Bonus: There's An Actual MAGA-Democrat— In Florida Of Course
Yesterday, the committee tasked with electing Democrats to state legislative chambers, the DLCC, announced a “$10 million investment to boost the Democratic ticket from the bottom up. The Republicans learned how important this strategy is long before Democrats ever figured it out— the more candidates hustling and getting out voters at every level, the more that helps the party candidates at… every level.
They have ten target states— Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota (states where the presidential election is being hotly contested) + Kansas— where they assert that “strong legislative campaigns will be key for delivering the Democratic Party’s message to voters and for protecting our democracy and fundamental rights from a total Republican takeover by Trump and his MAGA allies. This is the first time the DLCC has announced an investment like this as an early call to action to focus resources and attention on the critical work needed at the state level. Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda is being enacted in the states, and GOP donors are pouring millions of dollars into state and local-level races to boost the chances of a Trump victory and put in place an army of MAGA allies in state legislatures. If they succeed in building this base of power, it will be catastrophic for our democracy and our fundamental rights.”
Reporting for NBC News, Adam Edelman wrote that the investment “to boost down-ballot candidates as part of a broader effort that’s also designed to help President Joe Biden in key battleground states.” The initial $10 million is the first installment of a $60 million DLCC campaign.
In Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, the DLCC aims to help Democrats keep their narrow majorities in one or both chambers of the legislatures. In Arizona and New Hampshire, the group aims to help Democrats flip control of one or both chambers of those legislatures. In Wisconsin and Kansas, states that have Democratic governors but whose legislatures are firmly controlled by Republicans, the DLCC aims to win enough competitive seats to avoid GOP supermajorities and preserve the governors’ veto power.
A broader goal of the investment, DLCC officials said, is to help give Biden a boost from the bottom of the ticket.
“We know that strong legislative campaigns and candidates are really strong messengers and are fundamentally really close to their communities,” DLCC President Heather Williams said in an interview. “They are a critical part” of a broader effort that includes “not only telling the story of their campaigns and their priorities,” Williams said, “but also the story of Democratic Party values, of how we are advancing those, and the story of the president’s agenda.”
“Those conversations are incredibly powerful and they bring people into the process in a way that certainly supports the entire ticket— up and down the ballot,” Williams said.
…[H]elping Democratic legislative candidates, Williams added, will also help fortify the party’s power in those states regardless of who wins the White House in November.
“We’ve known for a long time that much of the Republican agenda was moving through or being tested in the states,” she said. “And that’s going to keep happening, whether Trump wins the White House or he doesn’t.”
…Aside from the DLCC, the States Project, a left-leaning group that works to build Democratic majorities in state legislatures, said last week it would spend at least $70 million on state legislative races in nine states this cycle— the largest planned expenditure on such contests by any outside group in the 2024 cycle so far.
And earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union said it will spend more than $25 million on down-ballot races across the country focused on issues like abortion rights, its largest ever investment for a single election cycle.
The June 25 legislative primaries in New York, where early voting began yesterday, are not part of the DLCC program. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t extremely important, as conservative special interests try to assert their dominance inside the Democratic Party. Fortunately, DSA is helping progressives in the battle against the forces of Darkness in the state Assembly, taking on sex predator Juan Ardila (Queens- AD 37), establishment tools Stefani Zinerman (Brooklyn- AD 56) and Michael Benedetto (Bronx- AD 82). Primary School reported that the state Democratic establishment “is fighting back through big-money PACs. While PACs are generally known for independent expenditures, this year’s big player is being a little more direct. The hilariously-named Solidarity PAC, founded in late March as a joint venture between a GOP operative, a Democratic operative, and a random real estate investor, and termed ‘a State-Level Mini-AIPAC,’ has chosen their targets in a predictable way— targeting DSA and WFP-affiliated candidates specifically because of those organizations’ position on Palestine— but is trying something unique: dancing around campaign limits by reaching a small collection of mega-donors who stand to personally benefit if progressive economic policy is blocked, and convincing them to split their contributions between several candidates Solidarity PAC has identified as important to defeating the left, thereby avoiding the normal contribution limit for PACs.”
Most of the Solidarity PAC sewer money is being thrown against seven candidates. So far these GOP-lite candidates have gotten $40,000 each:
Johanna Carmona: AD-37, Queens, running against DSA/WFP-endorsed Claire Valdez (and incumbent Juan Ardila)
Anathea Simpkins, AD-50, Brooklyn, running against DSA/WFP-endorsed incumbent Emily Gallagher
Stefani Zinerman (i), AD-56, Brooklyn, running against DSA-endorsed Eon Tyrell Huntley
Micah Lasher, AD-69, Manhattan, running against WFP-endorsed Eli Northrup
Jordan Wright, AD-70, Manhattan, running against tenant organizer Maria Ordoñez
Gabi Madden, AD-103, Hudson Valley, running against DSA/WFP-endorsed incumbent Sarahana Shrestha
Didi Barrett (i): AD-106, Hudson Valley, running against WFP-endorsed Claire Cousin.
As long as we’re on the topic of state legislative elections, Primary School had some good news from the elections last Tuesday in New Mexico, where “progressives seeking revenge for the state House’s narrow defeat of a paid family medical leave program got three of their targets, with challengers Jon Hill, Michelle “Paulene” Abeyta, and Anita Gonzales defeating state Reps. Willie Madrid, Harry Garcia, and Ambrose Castellano, respectively. State Sens. Bill O’Neill and Daniel Ivey-Soto also lost renomination to more progressive challengers Debbie O’Malley and Heather Berghmans, though Ivey-Soto’s landslide defeat was clearly the result of sexual misconduct allegations made by numerous women, including one of Ivey-Soto’s own state Senate colleagues. In open races in both chambers of the legislature, progressives also fared well; the next New Mexico legislature should be far friendlier to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s priorities and perhaps to even bolder policy proposals like the Green Amendment.”
And one more report from Primary School, one that centers around a long-time Blue America villain, MAGA-Democrat Kim Daniels of Jacksonville, who they described the same we we always do— “one of the Democratic Party’s worst elected officials at any level. An evangelist by trade, she bills herself as an exorcist and ‘demonbuster.’ She has pushed for Bible study in public schools; she has purported to exorcise gay people of their demons; she is lukewarm at best on abortion rights; she has said the deadly hurricanes which regularly strike Florida are divine retribution; she is an ethical mess; she has said ‘Jews own everything’. She’s actually been primaried out once before already; in 2020, union organizer and Bernie Sanders alum Angie Nixon unseated Daniels, beating her 60%-40%. Unfortunately, redistricting gave Daniels another chance in 2022, and she won an open seat with 48% of the primary vote. In 2024, she’ll thankfully face a primary again, and it might be harder than her last two due to a quirk of Florida election law. In Florida, if all candidates for a given office are of the same party, that party’s primary for that office is opened to voters of all parties, but once a candidate of any other party files, only voters registered with a party may vote in that party’s primary. In Daniels’ last two primaries, no other candidates filed, allowing Republicans and independents to vote in the primary (presumably for Daniels, the conservative candidate); this time around, independent write-in candidate Briana Hughes has filed for the November general election, which closes the August Democratic primary and means that Daniels will have to convince an all-Democratic electorate to choose her over pastor Lloyd Caulker or retired teacher turned entrepreneur Theresa Wakefield-Gamble.”