New York Democratic Representative and “Squad” member Jamaal Bowman lost his primary in NY today. In what was the most expensive House primary in history, he lost to Westchester County Executive George Latimer who was massively backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC). AIPAC had targeted Bowman over his positions and rhetoric on Israel.
How solidly Democratic is this district? Is there a chance a significant number of Bowman voters will stay home in November and tip it to the Republican nominee?
Political blogger Taegan Goddard lives in that district and noted that (a) almost all of Bowman’s record setting spending in the race was funded outside the district and (b) that George Latimer is an extremely skilled retail politician with an authentic connection to the people in his district and thirty years political experience in that region.
To be fair, almost all of the spending supporting Latimer came from outside the district as well – pro-Israeli PACs spent more than $16 million on defeating Bowman.
But Bowman has been very intentionally trying to paint the scenario as if this is a case of a grassroots local movement vs outside spending, and if all of his money came from the outside as well, that kinda deflates the whole narrative.
It was also a bad night for Trump-endorsements generally, as his preferred candidates lost in both SC 3rd and CO 5th, as well as the Utah Senate primary.
I think it’s time for reexamination of this, given recent events. Now that there’s a surge in the opposite direction, how do we think those downballot races are affected?
The GOP is gonna have problems- the RNC is now a 100% trump tool. However, one job of the DNC and RNC is to ID smaller down ballot races that can be affected by modest amounts of campaigning.
The 538 list (updated often) of individual House race polls is here:
538 also has a running nationwide aggregate percentage for “generic congressional ballot” (“would you prefer a D or an R in Congress?”) – I’m not sure if they’re including the Senate in this. It’s been roughly tied for a while, until this past week (i,e, since August 1); now the Ds are on the upswing, but still only up by 0.6%.
There was a ton of money spent against them, but there was also a ton of money spent against them when they first won their seats. Why was it effective now?
Dan Newhouse who was one of the few Republicans to vote to impeach Trump over 1/6 will most likely be on the Nov ballot. However, one of the TWO Trump endorsed MAGA candidates in the primary has more votes as of today. Adding on the votes from the other Trump MAGA endorsee should assure him an easy victory come November.
Also, does Trump typically endorse multiple people in the same race? Guess it ups your chances of picking a winner.
Trump-endorsed candidate Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe won the Missouri governor’s race on Tuesday, defeating two other conservative candidates endorsed by the former president. They included Missouri’s secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, the son of the former Missouri governor and U.S. senator and attorney general John Ashcroft.
Meanwhile, in Missouri’s attorney general race, Trump endorsed both incumbent Andrew Bailey and his challenger, Trump attorney Will Scharf, with Bailey winning last night’s primary, winning 63 percent to Scharf’s 37 percent.
The last member of the Squad to face a contested primary this year – Ilhan Omar – easily defeated her challenger and will almost certainly be reelected in the general election in November. Unlike Jamaal Bowman and Cory Bush, AIPAC kept out of this one and Omar herself proved to be a proficient fundraiser.
