Don't expect the Democrats to wipe away all the harm we have experienced so far, they aren’t miracle workers. It's going to take decades to repair what the Republicans have done to our country. These elections were an encouraging first step, don't let us drop the ball now but keep on fighting.
I don't agree. If there's a new Democratic administration in 2029, they need to put an aggressive Attorney General in office to do an extensive denazification, and loads and loads of government officials at all levels will need to be investigated and rooted out. And do we think ICE will be abolished? Besides which, things will never be the same between the U.S. and other countries.
Is the next Dem president willing and able to spend their entire first term doing backward looking cleanup and prosecutions? The exact opposite of Obama? Because that's what's required.
Not only backward-looking. New laws need to be passed, the Supreme Court needs to be enlarged, new states need to be admitted, new districting and election standards need to be imposed, etc.
Nuremberg 2.0. is needed if there's a new Dem administration elected along side a Dem Congress in 2029. If we're fortunate to have a Dem Administration and Congress in 2029 they'll have to spend the entire time cleaning up Trump's mess and rooting out the MAGA deep state.
I wish she had done better fundraising in recent quarters, she's going to start with a big financial disadvantage if she jumps in. The ideal scenario is she runs and Markey drops out to endorse her. I don't get a sense that he'd do that, but there's plenty of room for me to be wrong.
It seems clear to me: the point is that she and Markey can split the left-wing vote, leaving Moulton to win by a plurality. No claim there, just a logical thought.
I think it's entirely possible. There's a good chance that with all three of them in the primary that they would all occupy similar 25-40% levels of support in the primary. Clustered together closely enough that any one of them could win.
There is a lot of hunger from activists, at least, to replace Markey with someone younger. Those same people also largely do not want an asshole like Moulton. There's a decent sized lane for all three of them.
As it stands right now I think the primary would start off closely divided, maybe advantage Markey. Over time it would depend on if any of them are able to do something to stand out to get voters better in their corner. Massachusetts' primary isn't until next September so there's a long window for them to fight it out, which is probably to Pressley's benefit at Markey's expense. But maybe not.
I would respect Pressley far more than Moulton simply because:
1) She would be able to work with Elizabeth Warren, who may not necessarily come out and endorse Pressley's campaign out of respect for Ed Markey. Pressley was a staunch supporter of Warren when she was running for president whereas most of the squad from AOC and on supported Bernie's presidential campaign (to my recollection)
2) Pressley would make the campaign less about Markey and more about the issues. Moulton might not be able to get a good balance with this in his campaign, which would be a problem for him in the primary.
However, Markey's a good guy. Great Senator and is staunchly liberal, progressive on just about every issue.
I didn't see anyone other than me who predicted that Jones would win by more than 4 percent. But my prediction was 7 percent and I stuck with that. And guess what - Jones won by (a rounded) 7 percent.
And all my other predictions in Virginia ended up not being optimistic enough. All four seats that I thought Republicans would win narrowly ended up going Democratic. Even Bobby Orrock, who'd served in the HoD since before I was born, lost! In a Trump district!
interesting point about the VA HoD results - based on the current vote totals, it appears that Dems now control all seats down to Trump+4, with no Rs above the line, and no D's below that line.
You are right - so that may be the top-line race (although often federal statewide races are listed above state races). I'm seeing polling that Vivek Ramaswamy (odious, failed candidate for President in 2024) is likely to be the R nominee, with Amy Acton (the director of the Ohio Department of Health during the pandemic, who was effective but demonized by R forces) or Tim Ryan (former US representative, not yet declared) being the most likely Democratic candidates.
The combination of Sherrod Brown and Vivek Ramaswamy in the two statewide races might turn out to be very good news for downballot Dems (I expect the former to have more coattails than the latter).
Fun facts about the Virginia results: Spanberger's was the biggest margin for a Democrat for governor since 1961, and Hashmi's the largest Democratic win for Lieutenant Governor since 1969 (some say 1965.)
The 64 seats won by Democrats in the House of Delegates is the most since the 1987 election, when it was much more conservative. It wasn't that long ago (calendar year 2017, before that year's election) that the GOP had a 2-1 (66-34) majority.
