To borrow a phrase from Susan Collins, I was very disappointed by the 2024 election results in PA. Out of the 7 purple states, it was by far the worst with Casey losing his seat as well as falling short in the House races. Some people online blamed the state party chair (disarray?) but in light of this news, the governor definitely deserves more criticism.
coupled with Fetterman's defections, seems like an absolute dumpster fire statewide
I’m glad Ford is seemingly moving away from the approach that isn’t working. I will be curious as well to see if the tourism Armageddon Trump’s tariffs/threats against Canada and Greenland/ICE insanity brought to Las Vegas will also have an effect. The economy there has been devastated, I’ve heard.
Don't forget the surge in airfares, due to high oil prices from the Iran war, which would only further compound the problem. Could become an issue for other tourism destinations (looking at you Florida).
Yeah, this will be a good test of how much an "online presence" can make up for deficiencies in a candidate. Per the most recent FEC update, she has the least amount of money of the 4, only a pitiful $100K.
Thanks for your detailed explanation. I can see where you’re going here.
IA as a state has always been swingy but it depends on the sentiment at a given time. 2028 is still a long way away but I am not sure the GOP will be able to improve on much in the state traction wise if it can’t move on from Trump.
Once the tariffs are eliminated by the next Democratic POTUS (if elected in 2028), IA may be easier for Democrats to win again.
I understand what you’re getting at but be aware I said “may” to imply that it’s possible IA voters could swing back to Team Blue. Not a pre-Trump mentality but a post-Trump presidency (him leaving office being ineligible to run again) mentality. Economics do factor in to voters in how they cast their votes, even if we’re not talking strictly IA Republicans.
Also, I think we need to wait until the 2026 midterms to know whether IA voters are going to remain voting for the GOP or not, absent of course senior leaders like Chuck Grassley. There’s a lot of uncertainty as to what the GOP will become after not being able to ass kiss Trump a lot.
From a sentiment standpoint, getting to 50% for now even with what you are saying in Round 2 is still a good thing. More time for Peltola to get further up in the polls.
However, Sullivan not having a break still means he’s been consistently behind Peltola in the polls ever since she announced her candidacy. Not a good sign heading to the midterms if he cannot tighten things in the polls.
Now if only Schultz could further erode Begich's lead in the house race. Perhaps with enough name recognition and exposure through the summer and fall he might stand a decent chance for an upset.
Thank you for your service, DM – present and upcoming. I really really hope that, come November, Arizonans and Left-Coasters will celebrate the fruits of your labor!
Here, in order of primary election date, are the candidates I have pitched in for. I am interested in any feedback about these races. But let’s face it… I’m more interested in positive feedback.
I have also pitched in to the State and Local Election Alliance and to Contest Every Race. You are buying kind of a pig in a poke with entities like that. Their targets are so very very many that you would think they would do well just gathering low-hanging fruit. But until they have a track record of successfully gathering low-hanging fruit, it seems they might do a slicker job of explaining their targeting methodology and their allocation of resources. But I simply assume the best of their good intentions.
Some local news: the data center mayhem has come to North Central West Virginia, with two data centers expected to be built in Marion and Tucker counties.
When I was in Tucker last, there was a large anti-data center push from locals that live in the small liberal enclaves of Davis and Thomas. Meanwhile, Marion County has a much larger liberal voting bloc, but they're building it in a rural unincorporated area outside of Fairmont.
A thought I had about the gerrymandering and apportionment problems: could (or should) Democratic governments or organizations in the North and West encourage another Great Migration from the Confederate States? Perhaps targeted ads towards Black professionals like doctors, nurses, teachers, etc who might be looking for a more welcoming climate in the face of Republican cuts to health and education, attacks on DEI, civil rights, and everything else? I'm just spitballing here so feel free to me this is a wrong or impossible approach.
Yes, I was thinking more of the deep South like Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Might also consider a branch out to messaging to Hispanic populations in Florida and Texas, depending on how the trends go there. I know there has been a reverse migration to the big cities in the South, Atlanta and Charlotte and Houston and so on. But things can change. And who knows, you might even see ads with maple leaves on them looking for people to emigrate.
The problem is most people aren’t really factoring in politics when moving to different places. Jobs, affordability, climate are always the biggest drivers. If you get a nice job offer in Tennessee or Alabama most are not turning it down because of how red the state is.
