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You are here: Home / Archives for Elections / Local Races

Local Races

Repub Venality Open Thread: If You Thought the *Paxton* News Was Scummy…

by Anne Laurie|  July 14, 20255:26 pm| 75 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Local Races, Republican Venality, Elon Musk

can you even fathom all the seedy shit we don't know about yet

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— Karl Bode (@karlbode.com) July 14, 2025 at 10:42 AM

We know the Texas legislature has given Musk a lot of goodies in recent years — including the ‘freedom’ to flout environmental laws at his SpaceX compound. But what exactly did Guv Abbott (and his legislative cronies) have to do to… lure these exciting opportunities? And what exactly did they get in return for their open-hearted generosity?

They don’t want the public to know! Per ProPublica / the Texas Newsroom / the Texas Tribune:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott doesn’t want to reveal months of communications with Elon Musk or representatives from the tech mogul’s companies, arguing in part that they are of a private nature, not of public interest and potentially embarrassing.

Musk had an eventful legislative session in Texas this year. In addition to his lobbyists successfully advocating for several new laws, Abbott cited the Tesla and SpaceX CEO as the inspiration for the state creating its own efficiency office and has praised him for moving the headquarters for many of his businesses to the state in recent years.

As part of an effort to track the billionaire’s influence in the state Capitol, The Texas Newsroom in April requested Abbott and his staff’s emails since last fall with Musk and other people who have an email address associated with some of his companies.

Initially, the governor’s office said it would take more than 13 hours to review the records. It provided a cost estimate of $244.64 for the work and required full payment up front. The Texas Newsroom agreed and cut a check.

After the check was cashed, the governor’s office told The Texas Newsroom it believed all of the records were confidential and asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office referees disputes over public records, to allow the documents to be kept private.

Matthew Taylor, Abbott’s public information coordinator, gave several reasons the records should not be released. He argued they include private exchanges with lawyers, details about policy-making decisions and information that would reveal how the state entices companies to invest here. Releasing them to the public, he wrote, “would have a chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process.”

Taylor also argued that the communications are confidential under an exception to public records laws known as “common-law privacy” because they consist of “information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public, including financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a governmental body.”

He did not provide further details about the exact content of the records…

Repub Venality Open Thread: If You Thought the *Paxton* News Was Scummy…Post + Comments (75)

Open Thread: ‘Look, Everyone Dies’

by Anne Laurie|  July 11, 20259:42 am| 54 Comments

This post is in: Local Races, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!

As I've written, Democrats face long odds in all of Iowa's statewide races in 2026, because of the structure of Iowa's electorate & the longstanding GOP turnout advantage in midterms.
www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/06/15/r…
But an open seat would be less of a long shot.

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— Laura Belin (@laurarbelin.bsky.social) July 10, 2025 at 4:54 PM

Per Politico, “Joni Ernst is the next GOP senator on retirement watch”:

… The two-term Iowa senator hasn’t officially announced her plans for 2026, and she’s gone through some of the motions of launching another campaign, including recently hiring someone to manage it and announcing her annual fall fundraiser.

But three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions said there is rising concern among fellow Senate Republicans that Ernst will retire rather than run for reelection, giving Republicans another seat to defend next fall.

Many will be watching closely for clues next week when Ernst files new campaign fundraising totals. She raised just over $1 million in the first quarter of 2025, a solid but not overwhelming number for an in-cycle senator.

Asked about the senator’s 2026 plans, Ernst spokesperson Palmer Brigham declined to say definitively that she would run again: “Senator Ernst is focused on her work delivering for Iowans in the Senate to make Washington ‘squeal,’ making President Trump’s historic tax cuts permanent through the One Big Beautiful Bill, and advancing a strong NDAA.”

