Highlights from The Downballot: Confusion in New York over redistricting and a May primary overview

Furthermore, the IRC failed to produce actual new maps, and the constitution says that new maps have to come from the IRC and those maps have to be passed on a bipartisan basis—creating and impasse on the panel. Nir explained that the process ended up completely jumbled because the commission could not agree on any maps, leaving New York with none. Thus, the state legislature said, “Well, okay. There are no maps. New York has to have new maps, and so we are going to pass new maps,” which they did. Those maps unquestionably favored Democrats, but this was the process that lawmakers believe was left to them.

“It’s not at all clear to me how on earth lawmakers are supposed to force an evenly-divided partisan body, like the Independent Redistricting Commission, to quote, ‘make more meaningful attempts at compromise,’ but that seems to have been the only recourse that was left to them. A dissenter said that was really nonsense and said that this view would leave the legislature hostage to the IRC. That’s essentially what the court seems to be okay with—the majority; this was a 4-3 opinion. It was really bitterly divided. There was a lot of nasty sniping between the majority and the dissenters in the footnotes,” Nir added.

Lacking a timetable, all the commission said was that the maps should be passed with “all due haste.” This, however, throws New York’s politics into turmoil, because the filing deadline passed several weeks ago, and in New York, filing is not just a mere formality.

This “really bizarre” outcome has left Democrats extremely unhappy. As Nir put it:

No one has any idea what the next set of maps will look like, but those also will be subject to appeal. It’s certain that New York’s primary will be delayed. The Court of Appeals said it probably has to take place in August, but there’s a whole other round of litigation that’s going to have to be resolved over the maps drawn up by this special master. Right now, New York’s maps are a total black hole, and there is just no predicting what’s going to come out the other side.

Beard added his perspective on the importance of keeping these maps from a politically strategic standpoint, even if they are gerrymandered:

To take it from a New York-focused point of a view to a national point of view just for a minute, the end result will probably be less gerrymandered maps for the state of New York, which in a vacuum, one could think, “Oh, well, that’s a good thing. Gerrymandered maps are bad,” but when you look at it from a national perspective, what you see is that, in New York, a gerrymandered map to favor Democrats was struck down by a Democratic court, but in Ohio, Republican gerrymandered maps were struck down once by a Republican court. They allowed the Ohio legislature to go back and draw another gerrymandered map and now those maps are being litigated. The expectation is that the primary will go ahead and the general will go ahead with these current gerrymandered maps. The Republican legislature was allowed to do a second round of gerrymandering and just pass it through, at least through 2022.

Next, the pair turned to the Utah Senate race. Delegates to Utah’s state Democratic Convention voted on Saturday not to run a candidate, an unusual move that one would not expect a state party convention to do. What they decided instead is to back conservative Independent Evan McMullin’s campaign. “What you’ll have as a result is Republican Sen.—incumbent—Mike Lee running on the Republican ticket and you’ll have Independent Evan McMullin. You’ll have no Democratic candidate, but you’ll have it at least publicly known that the Democratic Party is backing McMullin’s Independent run,” Beard explained.

In conservative Utah, Democrats seem to have accepted the idea that they have little to no chance of unseating Republican Sen. Mike Lee. For that reason, while it may seem unusual, Utah Democrats are purposefully taking a very narrow path to try to get through with McMullin, so that at least the person who hopefully wins will be closer to the center—“a little bit more pro-democracy, if not a Democrat, somebody who doesn’t like Mitch McConnell, who has promised not to vote for Mitch McConnell for majority leader,” Beard said. “On the off chance he wins and we end up with some sort 50-49 Senate plus McMullin, it’ll be a really interesting scenario to investigate.”

Nir and Beard moved the conversation to Michigan, where concerning news emerged from Michigan Republicans’ convention last weekend. This was a convention to choose their nominees for state attorney general and secretary of state. In both cases, two Trump-endorsed candidates who are Big Lie proponents defeated more traditional choices backed by the establishment. The GOP went with Matthew DePerno in the race against Attorney General Dana Nessel and Kristina Karamo in the race against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Both Nessel and Benson won close races in 2018. In their roles as the top elections official and the top law enforcement official in the state, they have played an important role in making sure that elections are run safely and soundly, whereas the candidates preferred by Trump, obviously believe that the only legitimate elections are ones that Republicans win and would unquestionably use their powers, if elected, to overturn any Democratic electoral victories.

