Category Archives: Senate

Tomorrow’s Massachusetts Primary

By DocJess | Published August 31, 2020

Tomorrow is the Massachusetts primary. It’s a fascinating microcosm of campaigns. If you’re a political junkie (LIKE ME!) you’ve been following it really closely. While the 4th CD is a complete toss up (with a bunch of good options), the 1st CD is a battle between a really good guy (Richie Neal) who is being challenged by a guy who skirted the (possibly fake) sexual accusations against him.

Sometimes these challenges make sense — notably this year, Eliot Engel’s loss. Which was no great loss in the grand scheme of things: Engel was not that productive, and he’d lost touch with his District. But Richie Neal? One of the authors of the ACA, and the new NAFTA, Chair of Ways and Means. With a great body of legislative accomplishment that have been good for his district and for the nation. Challenger Alex Morse has said he would have voted against the CARES Act. He felt it didn’t go far enough. This shows a complete naivete of both necessity and political process. You want to be aspirational? Fine. But don’t do it when people need immediate financial relief from disaster. Morse believed that $600 a week wasn’t enough, and the $1,200 wasn’t enough…too many Alex Morses and no one would have gotten anything because those were the top numbers the House was going to be able to wrest from the Senate.

And then there’s the Ed Markey – Joe Kennedy Senate primary, which is actually the race, as the victor will win the seat in November. It’s astounding to me that Kennedy is challenging Markey not so much on issue grounds (their views are similar, although where there is a difference, Markey is more left than Kennedy) but because he’s OLD. No one ever says Ruth Bader Ginsburg is too old, as an aside. Continue Reading...

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August 4 Primaries — Arizona, Michigan, and Washington

By tmess2 | Published July 25, 2020

As the calendar flips around to August, we are about to hit a rush of state and congressional primaries.  Some states (e.g., California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois) hold their state and congressional primaries on the same day as the presidential primary.  Others (e.g., Florida) hold a separate presidential primary with the state and congressional primaries occurring later in the year.  And most of the states with separate primaries will hold them between August 1 and mid-September.  (In addition, there is the postponed Connecticut primary.)

Earlier this week, I discussed the  two states holding primaries on August 4 that I am most familiar with (Kansas and Missouri).  (And if I hear another ad attacking a hardcore pro-life Republican for saying something even slightly pro-choice fifteen years ago, I may get physically ill.)  The other three states holding primaries on August 4 are Arizona, Michigan, and Washington.

In Arizona, the biggest race is the special election for the remaining two years of the Senator John McCain’s term.  Mark Kelly is the only candidate on the ballot on the Democratic side.  It is likely that interim Senator Martha McSally will be the Republican nominee.  She does, however, have primary opposition.  Her opponent has some money, but not really enough to run a successful campaign.  So unless there is a lot of silent opposition to her among Arizona Republicans, she should win the primary.  (There was one poll that compared Kelly against both McSally and her primary opponent, and the primary opponent did a little bit better but not much better against Kelly.)  In 2018, the Democrats won 5 of the 9 congressional seats and none of the races was particularly close.  At this point, I am not hearing anything out of Arizona that points to any of the primaries being interesting. Continue Reading...

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Bleeding Kansas

By tmess2 | Published July 21, 2020

In two weeks, Kansas and Missouri will have their state and federal primaries.  (There are also primaries in Arizona, Michigan, and Washington.)  While on the Missouri side of the state line, the biggest race is actually a ballot issue (Medicare expansion which is expected to pass), Kansas has some major races on the Republican primary ballot.

The big one is the U.S. Senate race.  The incumbent Senator — Pat Roberts — is a conservative Republican.  However, that is not enough to guarantee a win in the Republican primary, and Senator Roberts had a tough race in 2014 (only getting 48% of the primary vote for an 8% margin).   Senator Roberts has  decided that forty years in Congress (sixteen in the House and twenty-four in the Senate) is enough and it’s time to enjoy retirement.  And eleven Republicans decided that their names would sound so much better with Senator in front of it.

At this point in the race, it appears that there are three major contenders.  The establishment choice is very conservative Representative Roger Marshall.  Marshall represents the first district of Kansas which covers western and north central Kansas.  Meanwhile, the Tea Party candidate is Spawn of Satan Kris Kobach.  Folks may remember former Secretary of State Kobach as the Republican who lost the governor’s seat in 2018 or as the author of much of the anti-immigrant legislation passed over the past decade.  Finally, there is Bob (Hamilton) the plumber.  Hamilton runs a highly successful plumbing company in the Kansas City area and is trying to paint himself as a Trump clone. Continue Reading...

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Primary Day

By tmess2 | Published July 14, 2020

Today is primary day in three states.  In two of the three (Alabama and Texas), it is actually primary run-off day as the first round of voting occurred prior to COVID-19 becoming a household word.  In the other state (Maine). today is the actual primary day.  Maine uses ranked-choice voting in its primary which means that voters are casting votes for all rounds of the election today.   In all three states, there are senate primaries to choose challengers, and the results could matter in November.