Ernst has told people as recently as the past month that she is still considering whether she wants to run again, according to a fourth person granted anonymity to discuss the matter…

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Multiple Democrats are already in the race, including — Iowa state Sen. Zach Wahls and state Rep. J.D. Scholten. If Ernst were to decide not to run, Republicans believe they already have at least one compelling candidate waiting in the wings. Two of the people granted anonymity said Rep. Ashley Hinson is highly likely to enter the race if Ernst bows out.

Hinson, a former TV news anchor, is the most formidable fundraiser in the Iowa House delegation. The $2.2 million she reported in her campaign coffers earlier this year was only about $800,000 behind what Ernst had available to spend. Hinson and multiple aides did not respond to requests for comment…

Ernst said last year that she intended to run for reelection, but she’s had recent setbacks. She lost her bid to be the No. 3 GOP leader late last year to Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. And her early concerns about Trump’s pick for Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, put Ernst under fierce scrutiny from MAGA allies — some of whom accused her of trying to angle to claim the top Pentagon job herself.…

Banging one’s head against the GOP glass ceiling is apparently discouraging, even for someone in a ‘secure’ seat.

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) admitted to reporters that he is scrambling to prevent Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) from retiring from her seat, Politico reported on Thursday.

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— Raw Story (@rawstory.com) July 10, 2025 at 5:40 PM

Open Thread:<em> ‘Look, Everyone Dies’</em>Post + Comments (54)

Open Thread: Potentially Good News (for Democrats) Out of Texas

by Anne Laurie|  July 10, 20255:00 pm| 87 Comments

This post is in: Local Races, Republican Politics, Republican Venality

The wife of Texas AG Ken Paxton has filed for divorce, saying:
“I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.”

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— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) July 10, 2025 at 3:11 PM

Cynic that I am, I’d have guessed either Angela’s legislative pension had finally vested, or some unusually ugly business misdealings had been uncovered. But the Texas Tribune says it’s (officially) adultery:

… “I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation,” Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, said in a post on X. “But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.”

In his own statement, Attorney General Paxton cited the “pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny” as the reason the couple had “decided to start a new chapter.”

Attorney General Paxton is currently running against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s Republican primary, after close to a decade as attorney general. Senator Paxton was elected in 2019 to represent the North Texas Senate district that her husband represented before his elevation to statewide office. She was reelected to another four-year term in November.

Paxton’s record of aggressively suing the Biden administration is matched only by his penchant for scandal, culminating in his impeachment by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023. The Republican-controlled Senate acquitted him after a nearly two-week trial.

Angela Paxton attended her husband’s trial but was not allowed to vote on any issues or participate on deliberations over whether to convict or acquit.

The impeachment claims focused on benefits Paxton provided to Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, as well as an alleged extramarital affair the attorney general had with a former Senate aide. According to investigators, the affair ended briefly in 2019 after Angela Paxton learned of it, then resumed in 2020. The woman he allegedly had an affair with was called to testify before the Senate and came to the chamber, but left without speaking.

BREAKING: Texas' hottest political couple is no more – State Sen. Angela Paxton is filing for divorce from her husband, Attorney General Ken Paxton, citing adultery and "recent discoveries." Here's my report on "Keeping Up With the Paxtons" in @chron.com www.chron.com/politics/art…

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— gwen howerton (@kissphoria.bsky.social) July 10, 2025 at 3:04 PM

The couple has been professionally (as well as Biblically) joined at the hip for decades, so this must’ve been something very unpleasant…

… The news of the divorce could complicate Ken Paxton’s run for U.S. Senate, where he is seeking to topple longtime incumbent John Cornyn in what is expected to be a gruelling Republican primary next year.

The Paxtons first met at Baylor University in Waco, where Ken was student body president. Angela and Ken married in 1986, and have four children and three grandchildren. After receiving a master’s degree from the University of Houston-Clear Lake, Angela taught math in Collin County public schools before becoming a counselor at a private Christian school in Frisco, Texas. She would eventually be elected to the Texas Senate in 2018, where she became one of the most conservative lawmakers in the state, regularly pushing for hard-right priorities on education and anti-LGBTQ+ issues.

