Ohhhhh yeah! Democrats kicked ass and then some in Tuesday’s special election in New York, so of course we’re talking all about it on this week’s episode of “The Downballot.” Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard explain how Tom Suozzi’s win affects the math for Democrats’ plan to take back the House, then dive into the seemingly bottomless list of excuses Republicans have been making to handwave their defeat away. The bottom line: Suozzi effectively neutralized attacks on immigration—and abortion is still a huge loser for the GOP.
The Davids then chat with Alex Roarty, a politics reporter at NOTUS, a new nonprofit newsroom promoting a new model not just for covering news but for training the next generation of reporters. Roarty tells us how his work has changed since coming over from the for-profit world and also shares his thoughts on the down-ticket races he’s watching most closely this year, including bellwether contests in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Subscribe to “The Downballot” on Apple Podcasts to make sure you never miss a show. New episodes every Thursday morning!
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
David Beard: Hello and welcome. I’m David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir: And I’m David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. “The Downballot” is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. Please subscribe to “The Downballot” on Apple Podcasts, then leave us a five-star rating and review.
Beard: We’ve talked about a fair number of wins on this show, but this is a big one.
Nir: This is indeed. On our Weekly Hits, we are leading off with the huge flip in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, but there was also another big Democratic win in a special election for the Pennsylvania state House. And then we are off to New Jersey, where Congressman Andy Kim pulled off a huge victory at an important endorsement convention in his bid to become United States Senator.
Then, for our deep dive, we are talking this week with Alex Roarty, who is a politics reporter at NOTUS, a brand-new nonprofit newsroom. We are going to be talking all about their model for journalism in the 21st century, and also going to be digging into a whole bunch of downballot races with Alex. It is another fantastic episode of “The Downballot,” so let’s get rolling.
Well, my friends, that fucking rocked! I’m talking about Tuesday night. Democrat Tom Suozzi, of course, beat Republican Mazi Pilip, 54 to 46, in the special election for George Santos’ seat. That matches Joe Biden’s 8-point win in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. And that means that Democrats just flipped a swing seat.
Beard: Yes, and obviously, all of these election results that we’ve been talking about as they’ve come in and been good have been really fun to talk about. But it’s especially exciting when you get to flip a Republican-held seat when we’re so close to the majority we’re trying to bring it back. Getting the seat in our corner, I think, is a real exciting moment.
Nir: There’s just no question about that. The mood among Democrats, progressives, folks online was just fantastic on Tuesday night. Let’s get down to the numbers because, of course, that’s what we always love to talk about here on “The Downballot.”
As a result of Suozzi’s flip, the House now has 219 Republicans and 213 Democrats. There are also three vacant seats—one that’s Democratic-held and the other two that are GOP-held. These are all going to have special elections over the next few months, and all of them will almost certainly remain with the party that currently holds them. The Democratic seat is quite blue. The GOP seats are quite red.
Assuming everything unfolds as we expect, then the House would stand at 220 Republicans to 214 Democrats heading into the November general election, when obviously all 435 seats will be up. So if everything unfolds as expected, that means the house would stand at 221 Republicans to 214 Democrats, meaning that Democrats would need just four more flips to take back the House in November, when, of course, all 435 seats will be up. But there is an asterisk here.
Beard: Yeah, unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. The real number, as we think of it now, is actually five seats because, due to redistricting over the past couple of years, a number of states have adjusted how many actually-safe seats there are for both Democrats and Republicans.
North Carolina, of course. The GOP there went and gerrymandered that map all to hell. That eliminated three Democratic seats and created three new Republican safe seats. That would increase the number actually all the way to seven. But thanks to litigation under the Voting Rights Act, both Louisiana and Alabama have added new Black-majority seats that will elect Democrats.
That takes it down by two, and so it nets out to one extra seat for Republicans, thanks to all of the redistricting that’s happened so far, which would result in Democrats needing to win five more seats to take back to the majority in November. Of course, there still may be redistricting in additional states, most notably New York, that we’re still waiting on. That number remains to be seen as these final processes go through.
Nir: Let’s talk about the race itself. And in particular, I want to talk about the aftermath because Republicans were just full of excuses as to why they managed to screw the pooch so hard on this one. Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman has been reporting on a lot of this stuff, and he rounded up a whole bunch of them.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, he said, “Democrats spent $15 million to win a seat with a known candidate against an unknown Republican in a Biden district, so no one should panic.” Well, go right ahead. Keep believing that. Johnson also blamed the weather, which is really funny because why should bad weather—there was some snow—hurt Republicans more than it would hurt Democrats?
Of course, we know the reason why, and it’s Trump’s war against mail voting that has led Republicans to vote in much greater numbers on Election Day. This was the scenario that we always wondered about/hoped for: terrible weather on Election Day, with a lot of Democrats voting early or by mail. And oh, if Republicans think that’s why they got screwed, how are they going to change that in the future?
Beard: Yeah. Hey, maybe stop being so crazy about mail voting. But also, to be clear, Suozzi’s margin was plenty, plenty above anything where this would’ve mattered. Chalking it up to the snow is just the height of excuse-making.
Nir: Absolutely. Suozzi’s margin was outside the snowplow margin of error. NRCC Chair Richard Hudson said pretty much the exact same thing. He emphasized that “our Democrat opponent” … Fuck you, dude, “Democrat”—I can’t believe this childishness that they still pull. “Our Democrat opponent spent decades representing these New Yorkers.” Okay. Okay. Except before the election, Hudson said that Mazi’s incredible life of service stands in stark contrast to career politician Tom Suozzi. Which is it? “Boo Tom Suozzi, career politician,” or, “Oh, it’s not fair Tom Suozzi is a career politician”?
