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Political Roundup for March 18, 2024

National

RFK: For the few people still thinking Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (I) might emerge as a serious candidate this fall, RFK is vetting the ex-wife of Google founder Sergey Brin, Nicole Shanahan (who also funded the RFK Super Bowl ad) to be his VP nominee. But fear not–he’s also vetting 90’s-era ex-Minnesota Gov. and former wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura (I), who, somehow, is still over 6 years younger than either Biden or Trump.

Congress

NJ-Sen: Rep. Andy Kim (D) won Atlantic County’s endorsement decisively over Heir Force Gen. Tammy Murphy (D), and will have it there if it isn’t declared unconstitutional. The margin of Kim’s victory was a surprise, as Murphy has the support of the George Norcross organization, whose caporegimes have longstanding interests in Atlantic County business.

OH-Sen: East Carolina University, which apparently polls Ohio, has Matt Dolan (R) narrowly ahead of Bernie Moreno (R) and Frank LaRose (R), 33-31-23. ECU also pushed the 14% who were undecided, and found that 47% leaned toward Dolan. The primary is tomorrow, and Dolan has late momentum much as he did in 2022, when he climbed from the back of the pack but ended up 2nd behind now-Sen J.D. Vance (R). ECU also polled the general and found Dolan up 43-41 on Sherrod Brown (D), with Brown beating Moreno 45-41 and LaRose 45-40.

More OH-Sen: Florida Atlantic University, which also apparently polls Ohio, has Dolan up by a similarly tight 40-37-24 margin on Moreno and LaRose with leaners included.

AZ-8: Abe Hamadeh (R), who threw away the AZ-AG race in 2022 by running to Stop The Steal, is facing criticism for message-board posts he made as a teenager blaming Israel for 9/11. Hamadeh claims he has been pro-Israel throughout his adulthood. He’s part of a crowded primary for this medium-red suburban seat that also includes State House Speaker Ben Toma (R), State Sen. Anthony Kern (R), ex-Rep. Trent Franks (R), and Blake Masters (R), one of Hamadeh’s teammates on the disastrous 2022 ticket.

TX-34: Godwin’s Law alert! Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D) compared Latinos who vote for Trump to “Jews for Hitler.” Gonzalez is facing a rematch against ex-Rep. Mayra Flores (R) after winning by just 8 points in 2022 in an overwhelmingly Latino district that Hillary Clinton won by over 35 points in 2016, suggesting Latinos are trending briskly toward Republicans in a way that Jews did not trend toward the Nazi Party.

State

NC-Supt.: Republicans appear ready to punt this race, after nominee Michelle Morrow (R, sadly) doubled down on statements from 2020 calling for Obama and Biden to be publicly executed for treason. Morrow said of Obama “I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad,” and of Biden “We need to follow the Constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!!” A spokesman for Thom Tillis (R) confirmed that Tillis is unlikely to support Morrow in November.

NJ-All: NJ Attorney General Matt Platkin (D) declined to defend the state’s use of “The Line” in party primaries, suggesting that he believes the Line to be unconstitutional. A federal judge is weighing a constitutional challenge to The Line, a uniquely Jersey feature of electoral politics, places all the candidates endorsed by a county party into an easy-to-vote bracket, while scattering non-endorsed candidates into different brackets across the ballot. This ballot setup tends to give a big advantage to the county party’s endorsed candidates, and makes NJ’s county machine bosses the most powerful in the country. An end to The Line would tend to favor Kim over Murphy in this year’s Senate primary, but more broadly, would seismically change the way machine politics work in New Jersey.

International

UK: The British press is circling October 10 as the likely date of the next general election, which must be held before January. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has committed only to an election date in the second half of 2024; with Sunak’s Conservatives likely to lose, the CW had been that he will wait until later in the year, or at least until after someone finds Kate Middleton.

France: An early poll of France’s 2027 elections finds that National Rally, the economically-left and culturally-right party of the Le Pen family, would win a majority of legislative seats, mostly at the expense of Emanuel Macron’s liberal Renaissance party. The Le Pens have had strong early polls in many election cycles, but have yet to break through and win when French voters have had a binary choice between them and a single opposition, although they’ve been getting closer.