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Ken, meanwhile, would go on to the University of Virginia, receive a law degree, and serve in both the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate before being elected as the state attorney general in 2014. Like his wife, he has been a champion of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ causes. The Paxtons have been inseparable during their political careers, with Angela accompanying Ken on the campaign trail and touting herself as “a pistol packin’ mama and my husband sues Obama.” In 2019, Angela introduced a bill that would give her husband immunity from securities regulations—something he had run afoul of several years before…

like, paxton testified about his affair in his impeachment trial, with his wife — who is a state senator — sat and listened! so whatever it is, it’s worse than that! i love it when terrible shit happens to terrible people!

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) July 10, 2025 at 2:32 PM

===

Talked to a friend who is active in Texas GOP politics and this was Cornyn firing a warning shot at Paxton by leaking evidence of a long term affair just to his wife before it goes to the media.

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— Gaius (from Tribunate) (@gaius.bsky.social) July 10, 2025 at 2:45 PM


===

did John Cornyn honeypot Ken Paxton? many are saying

— post malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) July 10, 2025 at 2:22 PM

So… is this potentially good news for Colin Allred, or just John Cornyn?

New: Democrat Colin Allred launched his campaign for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, making a second run at the upper chamber after failing to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz last year.

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— Texas Tribune (@texastribune.org) July 1, 2025 at 9:43 AM

Open Thread: Potentially Good News (for Democrats) Out of TexasPost + Comments (87)

Late Night Open Thread: I Like Brad Lander

by Anne Laurie|  June 26, 202512:24 am| 80 Comments

This post is in: Local Races, Open Threads

Congratulations, @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social!
Onward to November.

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— Democrats (@democrats.org) June 25, 2025 at 4:13 PM

When I was growing up in New York City — when I fled the city in the early 1970s — our mayors were notoriously weird, and the politics behind their various elections were even weirder. This had been true, from all reports, for at least the previous 200 years, and it remains true to this day. Let’s just specify that putting the national financial capital, and the national center of Big Media, on the same crowded landscape was a bad idea. Between these two classes and the 85% of the population that they perceive to exist only as their spear-carriers, the neverending battle(s) turn every mayoral election into a citywide version of Festivus. The potential Mamdani Era will not, I assume, be any less weird.

But I have total respect for Brad Lander. From NYMag, “Brad Lander Is the Happiest Loser”:

If Zohran Mamdani enters City Hall, it will be due in no small part to Brad Lander. The progressive comptroller struggled to break out of the shadow of his younger, democratic-socialist competitor, but two weeks ago, the pair cross-endorsed each other, campaigning on their shared politics and their disdain for front-runner Andrew Cuomo. Lander’s campaign didn’t stop there, running an ad urging voters against ranking Cuomo and paying for Primary Election Day robocalls aimed at Black and Jewish voters, two key parts of the former governor’s base. Lander finished third in the first round of voting, and it will likely be Lander’s second-round votes that deliver Mamdani’s official victory over Cuomo next week.

I spoke with Lander, after he got a few hours of sleep following Tuesday’s shocking results, about his alliance with Mamdani and whether he would serve in his administration.

The primary’s returns were released gradually last night. When did you realize that Mamdani might actually win it all?
I mean, it was as the same-day numbers were continuing in the pattern from the early voting. The early vote was, I guess, about 40 percent of the vote. So, at 50 percent, I think it still felt like, All right, you know, who knows what that is? But once it went to 60 percent of the vote and 70 percent of the vote and that same pattern held showing Zohran up, our team realized he’s gonna win this…

You and Mamdani cross-endorsed each other, a strategy that will likely help to propel him to victory. How did that decision first come to be?
Well, from the beginning of this race, we had talked about making sure we had a smart ranked-choice strategy. Four years ago, Eric Adams was elected, in large part, because the No. 2 and No. 3 candidates, Maya Wiley and Kathyrn Garcia, did not cross-endorse each other, and that wound up doing grave harm to New York City. We were committed not to make that mistake again. The Working Families Party brought four candidates into a slate, and early on, I had committed to ranking that slate.

