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 and leave us a five-star rating and review.
David Beard:
Now, I’d love to just keep celebrating the Wisconsin Supreme Court victory, but I guess we should move on to other topics.
David Nir:
We have many more topics to talk about. We obviously need to talk about the wild hijinks in Tennessee over the last week. There is some absolute Republican BS gamesmanship going on in Montana trying to rig the Senate election next year for them. We’ll hit that too. Then, there are the 23 states that could add protections for abortion rights to their state constitutions. We’ll take a dive into that. Finally, we are going to be talking about the House with Inside Elections analyst Jacob Rubashkin, taking a close look at some of the most interesting races and the overall playing field for what is certain to be a hotly contested chamber in the 2024 elections. Let’s get rolling.
If you’re listening to “The Downballot,” there is a 100% chance that you have been following the incredible, outrageous, amazing story in Tennessee regarding the two young Black Democratic state Representatives who were expelled by Republicans in the legislature after they led a protest in favor of gun reform on the floor of the chamber. What’s happened in the week since then has really been extraordinary. Both Justin Pearson and Justin Jones have been reinstated to their prior posts by their respective county governments. What makes this so remarkable is what an own-goal this was for Republicans. They knew what the state constitution required in the event of a vacancy and what it allowed. The moment that they began plotting to expel Pearson and Jones as well as a third Democrat who actually survived being expelled by one vote, they knew that the state constitution gave the county government in the county that representative was from the power to appoint a replacement.
They also knew that in Nashville and in Memphis where Pearson and Jones are from, that the county governments were dominated by Democrats. They had to know from the very first moment that they were just going to give both of these representatives a very quick path right back to where they started. Only in my mind, it’s like Obi-Wan telling Vader, “Strike me down and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Because Pearson and Jones are now national figures; they’ve raised tons of money. Their profiles are as high as can be, and these are 20-something state representatives in Tennessee, a state that almost never gets much national attention. I’m completely blown away that Republicans have almost done us this huge favor of elevating their profiles in such dramatic fashion.
David Beard:
Yeah, it’s truly been a wild time in Tennessee. Obviously, as you mentioned, these were both Black state representatives. There’s a huge racism and anti-Black aspect to this whole sordid ordeal. But there’s also, I think, a huge factor of just arrogance and laziness on the part of the Tennessee Republican Party who feels so in constant power and so uninterested in democracy, in debate, in hearing other voices that they just almost decided to do this before they checked the rules, is what it feels like. I don’t know if that’s actually what happened, but it feels like somebody got upset and was like, “We’re going to expel them.” Then after deciding that, they went and checked the constitution and found out that this wasn’t going to work out for them at all. It’s extremely strange.
I do think the Tennessee Democratic Party was all but moribund. We’ve seen these in states where one party really gets beaten down and it’s hard for them to even do basic things like run candidates to fill slots on boards where they’re entitled to spots as the second-largest party. There was real risk of Tennessee Democrats having that problem, and this has just been a huge boost to them. Now, obviously, Tennessee is one of the most Republican states in the country. This is not going to be a cure-all. We’re not going to go into 2024 and see Democrats win back control of the House of Representatives because of this. That isn’t going to happen. But what it can do is it can light a fire. Democrats are in a really, really low position, well under the one-third that would be able to prevent Republicans from exercising supermajority votes like this, but there are a number of seats in the suburbs of some of these Tennessee cities and the suburbs of Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, in Knoxville, where there are Republican-leaning seats that a real Democratic campaign could make competitive.
Now, they have the opportunity to get some money, get some attention into those seats, and start rebuilding the party in the state. Nashville is a city that is growing extremely quickly and is getting bluer every year. That is a place to build from that Tennessee Democrats can work from and can go in, who knows, six, eight, 10 years to a place where maybe they’re more competitive as these cities grow in Tennessee. If that does start happening, you can look back to this incredible series of events as the start of when Tennessee Democrats started a rebound.
David Nir:
You mentioned the big cities—Nashville, of course, Republicans brutally gerrymandered in the most recent round of redistricting. And so, now, there really isn’t a House seat in that area in the U.S. House for Democrats to run in, but Memphis remains intact in one very blue district. I think that Justin Pearson now has a really good chance of becoming the successor to Steve Cohen, who is the current Democratic congressman. In fact, when Pearson ran in the special election that gave him his seat in the first place in the primary back in January of this year, he was endorsed by Cohen. I hope that really the sky’s the limit for this young man. I think both of them have potentially amazing careers in front of them, and no one wants to get expelled by their legislature. No one wants to see creeping fascism take hold in a state capitol, but man, this really just does seem like a gift.
