The only Democratic Party primary candidate who has won a race for office before is Reilly Neill. Neither ChatGPT nor Gemini can find evidence of her being a hunter, and Gemini claims she was a conservationist in favor for protecting wolves from hunters when in the Montana legislature. Maybe I’m being a little silly, and the AI’s don’t have evidence that Trump-endorsed Republican-primary-shoo-in (due to the dirty trick) candidate Kurt Alme hunts either. But it could be in the public interest for her to drop out after winning the primary, endorsing the independent. Yes this sucks.
Yeah, among Montana Democrats, conservation and environmentalism is often a big motivator. Preserve the Great Outdoors, so we can continue to go enjoy it. Such as by hunting. Or fishing, or hiking, or skiing, or camping, or whatever. All of those are pretty big, too.
There is the potential for a similar dynamic in the Kansas Senate race, where megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton is considering an independent run for Senate.
The buzz amongst my family in the area (some of whom are members of the church) is that he is a pretty liberal guy, but can’t stomach putting the Democrat label on his campaign.
It will be interesting to see if either of these campaigns get any traction, or start a trend towards candidates that reject certain aspects of the major parties and decide to run as independents instead.
Personally I prefer a big-tent party system where there are clear lanes within the party rather than heterodox parties. But the days of Blue Dog Democrats and Rockefeller Republicans seems to have passed.
Re last post, if someone could show me that the percent of voters who register and vote for parties other than the Democratic or Republican is rising, I would agree that the U.S. is going in a more than two party direction. But U.S. third parties I can think of (Green, Libertarian, Reform, Constitution, Socialist, Communist) seem to be gone or weakening.
As for candidates running as independents for U.S. Senate this year (Dan Osborn in Nebraska, Ty Pinkins in Mississippi, and Seth Bodnar in Montana), they would organize with the Democrats if elected, just like currently serving supposed independents Bernie Sanders and Angus King. In as much as they are more different from a typical Democrat than is Sanders and King, it is because they are politically to the right of Sanders and King, and not because they are starting, or part of, a new party.
It’s not meaningless to consider the percentage of those who register but don’t vote. Where’s the legitimacy in a “victory” that, e.g. in the UK, can only claim the support of barely a quarter of the electorate? That’s been an underlying issue here since 1974 or so, and much more visibly and acutely in this century.
Big Illinois Senate primary in progress, voting ends 3/17. We are replacing the very elderly Dick Durbin, who was pretty consistently liberal but hasn’t quite seemed to grasp the urgency of the current crisis.
Unfortunately, it appears we are likely to nominate Raja Krishnamoorthi, a useless establishment Dem who takes money not only from AIPAC, but also from Hindu nationalist groups linked to right-wing Indian PM Modi.
If this happens, it will likely be because the progressive vote was split between two excellent and highly qualified candidates in Lt Gov Julia Stratton and Representative Robin Kelly. The biggest difference between the two AFAICT is that Kelly supports an immediate cutoff of arms sales to Israel, while Stratton does not. However, although I agree with Kelly on that issue, I will likely be voting for Stratton, since although there’s not as much polling as I would like, what there is seems to clearly point to her being more likely than Kelly to beat Raja.
It appears Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton has a substantial lead in the Illinois Democratic primary. If the lead holds, it is likely she will win in the Fall. This would be the first time 3 African-American women are serving at the same time in the U.S. Senate.
Good news for the Democrats from Alaska: Peltola(D) is leading Sullivan(R) in recent polls for Sullivan’s Senate seat. It’s not by a huge margin (about 4 points) but considering it’s Alaska, it’s about as good as it will likely get.
Meanwhile, in California, FBI director Trump lickspittle Kash Patel is trying to dig up 10-year-old dirt on Eric Swalwell, who’s running for Governor. Give that it’s California, this may actually give Swalwell a boost in the polls. Which he could use, since right now, the two leading the polls are both Republicans. The Democratic field is too crowded and that could hurt them with the top-two-advance primary system California has.