After a quiet period, suddenly, a lot of 2020 races got a jolt. Here’s a quick roundup.
Georgia
Republican Senator Johnny Isakson (GA) announced he’d be resigning at the end of the calendar year. He’s been dealing with multiple health issues and feels like his time in the Senate must come to end. He’s only halfway through his 6 year term, which was to end in 2022. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp will appoint a replacement right away, but that person will need to defend the seat in a 2020 special election for the right to fill out the final 2 years of Isakson’s term.
This means that the Democrats have 2 chances in 2020 to take Senate seats away from the Republicans. (Sen. David Perdue’s seat is also up for re-election.) It’s a tall order in that the Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in over two decades. But with Georgia trending blue, Democrats have more than a chance.
Alabama
The city of Montgomery has a general election on October 8 to elect a new mayor. The primary was held this past Tuesday, and one of the top two vote-getters was Steven Reed, who is African-American. If he wins, he’d be the first African-American mayor in the city, which is about 60% black and 32% white.
Mississippi
In the 2019 Governor’s race, the GOP held their primary run-off, so we now know that our Democratic candidate, GA Attorney General Jim Hood, will be facing Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves in November. Reeves is not particularly well-liked by fellow Republicans in the state, which adds an interesting angle to this election.
Arizona
Senator Martha McSally, who is serving out the remainder of John McCain’s term, just picked up a primary challenger. Daniel McCarthy was a big Trump backer and his entry in the race forces McSally to spend a lot of time and money to try to win the primary. That’s time and money she won’t have to use to fight the Democratic candidate, former astronaut Mark Kelly, who does not currently have a serious challenger.
The city of Tucson held their Democratic primary for mayor this week, and City Councilwoman Regina Romero won handily. She will face an underfunded Independent candidate, making it likely that she will win in November and become the city’s first woman mayor.
California
One of the big House upsets in 2018 was TJ Cox (D) winning California’s 21st Congressional District over the then-incumbent David Valadao (R). It was an extremely narrow win, 50.4% to 49.6%. Well, Valadao just announced he’s going to challenge Cox to see if he can win his old seat back. Keep in mind that he had won his previous elections pretty easily and even today has strong backing from the national Republican party. This will be a very, very competitive race.
2020 Presidential Election
Yesterday was the deadline to qualify for the next Democratic debate (set for Sept. 12.) Only 10 candidates qualified, and so the debate will take place on one night. Here’s who qualified (in alpha order by first name, to mix it up a little): Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, & Pete Buttigieg.
Following this news, Kirsten Gillibrand announced that she was ending her campaign. She signed off by saying, “It’s important to know when it’s not your time and to know how you can best serve your community and country. … To our supporters: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Now, let’s go beat Donald Trump and win back the Senate.”
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Another brilliant post, thank you.
I have 2 questions of great concern:
1) why is the Democratic leadership slow-walking impeachment? The danger of losing red’purple seats seems low as compared to the immense danger being wrought on a daily basis by Trump, McConnell, and Barr. We don’t even have coherent messaging from the Democratic leadership. What explains this apparent lack of strategy? Defaulting to the courts (after endless delays by leadership) seems to be a very dangerous gamble? Twitter pundits swerve from blind faith in Pelosi to dark accusations that Pelosi and her minions are complicit in their desire to maintain the economic status quo.
Should we be encouraging more progressives to run, or do you believe that there really is a viable Democratic leadership strategy?
2) why are Democratics continuing to ignore the tremendous danger we face in losing the courts? One of the core ‘wins’ of Trumpism (in the minds of the GOP) is the conservative takeover of the courts, yet I see almost no acknowledgment by pundits or politicians of the ultimate failure of any progressive legislation if the courts are rendered partisan arms of the GOP over the next 6 years (if GOP continue as majorities in the courts, even if a Democrat wins the presidency).
Thank you again for all your hard work.
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Thanks for writing. You ask two enormous questions, but to be able to answer as best I can, considering I have no contacts with Democratic leadership, let me ask a couple of clarifying questions. 1) Broadly speaking, what are the dangers posed by Trump/McConnell/Barr that you’re most concerned about, and how does impeaching Trump mitigate them? 2) Which do you think is stronger: legislation or the courts?