In Alabama, you have former Senator and Attorney General Jeff Sessions seeking to get his job back against former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville.  Besides his coaching experience, Coach Tuberville appears to have relocated to Florida until just recently and has some ties to some hedge fund fraud.  All of which makes him Trump’s type of candidate as Trump wants to stick it to Attorney General Sessions for only bending the law into a pretzel on some occasions and actually realizing that it would be unethical to head an investigation into a campaign in which he played a significant role.   Now, it’s going to be hard for Democrats to keep this seat in November, but I would rather be running against the former coach for Auburn (the “second” school in Alabama) in the hopes that some Alabama fans who would normally vote Republican might have trouble voting for somebody from Auburn.  Additionally, the scandal involving Coach Tuberville might just become a big deal by November allowing us to narrowly keep the seat over a flawed Republican candidate.  While Democrats rightly loathe the positions that Jeff Sessions took as Attorney General, Alabama is still a deep red state.  If Trump and Sessions decide that they have to make nice after the primary, I think it would be almost impossible to beat Sessions in November.

In Texas, you have almost a replay of the recent Kentucky primary.  The preferred candidate of the national party is a moderate, white, female, military veteran (MJ Hegar).  The other choice is a progressive, male, African-American, state legislator (Royce West).   And, like in Kentucky, you have an incumbent Republican member of the party leadership (John Conryn) who will be a favorite for re-election but could be beatable with the right candidate. Continue Reading...

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June 23rd Primaries

By DocJess | Published June 22, 2020

There are a number of primaries tomorrow, also some run-off elections and a Special Election. Some of them are Republican only, and I won’t be commenting on them because I honestly don’t care. For example, some Republican is going to win the runoff to get Mark Meadows seat. Whoever wins, he couldn’t be much worse than Meadows, and will lack his seniority.  (Thanks, I feel better now.) In the Virginia primary, Mark Warner is running unopposed and will keep his Senate seat in November.

The marquee events tomorrow are the Democratic Senate primary in Kentucky, the Special Election for convict (as of August, delayed due to pandemic) Chris Collins’ seat (NY-27) and some of the New York Democratic Congressional primaries: there are 10 of 12 incumbents seeking re-election who are being challenged.

Let’s start with the NY-27th: in 2018, WHILE UNDER INDICTMENT, Collins won over Nate McMurray, 49.1% to 48.8%. McMurray is running again, against state Sen. Chris Jacobs, who was hand-picked by the state Republican Party. Of note, Jacobs was almost tossed off the ballot for voter fraud, but last Friday night, the county DA decided to let bygones be bygones. If McMurray wins (which every well-regarded pollster and prognosticator says can’t possibly happen) in the reddest district in New York State, that would bide very well for a blue tsunami in November. Continue Reading...

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Kentucky Primary and Moscow Mitch

By tmess2 | Published June 21, 2020

Tuesday is the COVID-19-postponed primary in Kentucky, and a lot has changed since the originally-scheduled date.   And those changes put Democrats in a somewhat familiar position — do you vote for the candidate that most closely resembles your position or the candidate with the best chance to win.

For most of the year, Amy McGrath was the strong favorite to win the race.  She raised a significant amount of money who saw her background (including her veteran status) as potentially appealing to swing voters who will be necessary to beat Moscow Mitch in November.  While she does not have a record, she is perceived as a moderate — a necessity to win in a red state like Kentucky.

In recent weeks, the resurgence of issues surrounding racism have contributed to a surge of support for State Representative Charles Booker.  His status as a person of color and his positioning of himself as a progressive have contributed to this rise in support from Democrats who want to take a stand in the general election. Continue Reading...

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Sunday with the Senators: Moscow Mitch’s Calculus

By DocJess | Published October 13, 2019

You may have wondered why Moscow Mitch allowed for a vote to release the whistle blower complaint, and then publicly announced that if the House voted to impeach, the Senate would hold a trial according to established rules. For starters, he’s underwater, with an average -23 favorability. That’s right — that’s average, the latest polling shows him at -24, or 30 favorable/54 unfavorable. He’s got a real challenge running next year against Amy McGrath. There’s no public polling yet, but she’s a strong candidate, and while she lost her last Kentucky race, that gives her the experience necessary to overcome any errors, and let’s face it, while 2018 was a wave, there’s a chance 2020 may be a tsunami. In addition, she raised close to $11 million in Q3, more than most 2020 presidential candidates. Moscow’s numbers for Q3 aren’t out yet, but he had about $7 million CoH at the end of Q2, so she might have bested him.

Mitch didn’t get where he is without being able to read polls, and the constant uptick in voters favoring impeachment has got to be giving him the willies. While there is a dearth of state-by-state numbers, the numbers in favor of the inquiry rise daily, including among Republicans, Evangelicals and white men without college degrees — and that’s not just the Orange Menace’s base, it’s Mitch’s too.

