Will be giving an update on my predictions every few months. This is an update from December - it was made somewhat hastily, so tell me if I'm missing anything or suggest anything new.
Georgia is one of the states where we've seen the strongest Democratic overperformance in special elections. And Sen. Ossoff being on a glide path to re-election will help any gubernatorial nominee.
On the horizon, I’m interested in the WISC race in a couple weeks. Beyond that, the Georgia primaries in May and Iowa and Maine in early June.
Separately, I wanted to ask people who is the biggest, most beatable Republican running this year with a national reach that many view as a villain? I ask because I showed my wife the Ohio poll last night and she was ecstatic to see Ramaswamy losing big. I imagine it has to be Ramaswamy, right? People like Ken Paxton and Andy Biggs are odious villains, but they don’t really have a big national audience among laypeople. Elise Stefanik would have been a contender for that title before she dropped out, but she never had a chance of winning to begin with.
Susan Collins probably fits this bill lol. There are some particularly odious thugs who I think are at risk, but not the most powerful to compare to Ramaswamy running for OH gov. Cory Mills and Derrick Van Orden are the main incumbents that come to mind, maybe Andy Ogles. Rob Bresnahan has made himself into such a clown over stocks. Fascist candidates like Madison Sheahan and Brandon Herrera could lose. Hopefully tougher races for Cindy Hyde-Smith, Lindsey Graham and maybe Roger Marshall (if Davids runs). I'm pipe dreaming that Greg Abbott loses and also would be sweet if Doug Jones could beat Tommy Tuberville for AL gov, but I'm not betting on it lol.
Does she have much of a national audience though? I’m talking levels of notoriety where the villain would be somewhat of a recognizable household name like Ted Cruz, RFK, Kristi Noem, or Dr. Oz. Ramaswamy seems like the only statewide candidate with that notoriety this year.
I think Collins is extremely well known among normies, yes. Maybe different normies than Ramaswamy, but I'd bet that she probably has higher name ID and negative emotions from Dems overall than him. Albeit, his would probably have a higher portion at "STRONGLY disapprove" than her lol.
"Some names on Stitt’s shortlist that he pitched to people for the open Senate appointment while in DC, per sources familiar with his DC meetings:
Harold Hamm [oil tycoon/founder and board chair of Continental Resources]
Dustin Hilliary [co-CEO of Hilliary Communications and senior advisor/"chief negotiator with state legislators and elected official" to Stitt, former member of the state board of regents for higher ed]
Robert Cox [founder, president and CEO of Aviation Training Consulting]
Alan Armstrong [executive board chair of Williams Companies]"
Among the various names that have been floated for the appointment and campaign, I think the only one missed is Alex Gray, who was the chief of staff at the NSC at the end of Trump I and now co-founder and CEO of "American Global Strategies".
The Politico article says Armstrong is the compromise, outsider option. Stitt wants Hilliary and Trump wants Hamm. Usually, governors have appointed allies, though, so my guess is Hilliary.
NV-1: Perennial candidate Jim Marchant is no longer challenging Rep. Dina Titus. State Sen. Carrie Buck is the only major Republican running.
NV-2: Despite the district being open for the first time in 15 years, the only major Republicans running here are former Assemblyman James Settelmeyer and businessman David Flippo.
NV-3: Jeff Gunter, Aury Nagy, Tera Anderson and Marty O'Donnell are the major Republicans challenging Rep. Susie Lee. Another one, Chris Brandlin, withdrew.
I am way more curious how the races in Florida will shape up in November, esp after the special election wins.
FL has let me down before but with the perfect electoral storm brewing this year, I think Rs will lose their gerrymandered supermajority in the legislature and Jolly wins by a very slim margin. I’m a bit iffy on Vindman winning against Moody, but if he wins too, I’ll be happy.
If Donalds is the R nominee for the FL governor's race, I think Jolly has a 50-50 shot of an upset. Probably better if the FL Rs are as allergic to brown people as Ohio Rs seem to be.
I see Texas as like Georgia and Arizona: it's fool's gold right until it isn't. Those two states were moving towards us slowly and surely for a while. Many people insisted they were a waste of time for years due to our consistent defeats even after getting our hopes up with solid candidates. Then they became unambiguously purple states as they moved close enough to us to be competitive.
Texas is exactly like that, it just was starting from a point of us losing by 20+ points. There was -- and remains still -- ground to cover to bring it to competitive.