This is a key part of their strategy, Nir noted:

That’s particularly crucial, given that Michigan will, almost certainly once again, be a major swing state in 2024. This is a reflection of a broader pattern we are seeing in other states, where really extremist candidates, Big Lie supporters, are running for secretary of state. They want their hands on the election machinery. We’re seeing it in Arizona. We’re seeing it in Georgia, as well. DePerno, who is the candidate for attorney general, he shot on to the scene in 2020 after the elections, when he claimed that there was election fraud in Antrim County, that’s in northern Michigan, a small conservative community, because the vote totals initially showed Joe Biden leading. It turns out it was just a clerical error. It was quickly fixed. Trump did, in fact, win by a big margin in the county, but of course, none of that ever matters in the MAGA world, so DePerno has continued to press his claims that election fraud—which again didn’t exist—wound up causing Trump to lose the state of Michigan to Joe Biden.

Lastly, in Europe, two sets of elections have yielded positive results, as Nir and Beard explained.

In France, the presidential runoff took place between centrists Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Macron won with 59% of the vote to Le Pen’s 41%, a fairly significant defeat, a little bit larger than the polls were showing just before the election—which had been about 10 points—but was a significant narrowing from their 2017 race, which Macron won 66% to 33%. There was a real increase for Le Pen and her vote five years later, which Beard thinks is concerning:

We also saw that turnout was 72% out of registered voters, which was a low for French presidential runoffs dating back to 1969. More than three million voters went to the polls and cast a blank ballot in protest of the two candidates who were available. I mean, it’s safe to assume these were primarily left-wing voters who were unhappy with the options of a centrist and a far-right candidate.

The difference here, obviously, is that Macron is definitely less popular now than he was in 2017. There was much more of a sense that a lot of people voted for him purely to keep Le Pen out, rather than out of real energy on his behalf. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in the legislative elections. It’s a similar system, where all of the races go to runoffs between the top two candidates a couple of weeks later, just like the presidential system was.

Slovenia also recently held elections to determine whether right-wing Prime Minister Janez Jansa would receive another term. He was defeated by a political newcomer, Robert Golob’s Freedom Movement. Golob is the former executive of a state-owned energy company who took over, in a friendly way, the country’s very newly-constituted Green Party, renamed it the Freedom Movement, and led it to victory all in the course of about a year.

At this point, Beard and Nir welcomed Singer onto the show to analyze some sloppy GOP food fights in Senate races in Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; a pair of primaries in Oregon and Texas where progressive challengers are seeking to oust irritating Democratic moderates; and the first incumbent-vs.-incumbent matchup of the year, thanks to West Virginia losing a House seat.

Singer opened by sharing what he thought were upcoming main events, including the Ohio Republic Senate primary this upcoming Tuesday for an open seat in the wake of Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s retirement. With no fewer than five candidates running, Singer highlighted the major candidates:

It’s been a mess. Donald Trump recently decided to weigh in. He endorsed venture capitalist J.D. Vance, who is best known as the writer of Hillbilly Elegy. Vance, like plenty of Republicans in 2016, was a vociferous Trump critic, who at one point mused he might even vote for Hillary Clinton. He since reinvented himself as a born-again MAGA conservative, but he’s still taking plenty of flack for his past statements. We have also former state Treasurer Josh Mandel. He was the Republican nominee for the other Ohio Senate seat in 2012. He lost to Sherrod Brown. Mandel has the support of the Club for Growth, a really deep-pocketed conservative organization that’s been particularly aggressive about going after Vance for what he said about Trump.

”It’s really a Etch-A-Sketch. We have no idea who … Vance is going to end up beating. If he does win, that’ll at least be interesting to watch,” Beard said.

Moving on to Nebraska, where the winner of the Republican primary is probably going to go on to win the general election, Singer pointed out three major candidates. This race is open because Gov. Pete Ricketts, who hails from one of the most influential donor families in the Republican Party, is termed out. As he explained,

Ricketts is backing Jim Pillen, who is a University of Nebraska regent and a pig farmer. Donald Trump is endorsing wealthy businessman Charles Herbster, who was at the Jan. 6 rally that came right before the attack on the Capitol, although Herbster says he wasn’t there for that. Then, you have a third major candidate: state Sen. Brett Lindstrom, who is more moderate. He’s backed workplace protections for LGBTQ people, and he voted to override Ricketts’ video on a gas tax and death penalty repeal.

There was a recent poll that showed a very close three-way race, with Lindstrom for the first time with a small lead—but very little polling here. The race took a really unexpected turn two weeks ago when eight women, including a sitting Republican state senator, accused Herbster of groping them and other forms of sexual assault. Unsurprisingly, that’s not shaken Trump’s confidence in him in the least, but we’ll see if that affects things on May 10.