Jeff Flake has said that if there were an impeachment vote in the Senate that was secret, 30 – 35 Republicans would vote to oust General Bone Spurs. But secret isn’t going to cut it, and Moscow Mitch knows that. Thus, he’s keeping his options open. Because his calculus is whether he can, first, keep his seat, and second, hold the Senate in 2020. And those are his only concerns. (No, sorry, folks, he doesn’t actually care about law or history.) Continue Reading...

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What Will Mike Pompeo Do?

By tmess2 | Published September 1, 2019

Prior to Mr.  Narcissist becoming President, Mike Pompeo was an up and coming Congressman from Kansas about to start his fourth term in what (up to that point) had been the very conservative but not completely bonkers wing of the Republican Party.  Since 2017, Mike Pompeo has been one of the handful; of “responsible adults” in the Trump Administration’s foreign policy establishment.  (Responsible in the sense that these individuals are not willing to dump our allies and cozy up to authoritarian regimes.)

Mike Pompeo is now facing a choice about what next that may have a key impact on who controls the U.S. Senate in 2021.  Back in 2014, Senator Pat Roberts had a tough race for his fourth Senate term — only getting 48% of the vote in the primary and 53% in the general election.  While Senator Roberts is a traditional conservative, that’s not conservative enough for many Kansas Republicans.  (For almost three decades, there has been a civil war in the Kansas Republican Party between very conservative Republicans and traditional conservatives.  The main success of the Kansas Democratic Party has come when the Kansas Republicans have picked candidates who are too conservative thereby driving moderates to vote for the Democratic candidate.)  For 2020, Senator Roberts has seen the writing on the wall and had opted to retire rather than face another nasty primary that he probably would have lost.

At this point, multiple candidates have expressed interest in running in the Republican primary for this seat including Spawn of Satan Kris Kobach.  As you may recall, the last time we saw Spawn of Satan, he was losing the governor’s race to Democrat Laura Kelly.  Many in the Senate Republican leadership and in the Kansas Republican Party fear that, if Kobach wins the Republican nomination (highly likely in a split field), a Democrat could actually win the Kansas Senate race.  Looking for a white knight savior, they think that Mike Pompeo would fit the bill, either driving most of the other candidates from the race or at least having enough name recognition and support to get most of the non-Kobach votes. Continue Reading...

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Sunday with the Senators: Let’s Talk Maine

By DocJess | Published August 18, 2019

I have a gut feeling that we can retake the Senate. One of the seats that is definitely on my list is Maine. So let’s take a deep dive into that race…as you certainly know, the incumbent is anti-choice, Bret-Kavanaugh-enabler Susan Collins, who has held her seat since 1997. On the plus side, as I’ve pointed out many times before, she makes great blueberry muffins and passes them out at constituent events. And um…..that’s it, the upside is the muffins.

On the other side, she’s just plain bad news. She wasn’t always this way, but she’s now. She’s got a primary challenger in Derek Levasseur, He’s challenging from the right and says that Collins isn’t supporting Trumpkin enough. He launched a few months ago and has raised about $7,000. At first, I thought I read it wrong and he raised $7 million, but then I put my glasses on and saw it’s $7 thousand. All of that money is from individuals who gave less than $200 each — on the bright side for him, that translates into votes. On the downside, he spent all the money and is now $2 grand in the hole.

Collins, meanwhile, has about $5.5 million CoH, and receives about a quarter of her funding from PACs. But is money everything? Her polling is fascinating. she is now the second lowest polling Senator. The only Senator hated more than she is #MoscowMitch. Read all the juicy details here. But let’s say she gets through the primary, she’ll still need to face a Democrat, and, this being Maine, some third party folks. And remember, Maine has ranked voting. Continue Reading...

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Call the House Back

By tmess2 | Published August 12, 2019

Since the events of last weekend, a major focus of the press has been whether Moscow Mitch will call the Senate back into session to deal with gun control.  After all, there are several bills that the House has passed regarding background checks, etc., that would be useful starting points for Senate debate.

It has become pretty clear that Moscow Mitch intends to stay in his turtle shell and hope that — as in the past — other issues will gain media attention and the focus on Republican inaction on this issue will pass.  But there is one thing that Democrats can do to highlight the Senate’s failure and that is for the House to return to Washington to take another look at gun control.

Technically, it’s not necessary because — as discussed above — the House has already done its part.  But, unfortunately, the House passed its bills in the ordinary course of business — meaning that the media paid those bills little attention as they were passed.  The purpose of recalling the House into session is not a need to pass new bills (although we should do that as well) but to demonstrate that the House is doing the People’s business while the Senate is standing in the doorway and blocking up the halls (with apologies to Bob Dylan). Continue Reading...

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