Val Demings Wins Florida Primary, Teeing Up November Race Against Rubio
by Erin Doherty
August 22, 2022
Introduction:
(Axios)Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) clinched the Democratic nomination on Tuesday in Florida's Senate primary, teeing up a general election battle between the congresswoman and incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio (R). The Associated Press called the race for Demings at 8pm ET.
The big picture: Demings, who was on President Biden's shortlist for vice president, was first elected to her Orlando-area seat in Congress in 2016, after serving as the city's first female police chief.
• She won Tuesday's primary over immigration attorney William Sanchez, business owner Ricardo De La Fuente and former member of the Florida House of Representatives Brian Rush.
Florida: Charlie Crist Wins Democratic Primary to Challenge Ron DeSantis
August 22, 2022
Introduction:
(The Guardian) Charlie Crist will challenge Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, in November after trouncing Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner, in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
Crist, a former Republican governor of Florida who switched parties and became a Democratic congressman, fought a campaign touting his experience in office and opposition to the 15-week abortion ban signed by DeSantis.
In his victory speech in St Petersburg, Crist promised that if elected he will on his first day in office sign an executive order overturing the abortion law.
And he pledged to end the White House hopes of “wannabe dictator” DeSantis, who is tipped as a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. DeSantis has signed a raft of culture war legislation in Florida, attacking LBGTQ+ rights and “woke” corporations.
Democrat Pat Ryan Wins Potential Bellwether House Race in New York
by Tal Axelrod
August 22, 2022
Introduction:
(ABC) Democrats are projected to win a special House election in New York on Tuesday in a race seen as a potential bellwether for this year's midterms, ABC News reports.
The contest between Democrat Pat Ryan and Republican Marc Molinaro in New York's 19th Congressional District was sparked when Democratic Rep. Antonio Delgado was appointed lieutenant governor
Ryan and Molinaro, both of whom are local county executives, were running in the 19th as it existed prior to redistricting. But the seat being decided in Tuesday's special election will cease to exist in January -- and both candidates ran in primaries for separate seats on Tuesday as well.
The 19th has been among the swingiest in the country, with President Joe Biden carrying it by fewer than 2 points in 2020 and former President Donald Trump winning it by about 7 points in 2016.
With 99% of the expected vote being reported on Tuesday, Ryan was leading Molinaro 51-49.
Gen Z candidate outpaces experienced Democrats to win House nomination in Florida
Source: Washington Post
Maxwell Frost, an activist for myriad liberal causes who is running to be the first Gen Z member of Congress, is projected to win a crowded Democratic primary for an open seat in Florida’s 10th District, according to the Associated Press.
Frost, 25, who refers to his as the “mass shootings generation,” gained attention in June after he confronted Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over gun violence.
Although he’s the minimum age to hold a seat in Congress — and has never run for public office — Frost doesn’t consider himself a political newcomer. He started working in politics when he was 15, protesting gun violence after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
He went on to become the national organizing director for March for Our Lives, the group organized by students who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. He also worked for the ACLU in Florida, supporting voting rights for formerly incarcerated citizens.
Rep. Jerry Nadler beats Rep. Carolyn Maloney in New York House primary
Source: NBC News
Incumbent Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., defeated his longtime colleague Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., in Tuesday’s Democratic primary race for New York’s newly-drawn 12th Congressional District, NBC News projects.
He’s nearly guaranteed in November’s general election to win the heavily Democratic district, which merged Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Upper East Side into one.
Polls released ahead of the primary election showed Nadler had the edge. An Emerson College survey released last Thursday found 43% of eligible voters supported him, compared to 24% for Maloney. Fourteen percent said they supported the other Democratic contender, Attorney Suraj Patel, while 19% were still undecided.
The two New Yorkers were both elected to Congress in 1992, serving in the House for more than 30 years. Both hold major roles in Democratic leadership. Nadler chairs the powerful House Judiciary Committee, where he oversaw the proceedings for both impeachments of former President Donald Trump.