Russia: Vladimir Putin squeaked by to win another term with 87% of the vote over the weekend. Putin overcame systemic voter fraud to win by millions and millions of votes because Mike Pence had the courage.

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2024 Ohio & Illinois Primary Preview

This week, we have two more large Midwest states going to the polls for their primaries. Polls will close at 7:30p ET in Ohio and 8p ET in Illinois. There is also a Louisiana Rules Top Two special in CA-20, with polls closing at 11p ET, as well as an international election in the Maldives tomorrow. Our liveblog will start at 7:30p ET Tuesday.

OH-Sen (R)Republicans have a primary for Ohio’s Senate seat.

Sherrod Brown

Incumbent Sherrod Brown (D) is seeking a fourth term. Brown is a lifelong career pol who won his first election at age 22 in 1974, winning a legislative seat in the Mansfield area. After 8 years in the legislature, he was elected to the open SoS seat in 1982, serving 8 years before losing re-election in 1990. Brown carpetbagged from Mansfield to suburban Cleveland to win an open congressional seat in 1992. After 14 years in that post, he defeated a GOP incumbent, now-Gov. Mike DeWine (R), to win this seat by a large margin on the 2006 wave. Brown since won two competitive races for re-election in both 2012 and 2018 by margins of 6 points in each cycle. In his political career, Brown has been a populist establishment liberal who has been known for his forceful embrace of liberal economics. Moreover, Brown’s high-testosterone populist style has proven a decently good fit for the state’s large blue-collar base. He retains unanimous Dem institutional support for his re-election bid this year, and is extremely well-funded with a massive warchest of $33.5M. However, as Ohio has transitioned from a purple state to a red one over his Senate tenure, Brown has become one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats this year. Three Republicans are vying to take him on this year in what is likely to be a hotly contested general.

Bernie Moreno

Car dealer and 2022 candidate Bernie Moreno (R) is a Colombian immigrant and wealthy auto dealership owner in the Cleveland area. He initially ran for the Senate seat in 2022, dropping his campaign before the primary after failing to get much traction. As a consolation prize though, Moreno’s son-in-law Max Miller (R) was elected to the House that year. Moreno quickly launched a second bid for this race. In his runs, Moreno has been an antiestablishment-leaning conservative. He has collected strong institutional support from that wing of the party, including endorsements from Trump, Ohio Sen. JD Vance (R), ad Ohio US Rep. Jim Jordan (R). Moreno is also very well-funded with gross hauls of $9.74M, including $4.2M in self-funding; he has led the field in donor fundraising.

Matt Dolan

State Sen. and 2022 candidate Matt Dolan (R) is an attorney and former prosecutor. Dolan comes from one of the state’s wealthiest and most prominent families; his family owned the cable TV company CableVision and his father owns baseball’s Cleveland Indians Guardians, where Dolan himself worked in the front office. Dolan began his political career with a win for a conservative upscale suburban State House seat in Cleveland’s outer eastern suburbs in 2004, holding it for 6 years before losing a run for County Executive in deep-blue Cuyahoga County in 2010. Dolan bounced back in 2016 to win a light-red State Senate seat wrapping a full arc around all of Cleveland’s second-ring suburbs, winning a tough primary and holding the seat easily in the general; he has served 8 years in that post. In the legislature, Dolan has been known as an establishment conservative with some mild upscale moderate tendencies. He first ran for the US Senate in 2022, staking out his own ideological lane as a moderate and actively refusing to seek Trump’s endorsement, though Dolan mostly ignored Trump rather than criticizing him. He ultimately took a slightly stronger than expected third place in the primary with 23%, and quickly launched a second bid this year. Dolan has tried to pivot slightly to the right in his second run, and is avoiding any significant Trump criticism, though he is still clearly running in the establishment conservative lane. His institutional support was relatively modest for most of the race, but he secured late endorsements from a pair of big names in Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and ex-US Sen. Rob Portman (R). Dolan’s bigger asset, though, is cash; he leads the primary field in overall funds with a gross warchest of $11.43M, though the vast majority of that total comes from $9M in self-funding.