David Beard:
I am encouraged, I think Democratic parties in the south 20 years ago may not have reacted with unanimity, with the condemnation that they have appropriately done in this case. And so, that’s a good thing to see and to see the Democratic Party in Tennessee build in the right way, even if some people think that it’ll take longer, not try to do the shortcuts of appealing to this mythical rural, white conservative voter who voted for Democrats 30 years ago. That’s not the way forward in Tennessee. It’s a long slog, but these are great, great guys to start that work.
Moving now to a different state where Republicans are pulling shenanigans to try to go after the ability of Democrats to elect their representatives, we’ve got Montana where the state Senate passed a bill to change the rules for the 2024 U.S. Senate election and just that one election, no other elections that might take place in Montana, just the 2024 U.S. Senate election with the obvious goal of weakening Democratic incumbent Jon Tester.
This legislation would do away with typical partisan primaries that most states have and instead move to a top-two primary the way that California and Washington state do for all of their races where everybody runs on one ballot, the top two candidates then move to the general election. That would of course almost certainly be Tester and whichever Republican got the most votes in the primary, and they would move to the general election. The main thing that this would do would be to ensure that there were no Libertarian candidates on the ballot for the general election. In Tester’s previous elections, there has always been a Libertarian, and particularly in 2006, he had an extremely close race where he knocked off former Sen. Conrad Burns 49-48. It was extremely narrow. The Libertarian took the remaining vote. That’s obviously, conceivably, an instance where that Libertarian vote was determinative.
Six years later, he won 49-45 with a Libertarian on the ballot. I think in that case, you can’t necessarily guarantee that the Libertarian would’ve swung anything. You can’t just transfer all of the Libertarian votes into a Republican Party. That’s not how it works. We’ve seen that in many races. Some people will stay home. There are some people who vote for Libertarians as a first choice and then vote for a Democrat as a second choice. That does happen. And so, I don’t think necessarily the 2012 race was determinative by the Libertarian, and certainly not the 2018 race as Tester won with a majority. He got over 50% of the vote against Republican Matt Rosendale.
I don’t think this is something that dooms Tester. I think he could definitely still win under the scenario, but obviously, it does potentially weaken him a little bit. It’s done in a very undemocratic way because it’s targeting this one election. If Montana Republicans think that the top-two primary system is better, that’s their right. We have other states that do it. Some people like it, some people don’t. But that would be a reasonable thing to do if they just moved all races in the state to a new system. But to go after one race for one time, this would not apply to future Senate races, is just so anti-democratic and so putting a finger on a scale and not trusting the voters to elect the Senate candidate of their choice.
David Nir:
There’s something else they could do, of course. They could implement ranked choice voting if they wanted, and then we could actually see who the Libertarian voter’s second choice was, but they’re not talking about that. This is just so egregious and so blatant, and really it almost feels like the kind of thing that maybe they might even pay a price for. It’s just so embarrassing.
David Beard:
I do think people would get frustrated by having two different systems on the ballot at the same time, and just the sheer gamification of it, I think could potentially turn people off, you’re right.
David Nir:
One last topic that we want to hit in our weekly hits is a new analysis from myself and my colleague Stephen Wolf at Daily Kos Elections. We took a look at which states could amend their constitutions to guarantee the right to an abortion. It’s quite a few. Last year, California, Michigan, and Vermont all voted in favor of amending their constitutions to guarantee abortion rights. They were the first states to do so. It turns out that, at least at the moment, another 23 states could do the exact same thing. There’s a reason why amending your constitution really is so important both in blue states, but especially in purple or red states. It’s the most permanent, longest-lasting way of guaranteeing abortion rights. It’s more difficult than simply passing a statute, but sometimes it’s your only option.
In fact, there are two ways to go about getting an amendment on the ballot. In every state, the legislature can refer a constitutional amendment to the ballot. Since we know that Republicans, of course, will never support such a thing, that means we can expect that only blue states are going to be able to have their legislatures put an amendment on the ballot. That’s what happened in California and Vermont. Different states have different rules. In some states, you only need a simple majority of the legislature. In some states, you need a two-thirds supermajority. There are even some blue states where the legislature doesn’t have enough votes to put an amendment on the ballot.
But there are 18 states where voters themselves can put amendments on the ballot. They can do so by using the initiative process, which means that they gather a sufficient number of signatures from voters across the state, and then voters get to vote on that amendment if they qualify with enough signatures. This really opens up a lot of doors because it gives abortion rights advocates the chance to amend constitutions in purple and red states that are otherwise hostile to abortion or have even banned the practice.