I wonder if Phil Berger is regretting his redistricting power play after what happened in Virginia last night. Because if NC gets a similar blue wave next year, that planned 11 R - 3 D map could actually turn into 9 R - 5 D.
And this is great news for folks like Roy Cooper and even Sherrod Brown in Ohio.
Unfortunately all of those NC districts are still double digit Trump districts. It’s not like they dummymandered a bunch of Trump + 2-4 districts like in VA.
Things are going to get worse here in this country between now and 11/3/2026. Anything can happen.
I just hope this buoys NC Democrats to run for every seat and GOTV even harder. Because shock flips can happen. Virginia Dems overcame gerrymandered state legislative maps to wrest the majority away from Rs back in 2019.
I wouldn’t call Virginia’s state legislative maps a dummymander. However, the state Supreme Court did take some liberties with COI standards and traditional redistricting criteria to give Republicans a fighting chance at winning a majority in either chamber of the legislature.
If they end up drawing the maps in 2031, and if Democrats are still dominant in state government that year, then I wouldn’t be surprised if the Court draws legislative maps that give Republicans a higher floor but make it harder for them to win a legislative majority.
Similar to Colorado's legislative maps. They went high risk high reward to preserve a path to a majority via a bunch of single digit Biden seats but lost everything instead.
Where is everyone? It's the morning after one of the best election nights for Democrats in a long time, almost 90 minutes after this Digest was posted, and this is only the 9th comment. I would've thought we'd have at least 50-60 comments by now.
Did everyone drink too much in celebration last night?
I think most of us made our celebratory comments last night.
Now that you mention it though, we should be carrying it more into today! So I'll repeat myself from last night: this was an almost complete sweep of every reasonably contested election, with consistent and significant overperformances relative to polling and expectations across the board.
One of the best election nights we've had. Skimming the numbers it looks like we did somewhere between about the same and decently better than in 2017. That's no guarantee for 2026 but it's a good sign.
In way down ballot news. Georgetown SC dumped its GOP mayor (and county party chair) and all three GOP members of the city county in favor of 3 dems on the council and a local Progress Party mayor. The GOP swept the races last time kicking 3 dems out, iirc.
In the politics is local file, the issues came down to what to do with the paper plant that closed abruptly last Christmas (thanks International Paper) and a long sputtering steel mill. Lots of ideas, no resolution yet. Riverside properties, but lots of clean up to do. But even more pressing was the plan to replace the closed shrimp dock with high density, high end housing. I suspect that is what dumped the incumbents.
At least you don't replace it with condos. You might replace it with more public access/marina space, green space, even shops. But not condos that cater to rich.
The Georgia Public Service Commission margins are ridiculous. Republicans really didn't show up. Which is kind of embarrassing for Kemp since he campaigned for the republican incumbents.
Yeah, it really seems that Georgia Republicans legitimately forgot that there was an election yesterday. I figured the Dems would win but I thought it would be a lot closer (like a 5-6 point win).
I guess it's comeuppance for the massive margin the Republicans got in the 2008 US Senate runoff, for which Obama was no longer on the ballot.
I don't know, it seems concerning for the GOP if voters are screaming about utility prices, and they seemingly were asleep at the switch. And plenty of utility industry money was being spent on these races for months, to no avail, it turns out.
Dems had a coordinated campaign and Republicans largely didn't. Also it's pretty tough to defend the status quo when GA Power bills keep rising exponentially. Also ATL had municipal elections and the rurals just had this one race.
I wouldn't read too much into these vis a vis the upcoming Midterm races, but it's nevertheless positive.
Wow I am euphoric at our performance last night! Wish the party of progressive policy was not so reactive and voted before all of this happened but a win is a win!
Just curious about thoughts on Georgia. Obviously huge win there as Ossoff is no doubt happy. But also seeing some rhetoric that turnout was extremely low.
What are the thoughts on the Georgia outcome as it pertains to next year's midterms? Did Democrats turnout or did Republians just not??