The 2nd congressional district in the northern part of West Virginia will bear witness to the first incumbent-versus-incumbent primary of the whole cycle between Alex Mooney and David McKinley. As West Virginia is a very red state, whoever wins is almost certainly going to prevail in November. Singer thinks that there is a lot to see here. The two congressmen, while having voted the same way most the time, have diverged on two very important issues recently: McKinley supported creating a Jan. 6 commission; Mooney very much didn’t. McKinley was one of the few Republicans who voted for the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill; Mooney very much did not. McKinley’s backed by Gov. Jim Justice; Mooney has Donald Trump and the Club for Growth in his corner.

The GOP primary for North Carolina’s Senate seat, which is another open seat race, has also become another truly nasty affair. Nir asked Singer to provide a rundown of the situation, and Singer had this to say:

North Carolina’s Senate seat is open because Republican Sen. Richard Burr is retiring. There are three major Republicans running. There is former Gov. Pat McCrory—you might remember him from 2016, when he narrowly lost reelection over the backlash over the transphobic bathroom bill. Here’s how far Republican politics has gone to the right: McCrory, if anything, is the less far-right candidate. That’s because Ted Budd, who is Trump and the Club for Growth’s candidate, is also in.

You also have former Congressman Mark Walker, who has some connections with the religious right. Walker has trailed very badly in the polls, but kept running, even though Trump tried to convince him to run for a House seat. There’s some fear that Walker could cost Budd some much-needed votes, but while McCrory went into the year with leads in even a Budd internal poll, the recent numbers we’ve seen have shown Budd well ahead. Things very much appear to have changed. Maybe it was Trump pushing Budd extra hard. Maybe it was the Club for Growth, which has been spending very heavily here on Budd’s behalf, making the difference. Maybe people are just tired of seeing McCrory’s face. The polls show Budd’s really taking control of the race. McCrory’s fired back. He’s run ads that show Budd saying nice things about Putin and commending him as pretty smart when he invaded Ukraine, but so far that doesn’t seem to be moving the needle the way he needs it to.

“Regardless of who wins, Democrats will be nominating former state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley, who doesn’t really face any opposition in her primary,” Nir said.

The trio discussed yet another primary in North Carolina for a House race in the far western part of the state, which involves Madison Cawthorn. Singer elaborated that Cawthorn might have essentially shot himself in the foot by getting greedy and switching districts:

[Cawthorn’s] greatest liability might be [that he] essentially tried to switch districts. Last year, the Republican legislature adopted a congressional map, put most of Cawthorne’s existing seat in a different western North Carolina district. Cawthorne, he gets a little greedy and says, ‘I’m going to run for an even more Republican seat that I barely represent in the Charlotte area.’

No one’s quite sure why he did that. Might have just been to increase his statewide name recognition, might have been just to show what a big dog he was, but it really backfired, because that map no longer exists. That map got struck down. The map that was adopted by the state Supreme Court no longer gave Cawthorne any real option, except to run at home. Most incumbents would be quite okay with that, but Cawthorne’s constituents, they felt that he just tried to straight-up abandon them. That could be an even bigger liability than all the coke and orgy allegations in the world.

Cawthorn how has seven opponents, and with North Carolina’s runoff rules, that could bode well for him. In many states, Singer explained, if you take less than a majority of the vote, you’re in a runoff. In North Carolina, though, a second round happens only if no candidate takes more than 30% of the vote. “Even if a large majority of voters want Cawthorne gone, if he clears 30% and gets more votes than anyone else, he’s renominated, which is pretty good, considering how red this district is,” he added.

Cawthorne’s main opponent right now appears to be state Sen. Chuck Edwards, who has the endorsement of Sen. Thom Tillis. Edwards has been running ads, saying, “I’m not some vapid celebrity, unlike my opponent. I’m just a hardworking, dependable conservative. If 31% of the voters here want a vapid celebrity, that’s pretty good for Cawthorne.” Edwards even released a poll just last month that gave Cawthorne this huge 32 to 20 advantage. A Thom Tillis-aligned super PAC has also been running ads against him. “We’ll see if that moves the needle, but even Edwards knows he’s starting well behind,” Singer said.