Beard: And it’s not like A) they didn’t know that it was going to be Suozzi. It was clearly going to be Suozzi basically from day one. And B) it’s not like Pilip was foisted on them by the voters. We’ve certainly seen plenty of scenarios where Republican primary voters stick the NRSC or the NRCC with a difficult candidate, or Trump sticks them with a candidate that they wouldn’t have otherwise wanted. This was not the case here.
Nir: No.
Beard: They picked her, the GOP county parties. They get to go into a back room and pick the exact candidate they want, and they picked Pilip. All of this complaining after the fact, whose fault is it? It’s your own fault for picking her.
Nir: Speaking of Trump, he of course said that Pilip lost because she didn’t kiss his ass enough. But he says that after every election. Jake Sherman had some more that weren’t necessarily sourced to particular individuals. One was that the Nassau County GOP machine is “useless after supporting Pilip and Santos,” which is so funny because, Beard, how many articles did we see after 2022 and 2023, when Republicans did really well on Long Island? “Oh, the vaunted Nassau GOP machine is back, baby. Democrats are running for the hills.” And now all of a sudden they suck?
Beard: Yeah, which also doesn’t make any sense, because they have had successes in local elections and stuff. And honestly, they did get George Santos elected in 2022. It didn’t work out well for them, but that was difficult. I would think it’s pretty difficult to get George Santos into Congress, so they can’t be that bad.
Nir: Talk about a line on your résumé. “We got George Santos elected.” Like you said, not easy. Another line of attack was that Pilip herself hid out and did not raise enough cash. Now that is absolutely true. She ran the ultimate basement campaign, and it was really quite amazing to watch.
Our Daily Kos Elections colleague Jeff Singer pointed this out that at the start of the race, before she was even selected, Pilip was viewed as this unicorn candidate, a Black woman, Israeli, Jewish, had served in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], Ukrainian-American husband. Really, she seemed to be picked by the GOP because she checked all these boxes, so to speak, and she was treated as this kind of unicorn candidate.
But then, very quickly—in fact, really from day one—they started hiding her from reporters. They wouldn’t let her answer questions. She was almost invisible, and she just became Generic Republican. And not only that, Generic Republican with no real fundraising network who got terribly badly out-raised by Suozzi, 3- or 4-to-1.
Beard: Yeah. And I think it also comes back to an ongoing misunderstanding that Republicans seem to have around diversity, which is they view it as this like, “Oh, they’re just over there checking boxes.” And so when they try to do it, they’re just like, “Oh, I’m just going to find a candidate that checks a bunch of boxes. I’ll show them.”
When obviously from our perspective as Democrats, we want a diverse caucus because it makes a strong caucus. And we want strong candidates who happen to be African American or Hispanic or women to run because that makes us all better. As opposed to just being like, “We need to check a bunch of boxes,” because that usually doesn’t work as the Republicans found out.
Nir: Yeah, no kidding. We have so many excuses. I got to pick up the pace here.
Beard: Yeah.
Nir: So Sherman also said that a bunch of folks were saying that House Republicans shouldn’t have expelled Santos. I mean, okay, then you still have Santos hanging around every day. I mean, that one’s on you. But the best one from journalist Jacqueline Sweet said she heard “local GOP chatter.” And this is an exact quote from a tweet of hers: “Older Italian-American male voters were shy on Mazi because of race/accent.”
I mean, wow, “shy on Mazi.” That is a phenomenal way of saying they’re total racist assholes. But I’m just conjuring this image of “Sopranos”-esque voters being unwilling to vote for Mazi Pilip and instead voting for a fellow Italian-American Tom Suozzi, instead, even though he’s a Democrat. I mean like, wow. You know what? Maybe that’s even true. I don’t know, but holy crap.
Beard: Yeah, I mean, I think it was inevitable that all of this start coming out as soon as Pilip lost. I think Republicans love to make excuses to show why their loss wasn’t actually a loss. Whereas Democrats, of course, when they lose, they like to self-flagellate and talk about how terrible Democrats are. Republicans, when they lose, like to talk about how terrible everything else was so that they don’t have to blame themselves or question anything that they did wrong. But ultimately, like I said, this was the ultimate party-run process. If Republicans didn’t like their candidate, or they didn’t like how things were going, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Nir: I think you absolutely nailed it. And there are two critical things that Republicans are not saying because, of course, they refuse to do the actual introspection that you’re talking about, Beard. No. 1, they still have no answer whatsoever on abortion. That was a key topic for Suozzi and Democrats. They ran a lot of ads hammering Pilip for opposing abortion. And that is just going to be the case in basically every race across the country in November.
But we already knew that was going to be the case heading into this election. What really should trouble Republicans is that they thought that their best answer was to not talk about abortion at all, but instead to fearmonger about immigration, and that did not work. Now, Suozzi definitely ran to the right of many Democrats on immigration, but Republicans still attacked him mercilessly on the topic. And it failed. Mike Johnson even said that Suozzi sounded like a Republican talking about the border. Does that mean that the GOP ads attacking him were false? I mean, goodness gracious. Please alert the NRCC.
Beard: Yeah, and I think what it shows is that immigration is not some sort of silver bullet for Republicans, the way that it feels like Democrats are so often terrified of it, that you don’t have to be. Obviously, Suozzi took a particular path and maybe due to the fact that it was on Long Island, the fact that obviously New York City has had a lot of issues, particularly with just dealing with an influx of migrants due to some unique circumstances. Maybe that was the right track for him. Obviously, he won.
