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| State Rep. Stacey Abrams (D-GA) |
Surely if you were on Twitter last night, you likely know the results of at least one of the elections from Tuesday evening. That's because while she might not be as consequential in November (in terms of who will score a pickup on this list, she's not #1), it's impossible to deny that Stacey Abrams had a moment. Abrams became the very first African-American woman in US history last night to be nominated for a major party's gubernatorial slot (a fact so hard to believe I spent ten minutes before publishing this article trying to figure out if it was actually true...it is). Abrams, the former Minority Leader for the Georgia House of Representatives, clobbered her opponent (her former colleague State Rep. Stacey Evans), greatly outpacing even the most generous polls supporting Abrams. While some will claim that Abrams' victory stands as a win for the progressive wing of the party (she was further to the left of Evans), it's hard to imagine a candidate that earned pretty much every major endorsement (in a rare occurrence, both Hillary Clinton & Bernie Sanders backed Abrams' bid for governor) as the "outsider" candidate. In conjunction with last week's win for Paulette Jordan and last night's other major victory for Lupe Veldez in Texas (upsetting Andrew White in that primary), women of color are going to be a huge part of the DGA's strategy this fall, and Abrams stands the best shot of the three to win, which would make her a national player.
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| Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R-GA) |
Like pretty much every race (to the point we should probably be raising an eyebrow by now), polling has been scarce in the Georgia gubernatorial general election. At this point, most pundits seem to consider Abrams a good candidate who will have to run an inside straight to win the general election considering her state's historically red roots (no Democrat has won the Peach State's governorship since Roy Barnes in 1998). This will be tough, particularly if the conventional wisdom that Republicans are doing better now than they were a few months ago is accurate (a conversation for a different article on a different day).
Abrams did, however, score a big win last night in that no Republican advanced to the general. In Georgia, you have a runoff if no candidate gets the majority. The two main Republican candidates, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and SoS Brian Kemp will now compete until late July against each other, unlike Abrams, a huge asset for the Democrat who can define herself to the electorate while the Republicans tear the other guy to shreds. This might be particularly true in this race, which has already featured unconventional plays for the hard-right in the state, with Cagle threatening Delta Airlines, one of the state's largest employers, with a tax hike after they pulled their NRA endorsement, and Kemp's bizarre campaign ad strategy (featuring, amongst other things, him pointing a gun at a teenage boy and him threatening to detain immigrants in his truck). While the "fringe" candidates who may have been driving these ads are out of the race, it's impossible to assume that Kemp & Cagle won't continue this campaign style considering those are the votes they need to win to grab the nomination. If the Democrats can capture a strong national environment headed into the fall, these campaign pivots will be a goldmine for Abrams to use in the general.
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| Amy McGrath (D-KY) |
Heading north, we also saw another woman succeed, this time against a much better-known candidate in Kentucky's 6th district (comprising Lexington). Amy McGrath, a retired combat aviator in the US Marine Corps, started out the election as a rare find for the Democrats. Her smart campaign ads caught fire, and she seemed like a weirdly good recruit for the DCCC until popular Lexington Mayor Jim Gray decided to run for the 6th district. This set up one of the rare races with two genuinely strong candidates fighting to take on a Republican incumbent (Rep. Andy Barr). Gray arguably had more establishment support (a sitting officeholder, he actually won the 6th district in his Senate race in 2016 despite losing statewide), but McGrath caught on with the grassroots, framing herself as an outsider, and of course in a year where women have done shockingly well in the polls, she continued that trend.
McGrath's victory is hardly a bad thing for establishment Democrats. She easily would have scored a "Red to Blue" status if Gray hadn't been in the race (her profile fits the bill of what Democrats have been looking for in 2018), and McGrath is already being loudly touted on their Twitter account (expect her to be in the next "Red to Blue" lineup). She starts out as a slight underdog for November, but not by much, and internal polling has shown this race as being very close. If the Democrats win in November, they're going to need to take at least a few seats like KY-6 along for the ride, so the pressure is now on McGrath to win one more close race.
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| Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX) |
A few weeks ago, it looked like the DCCC would have egg on its face in the Lone Star State, and perhaps across the country. In what amounted to a botched wading into a primary race, the DCCC eviscerated Laura Moser, a DC journalist, for past comments she made about her home state, thinking she was political suicide in TX-7, a district that swung from Mitt Romney to Hillary Clinton, and therefore felt ripe for a pickup. Moser, however, became a cause célèbre for the grassroots wing of the party, advancing to the runoff, and threatening to make the DCCC look like idiots.
That didn't happen. Moser got crushed by attorney Lizzie Fletcher, who now advances with a lot of wind to her back in November, and the DCCC can breathe much, much easier (and perhaps continue to be pushier in the California primaries in a couple of weeks, arguably the most important primaries of the entire year). But it wasn't just Fletcher that scored a major win last night for the DCCC. Two other "Red to Blue" candidates (Texas's Colin Allred and Arkansas's Clarke Tucker) also won their primaries, and the DCCC got their establishment picks in Joseph Kopser & Gina Ortiz Jones, both Texas Democratic challengers that could be important come November (particularly Ortiz Jones). Like in Kentucky, some of these races are going to have to swap to the Democrats in November if they have any shot at the majority, but the DCCC got the slate they wanted a week after their preferred candidate got bested in Nebraska. Their political strength feels pretty solid, which is more than I can say for...
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| Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) |
The underwritten story of this year is that Bernie Sanders, two years after he took the Democratic Party by storm, is not having a good election cycle. While Sanders' Our Revolution endorsed Stacey Abrams, so did everyone else and it's hard to give him credit for Abrams' victory. Meanwhile the organization did endorse Laura Moser and Rich Trevino (who lost to Gina Ortiz Jones), and once again got egg on their face after failing in the Pennsylvania primaries earlier this month. They didn't even gain a "W" last week in Nebraska, as one of their leaders (Jane Kleeb) convinced the organization that Kara Eastman shouldn't be endorsed despite fitting the profile of an "Our Revolution" candidate since it didn't look like she'd have a chance at winning.
It's hard to say what this will mean for Sanders in 2020. You hear often that Trump can't transfer his connection with the electorate to other Republicans (as is evidenced by the losses of Ed Gillespie, Roy Moore, & Rick Saccone)-the same is surely true of Sen. Sanders. But in a cycle where Joe Biden is doing better (he was a high-profile surrogate for Doug Jones & Conor Lamb), Sanders is definitely losing the proxy battle against one of his most important theoretical 2020 rivals. Look to see if this trend continues as we march into the June primaries.
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