Frank LaRose

SoS Frank LaRose (R) is an Army veteran, serving a decade with the Green Berets and earning a Bronze Star in Iraq. After leaving the military, he was elected to the State Senate from a purple suburban Akron seat in 2010 and served 8 years. LaRose moved up to the SoS seat in 2018, winning a close race, and won re-election easily in 2022. LaRose was known as a relative moderate in his legislative career, but has moved to the right as SoS and has been an establishment-friendly ideological conservative in that office. He has notably threaded the needle of implementing some election security measures while pushing back against some of the most hardcore Trumpist impulses. LaRose was also credited with spearheading much of the unsuccessful GOP push to defeat a pro-choice ballot measure last year; he helped organize a measure to raise the ballot threshold for passing initiatives, which failed by a large margin, and then fought the pro-choice ballot measure in the fall, which passed by a large margin. However, the failed effort has still given LaRose bona-fides with the pro-life movement. LaRose has collected strong institutional support, with his biggest endorsement coming from the state’s largest pro-life group, as well as backing from a number of pols and insiders. However, LaRose has struggled with fundraising against his two self-funding rivals. He has a mediocre but credible warchest of $2.22M, including $250K in self-funding.

Overall, Moreno is generally seen as the favorite in the primary, but Dolan in particular could have a chance to pull the upset with his self-funding and base in the party’s establishment wing. LaRose seems a longer-shot but could surprise with his connections to the high-turnout pro-life movement. CW seems to be that Dolan has been surging in the last few weeks.

The general election is expected to be extremely competitive. Brown is a strong candidate for Democrats with a history of winning multiple tough races. Moreno is also looking like a relatively weak nominee if he wins the primary, while Dolan and LaRose would likely have an easier time in the general. However, Ohio continues to trend rightward and has a history of backing even weak GOP candidates, as evidenced by now-Sen. JD Vance’s (R) 2022 win. For now about all that can be said for the general is that there is no clear favorite and it is expected to be one of the year’s hottest races. RRH Elections currently rates this general election as a Tossup.

Flip over for much more!

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Weekend Open Thread for March 15-17, 2024

Happy Ides Of March/Evacuation Day/St. Patrick’s Day. First, a site announcement: it is our pleasure to welcome Theodoric of New York to the moderator team as the newest editor of RRH!

We will have a preview coming for Tuesday’s Illinois and Ohio primaries coming tomorrow at noon. But first today, Here are this week’s questions:

1. Thinking about St. Patrick’s Day and Irish-American political influence, nationality bloc voting has seemingly become less significant as America gets more diverse. What nationality (not ethnicity or race) do you think has the most significant political impact through ethnic voting today?

2. There are four special elections coming up in the next few months, all of which are in Likely or Safe districts: CA-20, CO-4, NY-26, and OH-6. Which will be most informative for predicting the November election?

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Political Roundup for March 15th, 2024

National:

Fox Polls: Trump is leading Biden in both Pennsylvania and Arizona according to the latest Fox polls, 49-47 in Pennsylvania and 49-45 in Arizona.  When including the other candidates, Trump’s lead fell to a tie in Pennsylvania but stayed the same in Arizona, with Kennedy taking the lion’s share of the 3rd party vote.  The GOP might want to start bashing Kennedy more, in most polls he’s taking a non-zero chunk of the vote from Trump, who has generally had an electoral ceiling problem.

Never Trump $$$: A group of “Republicans” against Trump is set to spend up to $50Million against him in the fall.  Its telling my first reaction was “Did they miss a zero somewhere?”, as that’s chump change in modern politics, and I have no reason to think its going to be any more success than the last billion or so these general groups have spent against Trump since 2015.

National PV:  Civiqs is out with another poll showing the odd trend of Trump doing way better with younger voters (leading by 13) while Biden cleans up with older ones (leads by 22).  This has happened often enough across multiple polls that I have to think its some sort of common weighting issue or something, though I’m not exactly sure what.