But I think what it shows is that you can take the issue, tackle it in a way that works for your area, and not be afraid of it and feel like you’re just going to get destroyed by your Republican opponent. You can go after them on it. You can show the fact that Republicans are the one who killed the border deal that the Senate put together. There are answers to this that you don’t have to be afraid of as a Democrat, no matter where you are.
Nir: Absolutely. I think that the unbelievably cynical move that the GOP pulled with that border compromise that was hammered out by a super-conservative Republican senator from Oklahoma—that was, on the whole, a very conservative bill. I think that they think that they can get away with this cynical crap. That “Oh, the right move politically was to yank it because Trump thought it would hurt him, and therefore yanking it will help us politically.”
But I really think that the cynicism, for once, broke through. Reporters were just really gobsmacked by this. And it’s not like Democrats are going to forget. Now, like you’re saying, Beard, we get to run ads on exactly that: Democrats wanted to do something about the border, and Republicans said no.
Beard: Yeah. And honestly, it’s the best of both worlds. And obviously, Democrats couldn’t have pulled this off voluntarily. They had to have the Republicans decide to pull this. But what you have is Democrats who are able to say, “Hey, we took this really tough compromise. We had these really, really difficult border policies that a lot of people in the Democratic Party really hated and opposed. And we offered it. We were going to put it in place to deal with the border, and the Republicans said no.”
You get to have this harsh thing that you were going to be willing to support without actually having to implement it because the Republicans stopped you. Folks on the Democratic side aren’t that upset, because it never went into the law. It’s actually just the perfect scenario to be able to run tough on the border without having to actually put in bad policies.
Nir: So I think the best coda of all for this race—Politico’s Jeff Coltin noted that Pilip’s election-night watch party, and her big rally the night before the election, and her debate-watch party the other day all took place outside the district. I mean, forget about a basement campaign. That’s like an outer-space campaign.
Beard: Well, I mean, where are you going to find a venue in Nassau County to host something like a debate-watch party? Right? Right? There’s none of those there.
Nir: Oh, man. Well, it really just seems like her campaign was total shambles. She expressed some sentiments suggesting she might want to try to run again in the primary, which is in June. I really don’t see Republicans wanting her to be the nominee in November. I really wouldn’t be surprised if they went in another direction, but I also highly doubt that they’ll beat Suozzi at this point. He won by 8 points, with special election turnout. We know that turnout sucked in New York in 2022. That’s not going to be the same in November, with Joe Biden on the ballot, with everything at stake. I just don’t see him losing, but I invite Republicans to try.
Beard: Yeah. Given how much defense Republicans are going to be playing in New York, I would be shocked if they spent any significant amount of money on this race once the fall comes around.
Nir: The wonderful thing is that this was, by no means, the only fantastic election result from Tuesday night.
Beard: Yes. There was another special election. Didn’t get quite as much national attention, but it was also really important. Over in Pennsylvania, Democrats easily held onto Pennsylvania House District 140 and therefore the Pennsylvania House itself. Of course, back in 2022, the Pennsylvania House elected 102 Democrats and 101 Republicans. So Democrats have this one-seat majority, and every time there’s a special election involving a Democratic seat, that has the potential to put the entire chamber at risk. So we’ve seen this happen a few times last year. This was another opportunity. This was a Biden-plus-10 seat in Bucks County, which is in the Philadelphia suburbs. Obviously, Democratic-leaning, but it’s represented by a Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick, at the federal level. So by no means impossible for a Republican to win. So this was certainly something that Democrats had to take seriously, but they took it seriously, and they crushed it.
Democrat Jim Prokopiak crushed his Republican opponent, Candace Cabanas, 67% to 32%. Just a massive overperformance compared to the presidential baseline. Now, that means that the chamber is now 102 Democrats to 100 Republicans. There’s currently a vacancy in a very safe GOP seat that will be filled by a future special election. One other note I wanted to make on this for both the previous special and this one, we talked about the snow. There was also a healthy amount of snow in the Philadelphia suburbs, which led the Republican candidate Cabanas to post on Facebook, and I’m quoting this, “Just a reminder to our voters. This is why we talk about mail-in ballots while we knock on your doors to introduce ourselves. Many of you turned down using a mail-in ballot as you promised me you would be at the polls on Election Day. None of us can predict the future… You might be sick, have another type of emergency, or the weather turns, like today.” So, obviously, Cabanas heard quite a bit of “No, I won’t be doing a mail-out, but don’t worry, I’ll vote on Election Day,” and was a little worried, when it was snowing, that her voters were not going to show up. It seems like probably some of them didn’t, given the result. So, Republicans, maybe rethink this mail-in ballot thing. It’s not working out too well for you.
Nir: Usually, you don’t see candidates so directly playing their own voters for their loss. “I mean, you turned down using a mail-in ballot as you promised me. I mean, you promised me you would be at the polls.” Even if every Republican had picked up a mail-in ballot, she still would’ve gotten her ass kicked. This was a 25-point overperformance by Prokopiak. Pennsylvania Democrats should be feeling really good about this one.
Beard: Yeah, yeah, but I just imagine her inner monologue of being like, “You stupid voters who wouldn’t just send your mail-in ballots,” while she’s trying to filter it into her Facebook post.