David Nir:
There are, in fact, two efforts underway right now that we know of in Ohio and South Dakota to qualify measures for the ballot, either this year or next year. But a number of other states, including Montana, which we were just talking about—Florida also allows citizen initiatives on the ballot. They are expensive, they take a lot of time and effort, you have to gather large numbers of signatures. But with the courts so hostile in so many ways to abortion rights, it really is a smart move for Democrats to pursue.
And also, as we saw in 2022, it’s not just the blue states where abortion rights are popular. In, once again, Montana, but also Kentucky and Kansas, voters rejected restrictions on abortion rights. Now asking them to vote for guarantees of abortion rights, a positive measure as opposed to voting against a negative restrictive measure, that’s something different. Obviously, not every single state that has the initiative process is going to be amenable to a constitutional amendment, but a lot of them probably are, and this is really an area that advocates and Democrats need to be focusing on.
Anyway, we have gathered all this information on a post on our site with a map that explains the process in every state. We will include a link in the show notes and we will also pin it to the top of our Twitter account. That’s @DKElections. That does it for our weekly hits. Coming up, we are going to be talking with election analyst Jacob Rubashkin of Inside Elections about the 2024 House playing field. A very fun conversation coming right up.
Joining us today is Jacob Rubashkin, who is a reporter and analyst with Inside Elections, a fantastic site that provides nonpartisan analysis of campaigns for Senate, House, governor, and unlike us at Daily Kos Elections, they also cover presidential races. Jacob, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jacob Rubashkin:
Thanks for having me.
David Nir:
So we wanted to talk about a topic that we haven’t really addressed that much this year on “The Downballot,” and that is the House. Obviously it’s a little bit early, a lot of campaigns haven’t yet launched, but there are still certainly some thoughts that we all have and conclusions we might draw. Of course, in 2022, the results, the final result wound up being a lot closer than just about everyone expected, with Republicans only ending up with a five-seat majority. What I wanted to ask you is, do you see the 2024 House playing field as a tossup, or do you think either side has an advantage right now or too early to say?
Jacob Rubashkin:
Well, it is still early, but we know a couple of things. We know that the country is pretty evenly divided politically. We don’t see these kinds of massive swings that we saw in previous decades perhaps nearly as often anymore. So we know that. We know that the number of competitive races overall as a function of redistricting, as a function of geographic polarization, has declined pretty precipitously over the last couple of decades. And we know that Congress is currently almost evenly divided, only a five-seat majority that Republicans are working with. So all of those factors point to a pretty clear close race on the fundamentals for House control in 2024.
Now, the thing that I think about when I think about this question is we are not quite done with redistricting yet, and we are very wary of assigning certainly ratings, but even more general thoughts to places where we just don’t know the lines. So we’ve got these 29 seats between Ohio and North Carolina that we know will be redrawn in some sort of fashion over the next couple of months. And additionally, there are other extraneous court cases out there. So that’s a lot of seats when you’re talking about a five-seat majority, and it introduces a lot of uncertainty. So with all of that said, I think yeah, the House is certainly up for grabs. It’s going to be highly competitive either way.
David Nir:
You make a really good point about things being so up in the air in terms of redistricting. One thing we do know right now, though, at least for the moment, there are 18 Republicans who sit in districts that Joe Biden would’ve won, and just five Democrats in Trump seats. Do you see that, all other things being equal, as giving any greater advantage to Democrats simply because Republicans have tripled the number of crossover districts?
Jacob Rubashkin:
Yeah, I think that there’s an argument to be made that that kind of additional exposure certainly gives Democrats more pickup opportunities or offensive targets, but not every Biden held seat is created equal. I think it’s a very different position that a guy like Anthony D’Esposito or a George Santos or even a John Duarte or Mike Garcia finds himself in, than a Brian Fitzpatrick or a Young Kim. So there are gradations within that population. The other thing I’ll say is that we get to 2024 and we’ll be four years out from what we’re thinking of as the Biden/Trump number that we’re still using as the foundational indicator of partisanship in a lot of these seats. And in the same way that perhaps it would’ve been a mistake to use Trump/Clinton numbers by the time we got to 2020, or not a mistake, but it gets a little outdated, I think that 18 is more than the five, but it’s not so much more that it’s like this overwhelming advantage, especially when you begin to drill down into who actually are these incumbents and what do these seats look like.