Congress:

AK-AL: Incumbent Democrat Mary Peltola is leading the first round for re-election in Alaska’s lone Congressional Seat 44-35-10 over Republicans Nick Begrich III and Nancy Dahlstrom, though she is tied with Begrich in the H2H 50-50.  Peltola is generally popular in the state, but her popularity is down a bit from past numbers and she faces strong headwinds with Trump on track to win the state by double-digits.

Battleground Polls: Cygnal-Battlegrounds has done a poll of what are seen as competitive House districts this fall.  The list of districts is somewhat odd (do people really have FL-27 on the board this year?), but the GOP leads by 3 in the sum of them, as does Trump over Biden.  Some issue polling finds Crime as a big weakness for Democrats, voters narrowly preferring an abortion ban outside of rape, incest, and life of the mother over no limits at all on abortion, though voters also say they think their states abortion laws need to be loosened rather than tightened.

NJ-Sen-1: This is a handy chart detailing how each New Jersey County party has endorsed for Senate.  Murphy is winning the counties in North Jersey, while Kim is winning the rest of the state.   Notably vote-heavy counties like Hudson and Essex haven’t decided yet.

NJ-Sen-2: Menendez is reportedly considering running for re-election as an Independent . . . though not really to win.  Doing so would allow him to fund-raise money for his (I assume quite large) legal bills, though I have no idea what % of the vote he’d get from residual name recognition or loyalty.  I doubt it would be enough to make the Senate race competitive for the GOP, but you never know.

OH-Sen-1: Democrats are going back to their usual tactic of trying to pick the worst GOP candidate and support them indirectly in the GOP primary running ads calling them “Too Conservative”, and it’s showing up in Ohio in favor of Bernie Moreno.  I am still somewhat baffled that the Democrats are doing this after it quite famously imploded in their faces in 2016 with Trump, but it has worked for them so far in some other races, so I guess they just have the money to burn.

OH-Sen-2: In another bizarre last-minute move, it has come out that Bernie Moreno’s work email was used to create an account on a gay-sex-hookup site over a decade ago.  Reporters have been able to confirm that it was only ever accessed within a few hours of being created back then, and a former Moreno intern has claimed credit for it, saying it was a juvenile prank gone wrong.  I doubt this story has much legs, but it might offer Moreno’s opponents a chance to highlight how Moreno went from being generally Pro-LGBT to more Socially Conservative the second he started running for office.

OH-Sen-3: Ohio Northern University is out with a poll of the GOP Senate primary and finds Moreno up on Dolan and LaRose 22-18-16, with a whopping 44% undecided.  This is far from the only poll showing the race still up in the air, though with a generally 3-way race, I’d be curious to know how many are truly undecided versus how many are deciding between only 2 candidates instead of all 3 (does anyone poll for that? I’m curious).  The poll also finds Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown leading all 3 Republicans by 3-8 points, and Trump leading Biden by 12 Statewide.

PA-Sen: An Emerson College poll of Pennsylvania has incumbent Democrat Bob Casey leading likely Republican candidate David McCormick 45-41.  That is down from their February poll showing Casey leading by 10.  Notably, Casey is winning more Trump voters than vice-versa.

WV-Sen: Schumer is trying to convince Manchin to run for re-election as an Independent, though Manchin has so far thrown cold water on the idea.  He hasn’t completely ruled it out, though he would need to get started on the effort soon (and the actual Democratic primary for the seat is in May and would have to be otherwise dealt with).

Other:

Canada: An interesting trend in Canada is that the CPC, ahead of a likely romp over the incumbent Grits in the next election, is starting to look and sound more like the GOP on social issues.  Naturally the article presents this as a terrifying development masterminded by insidious right-wing forces as opposed to a reaction to, well, *gestures at everything Justin Trudeau has done in the last decade or so*, but its an interesting data point in the globalization of the modern culture war even beyond America’s borders.