Nir: Oh, man. Absolutely, absolutely. I could picture it perfectly. So there’s one other feel-good story this week about a different sort of election. We are going to keep it in the Northeast, in the Mid-Atlantic area. Congressman Andy Kim just won the endorsement of the Monmouth County Democratic Party last weekend. This is in the race for Senate in New Jersey, the Democratic primary, and it’s a huge deal because unlike all of the other counties that have endorsed so far, Monmouth held an open convention with a secret ballot, and Kim won in a 57-to-39 landslide over Tammy Murphy. Murphy has won the endorsement of every other county so far, but all of those endorsements have been awarded either by a tiny cobble of leaders or even just a single power broker. It’s been pure machine politics, and the machine has lined up behind Murphy because she’s the governor’s wife, Gov. Phil Murphy. Monmouth was completely different. It was a true test of popularity, and Kim came out on top—bigly.
Now, as we’ve mentioned on the show before, candidates in New Jersey who win county endorsements get special placement on the primary ballot in that county, and that special placement gives you a big boost with voters, as many studies have shown. It’s a totally corrupt system, and Kim has called for its abolition, but he’s also acknowledged that he’s got to work within that system in order to win. There was even reporting that Murphy had been offered a co-endorsement by the county, but declined, thinking she would win outright at the convention and not have to share the spoils. Obviously, her whip count was terribly off base, and that says very, very bad things about her campaign. But, as one progressive organizer put it to Politico’s Matt Friedman, the county Democratic committee members who voted at this convention in Monmouth had been publicly pressured to say they would back Murphy. But once they had the benefit of a secret ballot, they were free to vote their actual conscience and vote for Kim. Friedman, in the same piece, he had an amazing kicker referring more generally to the rollout of big-name endorsements for Murphy. An unnamed Democratic operative said, “No one really like this. It’s just that for them publicly, Andy Kim wasn’t worth the fight with the governor. I don’t think any of them are going to be upset if Tammy loses the primary.” That just feels devastating to me. I mean, a total Potemkin campaign.
Beard: Yeah, and I think that lack of energy and enthusiasm comes through to voters. The way that the Murphy campaign has run this has been a very classic, machine-first, endorsements-first, voters-last sort of campaign. That can work, particularly the less visible that campaigns are. It works a lot at the lower levels, where voters are never going to know very much about county commission candidates or other type of local candidates, and they often will just vote the line as it’s called on the New Jersey ballot. That’s why it’s so successful and why there’s so much demand to get it. I do think at the Senate level—an open Senate seat, likely, as we don’t expect Menendez to run again—is very, very high-profile. That’s the kind of thing voters think about and decide before they go into the ballot box, and so you have to run the kind of campaign that reaches and inspires these voters, and that’s what Kim has been doing. It does the same for these mid-level, county-committee-person-type activists or local officials that vote in these type of conventions like this Monmouth Convention. They are still voters. They’re Democratic-base members, and they want to be excited and inspired by the candidate. That’s what Kim offers, and that’s the opposite of what Murphy offers.
Nir: I think you nailed it, and there are a whole bunch more counties that have yet to endorse. In fact, most haven’t yet, and many of them are this machine style, but a bunch of them do open conventions with secret ballots, just like Monmouth. I think this really has the potential to open the floodgates for Kim and for his campaign to pick up a whole bunch more of these endorsements, get positive news coverage out of this, generate more excitement with voters, and, let’s not forget, every single public poll has shown Kim leading by double digits. The Murphy campaign has not countered that in any way, shape, or form. I’m really starting to feel good about Kim’s chances, which is just hard to believe you could ever say about an outsider in New Jersey, but I think he could really strike a deep blow against the Jersey machine, and I am so here for it.
Beard: Yeah, and I think, ultimately, Murphy will probably have the majority of the ballot lines regardless, because a number of the big Democratic counties, like you said, are decided by one person or just a handful of people. But I think, particularly if Kim can get a healthy percentage, like winning these open-convention counties, he is much better positioned to run what they call off-the-line campaigns, which is to run in these counties and push voters to go vote for his name, even though it’s off like the normal Democratic County ballot line, and get a good percentage of votes in those counties. Whereas I think Murphy will struggle to run off the line and get people to go pick her out and vote for her, even though it’s not on the county line in these counties where Kim gets the line. So I think that’s another benefit. If he can get a healthy percentage, even if it’s not a majority of where Democratic voters are, I think that puts him in a good position.
Nir: That does it for our Weekly Hits. Coming up in our deep dive after the break, we are interviewing Alex Roarty, politics reporter at NOTUS, a brand-new nonprofit newsroom. It is a fascinating interview, so please stick with us.
Nir: Joining us today on “The Downballot” is Alex Roarty, a politics reporter for NOTUS, which stands for News of the United States. NOTUS is a brand-new publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute. Alex, it is so fantastic to have you on the show today.
Alex Roarty: Oh, thank you so much, David. I really, really appreciate it, and it’s exciting to be here. It’s exciting to find a podcast that talks about downballot races, and I know that I can nerd out about this stuff as much as you guys because it’s sometimes hard to find, even in Washington.
Nir: Well, I absolutely love hearing about that. Nerding out is our middle name. So we will get to all the downballot nerdery that our listeners can possibly handle. But before we do, Alex, I would love for you to tell us all about NOTUS because that was my inspiration for wanting to make sure we had you on the show, because it seems like such an unusual and interesting new publication at a time of incredible disruption in the media industry. So tell us about NOTUS, and what its goals are, and why it was launched.