County Exec neck and neck. Both candidates are pro transit liberals, mostly just different regional and demographic bases of support. I voted for Balducci but Zahilay, who leads, will do a fine job.
City attorney saw the Republican creamed
Bruce Harrell leads Katie Wilson by 7 points for Mayor, in a reversal of the primary. That lead isn’t insurmountable, but it will be hard. This is the most important race considering
Yeah as an outsider the mayors race surprised me given how well Wilson did in the primary and that results tend to be at least in ballpark of the primary.
As a local (albeit in the burbs) I’m surprised to. Best guess (and I should note that turnout was super low so there could be a big late break to Wilson we don’t know about yet with tricklers this week), all the comparisons of Wilson and Mamdani over the summer miss that A) Harrell is not Cuomo - I’d argue he’s to the left of Daniel Lurie even B) Harrell is an incumbent and the crime/homeless/fent situation in Seattle has improved drastically from the 2021-22 nadir and C) Wilson is not charismatic and her resume is so thin it makes Mamdani’s Assembly experience look like a Senate lifer by comparison, and not thin in an “exciting outsider way” but a “turns out you and your husband don’t have jobs and your rich parents pay your rents so you can cosplay your activism” way
I was torn between Balducci and Zahilay, but ultimately went with her. I'm fine with either though. I really hope Harrell holds on...it's gonna be close. Bye bye Ann Davison...
Obviously not the same level of importance, but this was the most unambiguous Dem sweep since 2008, where virtually every major target was a Dem victory. Even in 2012, 2018 and 2020 there were notable letdowns.
But just perusing the results, the only flags I saw:
Why did we lose the NH state house special? Those are the types of races we’ve been dominating for 6 months.
Lost local Long Island races as well. Maybe the Mandani hysteria is localized to the NYC suburbs only. Suozzi knows his crowd.
The NH special probably involved local issues. The district consists of Berlin, a dying mill town with differing ideas for how to revive it. And the Democrat still outperformed Harris.
Yeah, that's a bit of a puzzler. The consolation with the NH race is that the Democratic candidate overperformed a bit (3 points), just not enough to win.
And also, those ballot amendments in Texas... what's going on there?
Throwing 17 amendments in the face of voters naturally leads to many people voting one way on all of them, especially when half of them are about the minutiae of tax law.
The NH special was only call I can think of where I was off figured that would be a D win just given the special elections results everywhere. Something something find me 14 votes hah.
Nassau County has lots of racists and used to be the county in the state with the most powerful Republican machine, which our last Republican senator, Alphonse D'Amato, used to head.
I know New York's politics were somewhat different then, but I'm *still* flummoxed as to how D'Amato lasted three terms in the Senate before finally losing to Chuck Schumer in 1998.
Had Jacob Javits, who was in a wheelchair, dropped out of the race in 1980, D’Amato never would have been elected. Liz Holtzman, who barely lost the race, would have won. As I recall, he had a weak opponent in 1986, but a strong one in 1992 in Bob Abrams. Yet he ran a better campaign and managed to eke out a win.
Your memory is false. It's precisely because Javits refused to drop out and ran as an independent that he cost Liz Holtzman the race by about 100,000 votes.
Her seemed to be more interested in austerity than Carter in the debate, so if anything she is a tick to his right. Though both are definitely liberals.
What is it with disgraced former officials insisting on attempting a comeback lately? Malinowski lost his last seat because of a stock trading scandal. He should stay in retirement with all the money he made off that.