Turning their attention to Oregon’s 5th District, which is held by moderate Democratic Congressman Kurt Schrader, Singer noted that Schrader has annoyed progressives for—among many other things—saying last year that the idea of impeaching Donald Trump was like a lynching. He apologized and voted to impeach Trump anyway, but the damage was done. Schrader’s one and only Democratic primary opponent in the seat, which takes up some of the Portland suburbs in Central Oregon, is Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who would be the state’s first LGBTQ member of Congress and is running to Schrader’s left. McLeod-Skinner argues that Schrader is dependent on special interests. And big names are getting involved: Joe Biden recently endorsed Schrader. “Biden, in many ways, is not like Trump. One of them is he does not really take part in competitive Democratic primaries that often, so it’s pretty notable he’s weighing in here, even for someone who’s tried to obstruct his agenda,” Singer pointed out.

In the next district over, Oregon’s 6th District in the Willamette Valley, there is a large field of candidates, but only two of the nine Democratic candidates have really gotten a lot of attention. One of those candidates is Economic Development Advisor Carrick Flynn, who has benefited from over $7 million from Protect Our Future PAC, which is a group that’s funded by cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. Additionally, Democrat’s House Majority PAC, which exists to keep Democrats in the majority and generally do not intervene in primaries; yet they’ve spent $1 million to help Flynn. Singer says it is a cause for concern, and provided this overview of the situation:

That’s caused a lot of consternation here. Why would they get involved in a primary for a seat that, since Biden won at 55 to 42, really shouldn’t be that competitive? It doesn’t look like Flynn is such a great candidate, that the group needs to intervene here. It’s caused a lot of angst. The other candidate who’s got plenty of attention here is state Rep. Andrea Salinas, who would be the first Latina to represent Oregon in Congress. She has an endorsement from Gov. Kate Brown, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has also spent $1 million on her. That’s far less than what Flynn has benefited from, but it’s still quite a lot. It’s still going to help her get her message out. There are seven other candidates here. So far, none of them have benefited from anything like the endorsements the other two have, but we’ll see. It’s a very, very strange race.

The trio swung back to the eastern portion of the United States to hit the third major state that has a primary on May 17: Pennsylvania. Here, there are competitive Democratic and Republican primaries in the Senate race. “How do you see both of these going, Singer?” Nir asked.

Singer thinks things are clearer on the Democratic side, and that the GOP race has been an “expensive mess”:

On the Democratic side … We have three major candidates, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who’s the tattooed, six-foot-nine candidate who has this big fan base. He’s had an advantage in every poll we’ve seen against Congressman Conor Lamb, who won a very closely-watched special election in western Pennsylvania in 2018, and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who would be the first Black and gay senator to serve, ever.

To try to break Fetterman’s lead, a pro-Lamb super PAC has spent heavily on ads that—relying on a since-corrected media report—falsely claims that Fetterman was a self-described socialist. He’s not. The group had to pull the ad and edit it. The PAC seems to think that this is a good line of attack to argue Fetterman’s unelectable, because they’ve attacked Fetterman for applying for the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America, even though Fetterman explicitly said in their questionnaire he’s not a socialist. We’ll see if that does him any damage, but so far it doesn’t seem to be, at least in the primary.

The GOP race, on the other hand, is such an expensive mess. Trump recently decided to endorse TV personality Mehmet Oz, as in Dr. Oz, who has very weak ties to the state; he didn’t even vote there in 2020. Oz has been self-funding much of his bid, but so has former hedge fund manager David McCormick and his allied super PAC. They’d been running ads, attacking one another. McCormick is portraying Oz as this vapid celebrity. He’s benefited from recent footage of Oz kissing his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There are other candidates. We don’t have any recent polls, but it’s really been this demolition derby between Oz and McCormick.

Nir raised the issue of another demolition derby going on in the governor’s race in Pennsylvania. There, the current Democratic incumbent is term limited, and Democrats have rallied around state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, but the GOP primary is once again shaping up to be very messy.

With nine candidates running, Singer said, “anything can happen here,” especially given that not all of them have much money or name recognition:

One of the worst candidates in the nation—and that’s saying a lot—is state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who, among many other things, tried to help Trump steal the state after the 2020 election, and on Jan. 6, he was filmed passing breach barricades at the Capitol. Mastriano also recently addressed a QAnon-aligned group, although he claims not to have anything to do with it.

Mastriano has plenty of competition, though, on the far-right. You have former Congressman Lou Barletta, who lost the 2018 Senate race really badly to Democrat Bob Casey. Barletta, back in the early 2000s, was this virulent anti-immigration crusader when he was mayor of the small town of Hazleton. He has said he was a Trump conservative before there were Trump conservatives. You also have wealthy businessman Dave White, who has used his resources to outspend everyone else. He lost his election in eastern Pennsylvania to the Delaware County Council back in 2017, but he’s still a big presence, thanks to his wealth.