Roarty: Yeah. I mean, I really think that NOTUS is one of the few positive stories in journalism right now. I mean, it’s just a very grim time in the industry, as I’m sure y’all and many of the listeners know, but NOTUS was formed … We actually just launched in January, and it is a nonprofit newsroom. It’s a little different than a lot of newsrooms. It has a dual-mandate. One of the mandates is what you’ve come to expect from newsrooms. We cover politics, we cover campaigns, we cover Capitol Hill, we write stories about it that appear on the website, and it functions like a traditional newsroom. That’s the part that I’m a part of, and that’s the part … When you read a lot of our stories, that’s what you’ll be reading. The other mandate though is actually an educational one. We are like a teaching hospital. I like to joke we have a lot less education here than the doctors at a teaching hospital, but we are trying to train the next generation of journalists to learn to be political reporters, whether in Washington or anywhere else.
Right now, we have 10 fellows. I point out that they receive full salary and benefits and everything like that, just like any other employee. They are both receiving a curriculum, classroom instruction, both when they started and on an ongoing basis through the Allbritton Journalism Institute. Then, at the same time, they’re working in NOTUS alongside reporters like me, and the idea is that I will work closely with a lot of these fellows, show them the ropes, to the extent that I can. There are probably some colleagues of mine in the past who would think twice about that. Maybe some bosses of mine in the past who would wonder about that, but that is the idea, to help them learn and to grow as journalists, because, look … and this is really the whole impetus for this project, for this newsroom.
Again, journalism has taken a lot of hits, not just recently, but over the last 10 to 20 years. One of the things that’s happened, one of the things is that the places journalists used to go to learn the trade, to learn the craft, they just don’t exist anymore. Whether it’s the small newspaper … I started out at a small newspaper in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I think it has maybe one-fifth the number of reporters it did when I was there 15 years ago at this point. Or regional newspapers. The jobs just aren’t there. The pathways, the traditional career pathways, are different now. If you do get a job at one of those places, that’s great, but you’re not going to be in a situation where people are sitting down and teaching you, right?
You’re going to have to … Either you’re sinking or swimming, and that’s a way to learn, but another good way to learn is to have someone who’s had experience in the field, who can take the time to explain stories both how you report them, what you can do better, and then when it comes to the writing as well. So we’re trying, we’re trying to fill in that gap right now, and we’re trying to do it by finding fellows from all walks of life in America. There are people here who this is a second career. They spent the first part of their career in the Army. We have people who really make me feel incredibly old because they are very young, but they’re all … To say it’s an optimistic place, it’s not just because we’re a newsroom, and hey, all our paychecks come on time, and all that, and we’re able to publish stories. Working with the fellows, people who still want to enter this field, this industry, people who are at the beginnings of their careers, it is really inspiring. It’s really encouraging to me, because that’s … The moment journalism truly dies is when that stops happening, when people stop being interested in joining. At least here, that’s not the case at all. It’s really been a fun, pleasant experience for me so far here.
Like I said, we’re new, so there’s always a learning curve. But I think we’ve been able to write a pretty broad variety of stories, again, focused on politics and campaigns and Capitol Hill. It’s been an impressive record in journalism so far, in my own obviously biased but humble opinion.
Beard: Now, not to make you feel even older, but I did want to go through for listeners who maybe don’t pay a lot of attention to the inner workings of journalism, just compare how political journalism was when you first started, and the lay of the land, and how that has changed—particularly, like you said, at the local and state level. Obviously, there’s still a bunch of national reporters in Washington, D.C., covering the president and the speaker and etcetera. But down at those lower levels, how that’s changed so much for journalism.
Roarty: That’s a great question. As I mentioned earlier, I got my start at the Carlisle, Pennsylvania, newspaper. It was called The Sentinel. Believe it or not, you all, it was an evening newspaper at that point.
Nir: What?
Roarty: This was 2007. By that time, it was more like an early afternoon paper, and we published around lunchtime. But I would come in in the morning and our deadline would be, say, 10:00 AM or even earlier than that, which, rest assured, does not exist anymore.
Even at the state level, I did a lot of reporting in Harrisburg, covering Ed Rendell’s second term as governor of Pennsylvania. That was a full-time legislature. You had, I would say, when I joined, 20 or more reporters in the press room then. To be clear, I think a lot of state capitals across the country were already seeing pretty steep declines in the number of statehouse reporters that they had, even at that time.
But it was still robust. What you really need with journalism is just a bunch of good reporters, all approaching the same stories from different angles or different stories that other people aren’t writing about. And you just had a very healthy mix of journalism.
Those kinds of jobs, and particularly at statehouses, they’re just very rare now. I couldn’t tell you how many reporters are left in Harrisburg, but it’s a lot fewer than when I was there. I know that for sure. And some state capitals, it’s hard to find sometimes even a single full-time reporter.
Again, I don’t have to explain this to you all or the listeners, but what happens in statehouses is so important. You have so much money that’s being allocated. You have so many important state policies, often laws that have more effect on your daily life. I remember, in Pennsylvania—this is old hat now but—covering a smoking ban, whether or not you would be able to smoke in restaurants. It’s just critically important. But there’s just so much less coverage than there used to be.
I would make the same point I made earlier. You’ll still have coverage. The Associated Press will have someone in a state capital, in Lincoln, Nebraska, or anywhere else, Austin or other places, but if you’re only getting that one story and only that one wire story, you’re missing something. You’re missing deeper investigation. Sometimes you’re missing someone writing about the same story from different angles, which is always going to be the case, should always be the case.
That’s really changed, and it’s very sad. I love statehouse reporting, I love reporting in Harrisburg, but one thing that’s in the back of your mind is just whether or not there’s financial stability there. And if you lose your job—it’s literally happened to me before, it’s happened to many, many my colleagues and friends—where do you go after that? That’s why you see some convergence in Washington or New York for journalists, because if you do, God forbid, lose your job here, there are other jobs in media that you can hopefully apply for and get.