Florida is the opposite. It started as a purple state and has been steadily moving away from us for 10-15 years.
I've got a question for you all. I'm a member of a public employee union, and I'm part of their Political Education Committee, which, among other things, interviews candidates who want the union's endorsement. Recently, we were discussing the fact that negotiations with the Governor's office hadn't been going well for us, and the chair of the committee mentioned that we were not allowed to strike (meaning that we don't have a lot of leverage in the negotiations). When I asked him why not, he said that apparently the agreement with the state, that created the union in the first place, specifically forbid it from striking.
That evening, I pondered how this could be changed. One possibility would be to elect an extremely pro-union Governor, however this seems unlikely considering that even NH's recent Democratic Governors (Shaheen, Lynch, and Hassan) were not pro-union enough for this. But there's another possibility I'd briefly wondered about even before this conversation. It seems to me a fairly straightforward argument that striking is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and that therefore, all no-strike clauses are unconstitutional. And before you say that SCOTUS would never make a ruling like that, the no-strike agreement in question is part of state law, meaning that it would be the New Hampshire Supreme Court that would rule on it. And the New Hampshire Supreme Court is generally considered to be more moderate and less ideological than SCOTUS.
Now, I'm not an expert in constitutional law, so my question is, has either SCOTUS or any state Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of no-strike clauses against the First Amendment's freedom of speech?
Apparently previous court rulings at both the state and federal levels have treated no-strike clauses as ordinary labor-law provisions that don't raise constitutional issues. That was just from a quick search, though.
A Democratic lieutenant governors group spent $1.7 million to boost
@TaheshaWay
in last month’s NJ-11 primary.
Around the same time, the group received more than $1.5 million from donors who have also given substantial sums to AIPAC or its super PAC.
https://x.com/joeymdfox/status/2032493191379706050
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MRwkZOJx0OHAj91srxeibeWHtXOizS6mbx-cEN4obqQ/edit?tab=t.0
Will be giving an update on my predictions every few months. This is an update from December - it was made somewhat hastily, so tell me if I'm missing anything or suggest anything new.
Really not optimistic on GA Gov if Bottoms is the nominee, tbh
Georgia is one of the states where we've seen the strongest Democratic overperformance in special elections. And Sen. Ossoff being on a glide path to re-election will help any gubernatorial nominee.
Esteves needs to start taking off.
I think she'll still win if the environment is a blue wave.
The Republican nominee will matter as well. If said person has little to offer other than "I luvs Trump" it will make any Democrat's job easier.
On the horizon, I’m interested in the WISC race in a couple weeks. Beyond that, the Georgia primaries in May and Iowa and Maine in early June.
Separately, I wanted to ask people who is the biggest, most beatable Republican running this year with a national reach that many view as a villain? I ask because I showed my wife the Ohio poll last night and she was ecstatic to see Ramaswamy losing big. I imagine it has to be Ramaswamy, right? People like Ken Paxton and Andy Biggs are odious villains, but they don’t really have a big national audience among laypeople. Elise Stefanik would have been a contender for that title before she dropped out, but she never had a chance of winning to begin with.
Susan Collins probably fits this bill lol. There are some particularly odious thugs who I think are at risk, but not the most powerful to compare to Ramaswamy running for OH gov. Cory Mills and Derrick Van Orden are the main incumbents that come to mind, maybe Andy Ogles. Rob Bresnahan has made himself into such a clown over stocks. Fascist candidates like Madison Sheahan and Brandon Herrera could lose. Hopefully tougher races for Cindy Hyde-Smith, Lindsey Graham and maybe Roger Marshall (if Davids runs). I'm pipe dreaming that Greg Abbott loses and also would be sweet if Doug Jones could beat Tommy Tuberville for AL gov, but I'm not betting on it lol.
Does she have much of a national audience though? I’m talking levels of notoriety where the villain would be somewhat of a recognizable household name like Ted Cruz, RFK, Kristi Noem, or Dr. Oz. Ramaswamy seems like the only statewide candidate with that notoriety this year.
I think Collins is extremely well known among normies, yes. Maybe different normies than Ramaswamy, but I'd bet that she probably has higher name ID and negative emotions from Dems overall than him. Albeit, his would probably have a higher portion at "STRONGLY disapprove" than her lol.