I wonder how true this is these days? Historically what you say was absolutely true, but the country is sorting itself ideologically to a greater degree as time goes on.
Anecdotally, the way people respond to my personal opposition to relocating to red states is very different between recent statements and statements made many years ago. In the past people would treat it as something that made sense if it was important to me, but not something they would care about. Today I get far more people making statements of agreement, that they also would be unable to bear living in a deep red state. I care about politics far more than everyone I interact with in person.
Most specifically for affordability, African Americans in the South (especially in rural areas) tend to be rather poor, and considering bluer states tend to be expensive, there may not be many places where they can move to.
That'll be pretty tough due to Memphis' geographical location, and that aggressively cracking Memphis could inadvertently weaken the Nashville gerrymander.
Also depends on how much Kustoff, Van Epps, and Ogles are willing to play ball with taking in Memphis black voters in their districts.
yeah, the ideal R-map for TN (cracking both Memphis and Nashville) would require horizontal strips across the state to take in deep red Appalachia. Not sure how much willingness there is for that in the delegation.
I think the other big issue is the courts. Aside from legal issues surrounding the district itself the other issue is if it’s too late to redistrict this late in the cycle, since the filing deadline is long past.
Beyond the partisan consequences I have to imagine southern cities are going to suffer additional economic consequences if all of their federal representatives only represent a sliver of those cities and said representatives use the cities as political punching bags.
Some clarity would be nice. From what I've seen, on the one hand, the ruling defends compact, geographically logical VRA districts but then on the other delineates criteria that some are interpreting as "Okay, guys, just play dumb on racial statistics and you can map however you want. Just declare you want all Republican districts and nobody can stop you."
If tearing apart a geographically compact majority-minority district in order to create a majority white district isn’t vote dilution, I don’t know what is.
But yes, the Republicans are acting as if every majority-minority district, at least in the south, is by definition unconstitutional.
I think I'm approaching this from the POV that the focus of the case was on additional majority-minority districts (i.e. the ones in Louisiana and AL) and not legacy ones.
When those corrupt Republican hack judges don't overturn laws and decisions in one fell swoop, they do it by death from 1,000 cuts. Therefore, trying to parse their illegitimate, unconstitutional decisions for some remaining crumb they would enforce is a waste of time.
Is a 17-0 Illinois map really possible? I’ve seen some maps floating on twitter with like 17 bacon strips from Chicago stretching downstate but they never have PVI data.
Just factoring in incumbent demands, 17 safe seats where everyone is happy seems like a fantasy but maybe it’s possible.
I haven’t drawn it in a while but I’d settle for 2 or 3 downstate GOP seats to ensure the other 15 stay blue even in a bad wave. Ditto what I would’ve done in VA (9-2).
Illinois is blue but not so overwhelmingly blue that I would want to risk a 17-0 or even 16-1. I’d like Chicago to not be completely sliced up, as well.
Depending on what can be made I can imagine a 16-1 map being non-risky. Concentrate enough republicans in one district and the rest become a lot more reliable.
Theoretically if every district was balanced perfectly they would all be Harris +10. With a single republican district I could see that getting to the +12-14 range depending. Of course we wouldn't get that perfect even distribution in practice, but if we can get most of the districts to +14 with 2-4 in the +5-10 range I think that would be a good result. Question is if that's possible.
Not sure of poster's opinions on this topic - this person did an alternate history video where every President from 1976-2000 was instead a figure from the opposite party.
I'll save you an hour - skip if you're not a fan of this sort of thing:
1976: POTUS Gerald R. Ford and KS Sen. Bob Dole defeat GA Gov. Jimmy Carter and MN Sen. Walter Mondale.
1980: Former CA Gov. Burt Lancaster (Reagan) and DNC chair Sargent Shriver (Bush Sr.) defeat VPOTUS Bob Dole and NSA George H.W. Bush (Mondale). They also defeat the independent ticket of WA Sen. Scoop Jackson (Anderson) and former OR Gov. Tom McCall (Lucey).
1984: POTUS Burt Lancaster and VPOTUS Sargent Shriver defeat former NSA George H.W. Bush and Ambassador Shirley Temple (Ferraro).
1988: VPOTUS Sargent Shriver (Bush Sr.) and DE Sen. Joe Biden (Quayle) defeat NV Sen. Paul Laxalt (Dukakis) and RI Sen. John Chafee (Bentsen).