Not disagreeing that Malinowski should probs stick to his current career as a Twitter poster, but surely we can acknowledge the difference in scale between a stock trading scandal and sexual harrassment/ruthless cronyism/pandemic mismanagement scandals
tom malinowski is not trump nor cuomo nor anything like that. What he is a former deputy secretary of state, respected congressman who traded stocks, and a hell of party chair in Hunterdon County
I know he isn't perfect, but I've always liked him (probably because he physically resembles my late father somewhat—he actually looks more like he could be my old man's son than I do!).
https://giphy.com/gifs/community-fire-shocked-nLhdSinRtaL2E
Don't expect the Democrats to wipe away all the harm we have experienced so far, they aren’t miracle workers. It's going to take decades to repair what the Republicans have done to our country. These elections were an encouraging first step, don't let us drop the ball now but keep on fighting.
it'll take like 6 months if they buck up and eliminate the filibuster in 2029
I don't agree. If there's a new Democratic administration in 2029, they need to put an aggressive Attorney General in office to do an extensive denazification, and loads and loads of government officials at all levels will need to be investigated and rooted out. And do we think ICE will be abolished? Besides which, things will never be the same between the U.S. and other countries.
Is the next Dem president willing and able to spend their entire first term doing backward looking cleanup and prosecutions? The exact opposite of Obama? Because that's what's required.
Not only backward-looking. New laws need to be passed, the Supreme Court needs to be enlarged, new states need to be admitted, new districting and election standards need to be imposed, etc.
Nuremberg 2.0. is needed if there's a new Dem administration elected along side a Dem Congress in 2029. If we're fortunate to have a Dem Administration and Congress in 2029 they'll have to spend the entire time cleaning up Trump's mess and rooting out the MAGA deep state.
They can't. They must fix things going forward, too. There's so much to do.
Pressley considering jumping into the Massachusetts senate election.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/11/04/congress/ayanna-pressley-for-senate-00636295
I wish she had done better fundraising in recent quarters, she's going to start with a big financial disadvantage if she jumps in. The ideal scenario is she runs and Markey drops out to endorse her. I don't get a sense that he'd do that, but there's plenty of room for me to be wrong.
If she gets in and Markey doesn't drop out, we may have a moulton hot problem on our hands.
that's a wildly unsubstantiated claim
It seems clear to me: the point is that she and Markey can split the left-wing vote, leaving Moulton to win by a plurality. No claim there, just a logical thought.
it is a claim.
I think it's entirely possible. There's a good chance that with all three of them in the primary that they would all occupy similar 25-40% levels of support in the primary. Clustered together closely enough that any one of them could win.
There is a lot of hunger from activists, at least, to replace Markey with someone younger. Those same people also largely do not want an asshole like Moulton. There's a decent sized lane for all three of them.
As it stands right now I think the primary would start off closely divided, maybe advantage Markey. Over time it would depend on if any of them are able to do something to stand out to get voters better in their corner. Massachusetts' primary isn't until next September so there's a long window for them to fight it out, which is probably to Pressley's benefit at Markey's expense. But maybe not.
possible? sure. guaranteed? no.
I would respect Pressley far more than Moulton simply because:
1) She would be able to work with Elizabeth Warren, who may not necessarily come out and endorse Pressley's campaign out of respect for Ed Markey. Pressley was a staunch supporter of Warren when she was running for president whereas most of the squad from AOC and on supported Bernie's presidential campaign (to my recollection)
2) Pressley would make the campaign less about Markey and more about the issues. Moulton might not be able to get a good balance with this in his campaign, which would be a problem for him in the primary.
However, Markey's a good guy. Great Senator and is staunchly liberal, progressive on just about every issue.
I didn't see anyone other than me who predicted that Jones would win by more than 4 percent. But my prediction was 7 percent and I stuck with that. And guess what - Jones won by (a rounded) 7 percent.
I feel massively vindicated.
So stipulated
I made the mistake of putting on "Morning Joe" for a minute and the titular commentator was devoting an extended monologue to...bashing Joe Biden.
*click*
I felt the same way after watching Van Jones on CNN last night.
And all my other predictions in Virginia ended up not being optimistic enough. All four seats that I thought Republicans would win narrowly ended up going Democratic. Even Bobby Orrock, who'd served in the HoD since before I was born, lost! In a Trump district!
I guess Bobby Orrock was the Bob Marshall of 2025!
Bobby Orrock was never a controversial figure like Bob Marshall was. I would compare his loss to Manoli Loupassi’s loss in 2017.
interesting point about the VA HoD results - based on the current vote totals, it appears that Dems now control all seats down to Trump+4, with no Rs above the line, and no D's below that line.
