Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP
Filling out an absentee voting application in St. Louis, Missouri
Voters in five states today head to the polls for elections that, as is the new normal, will not be officially or perhaps even conclusively settled for weeks. In Missouri, Washington, Michigan, Kansas, and Arizona, there are races with important national stakes, as progressives continue to make inroads down the ballot, Trump Republicans test their strength within the GOP, and Medicaid expansion gets considered in yet another red state.
Missouri
Progressive forces, looking to convert Jamaal Bowman’s recently formalized victory in New York 16th Congressional District into a nationwide blueprint, will be paying particularly close attention to the Democratic primary in Missouri’s First Congressional District between incumbent Lacy Clay and upstart Cori Bush. Clay is a 10-term incumbent in MO-01, a safely blue district that has a Black plurality and encompasses much of St. Louis.
If the conditions of Bowman’s triumph are to be duplicated anywhere, MO-01 seems like a good option. Clay is older, at 64 years old, and relatively unpopular, criticized frequently for his ties to payday lenders and other financiers as a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee. While he or his father have represented the district since 1969, Clay does fit the model of a longstanding incumbent who, like Eliot Engel, may have worn out his welcome. Bush, on the other hand, is younger, with deep ties to the activist community and the Black Lives Matter movement. Like Bowman, she has also been the beneficiary of high-profile endorsements, from Bernie Sanders to national progressive groups like Justice Democrats to a battery of local politicians, who just recently have rushed to back her candidacy.
Bush has benefitted from a robust media operation as well, booking $184,000 in TV ads, outspending Clay by some $65,000. Justice Democrats, meanwhile, has spent more than $150,000 of its own on TV ads boosting her candidacy in the final week of the race. Bush has also outspent Clay on the radio. Her formidable fundraising haul has been buoyed in part by her appearance in the Netflix documentary Knock Down the House, which followed her (along with AOC and others) on her previous campaign in 2018, a longshot effort that resulted in her losing by roughly 20 points in a four-person field but elevated her profile significantly. All that adds up to an unusual advantage for a primary challenger.
Clay hasn’t only been dogged by subpar fundraising numbers, he’s been mired in a number of scandals throughout the campaign cycle. He referred to Bush as “a prop,” and sent out a mailer with her skin darkened and his lightened (Clay is also Black). Meanwhile, Clay has funneled $180,000 worth of his campaign funding to his sister’s law firm for “fundraising” purposes, a move which is not illegal but has raised eyebrows. He funneled another $30,000 to a company run by his sister’s husband that was, in fact, operating illegally, and, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Clay was the recipient of a $30,000 kickback in a 2016 St. Louis County Port Authority marketing deal now at the center of a federal investigation.
That’s not the only notable race on the Missouri ballot. The state will also be voting on Medicaid expansion, meaning it might soon join the league of red states that has expanded Medicaid by popular approval, overriding the priorities of Republican gubernatorial leadership. Given the popularity of the proposal, it may lead to increased turnout, a condition that could boost Bush’s chances even further. If enacted, it would mark another victory for Democrats on health care, as Medicaid expansion has quickly become the most enduring and most popular component of the Affordable Care Act.
Washington
The south Puget Sound region’s 10th District sports an extremely crowded field, with 19 candidates running. But progressive groups have come out strongly in favor of Beth Doglio, from local nurses and carpenter unions to the Sunrise Movement and the Sierra Club. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee endorsed Doglio as well, as have national politicians like Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pramila Jayapal, the representative from neighboring WA-07. Jayapal, in particular, has pushed hard for Doglio, who, as a Medicare for All and Green New Deal supporter, would immediately join the ranks of Jayapal’s Progressive Caucus.
Among Doglio’s more formidable challengers is Seattle Times–endorsed Marilyn Strickland, former head of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. The paper celebrated her “cultivation of fresh foreign investors” in Tacoma.
Elsewhere in Washington, Rebecca Parson, another Medicare for All, Green New Deal, and federal jobs guarantee supporter, is running in the Sixth District, sporting the endorsement of Our Revolution and Tacoma’s Sunrise chapter. Four-term incumbent Rep. Derek Kilmer has dumped more than 25 times his 2018 campaign expenditure on just television advertising to keep Parson at bay, with more than $400,000 on TV ads alone, an additional $155,000 in digital ads and $22,000 in direct mail. Kilmer, a deficit hawk and chair of the New Democratic Coalition, holds a spot on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee.
As of right now, Jayapal is the only Washington House rep not in the New Democratic Coalition. But recent protests in the Seattle area have only furthered the notion that the state’s politics are well to the left of its current representation, and that will be tested today.