1992: ME Gov. John McKernan (Clinton) and NH Sen. John H. Sununu (Gore) defeat POTUS Sargent Shriver and VPOTUS Joe Biden. They also defeat the independent ticket of businessman Steve Forbes (Perot) and judge Clarence Thomas (Stockdale).
1996: POTUS John McKernan and VPOTUS John H. Sununu defeat former SD Sen. George McGovern (Dole) and NJ Sen. Bill Bradley (Kemp). They also defeat the independent ticket of Forbes, again, and economist Milton Friedman (Choate).
2000: CA Gov. Bobby Shriver (Bush Jr.) and strategist Hamilton Jordan (Cheney) defeat VPOTUS John H. Sununu (Gore) and PA Sen. Arlen Specter (Lieberman).
As somebody who’s written an alt-1976 timeline himself on alternate history.com, the 1980 candidate people should really look at had Ford won would have been New York Governor Hugh Carey (for my timeline I tapped Reuben Askew of Florida as his VP)
Rick Wilson and his son Andrew on their Friday "Behind the Numbers" podcast say that while the GOP has a ton of money to burn, they've already triaged Michael Whatley's Senate campaign in NC (and that his campaign is "done").
I get what you're saying, but I have not seen any negative Cooper attack ads (yet) following the March primary. Now, are the GOP saving their money for after Labor Day? Yes.
As a NC voter, for me this Senate race went from toss-up to Lean Dem immediately after Roy Cooper announced his candidacy last summer. Cooper has been battle tested during multiple election cycles for AG and governor. And whatever "oppo" Rs have thrown at him isn't sticking.
We shall see how right Rick is this fall. If what he said bears fruit, Rs will have a beyond awful night on 11/3/26.
This is quite surprising, given that Whatley was the RNC chair and even successfully got the president to push aside one of his own family members (in-law) to clear the field.
Cooper is far ahead in the fundraising race too, even before accounting for any outside PAC spending.
Even worse, the candidate he helped is his opponent in this year's governor race, Stacy Garrity. Just awful.
I definitely wasn't a fan of him before, but I appreciated his ability to get a big win a tough state.
He's dead to me now. Democrats that help republicans win, outside of some extraordinary circumstance, are worse than worthless.
To borrow a phrase from Susan Collins, I was very disappointed by the 2024 election results in PA. Out of the 7 purple states, it was by far the worst with Casey losing his seat as well as falling short in the House races. Some people online blamed the state party chair (disarray?) but in light of this news, the governor definitely deserves more criticism.
coupled with Fetterman's defections, seems like an absolute dumpster fire statewide
If I remember, our treasurer nominee won an upset in the primary, so I wonder if Shapiro was being a sore loser. He should blame himself, according to Wiki he didn't even bother to endorse the more electable candidate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Pennsylvania_State_Treasurer_election#Democratic_primary
For a million different reasons from foreign policy to his ego, he's the worst 2028 contender for me.
Isn't the Bulwark right wing but antiTrump? Or have I mixed it up with another outlet that I don't read?
I’m glad Ford is seemingly moving away from the approach that isn’t working. I will be curious as well to see if the tourism Armageddon Trump’s tariffs/threats against Canada and Greenland/ICE insanity brought to Las Vegas will also have an effect. The economy there has been devastated, I’ve heard.
Don't forget the surge in airfares, due to high oil prices from the Iran war, which would only further compound the problem. Could become an issue for other tourism destinations (looking at you Florida).
There's three other high profile people in the primary. She could possibly place 4th, unless he endorses her.
Yeah, this will be a good test of how much an "online presence" can make up for deficiencies in a candidate. Per the most recent FEC update, she has the least amount of money of the 4, only a pitiful $100K.
Also, the other Republicans in the race aren't exactly spectacular candidates either.
Definitely. Republicans missed an opportunity by nominating Rob McColley for lieutenant governor instead of Congress.
That’s a good thing! I’m glad the GOP is fearing about the OH-09 race.
But really Republicans. Really. You had ample opportunity to tell Madison Sheahan not to run and you blew it.
Iowa is one of the most affected states by Trump's erratic tariff policies, IIRC
Makes me potentially hopeful that IA could go back to being a competitive state for Democrats at the presidential level in 2028.
Trump turned the tide back in 2016 but I don’t think he can keep the tide managed anymore.
Thanks for your detailed explanation. I can see where you’re going here.