New York House Special Election Results: Democrat Pat Ryan wins in bellwether district
Source: nbc news
Democrat Pat Ryan emphasized abortion rights as part of his winning campaign over Republican Marc Molinaro, positioning it as a “freedom” issue. The district has tracked the national mood in recent elections: President Joe Biden won it by about 2 points in 2020 after Donald Trump and Barack Obama carried it in their winning campaigns. Republicans held the district from its creation in the 2012 cycle until the 2018 blue wave.
Dan Goldman Just Won His Primary Thanks to The New York Times and Self-Funding
by Noah Lanard
August 24, 2022
Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Dan Goldman—an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, former federal prosecutor, lead counsel during Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and MSNBC analyst—is now the Democratic nominee to represent a congressional district that stretches from lower Manhattan to south Brooklyn. The first-time candidate is all but guaranteed to win the general election come November.
Goldman prevailed thanks to a key New York Times endorsement and millions of dollars of his own money. In an unusually competitive and diverse field, Goldman was the rich white guy. He defeated Rep. Mondaire Jones, a Black freshman Democrat endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Carlina Rivera, a Latina city council member who grew up in the district; and Yuh-Line Niou, a Chinese-American assemblymember backed by the New York Working Families Party and the main target of attack ads funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
As of early Wednesday morning, Goldman has 25 percent of votes, which puts him 2 percent ahead of Niou. Despite losing to Niou in Brooklyn, he managed to win by building a 13-point lead in lower Manhattan. Jones and Rivera are further behind with 18 percent and 16 percent of the vote, respectively. In total, only about 70,000 people voted in a primary whose late summer date was expected to depress turnout. Their votes will determine who represents more than 700,000 people.
Goldman positioned himself as a defender of democracy by highlighting the work he did to help impeach Trump in 2019 for the former president’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden in the lead up to the 2020 election. He spent nearly $5 million of an inheritance worth up to roughly $250 million to get that message across. (As a resident of the district, I can confirm that his mailers arrived early and often.)
There is little doubt that Goldman worked hard in Washington to protect American democracy from Trump’s efforts to corrupt it. At the same time, he used a fortune that dates back to the Gold Rush to secure a louder voice than opponents like Rivera, who grew up in Section 8 housing with a single mother from Puerto Rico.
Senate Candidate J.D. Vance Appeared With Podcaster Who Once Said “Feminists Need Rape”
by David Corn
August 25, 2022
Introduction:
(Mother Jones) J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, is typically described as the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, a venture capitalist, and a Never Trumper who came to embrace Donald Trump. But that snapshot doesn’t do justice to Vance, a reactionary extremist who yearns to destroy what he calls the “American leadership class” and to implement an extensive and possibly illegal program to cleanse US society of liberal influence. He compares this project to the de-Nazification of Germany following World War II. Last September, Vance outlined this message of revolutionary conservatism on a podcast hosted by a rightwing activist and self-styled masculinity champion who once declared, “Feminists need rape.” During the interview, Vance called for returning Trump to the White House in 2024 so Trump could fire every top and mid-level federal government employee to “deconstruct the administrative state,” and he noted that Trump should even defy the law, if necessary, to mount such a purge.
The show’s host was Jack Murphy, who runs a secretive men’s organization that claims all major American institutions—universities, the media, the government, unions, professional organizations, nonprofits, and corporations—have been “infiltrated, corrupted, demoralized” and aim to “control you forever.” For years, Murphy has railed against feminism, wokeness, and other conservative bête noires. In a blog post written in 2015 and subsequently deleted, he asserted, “Feminists need rape… It is our duty as men to save feminists from themselves. Therefore, I am offering rape to feminists as an olive branch.”
Vance spent a cordial 90 minutes with Murphy, legitimizing the host and discussing politics, culture wars, and masculinity, as Murphy (whose real name is John Goldman) fawned over Vance. Not once did Vance raise Murphy’s comments about rape—which were first reported in 2018 (at a time when Murphy, then an employee of the Washington DC Public Charter School Board, was being investigated for incendiary blog posts written under his Jack Murphy moniker). The two men appeared largely in agreement, as they bemoaned the current state of American society and advocated drastic remedies to impose a new conservative order on the nation. The conversation provides a clear picture of Vance’s worldview and his support for extreme actions.