Michigan
Rashida Tlaib is in a hotly contested fight for her seat in Michigan’s 13th District. Tlaib now has a major national profile as a member of the Squad, but she only eked out her victory in 2018 by one percentage point over Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones. Tlaib is again taking on Jones, who’s made her case to voters in Detroit and its suburbs based on the notion that that seat, held for years by John Conyers until he resigned over sexual harassment allegations, should be held by a Black politician. The top three also ran candidates who split the vote in 2018 have all endorsed Jones. But Jones has been dogged by campaign finance problems, illegally accepting campaign contributions in violation of state rules against pay-to-play activity, according to The Intercept, and then raking in money from billionaire Dan Gilbert while he gobbled up public money. She got into the race late, contracted COVID-19 which prevented her from early campaigning, and by July 15 had barely $12,000 in cash on hand.
Meanwhile, Detroit’s district attorney race will be closely watched by progressives, as Victoria Burton-Harris, a Sanders-endorsed defense attorney takes on incumbent Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, in a race that could see Detroit become the next major metropolitan area to be repped by a progressive DA. It's one of several prosecutor races on the ballot nationwide today that could change the face of criminal justice.
Arizona
Squarely in the crosshairs in a state with changing politics is Republican Rep. David Schweikert, a fierce conservative who has served as the representative of AZ-06, Jeff Flake’s one-time district, for the last 10 years. Schweikert was recently the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation (noticing a trend here?) that resulted in him admitting to 11 violations and agreeing to pay a $50,000 fine. Arizona’s Sixth District, made up of Phoenix’s suburbs, still technically leans Republican, per the Cook Political Report, but it’s exactly the sort of district Democrats have indicated they believe they can compete in.
Four Democrats are jockeying for the chance to take Schweikert on in November. Leading contenders include progressive Anita Malik, a former tech executive, and centrist Hiral Tipirneni, a former emergency room physician. Malik, a Medicare for All supporter, came within 10 points of knocking off Schweikert in 2018, before he was tarred by ethics violations. Tipirneni, meanwhile, came out of nowhere in 2018 to finish with a narrow five percentage point loss in Phoenix’s deep-red neighboring district AZ-08, which Trump won by 20 points in 2016. Tipirneni has already proven to be a fundraising stalwart; she’s banked over $1 million, giving her a significant advantage over Malik.
In AZ-01, meanwhile, former Flagstaff City Councilwoman Eva Putzova has mounted a primary challenge to Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran, running as a progressive to O’Halleran’s left. AZ-01 is largely considered a swing district, but leans Democratic, and has been in Democratic hands for years. Putzova doesn’t have a huge national profile, but if she were to win out it would mark a major triumph for progressives in what was a safe red state just four years ago, where Democrats that have made inroads have largely been centrists.
Elsewhere in the state, too, the strength of President Trump’s brand will be tested. Joe Arpaio, now 88, is again running for sheriff, his old job, in a competitive Republican primary. Arpaio is an original practitioner of Trump’s tough on crime policing and no-holds-barred contempt for immigrants, in defiance of civil liberties and legal constraints. He was convicted of criminal contempt in 2017, then pardoned by President Trump. If Arpaio loses, and it’s very possible he will, it will signal that even the Republican Party has grown less comfortable with Trump’s line on policing and immigration, and bring an end to one of the more objectionable political careers in recent memory.
Kansas
The same test is on offer in Kansas, where high-profile Trump lackey Kris Kobach is running against Rep. Roger Marshall for a nomination to replace retiring senator Pat Roberts. Kansas Republicans hoped to draft Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for the race, and after failing to convince him, rallied behind Marshall in the primary. But a super PAC with ties to Democrats pumped $5 million into the race to elevate Kobach, and the primary is now effectively a toss-up.
That could spell disaster for Republicans, who would be forced to pour money into Kobach’s general election race against Democrat Barbara Bollier, on a Senate map where they’re already stretched thin. Democrats haven't won a Senate race in Kansas since the 1930s, but Kobach is a proven loser, and something of a slump-buster. In 2018, he rode a Trump endorsement to a narrow win of the GOP gubernatorial primary, only to lose to Democrat Laura Kelly in the general by 5 percent (Trump hasn’t endorsed in this race). If Kobach does win out, Democrats will be able to call another seat in play come November, and their path to a Senate majority, unthinkable only months ago, will become even easier to navigate.
As the coronavirus pandemic rages, the economy remains in tatters, and Republicans seem resolved to do nothing in terms of subsequent stimulus, today’s elections, particularly in red states, will offer a strong indication of just how strong of a showing Democrats will have come November. And while Republicans try to stop the bleeding, progressives, riding an incredible winning streak in recent months, will try to swell their ranks even further, at the national, state, and local level.
Just don’t expect to find out what happened any time soon.