Beard: I’m sure our listeners want to talk all about the special election and all the things going on, but I do have one more question about journalism, and then we’ll get to the good stuff.
Roarty: Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it.
Beard: For-profit journalism has been in decline for the past 15-plus years. No one’s really solved it, outside of being The New York Times, so alternatives have popped up, like NOTUS, like we’ve seen other state-based nonprofit newspapers, or things like that. Nonprofit journalism, does it feel differently? Are there different incentives or work within it, now that you’ve transitioned from the for-profit places that you’ve worked, to now working in a nonprofit newsroom?
Roarty: It’s another good question. It is a little different, I would say. I hesitate to get too specific with things, but most reporters will tell you pretty readily about page views and how cognizant they are about how their stories do with traffic, and how many readers. At a certain level, I’m certainly happy to …
I want to be able to write stories that people read. It goes without saying. Just for my own selfish benefit. But I also want journalism to be able to thrive. You’re going to have to have readers, you’re going to have to have subscribers.
But any reporter will tell you, is there pressure on pages? Of course there is. Does it affect editorial decisions? Yes. I don’t know that it’s quite the sinister stuff you would think of in, let’s say, a movie when it comes to that. What is the old … “Nightcrawler,” the Jake Gyllenhaal movie, if you saw that, from years ago, where he was trying to film car crashes, just really prurient stuff—it’s not that level. But yes, it is a pressure, but to your question, we don’t have that here.
I try to think of what I think is a good, compelling, and important story, and I go and try to write it. That’s the approach that we’re taking here. I think that is, at some level, enabled by the nonprofit model. I think as a nonprofit model, the silver bullet for journalism … Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any silver bullets for journalism.
I have really enjoyed my time here. I think the nonprofit newsroom is a major component moving forward. It’s a situation where I wish a thousand flowers would bloom, and we would have all different kinds of models, and so we’re not dependent on any one thing. But that’s the state we’re in.
It’s funny, before you asked the question, I hadn’t really thought about page views in several months. I’ll just say that that is different than my previous experiences in journalism. And we’ll leave it at that.
Nir: All right, Alex, we got to get down to the horse race here. What is your specific area of coverage at NOTUS?
Roarty: That’s a good question. It is, really broadly, national politics, but it’s a lot of campaigns. It is going to be a lot of the presidential race, naturally, but … Nir, you and I have been talking about this a long time, I really enjoyed downballot coverage.
I’ve written about it extensively in my career, and I’m looking forward to doing some more of that, getting back into that here, including tracking the New York 3 special election. I really appreciate you guys holding off on talking about that, and talking about those instead, and to the listeners who are listening, because I know that that is the hot topic, and I’m eager to talk about it as well.
Nir: Your timing is so excellent that we happen to have you on this week, because when you and I first connected years ago, it was also around another special election, the Jon Ossoff special election in Georgia’s 6th. I feel like this is—
Roarty: That feels like a long time ago.
Nir: I know, I know. And I can’t believe we’re talking about Sen. Ossoff now. This is kismet. When Beard and I and all our colleagues and the Daily Kos elections team—when we’re covering these races, we are relying in so many ways on reporters, like yourself, who are actually talking to people, who are on the ground or making the phone calls, or who are just really in the center of things, for your observations and the quotes that you’re relaying back and the information that you are providing to your readers.
Now, with this wild election finally in the rearview, I would love to hear about your takeaways from the result and just, I don’t know, any cool tidbits that maybe didn’t make it into your articles, or a preview of stuff to come.
Roarty: One, I will say, before the show, we were talking a little bit about the margin and how surprising it was. I will tell you, I haven’t reported this yet, but there are Democrats who were, we’ll say, involved in the race, who are very surprised today about the margin of victory, not that Suozzi won but, I think, that he won so convincingly. There was a perception that New York, and Long Island in particular, is just tough terrain for Democrats right now. I think Kathy Hochul lost that district by a large margin.
Nir: Yeah, 12 points.
Roarty: Yes, 12 points.
There was just a thought that crime and immigration had really emerged as tough issues in that New York City market. There was some palpable relief morning, I think, from some corners. It’s always tricky.
Go under the hood here for a second, because I know you all and the listeners nerd out on this. When I talk about Democrats, I’m not trying to say that every Democratic operative thought that way …
Nir: Of course.
Roarty: … the consultants who worked for Suozzi or for the DCCC. But there are, as you know, a lot of interested groups in this race who spend a considerable amount of money and put a lot of time, effort, and research into this race. It is fair to say that they think some of them were concerned about this district and, like I said, were probably relieved this morning when the result came in the way that they did.
But you asked me for my takeaways. We’ll put aside the national political environment and what it means for November, and Biden or Trump, or the battle for the House, or anything like that. My biggest takeaway the morning after, and I started to pick this up in my reporting even before the results came in, that Democrats believe that the way that Tom Suozzi handled the immigration issue was key to his success there. They think that that was front and center, and his ability …
‘Cause he was getting attacked repeatedly. You guys have seen some of the ads from the NRCC and others, where immigration seemed like it had emerged as the top issue, as far as how people were criticizing how Republicans were spending their money. And they spent a lot of money criticizing Tom Suozzi.