UK: There is an increased feeling that UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak might not even survive to the next general election, meaning the Tories will have gone through *6* different leaders since winning power in 2010.  Sunak has managed to take a broken, unpopular Conservative party and somehow made it even less popular by pushing bizarrely left-wing policies that have so alienated the British Conservative base that the Reform/Brexit party is winning around 10% of the vote again after being mostly an afterthought at the 2019 election.  This has also done nothing to dent Labour’s ~45% standing in the poll, meaning that we could very well see the Conservatives put up their worst ever showing, as basically a 1997 redux except with a right-wing splinter party taking 10% of the vote this time and the Tories stuck at below 25%.

Ringwiss:  In perhaps the ultimate demonstration that election nerds know Congress’s job better that Congress does, the Twitter account @ringwiss has become a go-to resource for electoral procedures and historical facts on Capital Hill.  The thing is, the handle is (as of now) anonymous, leading to many theories as to who (or possibly *what*, since one of the theories is that its an AI of some sort) is behind the account that members of Congress are using to figure out their job.  I can neither confirm nor deny that the handle is run by a moderate of this site.

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Political Roundup for March 14, 2024

Senate:

OH-Sen: A new Emerson College/The Hill poll has a close race for the Republican nomination for Senate. State Sen. Matt Dolan (R) leads with 26%, with businessman Bernie Moreno at 23% and Sec. of State Frank LaRose (R) at 16%. This is the first poll to have Dolan in the lead. In head-to-head matchups with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), Dolan trails 37-34%, Moreno trails 39-34%, and LaRose trails 39-33%.

House:

CA-16: It is still unclear who will get the second spot for the general election for this open seat. Former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo (D) has secured one spot, but both Santa Clara County Commissioner Joe Simitian (D) and state Rep. Evan Low (D) are close for the second spot. Simitian currently leads Low by 162 votes for the second spot, but Low has been gaining ground as more votes get counted.

CO-5: There have been dueling endorsements in this race. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) has endorsed Jeff Crank (R) in the Republican primary. Following close behind, Donald Trump has endorsed Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams (R). Also running in the Republican primary are state Sen. Bob Gardner (R) and ex-state Rep. Doug Bruce (R).

MI-8: Former Flint Mayor Matt Collier (D) has entered the race for this open seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Dan Kildee (D). He joins a Democratic primary that includes current Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley (D), state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D), state Board of Education President Pamela Pugh (D), and businessman and former Genesee County Democratic Chairman Dan Moilanen (D). 2022 Republican nominee Paul Junge (R) is the only Republican currently running.

NC-6: Ex-Rep. Mark Walker (R) has decided to forego a runoff for this seat. He will instead take a position with the Trump campaign. Lobbyist Addison McDowell (R), who Trump endorsed, will be the Republican nominee. McDowell took 26% in last week’s primary, with Walker getting 24%.

States:

VA-LG: Prince William School Board Chair Babur Lateef (D) is the first candidate in the 2025 race for Lieutenant Governor. Incumbent LG Winsome Sears (R) is thought likely to run for governor, although she has not stated her plans yet.

OR-SoS: State Sen. Dennis Linthicum (R) has filed to run for Secretary of State. Linthicum cannot run for re-election due to a voter-passed initiative that bars legislators who miss at least 10 days of a session with unexcused absences from running for re-election. The measure, confirmed by a recent state Supreme Court ruling, bars Republican senators who have engaged in recent walkouts from running for re-election. Linthicum will face two other candidates in the Republican primary-real estate broker Brent Barker (R), and market analyst Tim McCloud (R). Democrats running include State Treasurer Tobias Read (D) and state Sen. James Manning (D) as well as three perennial candidates who have lost previous races for Sec. of State and various other offices. Current appointed Sec. of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade (D), is not seeking election.

OR-Treas: State Sen. Brian Boquist (R), is running for State Treasurer. Like Linthicum, Boquist is one of the group of Republican senators barred from running for re-election due to walkouts. Soon after Boquist filed for the race, Nathan Sandvig (R), who had just filed for the race on Sunday, dropped out. Sandvig expressed surprise at Boquist’s entry and said he had filed at the request of Republican leaders, but was not prepared for a primary fight. Boquist will face the winner of the Democratic primary between state Sen. Elizabeth Steiner (D) and former Lake Oswego councilman Jeff Gudman (R ->D).