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The cross-endorsement for Zohran and I emerged two weeks ago as the final shape of the race was taking place. For starters, to me, it was really ranked-choice math. We knew we could defeat Andrew Cuomo but that it would be challenging and what it would take was adding up our voters, and that’s what ranked choice lets you do. So we had dialogue with his team and we decided to do it. Once it happened and that video we did was out in the world, it shifted from being ranked-choice math to being something more like a politics of hope and cooperation. People were really excited about a politics that doesn’t feel so selfish. I thought it was interesting yesterday that both Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo went out of their way to say, “I’m only voting for myself.” And in contrast, the cross-endorsement reflects a shared belief in the future of the city and just so many people expressed gratitude for it. It certainly was valuable in its math, that it will be my No. 2’s that technically take him over 50 percent plus one when all the votes are tabulated. But it also unleashed a real hopeful energy that you could feel in the city over the past two weeks and especially yesterday…

Cuomo spent the whole campaign trashing the Democratic Party while Mamdani never shied away from being a Democrat. For both centrists and leftists it's an important lesson: if you want to win a party primary you should outwardly like the party.

— Bobby Big Wheel (@kleinman.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 10:01 PM


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What does “NYC’s business community” even mean? Bodega owners & home renovation contractors & daycare center owners & Big Law & Southeby’s & Def Jam Recordings & Jamie Dimon are all meeting & plotting a unified strategy?
[Not criticizing @taniel.bsky.social, criticizing Ben Smith]

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— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 3:52 PM


===

a ratfuck operation as predictable as the tides

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— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 12:32 AM

Late Night Open Thread: I Like Brad LanderPost + Comments (80)

Monday Evening Open Thread: Colin Allred for Texas

by Anne Laurie|  September 30, 20246:54 pm| 120 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Local Races, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

The @tedcruz cycle is real: complain about the border, block solutions, then blame others. 11 years of press conferences, nothing to show for it. Time to fire him! https://t.co/wfIbTdTqes

— Isaiah Martin (@isaiahrmartin) September 30, 2024

Ted Cruz’ defense for helping Trump Kill The Border Bill… is we had lower immigrant crossings during COVID… when we also had fewer CBP officials in the field COUNTING..that any time in the last 7 decades.

&Thanks to #CancunCruz Texas had more COVID cases than all of Mexico. pic.twitter.com/LPw8V2Vu54

— Hal Sparks (@HalSparks) September 30, 2024

Allred: Ted Cruz would not last a second in a locker room. He would not last a second in an NFL locker room or my college locker room because we could spot guys like him a mile away. We called them ‘me guys.’ The ‘me guys’ were the ones who were always looking out for themselves… pic.twitter.com/pPoFPdQwBG

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 30, 2024

The Democrats’ current funding advantage gives us the opportunity to boost ‘marginal’ candidates like Colin Allred. Even if he doesn’t win — and Ted Cruz is a pissant who performs worse the harder he’s pressed — the GOP will have had to spend money in Texas that they could’ve used in swing states instead.

“We have flawed Republican candidates in Ted Cruz and Rick Scott… And we have very strong Democratic candidates, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida and Colin Allred in Texas.”

LISTEN: DSCC Chair Sen. Gary Peters on our new multi-million dollar TV investment in Texas and Florida… pic.twitter.com/DdKEhL4uFM

— Senate Democrats (@dscc) September 30, 2024

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Keep hope alive!