David Beard:
And there are different gradations among the five as well, one of which I know we definitely want to talk about. But there’s way too many seats for us to cover here in just this episode, but let’s go ahead and dive in and get to as many as we can. I want to start with a couple that you’ve recently written some deep dives on. Let’s start with CO-03. It was one of the biggest surprises of election night. It went uncalled for days, and it certainly looks like it’s shaping up to be a rematch, is what it seems to be?
Jacob Rubashkin:
Yeah, so Colorado’s 3rd District, Lauren Boebert, one of the most high profile members of the House Republican conference, had the closest race of the cycle last time, and this is one that we missed at Inside Elections. I think everyone, both in the prognostication field, and frankly the folks whose job it is to win these races in both of the parties, would acknowledge that they really missed the boat on this one. It was not expected to be competitive. There was very little outside involvement in this general election, and ultimately it was decided by just a handful of votes. So it does look like it will be a rematch between Boebert and the Democrat, Adam Frisch.
The thing that I was trying to focus on with my story is understanding those conditions. What will be different in 2024 and how will that contribute to a potentially different outcome? What does a race look like when it’s being observed, when it’s getting the national attention and resources that a top tier congressional race can attract, but that this one didn’t attract in 2022? What are the things that Republicans are going to attack Adam Frisch over that they didn’t bother to in 2022? The National Republican Congressional Committee publishes research books of all of the top Democratic candidates and members of Congress, and they published them publicly so that the super PACs can pick them up off the website and make ads off of them, but it also means that reporters that know what URL to go to can see them too. There was no research book on Adam Frisch. There was no special attention paid to him. That’s all going to change now.
So what does that mean for him on the negative side? What does it mean for him on the positive side? Can he leverage the exposure into raising even more money is a big question. I think certainly based on the small dataset we have so far, which is what his campaign, I think, reported raising in their first couple days, that’s certainly going to be a factor. The other thing that I was trying to explore is: Was 2022 just an abnormally good year for Colorado Democrats? The bottom really fell out for Colorado Republicans in a way that Boebert actually had to over perform the top of ticket Republican candidates in order to eke out that very narrow win. Heidi Ganahl lost that district, the Republican candidate for governor. Joe O’Dea won the district, but he actually did win it with, I believe, a slightly lower percentage of the vote share than Lauren Boebert did.
So in a universe where Republicans are doing slightly better at the top of the ticket, whether it’s a Republican nominee Trump or DeSantis, I think it’s unlikely that they lose Colorado by as great a margin as Heidi Ganahl did. She lost by 20 points. So a Republican doing better at the top of the ticket overall I think does help Boebert because it means that she doesn’t have to win over crossover voters, and assuming Colorado doesn’t continue to zoom leftward for Democrats, that’ll be something in her favor.
David Beard:
I think people often expect that a rematch might benefit the challenger because they’ve already built up that name recognition, but it also, like you said, gives some benefits to the incumbent to be sharper, for the party to be more ready for presidential top of the ticket to help in a Republican-leaning district in this case, so it’ll definitely be something to keep an eye on as we go into 2024.
I want to go to another district that you did a deep dive on, that’s CA-27. Now, this is a Biden district that Democrats have lost the last three times with the same candidate each time, in a special in 2020, and then again in the regular election in 2020, and then in 2022. But it looks like Dems are going to have some new candidates as options going into that primary.
Jacob Rubashkin:
CA-27 is one of these seats that has bedeviled Democrats for quite some time. Currently the 27th District, its prior iteration, California’s 25th District was also one that Democrats felt like they should have won more than they did. This is one of these swingy areas in north Los Angeles County that votes more Republican downballot, votes for Democrats at a federal level. The 27th District, Biden would have won by double-digits. It’s one of the most Biden-friendly districts represented by a Republican, Mike Garcia, and Democrats for the last three elections have run the same candidate against him, a former state assemblywoman named Christy Smith.
Now, the first one was a special election in May 2020 caused by Katie Hill’s resignation, and to give Dems their due, they picked Christy Smith for both the special and the general election at the same time. So they didn’t know that she was going to lose just by 10 points to Garcia in the special when they voted her in for the primary in the general election in 2020. But she lost that race too by a very narrow margin, just a couple hundred votes, and then ran it back a third time in 2022, lost by about 6 points. She’s not running this time. I think that is music to a lot of Democrats’ ears. Frankly, it’s something that I heard over and over again when I wrote this story, was, “We are glad Christy Smith isn’t running.” I would ask about the other candidates in the race, and the first thing they’d say would be, “They’re not Christy Smith.”