The perception is that Suozzi did not shy away from this fight, that he didn’t want to try to change the subject. He did talk about other issues, of course. He talked a lot and they spent a lot of money on abortion rights, for instance. But he didn’t try to change a subject, he met it head on, and really talked about …
Of course now, what happened in Congress with the immigration deal collapsing because of Donald Trump and Republicans not wanting, basically, to give Joe Biden the year, which is I think what a lot of them would pretty readily admit to, at least privately, did that help them? Yes. But you saw examples of this before, and I did write a story last week. It really struck me.
A few years ago I was a White House correspondent for McClatchy. I was writing a lot about immigration, covered a lot of immigration policy at that time. And to see not just Suozzi but the Democratic Party agree to parts of this immigration deal was really, in some ways, stunning to me. You’re talking about increasing the size of detention centers, talking about changing asylum laws. It was really a pretty hard-right, in some ways, tack on immigration.
But the one thing, and this was the point I really wanted to make, Tom Suozzi hosted a call a couple of weeks ago. Or, I guess, it was last week. What is time anyway? Early last week, he hosted a call with reporters, there’s a lot of national reporters, about immigration. I won’t forget this.
The last question he was asked was whether or not he agreed with the terminology that some Republicans were using to call this: The surge of migrants at the border are, quote-unquote, “invasion.” Now, this is a very loaded term. This is a term that has appeared in some people’s manifestos. The El Paso shooter, in 2019, who killed 20 people outside of a Walmart, he wrote a manifesto that talked about this being an invasion. This is an incredibly racist and charged way to describe it.
And I won’t forget, Suozzi was asked this. He said that he didn’t have an issue with the terminology. He didn’t voice it back. He didn’t say the word back. But he said, “I don’t want to take issue with the language. It’s a chaotic situation at the border, unvetted people were coming in.” And that really got my radar up.
Are other Democratic candidates going to take that approach? I don’t know that. My hunch is, a lot of them would say that that’s too far, both for political reasons, but also that a lot of people would just personally be repelled by that. But to me, that was an example, I think, of what the lesson some Democrats are going to take for this. Guys, they were saying that even before the margin of victory, before the results came in on Tuesday, that the party shied away from this fight in ’22, “It really cost us, particularly in a lot of these New York districts that were key to the House battleground then, and we’re not going to make that same mistake again.”
I do think that is my biggest takeaway right now, is the Democratic Party’s belief that this is the approach that they have to take. And I think it’s fair to say that it could really bother and anger some members of the Democratic Party, the way that Democratic candidates talk about this issue now and some of the policies that they agreed to. But we’re going to have to watch that closely over the next few months.
Nir: Yeah. Speaking for a moment as a partisan with feelings and progressive views, that comment from Suozzi really struck me when it came out, and it made me feel sick to my stomach, but putting my analyst hat back on, by saying that there were no attack ads that could be run against Suozzi, and even if there were quite a lot of voters who might be appalled to hear him say that, if I were living in the district, I would’ve been even more grossed out, but the amount of traction that kind of remark can get is simply going to be fairly small. Unless Republicans were going to try running ads with Suozzi’s quote to try to suppress the vote among progressives, we’re really talking some double bank shots here with very little time left. So, I think, I don’t want to defend what he said at all, but I suppose from a really hard-nosed political analysis, he kept them from making it into an issue.
Roarty: I don’t know, but I would assume that that was a lot of the thinking there. And I’ll say this, just broadly speaking, again, I think Democrats and a lot of Democratic strategists, not just the source of mine who didn’t expect the result, people who were even more confident about this race to begin with, a lot of Democrats in the political class are deeply worried about immigration right now. They see it in a lot of ways as having even surpassed crime as an issue. And that’s the feedback that I’ve received over and over again from Democrats. And I think that that explains this pivot we’ve seen, and is going to explain a lot of the rhetoric we might see. Like I said, I don’t know, Suozzi might’ve been freelancing there. Who knows? Sometimes you find out, you assume that there is some grand calculation for candidates explaining why they do what they’re doing and then you come to find out “No, it was just some off-the-cuff remark that the candidate …,” and that often explains what’s happening. But look, the Democratic Party remains very concerned about immigration as a political issue in 2024, and many, I think, put it at the top of the list of their concerns right now. So that could and will explain some of the behavior from here on out.
Beard: So looking now towards November—obviously, presidential race, not going to dwell on that one—but there’s a ton of downballot races: Senate, some governors, 435 House races, lots below. What are a few key races that you’re going to be keeping an eye on this year as we move towards November and as things start to develop and shake out?
Roarty: Okay, so there are two that catch my eye and maybe not coincidentally. They’re in two of my favorite states. One is actually the North Carolina governor’s race. That is one of the few presidential-year gubernatorial battles that we have. So there’s always, when you look at North Carolina now, a swing state, you always, in a presidential year, you have the governor’s race running alongside it. There are a lot of reasons I’m fascinated by that. One, I think Democrats, based on some of my reporting, including the Biden campaign, are going to make a major push in North Carolina in ’24. I think they see it as a state, and they’ve been laying a lot of ground. If you count the number of times that a Biden Cabinet official has visited North Carolina, you would very quickly run out of fingers and toes over the last couple of years. They have made a concerted effort to reach out to the state’s voters.
But part of the reason—part of the reason is the assumption or belief that the state’s Republican lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, is going to be the gubernatorial nominee in North Carolina. If he is—he does face a primary, it’s not a sure thing, and there’s some rumblings when you talk to people there that it’s not quite a slam dunk—but he is a … If you’re not familiar with Mark Robinson, his rhetoric and the way that he has talked about issues in the past, even in these times really cuts through and grabs people, the way that he has talked about women, the way that he has talked about abortion, the way that he has talked about the LGBTQ community is jarring in a lot of ways, and it goes further than what we’ve seen even from, say, Donald Trump. The North Carolina governor’s race on its own is a big deal. North Carolina is a large, important state. Democrats are likely to run Josh Stein, the attorney general, who is next in line for Democrats there, after Gov. Cooper.