IA as a state has always been swingy but it depends on the sentiment at a given time. 2028 is still a long way away but I am not sure the GOP will be able to improve on much in the state traction wise if it can’t move on from Trump.
Once the tariffs are eliminated by the next Democratic POTUS (if elected in 2028), IA may be easier for Democrats to win again.
I understand what you’re getting at but be aware I said “may” to imply that it’s possible IA voters could swing back to Team Blue. Not a pre-Trump mentality but a post-Trump presidency (him leaving office being ineligible to run again) mentality. Economics do factor in to voters in how they cast their votes, even if we’re not talking strictly IA Republicans.
Also, I think we need to wait until the 2026 midterms to know whether IA voters are going to remain voting for the GOP or not, absent of course senior leaders like Chuck Grassley. There’s a lot of uncertainty as to what the GOP will become after not being able to ass kiss Trump a lot.
Lol. A businessman from New York polling higher than Bronco Williams, who appears to be a native Alaskan.
He is running in more than 30 house districts nationwide lol
Peltola will be # 52 or 53 for Dems!!
Sullivan sure isn’t getting a break in polling, especially considering Peltola is at the 50% mark here!
True but not in Round 1. The numbers above are Round 2. In Round 1, she still leads big, however, 49%-42%.
From a sentiment standpoint, getting to 50% for now even with what you are saying in Round 2 is still a good thing. More time for Peltola to get further up in the polls.
However, Sullivan not having a break still means he’s been consistently behind Peltola in the polls ever since she announced her candidacy. Not a good sign heading to the midterms if he cannot tighten things in the polls.
Now if only Schultz could further erode Begich's lead in the house race. Perhaps with enough name recognition and exposure through the summer and fall he might stand a decent chance for an upset.
This poll is far from new. We discussed it on this site on April 23.
I am 25, will be 26 soon, and I am planning to spend this summer volunteering as best I can — preferably in my swing district of NY-17.
🫡 grew up in AZ so thank you for your service!
I’ll be knocking doors for Roy Cooper and Anita Earls this summer!
Thank you for your service, DM – present and upcoming. I really really hope that, come November, Arizonans and Left-Coasters will celebrate the fruits of your labor!
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/us/politics/alex-bores-chris-larsen-open-ai-jack-schlossberg.html
*Repost from digest*
NY-12: California tech billionaire Chris Larsen will spend at least $3.5 million to boost Democratic Assemblyman Alex Bores.
Here, in order of primary election date, are the candidates I have pitched in for. I am interested in any feedback about these races. But let’s face it… I’m more interested in positive feedback.
Keisha Lance Bottoms
Georgia Governor
Tina Shah
NJ-7
Deb Haaland
NM Governor
Letitia James
NY AG
Joanna Mendoza
Arizona-6
Don Coover
Kansas-2
Sharice Davids
Kansas-3
Sandy Spidel Neumann
Kansas US Senate
Cindy Holscher
Kansas Governor
Ilhan Omar
Minnesota-5
Peggy Flanagan
Minnesota US Senate
Mary Peltola
Alaska US Senate
I like Esteves for GA-Gov and probably Bennett for NJ-7, but the rest seem pretty reasonable.
Sometimes I have been mistaken for a pretty reasonable man.
I have also pitched in to the State and Local Election Alliance and to Contest Every Race. You are buying kind of a pig in a poke with entities like that. Their targets are so very very many that you would think they would do well just gathering low-hanging fruit. But until they have a track record of successfully gathering low-hanging fruit, it seems they might do a slicker job of explaining their targeting methodology and their allocation of resources. But I simply assume the best of their good intentions.
https://www.wboy.com/news/tucker/12-news-exclusive-data-center-official-discusses-tucker-county-project/
https://res.cloudinary.com/jll-global-sandbox/image/upload/v1756822731/MyListing/public/prod/property-875565/hog-lick-appalachian-mega-site-data-center-04.pdf
Some local news: the data center mayhem has come to North Central West Virginia, with two data centers expected to be built in Marion and Tucker counties.
When I was in Tucker last, there was a large anti-data center push from locals that live in the small liberal enclaves of Davis and Thomas. Meanwhile, Marion County has a much larger liberal voting bloc, but they're building it in a rural unincorporated area outside of Fairmont.