I think there was real frustration with her performance in the three races that she did run. So I think one of the things that we think about when we look at some of these Republicans, or Democrats, frankly, in districts that swing the other way by bipartisanship, is you want to evaluate whether there is truly something special about them, whether they have some sort of unique strength or appeal to the district, that special sauce that allows them to win, or whether they’ve just gotten a series of lucky breaks.
And when you look at a guy like Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania’s 1st District, or John Katko up in New York, who have faced a variety of different challengers and a variety of different environments, it’s clear that they’ve got something special going on.
When you look at Mike Garcia, yes, he is running three different environments, three electorates, two different districts, but against the same Democrat every single time, and a Democrat that had some pretty serious vulnerabilities that she was bringing along with her.
I think that certainly, of all the California seats, this one actually might be the most appealing to Democrats simply because they view Garcia as a slightly weaker opponent than some of these other Biden-district Republicans, David Valadao, Young Kim, Michelle Steel, who have managed to insulate themselves a little bit more.
There’s one candidate currently in the race, a guy by the name of George Whitesides. He’s a former chief of staff to the NASA administrator, and he was the CEO of Virgin Galactic, the commercial space flight company, for the last decade. He started to lock up some local endorsements. He got the endorsement of the New Democrat Coalition, today I believe, and has been raising a fair amount of money. I think he raised $500,000 plus a $500,000 personal contribution. He won’t have the field to himself.
One of the things I reported in the story that I wrote recently was a criminal justice advocate named Franky Carrillo is planning on jumping into the race within a week or so from now. He filed with the FEC a little over a month ago but, for a number of reasons, had to change his campaign consultants and is now on track for a mid- to late April announcement. And it will be an interesting primary and then, no matter which candidate emerges, this is going to be a top target for Democrats. You can’t win back the majority if you’re a Democrat without beating a guy like Mike Garcia sitting in a district Biden won by 12 points.
David Nir:
No discussion about the House in 2024 can fail to include New York, where Democrats from the top of the ticket on down really underperformed the state’s fundamentals in 2022, and that allowed Republicans to either pick up or hold several seats that almost certainly are going to be in play next year.
You mentioned George Santos earlier. I think we’ve talked about him to death and everyone knows this story there, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on some of the other districts that you think Democrats are going to target, any candidates who’ve already announced or may announce, and which you think might actually be the most vulnerable.
Jacob Rubashkin:
I think the 3rd District, like you said, exists in its own space given George Santos, all his legal troubles, the possibility of a special election. But the reality is Democrats have a plethora of pickup opportunities, even just on Long Island. Obviously there’s the 4th District, which is Southern Nassau County, the most Biden-friendly district that any Republican-held seat. Congressman Anthony D’Esposito won a very narrow race last cycle. He will be a top target.
Frankly, I think that the 1st District with a better-equipped and more organized Democratic Party out on Long Island, that 1st District out in Suffolk County, would be a prime pickup opportunity. The candidate there last cycle didn’t really have the resources or the attention to get anything going, but that’s a seat that Biden would’ve actually won quite narrowly. And in the right environment, even the 2nd District is another one of these marginal seats.
All of Long Island, there is potential for certainly more in Nassau County than Suffolk County. You go up to Westchester and the Hudson Valley, you’ve got the 17th District with Congressman Mike Lawler, obviously knocking off the Democratic campaign chief, Sean Patrick Maloney. This one is probably the seat that’s seen the most development as far as candidates go, in recent weeks.
The biggest name out there right now is Mondaire Jones, who previously represented a version of this district before he was, frankly, pushed out by Congressman Maloney after redistricting and had to go run really a no-shot campaign in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. But he has come back to the area, come back to that 17th District and is making noises about running. Gretchen Whitmer’s sister, who’s a local school board member, has also had her name in the mix. But I think Mondaire Jones is the big one there.
The 19th District, Marc Molinaro, this is another one of these more ancestrally Republican places, even more so than some of these other Hudson Valley seats. Josh Riley, who was the candidate who nearly won this seat last year against Molinaro, just announced his campaign again. He’s back in the mix. Michelle Hinchey is the big outstanding name there. Her father represented a previous iteration of this seat several congresses ago, so it’s unclear what she’s going to do.
And then finally, you get upstate to the 22nd District. This is a seat Democrats should not have lost. This was one that was primed for them to flip when John Katko retired and their candidate, Francis Conole, couldn’t put it together. And so, you ended up with a fluky Republican incumbent, a guy by the name of Brandon Williams, who Republicans didn’t even want in their primary. And he should be a top target, but Democrats have really struggled to recruit here. Conole is not running, there was one woman who was a local town councilor who briefly ran and dropped out.
