After winning a crowded primary in February, Mejia was heavily favored in a district where there are about 65,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, according to the state’s Department of Elections. Mejia united most of the Democratic Party behind her, including former Rep. Tom Malinowski, who ran in the primary and lost after facing a barrage of spending from a group linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Yeah, AIPAC really screwed up. Malinowski wasn’t an Israel absolutist, so they went after him really hard. I suppose they were hoping to do enough damage that he would lose to the Republican? Instead, Mejia is joining the Squad. I don’t know Mejia’s exact position on Israel and the Palestinians, but it’s certainly much more sympathetic towards the Palestinians than Malinowski would have been.
Doing a tiny bit of googling, looks like Mejia accused Israel of genocide, so I think it would be fair to say that AIPAC really screwed up.
There was a bizarre situation in the Democratic primary for the open seat in deep-blue IL-9 this year. There was a wealthy guy who was self-financing his run as the “moderate, pro-Israel Democrat”. Which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what 9th District Democrats were looking for, but there was at least some chance he might have squeaked through if the progressive vote split three or four ways. But AIPAC, for some reason, decided to throw a bunch of money at a DIFFERENT pro-Israel candidate, absolutely guaranteeing that neither of them had a prayer of winning.
Never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake…
Now that NJ 11 has had their election, here’s the current breakdown of the House of Representatives:
Rep: 218 (includes one Independent who caucuses with the Rs.)
Dem: 214
Vacant: 3
And the upcoming by (special) elections:
CA 01 – primary: Jun 2; general: Aug 4 [R favored]
CA 14 – primary: Jun 16; general: Aug 18 [D favored]
TX 23 – date not set yet. [district is R+7, so a flip is possible]
As far as has been reported, Gov Abbott has still not set a date for TX 23. A bit of history might give a clue as to why.
The last time Texas had a open seat, it was in a very blue district. Abbott, seeking to keep a D out of the House for as long as possible, scheduled the election some 11 months after it became open. In apparent retaliation, when a very red district in California became open, Gov Newsom scheduled it as far out as California law allowed. That’s the CA 01 election in the list above. Then when a very blue district became open in California, Newsom scheduled it as soon as the law allowed. That resulted in the overlap of election dates of CA 14 with CA 01, even though the seats became open 3 months apart.
So what’s Abbott going to do about a district that’s R but not overwhelmingly so? The Dems have been outperforming their previous results in election after election by more than the R+7 percentage points that TX 23 has. So he may be worried about the potential flip of the seat. It’s quite possible he’ll leave the seat open until the Nov election.