Nir then informed listeners that Pennsylvania is a state that does not use runoffs, so whoever wins this primary could do so with a very small share of the vote.

“Moving on to May 24, we’ve got three states holding a primary, along with the Texas runoffs. That’s Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia. Let’s start off in Alabama, where the Republican Senate primary is taking place. We’ve talked a little bit about that one. That’s where Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mo Brooks. What’s going on there now?” Beard asked.

Singer offered this update:

Brooks is still limping along. The Club for Growth is still on his side … Brooks really is in bad shape.

There are two other major candidates to watch. There’s Katie Britt, who ran the state’s Chamber of Commerce. She’s the former chief of staff to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby. Shelby’s going all in for her. He’s using his money to finance super PACs to help her.

Then there’s Army veteran Mike Durant, who was held prisoner in Somalia for 11 days in 1993 in the incident that was dramatized in the movie Black Hawk Down. He’s been self-funding. He’s all over the air. We’re waiting to see if Trump’s going to take sides, now that he’s abandoned Brooks, or if he just lets this one play out.

Alabama’s another state where you do need to win a majority to avoid a runoff. With three major candidates, or two and a half if you count Brooks, and a bunch of pretty minor contenders on the ballot, it’s very unlikely anyone’s going to win the first round outright. This one will probably go to a second round almost certainly [in a June 21 runoff].

Nir then highlighted what is happening in Georgia, home to a whole host of compelling primaries, the top of the ticket of which is the GOP battle in the Georgia governor’s race. “This one might’ve gotten more ink than any other, but it seems like it’s possibly about to fizzle?” he suggested.

Singer thinks that it very well could:

Brian Kemp, the governor—he rode to victory in the 2018 primary after Trump endorsed him. Trump’s not so fond of him anymore, especially after Kemp refused to help him steal the state two years later. Trump’s gone all in for former Sen. David Perdue, who lost last year’s runoff very narrowly. The problem for Perdue, it seems, is that Kemp still is liked by a majority of the base. Kemp is anything but a moderate. He’s fervently conservative on pretty much everything.

Perdue’s trying to still get to his right. He’s been focusing pretty much entirely on how he’s Trump’s candidate, and he’s been proclaiming the Big Lie at every chance he gets … but it doesn’t seem to be working. Every poll we’ve seen has shown Kemp either at or very close to the majority he’d need to avoid a runoff also on June 21. Perdue’s sticking with his strategy. Maybe the polls are wrong, but if they’re not, it’s looking like Trump’s going to take a very big black eye here. Whoever wins this one is going to take on Stacey Abrams, who was the 2018 Democratic nominee. She has no primary opposition this time.

“If it is a rematch between Kemp and Abrams, that will certainly be a blockbuster in November,” Beard added.

The trio wrapped up the show in Texas, which is holding runoffs from their March primary. “The highlight, of course, is TX-28, which we’ve covered extensively here already, but what has been going on since the first round down there in south Texas?” Beard asked.

On March 1, conservative Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar led his progressive Democratic primary opponent, Jessica Cisneros, just 49 to 47%—very close, just below what Cuellar needed to avert a runoff. Cuellar’s pretty much stuck with his strategy from the first round. He’s argued Cisneros is weak on public safety. Cisneros is more focused on abortion rights for this round: she’s attacked Cuellar for siding with Texas Republicans to restrict the right to choose. Singer recalled an interesting turn in this race back in January, when Federal investigators raided Cuellar’s home and campaign office, allegedly over his ties to Azerbaijan. Cuellar’s attorney recently said the congressman is not a target in a federal investigation. “No corroboration on this claim from the FBI or Department of Justice, but it hasn’t emerged in campaign ads this time. We’ll see if that changes, but so far Cisneros is focusing on abortion rights,” Singer said.

In closing, he noted that things are far from determined in this race:

While Cuellar has long had a money advantage—and still does—it has narrowed quite a bit. Cisneros is not getting outgunned the way she did back in 2020, when she narrowly lost in the first round. The Republicans also have a race to watch here, but the GOP establishment’s going all in for a former Ted Cruz staffer named Cassy Garcia. Garcia faces Sandra Whitten, who lost a very little-noticed campaign in 2020 to Cuellar … This seat in the Laredo area is a long-time Democratic stronghold, but Biden won it only 53 to 46 in 2020, so it could be in play.