That would suggest the Dems on the Ohio redistricting commission made the right move, if margins remain the same.
The Ohio Democrats will also probably have the most popular statewide Democratic politician on the top line of the ballot in 2026 - Sherrod Brown.
Isn't there a Gubernatorial election in 2026 in OH?
You are right - so that may be the top-line race (although often federal statewide races are listed above state races). I'm seeing polling that Vivek Ramaswamy (odious, failed candidate for President in 2024) is likely to be the R nominee, with Amy Acton (the director of the Ohio Department of Health during the pandemic, who was effective but demonized by R forces) or Tim Ryan (former US representative, not yet declared) being the most likely Democratic candidates.
The combination of Sherrod Brown and Vivek Ramaswamy in the two statewide races might turn out to be very good news for downballot Dems (I expect the former to have more coattails than the latter).
Fun facts about the Virginia results: Spanberger's was the biggest margin for a Democrat for governor since 1961, and Hashmi's the largest Democratic win for Lieutenant Governor since 1969 (some say 1965.)
The 64 seats won by Democrats in the House of Delegates is the most since the 1987 election, when it was much more conservative. It wasn't that long ago (calendar year 2017, before that year's election) that the GOP had a 2-1 (66-34) majority.
So 64-36 was the final seat count? I figured 60 was the ceiling wow.
Interesting (and awesome) a near complete margin reversal in just 8 years!
I wonder if Phil Berger is regretting his redistricting power play after what happened in Virginia last night. Because if NC gets a similar blue wave next year, that planned 11 R - 3 D map could actually turn into 9 R - 5 D.
And this is great news for folks like Roy Cooper and even Sherrod Brown in Ohio.
Unfortunately all of those NC districts are still double digit Trump districts. It’s not like they dummymandered a bunch of Trump + 2-4 districts like in VA.
Things are going to get worse here in this country between now and 11/3/2026. Anything can happen.
I just hope this buoys NC Democrats to run for every seat and GOTV even harder. Because shock flips can happen. Virginia Dems overcame gerrymandered state legislative maps to wrest the majority away from Rs back in 2019.
I wonder if Tricia Cotham is sending out résumés yet...
3 and 11 are potential flips in a wave under the new map.
I wouldn’t call Virginia’s state legislative maps a dummymander. However, the state Supreme Court did take some liberties with COI standards and traditional redistricting criteria to give Republicans a fighting chance at winning a majority in either chamber of the legislature.
If they end up drawing the maps in 2031, and if Democrats are still dominant in state government that year, then I wouldn’t be surprised if the Court draws legislative maps that give Republicans a higher floor but make it harder for them to win a legislative majority.
Similar to Colorado's legislative maps. They went high risk high reward to preserve a path to a majority via a bunch of single digit Biden seats but lost everything instead.
Trump+10-15 is winnable territory in a 2018 style environment.
Where is everyone? It's the morning after one of the best election nights for Democrats in a long time, almost 90 minutes after this Digest was posted, and this is only the 9th comment. I would've thought we'd have at least 50-60 comments by now.
Did everyone drink too much in celebration last night?
Why post when we have nothing to complain about?
There *are* reasons to post besides just complaining ;)
This made me literally laugh out loud
I think most of us made our celebratory comments last night.
Now that you mention it though, we should be carrying it more into today! So I'll repeat myself from last night: this was an almost complete sweep of every reasonably contested election, with consistent and significant overperformances relative to polling and expectations across the board.
One of the best election nights we've had. Skimming the numbers it looks like we did somewhere between about the same and decently better than in 2017. That's no guarantee for 2026 but it's a good sign.
It's definitely bigger than 2017 and significantly bigger than Republicans' 2021 mini-wave.
*Thread proceeds to become one of the most commented ever*
In way down ballot news. Georgetown SC dumped its GOP mayor (and county party chair) and all three GOP members of the city county in favor of 3 dems on the council and a local Progress Party mayor. The GOP swept the races last time kicking 3 dems out, iirc.