And I’m interested, so it’s twofold: It’s both the race and, whether or not are some voters just so desensitized at these comments that even what Mark Robinson has said won’t cut through? I suspect that it will. I think a lot of Republicans in the state are worried that it will. I’m also interested, though—frankly, how it does affect the presidential race? We talk so often about the top of the ticket dictating what happens lower down the ticket, and that does happen. That is the way it usually goes. I’m wondering though if these both barrels, if you will, of Trump and Mark Robinson on the ballot, there’s just another tranche of voters in the research triangle or suburban Charlotte or wherever who say, “I just can’t.” And either they sit out the race, or they vote Democrat, and so I’m fascinated to see that.
The other race that I’m watching, this is a state that many people think I’m actually from. I grew up in Houston, but I spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania. I got my professional start in Pennsylvania. Matt Cartwright running in the state’s 8th Congressional District. Whether or not he can continue to hold on, this is a district that the Cook Political Report ranks as a toss-up, like a Democratic toss-up right now. Cartwright is the kind of Democrat who Republicans have been targeting cycle after cycle. Now, I covered his 2018 race, which at the time it was a district … This is, to back up real quick, to explain to people, this is in northeast Pennsylvania. This is the Scranton and Scranton area, and this is a district that Paul Kanjorski had represented for decades, but it’s been trending Republican, like a lot of more blue-collar areas. Republicans, again, they targeted it heavily in ’18. They made a real effort. Republicans really …
This is a district that they thought that they could go on offense with, but Cartwright is a good match for the district. He is the kind of Democratic lawmaker who does not need to be reminded to talk about Social Security. I’ll put it that way. When I was with him, campaigning, he talks about Social Security and other entitlement programs early and often, and I’m just fascinated to see if he can hold on again in a district that, in theory, Donald Trump could compete and do well in—if Matt Cartwright is able to separate himself and rise above. So those are the two races that I’m paying close attention to.
Nir: I like those as bellwethers a lot. I find the Cartwright story so interesting. He was one of just five Democrats in ’22 who won a Trump seat. You’ll recall, I’m sure, Alex, that in 2012 he won a primary against Tim Holden, who was a much more conservative Democrat, holding himself out as somewhat more in tune with—I don’t necessarily want to say that he was advertising himself as a progressive, but definitely more in tune with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. And so it’s so interesting to me that he has now successfully adapted to representing what is now one of the most conservative districts held by a Democrat.
Roarty: Yes. Yeah. Again, I wrote a longer story in the district in 2018 and spent a lot of time with him then, and it was just the degree to which he was able to route every question that he was asked—because he’s out in the community, he’s talking with people, he’s not hiding or anything like that. The degree to which he was able to route every question into an answer about Social Security and the importance of protecting that program and others and things like Medicare, and then talking about local issues. You’re absolutely right there. He has absolutely adapted to the district.
It’s a little bit of a broader metastory for someone like me who covers politics. I consider this unfortunate for our democracy, but also for my journalism and for stories—just decades ago, there was so much more of an ability seemingly for politicians to have their own individual identity and carve out their own niche with voters, their own set of issues and priorities. And the truth is, that’s just not how it works very often anymore. Your ability to separate and distinguish yourself from the national political climate or the presidential ticket is just less and less and less. And of course it exists. The big question for the John Testers and Sherrod Browns of the world—even to some extent, Bob Casey, I think, of Pennsylvania—they still can do it. I’m not saying that candidates don’t matter. Of course they do. Of course the campaigns they run matter and all that, but objectively, they matter less than they used to. And so I’m always interested in candidates who are able to still do that a little bit, and Cartwright’s one of them. And you’re absolutely right. He is one of the few to win a Trump district in ’22. He was able to do it in ’16. And so it’s just fascinating for me to watch to see if they’re able to keep doing this over and over again.
Nir: Well, we have been joined today on “The Downballot” by Alex Roarty, politics reporter at NOTUS, News of the United States. Alex, before we let you go, where can listeners find you and your work, and where can they learn more about NOTUS and follow what your organization does?
Roarty: Yeah. So the easiest way, we have an old-school website, it’s www.notus—N-O-T-U-S—.org. That’s the key part: not .com, .org, because again, we are nonprofit. And you can follow our work there. If you want to sign up for our newsletter, that’s a key part of how we distribute all our stories. That’s readily available online. We have not just links to our work but little character bios about people who work here and trying to explain their origin story or why they’re here or things like that. So it’s a good way to get to know the NOTUS team here. Otherwise, I’m on Twitter, though I’m on Twitter a lot less than I used to be, @Alex_Roarty, and I think I’m just Alex.Roarty at Threads. But social media seems a little bit less important than it did five or six years ago—or useful, I should say. Obviously, it’s still important. So notus.org, that’s the place to go.
Nir: Alex, thank you so much for coming on “The Downballot.”
Roarty: Thanks for having me, all. It’s always fun to … There are many people who, in Washington, who like to nerd out about this stuff like you guys do, so I really appreciate the chance to do it.
Beard: That’s all from us this week. Thanks to Alex Roarty for joining us. “The Downballot” comes out every Thursday, everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing [email protected]. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to “The Downballot” on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor Drew Roderick, and we’ll be back next week with a new episode.