It's happening my friends – this race is winnable! @ColinAllredTX https://t.co/8lKoVZC8sZ

— Wendy Davis (@wendydavis) September 30, 2024

… A Public Policy Polling/Clean and Prosperous America survey of 759 registered Texas voters showed Cruz is ahead of Allred by 47 percent to 46. In a previous August poll, the incumbent led Allred by 2 points (47 percent to 45). The poll was carried out on September 25-26. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

The survey adds Cruz has a negative net favorability rating, and has fallen from a minus 6 in August to minus 8 points (41 percent favorable and 49 said unfavorable).

Allred has a plus 5 net favorable rating (40 percent favorable and 35 percent unfavorable), down from a plus 7 net rating in August…

If Allred were to beat Cruz in November, he would be the first Democratic senator in the Lone Star State since 1988. An Allred victory in Texas could also be vital in the Democratic Party’s bid to hold on to the upper chamber…

Polling suggests that Cruz could be in another tight reelection race. He narrowly beat then Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke in 2018.

A recent Morning Consult poll of 2,716 likely voters showed that Allred was ahead in the 2024 Texas Senate race (45 percent to 44 percent), though forecasters and experts believe Cruz will still come out on top in the competitive Texas Senate race.

“Cruz’s close call with O’Rourke in 2018 took place in an election year that favored Democratic candidates, and whether 2024 ultimately turns out to favor one party or neither remains to be seen,” Joshua Blank, director of research for the Texas Politics Project at The University of Texas at Austin, previously told Newsweek…

#BREAKING: @tedcruz and @ColinAllredTX agree to their first televised debate.

It's Tuesday, October 15 at 7:00p at @WFAA's downtown Dallas studios.

You can watch the hour-long debate on-air and online on all of @TEGNA's 12 stations in Texas.https://t.co/bJHXZMCwSy

— Jason Whitely (@JasonWhitely) September 20, 2024

Folks around the country are seeing what Texans already know: we are going to beat Ted Cruz.

We’ve got 37 days to prove that WE is more powerful than me. Join our fight at https://t.co/2dROrrPU0n pic.twitter.com/p7Ki4d82gF

— Colin Allred (@ColinAllredTX) September 29, 2024

Monday Evening Open Thread: Colin Allred for TexasPost + Comments (120)

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Dems Are On A Roll!

by Anne Laurie|  June 5, 20246:48 am| 271 Comments

This post is in: LGBTQ Rights Are Human Rights, Local Races, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

President Biden: Unlike Donald Trump, I will never demonize immigrants. I'll never refer to immigrants as 'poisoning the blood of this country.' I'll never separate children from their families at the border. I'll never ban people from this country because of their religious… pic.twitter.com/gl7FQkKGdn

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) June 4, 2024

Fox contributor: President Biden put on the table border solutions, Republicans agreed with him and then walked away for political reasons. He should remind people that Republicans walked away to help Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/Dptg4M3Dnu

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) June 4, 2024

Great news from New Jersey!

BREAKING: Andy Kim wins New Jersey Democratic Senate primary for indicted Bob Menendez’s seat https://t.co/GIu2boJJY6

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 5, 2024

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Thank you to everyone with @1199SEIU_NJ for showing up for NJ workers and for our movement today. Election Day is just the starting line. I look forward to carrying this energy all the way to the US Senate with you all and deliver for working families across the state. pic.twitter.com/vfjPcefHnQ

— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) June 4, 2024

New Jersey Assemblymember Herb Conaway won a crowded Democratic primary in U.S. Rep. Andy Kim's South Jersey district.

He said he would be the first Black physician to serve in Congress and the first Black person to represent South Jersey in Congress.https://t.co/4oLvyFK0HT

— Aliya Schneider (@aliyareports) June 5, 2024


 
I ❤️ my representatives!

“I don't want to hear from Republicans who say they support contraception but can't make it the law of the land.”

—@SenWarren on the vote to advance the Right to Contraception Act pic.twitter.com/wEa0Rfe1Mn

— Senate Democrats (@SenateDems) June 4, 2024

Your choice to use birth control is none of the government's business.