In the politics is local file, the issues came down to what to do with the paper plant that closed abruptly last Christmas (thanks International Paper) and a long sputtering steel mill. Lots of ideas, no resolution yet. Riverside properties, but lots of clean up to do. But even more pressing was the plan to replace the closed shrimp dock with high density, high end housing. I suspect that is what dumped the incumbents.
City council, that is. I can't edit comments with the 3 dots.
Low country SC seems like the exact place you don’t close a shrimp dock
At least you don't replace it with condos. You might replace it with more public access/marina space, green space, even shops. But not condos that cater to rich.
The Georgia Public Service Commission margins are ridiculous. Republicans really didn't show up. Which is kind of embarrassing for Kemp since he campaigned for the republican incumbents.
So not indicative of what the electorate may be next year??
Right, not necessarily.
Yeah, it really seems that Georgia Republicans legitimately forgot that there was an election yesterday. I figured the Dems would win but I thought it would be a lot closer (like a 5-6 point win).
I guess it's comeuppance for the massive margin the Republicans got in the 2008 US Senate runoff, for which Obama was no longer on the ballot.
I don't know, it seems concerning for the GOP if voters are screaming about utility prices, and they seemingly were asleep at the switch. And plenty of utility industry money was being spent on these races for months, to no avail, it turns out.
"Our utility costs are skyrocketing"
vs.
"My opponent is woke"
Shocked, shocked, I tell you, that that line wasn't an effective counter...
Dems had a coordinated campaign and Republicans largely didn't. Also it's pretty tough to defend the status quo when GA Power bills keep rising exponentially. Also ATL had municipal elections and the rurals just had this one race.
I wouldn't read too much into these vis a vis the upcoming Midterm races, but it's nevertheless positive.
Wow I am euphoric at our performance last night! Wish the party of progressive policy was not so reactive and voted before all of this happened but a win is a win!
Just curious about thoughts on Georgia. Obviously huge win there as Ossoff is no doubt happy. But also seeing some rhetoric that turnout was extremely low.
What are the thoughts on the Georgia outcome as it pertains to next year's midterms? Did Democrats turnout or did Republians just not??
Yes to both.
This bodes well for Ossoff as well as flipping control of the utility commission next year. And with a potential Democratic governor?
I hope the 2026 midterms will be a 2010 sized shellacking for the Republican Party. They've had it coming.
From Seattle.
The NIMBY city council president was creamed.
County Exec neck and neck. Both candidates are pro transit liberals, mostly just different regional and demographic bases of support. I voted for Balducci but Zahilay, who leads, will do a fine job.
City attorney saw the Republican creamed
Bruce Harrell leads Katie Wilson by 7 points for Mayor, in a reversal of the primary. That lead isn’t insurmountable, but it will be hard. This is the most important race considering
Yeah as an outsider the mayors race surprised me given how well Wilson did in the primary and that results tend to be at least in ballpark of the primary.
As a local (albeit in the burbs) I’m surprised to. Best guess (and I should note that turnout was super low so there could be a big late break to Wilson we don’t know about yet with tricklers this week), all the comparisons of Wilson and Mamdani over the summer miss that A) Harrell is not Cuomo - I’d argue he’s to the left of Daniel Lurie even B) Harrell is an incumbent and the crime/homeless/fent situation in Seattle has improved drastically from the 2021-22 nadir and C) Wilson is not charismatic and her resume is so thin it makes Mamdani’s Assembly experience look like a Senate lifer by comparison, and not thin in an “exciting outsider way” but a “turns out you and your husband don’t have jobs and your rich parents pay your rents so you can cosplay your activism” way
I was torn between Balducci and Zahilay, but ultimately went with her. I'm fine with either though. I really hope Harrell holds on...it's gonna be close. Bye bye Ann Davison...
Obviously not the same level of importance, but this was the most unambiguous Dem sweep since 2008, where virtually every major target was a Dem victory. Even in 2012, 2018 and 2020 there were notable letdowns.
But just perusing the results, the only flags I saw:
Why did we lose the NH state house special? Those are the types of races we’ve been dominating for 6 months.