There’s a real dearth of candidates here, and that’s something that Democrats are going to have to resolve because ultimately you can’t win a race without a candidate.
David Nir:
I’m super curious if you’ve heard more about the possibility of Whitmer’s sister running?
Jacob Rubashkin:
Yes. I think that we’re in this early stage where it’s easy to get names floated. This was something that I heard a little bit about, and then there was a big Politico story about it more recently, within the last week or so. I think that New York Democrats are not quite in rebuilding mode because it is still New York, but everyone is back to the drawing board. And so, I think the ability for a candidate to even hint at tapping into the nationwide network or visibility that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has is an appealing thing, if you’re a Democratic operative. Even just being able to say, “My sister, the governor of Michigan, one of the biggest stars in the Democratic Party …” That’s a powerful fundraising pitch. It gets you in the door in ways that most other local school board members would have trouble attracting attention for a potential congressional bit.
We’ll see. My understanding is that we’re still very, very early in those stages. Someone like Mondaire Jones is much further along in terms of his infrastructure. He’s got much more of a … I don’t want to call it plug and play, but he knows exactly who he needs to call up, he’s got a team that’s been in place for him over the last couple cycles. And so, the path is shorter for him if he wants to jump back in, to do that.
David Beard:
Do you think the district-hopping will hurt him, if there’s a primary against somebody like Whitmer’s sister? It seems like that’s a possible line of attack to say, “He went and ran for Congress on the other side of the city and now he’s back again.”
Jacob Rubashkin:
I think that you never want to give potential opponents easy hits, and this is the biggest thing that Mondaire Jones has done over the last year or so, is move districts. And not just move districts from 17 to 18, or 17 to 16. There was some talk that he might run in a primary against Jamaal Bowman in the district just south of him. He moved from the Hudson Valley to lower Manhattan, to brownstone Brooklyn, which is just a totally different universe in a lot of ways—both Democratic areas, but very different. And now he’s moved back.
I think that it would certainly be a topic of conversation. I think that the fact that he has an easy person to blame in Sean Patrick Maloney basically saying, “I am this young freshman member who was strong-armed into leaving,” and if he can spin that as bring him back to his roots as a more anti-establishment figure, I think that he’ll be able to move past the fact that he did try and run somewhere else.
Remember, he announced his bid before the incumbent congresswoman said that she was going to retire. He was initially in this New York primary challenger category and grew out of that because he ended up running in an open seat. But I think there’s a play for him there if he decides to go do it. And I think people there know him, they seem to like him, and so I don’t think it’s disqualifying.
David Beard:
We’ve talked a lot about Republicans that Democrats are going to target, but we should talk a little bit about some Democratic seats that Republicans are going to target. Let’s start with Mary Peltola, who we talked about last week when we talked about Alaska. Now, she holds the most Republican seat by a Democrat and Inside Elections, your publication, has her at leaning Democratic. Tell us why you guys decided to do that and any potential Peltola opponents you’ve heard about.
Jacob Rubashkin:
Mary Peltola is this fascinating political figure, and she exists in the very unique universe of Alaska politics. This is a state that has always had politics that’s just a little bit different than what they call the lower 48. Even before they adopted their new top-four ranked choice voting system, they have always been more willing to go for heterodox outcomes. But whether it’s independent candidates for governor or unity coalitions in their state legislature, this is a state that does not listen to the conventional rules of politics. And Mary Peltola fits right in there.
She has this great profile as the first Alaskan Native representative, she’s got deep roots in the state, she’s beloved by her former colleagues in the state legislature. She brings a lot of strengths to the table. And so, when looking at this race and assigning it a rating, yes, it does stand out. She’s in a state that Trump won by 10 points, and we see her starting out as a pretty obvious favorite. And that’s just because she has developed a reputation, she’s burnished her reputation as being pragmatic, as being bipartisan. She’s hired Republicans into her staff. She has really, really played up continuing the legacy of her predecessor, Don Young, who at the time of his death was the longest-serving member in the House at that time, and who made a huge deal of his seniority and of his ability to be a megaphone for Alaska.
And so, regardless of the party label, she has assumed that mantle in a very effective way, and voters have responded to it. She won a very narrow special election victory; she won a much wider general election victory. And you can see, even within the confines of those two races which featured the same candidates; it was her, Sarah Palin and Nick Begich. In the special election, she narrowly beat Sarah Palin. We can tell from what’s called the cast vote record, the cast ballot record, she would not have beaten Nick Begich if the ranked-choice had gone the other way in that special election, right? We know that. In the general election, we have that same data and we can see that she would’ve beaten Nick Begich. So clearly, something shifted. It wasn’t just that voters grew more tired of Sarah Palin, it was that voters actually grew to like Mary Peltola even more. And so, she’s got a lot of positives. In terms of who the Republicans are going to run against her, it’s a real open question. There have been a lot of names floating around.