A thought I had about the gerrymandering and apportionment problems: could (or should) Democratic governments or organizations in the North and West encourage another Great Migration from the Confederate States? Perhaps targeted ads towards Black professionals like doctors, nurses, teachers, etc who might be looking for a more welcoming climate in the face of Republican cuts to health and education, attacks on DEI, civil rights, and everything else? I'm just spitballing here so feel free to me this is a wrong or impossible approach.
Yes, I was thinking more of the deep South like Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Might also consider a branch out to messaging to Hispanic populations in Florida and Texas, depending on how the trends go there. I know there has been a reverse migration to the big cities in the South, Atlanta and Charlotte and Houston and so on. But things can change. And who knows, you might even see ads with maple leaves on them looking for people to emigrate.
i'd back an effort to encourage them to move there though a lot of young professionals moving there are part of the reason they remain competitive.
The problem is most people aren’t really factoring in politics when moving to different places. Jobs, affordability, climate are always the biggest drivers. If you get a nice job offer in Tennessee or Alabama most are not turning it down because of how red the state is.
I wonder how true this is these days? Historically what you say was absolutely true, but the country is sorting itself ideologically to a greater degree as time goes on.
Anecdotally, the way people respond to my personal opposition to relocating to red states is very different between recent statements and statements made many years ago. In the past people would treat it as something that made sense if it was important to me, but not something they would care about. Today I get far more people making statements of agreement, that they also would be unable to bear living in a deep red state. I care about politics far more than everyone I interact with in person.
But, of course, anecdotes are just that.
Most specifically for affordability, African Americans in the South (especially in rural areas) tend to be rather poor, and considering bluer states tend to be expensive, there may not be many places where they can move to.
If this were feasible, Illinois would have the highest population growth of any state in the country right now, but it doesn't for a lot of reasons.
Lee calls a special session to redistrict TN to eliminate a minority opportunity district that happens to have a white representative.
https://x.com/thetnholler/status/2050332577878224962?s=46&t=sbdQQeYBqp0h_Zql717iTw
He better be careful - if he stretches a district from somewhere in Memphis to the city of Jackson, it could be swingy.
Unfortunately they’ll probably just do Memphis like they did Nashville and split it 3 or 4 ways.
That'll be pretty tough due to Memphis' geographical location, and that aggressively cracking Memphis could inadvertently weaken the Nashville gerrymander.
Also depends on how much Kustoff, Van Epps, and Ogles are willing to play ball with taking in Memphis black voters in their districts.
yeah, the ideal R-map for TN (cracking both Memphis and Nashville) would require horizontal strips across the state to take in deep red Appalachia. Not sure how much willingness there is for that in the delegation.
I think the other big issue is the courts. Aside from legal issues surrounding the district itself the other issue is if it’s too late to redistrict this late in the cycle, since the filing deadline is long past.
It would be past the deadline, but only for Democrats.
Beyond the partisan consequences I have to imagine southern cities are going to suffer additional economic consequences if all of their federal representatives only represent a sliver of those cities and said representatives use the cities as political punching bags.
Some clarity would be nice. From what I've seen, on the one hand, the ruling defends compact, geographically logical VRA districts but then on the other delineates criteria that some are interpreting as "Okay, guys, just play dumb on racial statistics and you can map however you want. Just declare you want all Republican districts and nobody can stop you."
This seems to be about testing boundaries.
If tearing apart a geographically compact majority-minority district in order to create a majority white district isn’t vote dilution, I don’t know what is.
But yes, the Republicans are acting as if every majority-minority district, at least in the south, is by definition unconstitutional.
Did the opinion have anything to say about retrogression? That seems to be the biggest missing piece.
If by that you mean getting rid of majority-minority districts that have been around for a while, like TN 9, no.
I think I'm approaching this from the POV that the focus of the case was on additional majority-minority districts (i.e. the ones in Louisiana and AL) and not legacy ones.
When those corrupt Republican hack judges don't overturn laws and decisions in one fell swoop, they do it by death from 1,000 cuts. Therefore, trying to parse their illegitimate, unconstitutional decisions for some remaining crumb they would enforce is a waste of time.
https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/david-scott-death-special-election-congressional-district/
GA-13: The special election for the late Rep. David Scott's seat will be held on July 28.
At least they held one.
Is a 17-0 Illinois map really possible? I’ve seen some maps floating on twitter with like 17 bacon strips from Chicago stretching downstate but they never have PVI data.