Today, @HouseDemocrats introduced a discharge petition to force a vote on the Right to Contraception Act.

Will Republicans stand on the side of freedom or triple-down on MAGA extremism? pic.twitter.com/jd8gaRwqo6

— Katherine Clark (@WhipKClark) June 4, 2024

Don't let misinformation sway you—despite JD Vance's assurance, 195 Congress members voted AGAINST the #RTCA in 2022, and tomorrow our Senators will vote on the same bill. Call your senators, urge them to support the Right to Contraception Act. Your voice matters! pic.twitter.com/J63E5k2nNC

— Red Wine and Blue (@RedWineBlueUSA) June 4, 2024

They’re really doing this pic.twitter.com/zvUb9pvF7N

— constans (@constans) June 4, 2024

“The election denier illustrated the beauty of democracy and freedom,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi told NOTUS of a heckler at today’s Tiananmen Square commemoration event. “To be able to do what he did — there’s no way he could do that in Tiananmen Square.”https://t.co/yDRTrPebvq

— Haley Byrd Wilt (@byrdinator) June 4, 2024

(Pelosi came over to apologize to Chinese dissidents wearing “End CCP” t-shirts and watching the event after the interruption)

— Haley Byrd Wilt (@byrdinator) June 4, 2024

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Dems Are On A Roll!Post + Comments (271)

Good News Open Thread: Andy Kim for Senate!

by Anne Laurie|  March 25, 20245:04 pm| 51 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, Local Races, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

Good News Open Thread: Andy Kim for Senate!

BREAKING: Tammy Murphy just announced she’s dropping out of the race for U.S. Senate in New Jersey, which clears the way for Andy Kim to replace Bob Menendez and be the next U.S. Senator from New Jersey. Such great news & such a great person to replace Bob Menendez. pic.twitter.com/bfJH8MtwLZ

— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) March 24, 2024

Well we needed 1,000 signatures to get on the ballot NJ…and you gave us 6,000! My team was sure to get them all filed in Trenton and I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone for helping make this happen. Another step forward for our movement! pic.twitter.com/rXqMKPYw2c

— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) March 23, 2024

Among other things, the political news out of New Jersey today means that the Senate seat is likely to go from a man accused of taking gold bars as part of a bribery scheme to a man best known before running for Senate for doing this in the Capitol after Jan. 6 riots/ pic.twitter.com/mIk9SdV1QK

— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) March 24, 2024

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Meet the Dem who won a Trump district in 2018 & 2020 but now is an insurgent against the entrenched Dem machine in Jersey.

This @AndyKimNJ vs @TammyMurphyNJ matchup is 1st real Dem primary battle since '00.

It's all about the lines. My weekend column.https://t.co/5Z2zSYiNav

— Paul Kane (@pkcapitol) March 23, 2024


Per the Washington Post, “In New Jersey, an insurgent upends a Democratic machine”:
[Gift link]:

… Kim, a third-term congressman from the state’s Philadelphia suburbs, had just thumped Tammy Murphy, the wife of the popular governor, Phil Murphy (D), by nearly 20 percentage points in her home county to collect the endorsement for the Senate nomination.

Kim both secured the Monmouth Democrat’s “line” — a top placement on the June 4 primary ballot — and jolted the state’s Democrats into realizing they had their first real battle for a statewide nomination in nearly 25 years…

Kim, 41, has turned the Senate race into something bigger than just a fight over who should replace the state’s senior senator, Bob Menendez (D), who faces a felony corruption trial later this year and is mulling running as an independent.

Now Kim is trying to fight against the system of these county party chiefs, both through running to defeat their handpicked candidate, Murphy, and by battling in court to try to outlaw the “line” system.

“It’s more of a movement to try to restore power back to the citizen, to the voters, to the people. And that appeals to a wide swath,” Kim said.