Sarah Palin is one of them. Nick Begich is another. Two candidates who couldn’t get the job done before. Kelly Tshibaka who ran against Lisa Murkowski has had her name out there. My understanding is that is less likely to happen. She’s got a new organization that she’s spun up in response to voter turnout and the Republican fear that their voters are getting scared of voting at all or voting by mail.
The other interesting name that I’ve heard out there is Tara Sweeney, who was a candidate in the special election who actually came in one slot below Mary Peltola. Also an Alaskan Native with deep roots in the state; was a Cabinet undersecretary of interior in the Trump administration. Her problem will just be that she’s perceived as being a little bit more moderate or less conservative than some of these other candidates like a Palin or a Tshibaka. And so, can she capture enough of the electorate in that ranked-choice system to get herself into a one-on-one with Mary Peltola if she does run? I don’t know. It’s not an easy question.
David Nir:
I feel like as election analysts, we should all be in favor of ranked-choice voting simply because it gives us so much more data to work with.
Jacob Rubashkin:
Yeah. I mean, it’s certainly … There’s a ton of information you glean from a ranked-choice election that you’re left guessing when it comes to a conventional race. It was really fascinating to see the interplay between Mary Peltola’s race and Lisa Murkowski’s race and ultimately, what ended up happening was the coalition for Lisa Murkowski, the Republican incumbent senator and the coalition for Mary Peltola were the same coalition. It was the same voters who were voting for the two of them, and it was the same voters who were voting for Sarah Palin and Kelly Tshibaka.
Which when you take a step back and think about it, is really fascinating that you’ve got these two figures from opposite political parties who do have some distance politically, who because of the system of elections, have landed on the same winning coalition and it’s a problem for Republicans and conservatives because they don’t like Mary Peltola and they don’t like Lisa Murkowski. And so, that’s why we see a pretty substantial effort to revert back to the old way of doing elections in Alaska and I believe there might be a ballot measure this cycle or in a cycle soon to bring Alaska back to the more conventional D versus R general election set up simply because they haven’t been able to crack this yet.
David Nir:
One other definite Republican target that we want to talk about is Michigan’s 7th District. This is in the Lansing area. It’s the seat that is now open because Democrat Elissa Slotkin is running for the open Senate seat and this is by far the most swingy, most competitive seat that has opened up this cycle. So I’d love your take on how you see both sides playing out in terms of who winds up running, who they wind up nominating, and where you see the race headed.
Jacob Rubashkin:
Yeah. So this was a race that was one of … I believe this was the second most expensive congressional race in the country in terms of outside money this past cycle after the David Valadao seat, was thought to be highly competitive. In its redrawn form, Biden would’ve won it by a vanishingly narrow margin. Elissa Slotkin, one of Democrats better recruits coming out of that 2018 wave year, one of the national security women with her background as a CIA officer.
This is a real pickup opportunity for Republicans. This one along with the Katie Porter seat rank in the top two for seats that Republicans are looking to play offense on, certainly among the category of Biden-won districts. I think the other thing Republicans have going for them here is it looks like they’re going to likely be able to avoid a primary. Their candidate from last cycle, Tom Barrett, looks pretty set to go here and I think that he had some pretty clear weaknesses that Elissa Slotkin was able to avoid both in terms of his stance on vaccinations as well as some of the votes that he took in the Michigan state Senate.
But now, he’s got a donor network and he’s got a cycle running under his belt and so he’s going to be a credible candidate. Democrats will have to figure out who is going to run here. The mayor of Lansing looked like he was going to go for it. He formed an exploratory committee, decided against running. There are a couple of other figures out there who are still considering bids but it really hasn’t solidified in any sort of way the Democratic field here as opposed to the Senate race where Elissa Slotkin has really masterfully gotten herself a clear or a virtually clear path to the nomination.
I think that it’s similar to Colorado in some ways in that Michigan was just a bloodbath for Republicans in this last election cycle. And so, one of the questions will be whoever is at the top of the ticket for Republicans in this state, can they lose? Not just can they win or not, we’ve seen a Republican win Michigan on the presidential race not too long ago but certainly, can they keep it closer than Tudor Dixon? If you can keep it closer than Tudor Dixon, how much of an opening does that give you in a very evenly divided district like this one? So look, I think that if we’re looking at a neutral to Republican-friendly environment next cycle, this is going to be a very competitive seat. If it looks like we’re headed toward a year where Democrats are going to clean up, maybe this one starts to move off the board but at the moment, it looks highly competitive. We’ve got it rated as a tossup.