Lost local Long Island races as well. Maybe the Mandani hysteria is localized to the NYC suburbs only. Suozzi knows his crowd.
The NH special probably involved local issues. The district consists of Berlin, a dying mill town with differing ideas for how to revive it. And the Democrat still outperformed Harris.
Yeah, that's a bit of a puzzler. The consolation with the NH race is that the Democratic candidate overperformed a bit (3 points), just not enough to win.
And also, those ballot amendments in Texas... what's going on there?
The TX amendment summaries were purposely misleading and there was no real campaign to counter them either.
Why no real campaign?
Texas is gonna Texas.
Throwing 17 amendments in the face of voters naturally leads to many people voting one way on all of them, especially when half of them are about the minutiae of tax law.
I suspect if we had that many amendments in New York, we'd vote them all down, but we've never had that many. We had 6 this year. I know the 3 pro-housing ballot measures passed and the one to move all mayoral elections to even-numbered years (if the State Legislature decided to do so) failed. Prop 1 was apparently narrowly approved: https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/52590/20251105/ny-voters-narrowly-approve-prop-1-to-protect-land-and-make-amends-in-the-adks
The NH special was only call I can think of where I was off figured that would be a D win just given the special elections results everywhere. Something something find me 14 votes hah.
Nassau County has lots of racists and used to be the county in the state with the most powerful Republican machine, which our last Republican senator, Alphonse D'Amato, used to head.
I know New York's politics were somewhat different then, but I'm *still* flummoxed as to how D'Amato lasted three terms in the Senate before finally losing to Chuck Schumer in 1998.
Had Jacob Javits, who was in a wheelchair, dropped out of the race in 1980, D’Amato never would have been elected. Liz Holtzman, who barely lost the race, would have won. As I recall, he had a weak opponent in 1986, but a strong one in 1992 in Bob Abrams. Yet he ran a better campaign and managed to eke out a win.
Holtzman would have been a GREAT senator. What a loss.
Your memory is false. It's precisely because Javits refused to drop out and ran as an independent that he cost Liz Holtzman the race by about 100,000 votes.
I think that’s what I wrote.
St. Paul Mayor.
State Representative Kaoly Her called as the winner against incumbent 2 term mayor Melvin Carter. Both Her and Carter are Democrats.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/11/05/kaohly-her-wins-st-paul-mayor
I had no idea what to expect on this race. Or even if there's any daylight between Her and Carter on the issues.
Do you think Frey hangs on after subsequent IRV rounds? 42% seems like the danger zone to me with the other three candidates all working in tandem.
I thibk Frey is toast.
Her seemed to be more interested in austerity than Carter in the debate, so if anything she is a tick to his right. Though both are definitely liberals.
Frey wins with 50% after the 2nd round.
"...Her?".gif
Even though the gif didn't post, I still caught the reference...
Haha yeah I didn't actually post the gif, just an Easter egg
NJ 11: Democrats already lining up for the special election. Including former rep Tom Malinowski.
https://newjerseyglobe.com/congress/with-sherrill-now-governor-elect-john-bartlett-will-run-for-her-house-seat/
What is it with disgraced former officials insisting on attempting a comeback lately? Malinowski lost his last seat because of a stock trading scandal. He should stay in retirement with all the money he made off that.
Coumoism remains the challenge of our time.
Ok. But it's really just Trumpism. Felonies and all. 😁
Not disagreeing that Malinowski should probs stick to his current career as a Twitter poster, but surely we can acknowledge the difference in scale between a stock trading scandal and sexual harrassment/ruthless cronyism/pandemic mismanagement scandals
tom malinowski is not trump nor cuomo nor anything like that. What he is a former deputy secretary of state, respected congressman who traded stocks, and a hell of party chair in Hunterdon County
I know he isn't perfect, but I've always liked him (probably because he physically resembles my late father somewhat—he actually looks more like he could be my old man's son than I do!).
He lost because his district was made more Republican. The stock thing was minor. He was a good representative
I respect him but I'll pass, I prefer candidates who live in my district, personally.