Just factoring in incumbent demands, 17 safe seats where everyone is happy seems like a fantasy but maybe it’s possible.
You’d basically have to have all 17 districts like a slot car track that goes into Chicago.
Hire abgin!
I haven’t drawn it in a while but I’d settle for 2 or 3 downstate GOP seats to ensure the other 15 stay blue even in a bad wave. Ditto what I would’ve done in VA (9-2).
Illinois is blue but not so overwhelmingly blue that I would want to risk a 17-0 or even 16-1. I’d like Chicago to not be completely sliced up, as well.
Depending on what can be made I can imagine a 16-1 map being non-risky. Concentrate enough republicans in one district and the rest become a lot more reliable.
Theoretically if every district was balanced perfectly they would all be Harris +10. With a single republican district I could see that getting to the +12-14 range depending. Of course we wouldn't get that perfect even distribution in practice, but if we can get most of the districts to +14 with 2-4 in the +5-10 range I think that would be a good result. Question is if that's possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdMzMfuqVtE
Not sure of poster's opinions on this topic - this person did an alternate history video where every President from 1976-2000 was instead a figure from the opposite party.
I'll save you an hour - skip if you're not a fan of this sort of thing:
1976: POTUS Gerald R. Ford and KS Sen. Bob Dole defeat GA Gov. Jimmy Carter and MN Sen. Walter Mondale.
1980: Former CA Gov. Burt Lancaster (Reagan) and DNC chair Sargent Shriver (Bush Sr.) defeat VPOTUS Bob Dole and NSA George H.W. Bush (Mondale). They also defeat the independent ticket of WA Sen. Scoop Jackson (Anderson) and former OR Gov. Tom McCall (Lucey).
1984: POTUS Burt Lancaster and VPOTUS Sargent Shriver defeat former NSA George H.W. Bush and Ambassador Shirley Temple (Ferraro).
1988: VPOTUS Sargent Shriver (Bush Sr.) and DE Sen. Joe Biden (Quayle) defeat NV Sen. Paul Laxalt (Dukakis) and RI Sen. John Chafee (Bentsen).
1992: ME Gov. John McKernan (Clinton) and NH Sen. John H. Sununu (Gore) defeat POTUS Sargent Shriver and VPOTUS Joe Biden. They also defeat the independent ticket of businessman Steve Forbes (Perot) and judge Clarence Thomas (Stockdale).
1996: POTUS John McKernan and VPOTUS John H. Sununu defeat former SD Sen. George McGovern (Dole) and NJ Sen. Bill Bradley (Kemp). They also defeat the independent ticket of Forbes, again, and economist Milton Friedman (Choate).
2000: CA Gov. Bobby Shriver (Bush Jr.) and strategist Hamilton Jordan (Cheney) defeat VPOTUS John H. Sununu (Gore) and PA Sen. Arlen Specter (Lieberman).
Henry Fonda would have made a better governor and president
Than Lancaster, you mean? As a progressive alternative to Reagan?
Both
As somebody who’s written an alt-1976 timeline himself on alternate history.com, the 1980 candidate people should really look at had Ford won would have been New York Governor Hugh Carey (for my timeline I tapped Reuben Askew of Florida as his VP)
For All Mankind’s alternate history is wild.
Rick Wilson and his son Andrew on their Friday "Behind the Numbers" podcast say that while the GOP has a ton of money to burn, they've already triaged Michael Whatley's Senate campaign in NC (and that his campaign is "done").
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THkz9CIJQxs
Go to 26:00 for the relevant comments.
I get what you're saying, but I have not seen any negative Cooper attack ads (yet) following the March primary. Now, are the GOP saving their money for after Labor Day? Yes.
As a NC voter, for me this Senate race went from toss-up to Lean Dem immediately after Roy Cooper announced his candidacy last summer. Cooper has been battle tested during multiple election cycles for AG and governor. And whatever "oppo" Rs have thrown at him isn't sticking.
We shall see how right Rick is this fall. If what he said bears fruit, Rs will have a beyond awful night on 11/3/26.
3 months ago I said Cooper wins big!
This is quite surprising, given that Whatley was the RNC chair and even successfully got the president to push aside one of his own family members (in-law) to clear the field.
Cooper is far ahead in the fundraising race too, even before accounting for any outside PAC spending.
Lara Trump would get steamrolled by Cooper. Probably even more than Whatley will be after November.