"Some names on Stitt’s shortlist that he pitched to people for the open Senate appointment while in DC, per sources familiar with his DC meetings:
Harold Hamm [oil tycoon/founder and board chair of Continental Resources]
Dustin Hilliary [co-CEO of Hilliary Communications and senior advisor/"chief negotiator with state legislators and elected official" to Stitt, former member of the state board of regents for higher ed]
Robert Cox [founder, president and CEO of Aviation Training Consulting]
Alan Armstrong [executive board chair of Williams Companies]"
https://x.com/reesejgorman/status/2032565571477266708
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/13/stitt-and-trump-patch-things-up-00828775
Among the various names that have been floated for the appointment and campaign, I think the only one missed is Alex Gray, who was the chief of staff at the NSC at the end of Trump I and now co-founder and CEO of "American Global Strategies".
https://x.com/reesejgorman/status/2029930212587110642
The Politico article says Armstrong is the compromise, outsider option. Stitt wants Hilliary and Trump wants Hamm. Usually, governors have appointed allies, though, so my guess is Hilliary.
Also Stitt isn't going to run for the full term.
https://www.newson6.com/oklahoma-politics/gov-kevin-stitt-plans-to-finish-governors-term-says-he-will-not-run-for-u-s-senate
https://www.nvsos.gov/SOSCandidateServices/AnonymousAccess/CEFDSearchUU/CertCandList.aspx
NV candidate filing:
NV-1: Perennial candidate Jim Marchant is no longer challenging Rep. Dina Titus. State Sen. Carrie Buck is the only major Republican running.
NV-2: Despite the district being open for the first time in 15 years, the only major Republicans running here are former Assemblyman James Settelmeyer and businessman David Flippo.
NV-3: Jeff Gunter, Aury Nagy, Tera Anderson and Marty O'Donnell are the major Republicans challenging Rep. Susie Lee. Another one, Chris Brandlin, withdrew.
I am way more curious how the races in Florida will shape up in November, esp after the special election wins.
FL has let me down before but with the perfect electoral storm brewing this year, I think Rs will lose their gerrymandered supermajority in the legislature and Jolly wins by a very slim margin. I’m a bit iffy on Vindman winning against Moody, but if he wins too, I’ll be happy.
Florida and Texas are fool's gold. I have a bit more confidence in James Talarico but that's pretty much it.
If Donalds is the R nominee for the FL governor's race, I think Jolly has a 50-50 shot of an upset. Probably better if the FL Rs are as allergic to brown people as Ohio Rs seem to be.
I see Texas as like Georgia and Arizona: it's fool's gold right until it isn't. Those two states were moving towards us slowly and surely for a while. Many people insisted they were a waste of time for years due to our consistent defeats even after getting our hopes up with solid candidates. Then they became unambiguously purple states as they moved close enough to us to be competitive.
Texas is exactly like that, it just was starting from a point of us losing by 20+ points. There was -- and remains still -- ground to cover to bring it to competitive.
Florida is the opposite. It started as a purple state and has been steadily moving away from us for 10-15 years.
I've got a question for you all. I'm a member of a public employee union, and I'm part of their Political Education Committee, which, among other things, interviews candidates who want the union's endorsement. Recently, we were discussing the fact that negotiations with the Governor's office hadn't been going well for us, and the chair of the committee mentioned that we were not allowed to strike (meaning that we don't have a lot of leverage in the negotiations). When I asked him why not, he said that apparently the agreement with the state, that created the union in the first place, specifically forbid it from striking.
That evening, I pondered how this could be changed. One possibility would be to elect an extremely pro-union Governor, however this seems unlikely considering that even NH's recent Democratic Governors (Shaheen, Lynch, and Hassan) were not pro-union enough for this. But there's another possibility I'd briefly wondered about even before this conversation. It seems to me a fairly straightforward argument that striking is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and that therefore, all no-strike clauses are unconstitutional. And before you say that SCOTUS would never make a ruling like that, the no-strike agreement in question is part of state law, meaning that it would be the New Hampshire Supreme Court that would rule on it. And the New Hampshire Supreme Court is generally considered to be more moderate and less ideological than SCOTUS.
Now, I'm not an expert in constitutional law, so my question is, has either SCOTUS or any state Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of no-strike clauses against the First Amendment's freedom of speech?
Apparently previous court rulings at both the state and federal levels have treated no-strike clauses as ordinary labor-law provisions that don't raise constitutional issues. That was just from a quick search, though.