This is not one of the standard ideological battles of far-left progressives against mainstream liberals that have dominated the last decade of Democratic politics. Kim, a Rhodes scholar, served in the State Department and on the National Security Council under the Bush and Obama administrations. He jumped into politics in 2018, even though he was a long shot in a GOP district.

He eventually received large establishment backing and eked out a win by 1 percentage point. He has positioned himself more along the lines of other national security experts from that massive Democratic class of 2018, smart technocrats who don’t embrace the rage-against-the-machine ethos of the self-proclaimed “Squad” of far-left liberals…

One scorecard, ranking votes from 2021 when Democrats moved an aggressive agenda, gave Kim an 80 percent liberal rating, tying for seventh most liberal out of the state’s 10 Democrats in the House…

Much more, including details of ‘the line’, at the link.

How did Andy Kim beat the machine? https://t.co/8EbxE7v89k via @TPM

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 24, 2024

… What makes this a bigger deal than just another primary in a fairly safe Democratic state is that it managed to bring to the fore an almost comical feature of New Jersey politics — something called “the line,” which allows county party chairs the ability to exercise an absurd power over the design of ballots to assist their chosen candidates. Machines have long half-lives. But it seems questionable whether the line will survive this race, whether it goes down in the current court fight or just can’t withstand the new scrutiny the race has brought to it. If it is done that will deal a pretty debilitating blow to the party machines in New Jersey…

I’m no expert on New Jersey politics. But the real factor here is that Kim was willing to risk everything at just the right moment. My recollection is that he announced his candidacy the day after the original Menendez indictment. (I guess we have to be clear that Menendez was indicted before and beat the rap. I mean, the original indictment this time, before the various superseding indictments.) The key I think is that Kim got in fast before the machine really realized that Menendez was toast. And because they didn’t yet realize that Menendez was done, they hadn’t had a chance yet to get behind and coalesce around a new person. That ended up being Murphy, the wife of the current governor.

This gave Kim a critical window of opportunity that he used almost perfectly.

Kim had enough of a national brand, in part based on the iconic photos of him literally sweeping up the glass and debris of January 6th, that he was able to build momentum and raise money. He also gained mightily from his willingness to say, more or less on day one, fuck this. This crook should not be senator. I’m going to challenge him.

Every other Democrat was still caught off guard and uncertain how to react, not withstanding the fact that Menendez has long been fairly notorious. Rightly or wrongly I think many people at least figured he’d keep his nose clean after he beat his previous high profile federal charges. Oh well.

Too soon to say it’s 100% over. Kim hasn’t been elected senator yet. But it certainly seems like one of those the fates favor the bold kind of moments.

 
New Jersey Democratic voter:

He's a good guy who has done a good job in Congress and he happened to be running against a person who is a particularly egregious example of machine politics at work & also had some unique flaws that highlighted the sleaziness of how D politics operates in NJ. https://t.co/6AKr0hbwld

— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) March 24, 2024

I support Kim, but had she won the primary, I would have voted for her in Nov. There was ZERO rationale for her candidacy other than who she is married to. She's done NOTHING as First Lady + is a former Republican. Andy Kim is a great Congressman & will be an even better Senator! https://t.co/bZAFhxJksG

— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) March 24, 2024

Watched Tammy' Murphy's "I'm dropping out" video: completely disingenuous (no one asked her to run, she had little/no grass roots support, and she didn't have to "tear down" a fellow Dem in order to win) and then didn't even endorse Andy Kim. Classless, clueless, and tone deaf.

— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) March 24, 2024

Bonus content / readership capture…

My wife wasn’t thrilled when I put this Lego Millennium Falcon on our wedding registry. To not seem completely self-indulgent, I told her I’d wait until we had kids to build it. Today, after 10 patient years, the adventure begins. #MayThe4th #MayThe4thBeWithYou pic.twitter.com/LTEWOUa6oi

— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) May 4, 2021

Good News Open Thread: Andy Kim for Senate!Post + Comments (51)

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