David Beard:
Now, there’s probably another 30 or 40 races we could all sit here and discuss but we’re running out of time, so I want to give you a last chance to see if there are any under the radar races that you think are worth highlighting or discussing a little bit before we wrap up.
Jacob Rubashkin:
There are a few seats on the edge of the battlefield that I do think are worth watching just given either the results in 2022 or redistricting or the way that these states and districts have acted in recent years. I think Wisconsin is going to be super fascinating. We’ve got a competitive presidential race, a potentially competitive Senate race with Tammy Baldwin. We’ve also got these two districts, the 1st District and the 3rd District that did not get a lot of attention last cycle but in their redrawn forms are actually quite marginal for Republicans.
The 3rd District ultimately was actually a very close race last year. If the incumbent Democrat Ron Kind had run for reelection rather than retire, I think he probably would’ve won. The 1st District got zero attention. Bryan Steil, the incumbent Republican there, who was Paul Ryan’s successor, didn’t have a real challenge there but I think if Democrats can find a credible candidate to run in that southeastern corner of the state, that one could get interesting really quickly.
So both of those Wisconsin seats. I would say that for Democrats as well, Montana’s 1st District, Ryan Zinke, this is a race that was decided by just 3 points last cycle. For a while, it looked like Ryan Zinke was going to run for Senate and that actually might cut against Democrats in this district because he’s an opponent that offers so many different lines of attack. But lately, it looks like he might forego a Senate run and instead continue in this congressional seat and that creates the possibility Democrats could make a play here, especially because this is a district that Jon Tester absolutely has to win if he wants to get anywhere near winning re-election. I think in 2018 when he won statewide by 3 points, he won this district by about 10 points. So a Democrat will be winning this seat at the top of the ticket or somewhere higher on the ticket and that creates opportunity.
For Republicans, I would say there are a few places: Florida’s 23rd District which is a freshman Democrat, Jared Moskowitz; this is Ted Deutch’s old seat. This was a really close race in 2022. One of these artifacts of the DeSantis landslide at the top of the ticket was some of these congressional races got really dicey for Democrats at the end of the cycle. And so, while most likely Florida will not be nearly as bad for Democrats as it was last cycle, I think that this is a seat that should be beyond solid that all of a sudden Democrats have to pay attention to.
And then, we’ll see what happens in say, a Maryland’s 6th District if Ben Cardin retires rather than run for Senate for another term and David Trone in that case would almost certainly run for Senate there. You’re going to have an open seat in Maryland’s 6th District. This is one that was redrawn by a court or was ordered to be redrawn by a court to be slightly more competitive. It floats at around a Biden plus-10 but it does include the most conservative areas of Maryland out in the panhandle.
If Trone runs for Senate, there will be a crowded primary to replace him. There will be a lot of candidates running. If Republicans can find someone who is not completely objectionable to the narrow swath of Biden voters who might vote for Republican for Congress, I think it could be interesting. I might just be saying that because I’m a Marylander and I need something interesting to be talking about in my home state but I do think that there’s a potential if you subtract David Trone and his endless wealth and you put in a competitive Democratic primary to have something of a reach seat for Republicans there.
David Nir:
Jacob, I’ve absolutely loved having this conversation with you. I love the chance to really get into the weeds and do a deep dive on House races. Before we let you go, where can our listeners find your work and where can they follow you on Twitter and social media?
Jacob Rubashkin:
Yeah. So they can find my work at insideelections.com. That’s where everything that I write gets published. You can follow me on Twitter @JacobRubashkin, J-A-C-O-B R-U-B-A-S-H-K-I-N, and I do also now have a Substack, which sounds silly to say but that’s just rubashkin.substack.com. It’s called Ruby Tuesday. If and when Twitter disintegrates into a million pieces, that is where you will be able to find me on Substack, on the new Notes app that everyone seems very excited about and I’m at [email protected].
David Nir:
Jacob Rubashkin, reporter and analyst with Inside Elections, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jacob Rubashkin:
Thank you.
David Beard:
That’s all from us this week. Thanks to Jacob Rubashkin 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 Podcast and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our producer Walter Einenkel and editor Trevor Jones. We’ll be back next week with a new episode.
