretty paltry. $1M doesn't go very far in the Atlanta media market especially if you are trying to introduce yourself to voters. I wonder if a PAC is going to do the heavy lifting here for particular candidates.
With as much as Doc Jensen beclowned himself as the GOP gubernatorial nominee four years ago, I think he would hurt rather than help the Republicans' chances of picking up the auditor's office, which is otherwise likely their most winnable statewide race.
As for the MN-01 poll, Brad Finstad has in no way distinguished himself or developed a brand in MN-01. Voters in population centers like Rochester and Winona would have zero relationship with him and even closer to home in Mankato, I'd wager fewer people could "name their Congressman" than any time in my lifetime because Finstad is so invisible. The race is not in the top tier of Democratic pick-ups but I'll double down on my prediction months ago that it's a race to watch. It depends a lot on whether Jake Johnson is a good candidate who has any chance of raising decent money, which I can't speak to.
Most of the attention around ICE activity in MN has been focused on the Twin Cities, but every congressional district in the state has smaller cities and towns that are also dealing with this. Seems like to make MN-01 and -08 more attainable, unless enthusiasm to vote is tempered by fear of leaving one's house (which sounds like the GOP's midterm strategy).
If this wave is just a few percentage points bigger than 2018 here, Johnson would win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIz6B7aGC2E&t=4s
TX-31: First ad from Vince "ShamWow" Offer
absolutely kookoo, the screaming fetus at the end tops it off...
Of course, the talentless hacks have to resort to AI to get their bad message across.