Judy Stacey forwards a poster from the Urban Peace Movement. They’re running a phone/social media campaign on our local law enforcement.
Alameda County Sheriff
Author: Andrew J. Lazarus
Alaska polls
Public Policy Polling (PPP) is out with polling from Alaska.
You heard it here first, but these are the sleeper races. They have Biden trailing Trump by 3, 45–48. Al Gross is still almost unknown, but trails by only 5, 34–39. (An incumbent with 39 is in trouble.) And Alyse Galvin is up(!) 2, 43–41.
Alaskan voters don’t seem to realize there’s a Senate race this fall. Democrats need to change that ASAP, and Alaska is a dirt cheap state to advertise in. Not sure what the hold up is.
Good point. Although Gross has been outraised so far, he’s being noticed. He’s done several joint fundraisers with better-known Lower 48 Democrats. My next check to him will suggest it’s time for him to get moving.
Minutes from July 5 meeting
Most of the meeting was discussion of Indivisible Elmwood endorsements. I presented a chart.
We eliminated the strikeouts, either as too much of a long shot, or because we think we will be just as effective supporting down-ballot races in the same jurisdiction. (Since the meeting, Bullock and Cunningham reported enormous cash hauls, making up significant deficits relative to Team COVID.) We will make a final decision at the next meeting. Current prospects are in yellow background. Bollier may be added if Kobach is her opponent.
Current polling is, of course, favorable. Here is an Internet op-ed from the WaPo pointing out conventional wisdom in April and May was that Trump had reached his nadir, but fell further. If the coronavirus picks up in the Sun Belt, which looks very plausible right now, even Trump’s current support could weaken.
In other meeting news, Bruce reported that the Movement Voter Project was favorably impressed with donations that came in through Indivisible Elmwood links. And Judy spoke favorable of Alameda Supervisor candidate Vinnie Bacon: much better on law and justice than the conservative competitor. We’ll be hearing more about him, too.
Zoom link for July 5
Andrew Lazarus is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Indivisible Elmwood
Time: Jul 5, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 840 7961 5742
Password: 737384
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A graph I would rather not be posting
The rate after June 15 is about triple where we had been, although still low by National and California standards.
Expect serious slowing of re-opening measures. A few more months and I may have enough hair in back for a comb-over.
Election roundup
New York: No more news as of time of this posting. The race to face Lee Zeldin (NY-01, Long Island) has a margin of less than 200 with most of the ballots outstanding.
Kentucky: Squeaker win for McGrath. I suspect she would have lost if the election were this week and not last week. I would have more regrets except I don’t expect either can give Moscow Mitch more than a token scare. But: we flipped a Kentucky State Assembly seat up for a special election, 57–43(!). Dr. Karen Berg is the first Democrat to hold it in 25 years. She turns out to be the childhood neighbor of a friend, so we kicked in $25. And—look— that was enough! By my math, this costs the Republicans their veto-proof majority in the chamber.
Colorado: To the surprise of no one, John Hickenlooper won the right to dispatch Cory Gardner in November. Primaries for Progress, which I take, has a low opinion of Hickenlooper. Their newsletter even compared him to Dianne Feinstein: waste of a safe blue seat. Most of the mainstream press attention went to the Republican incumbent in CO-03 losing his primary to a QAnon-conspiracy nut. She also doesn’t let people with masks into her bar. Basically, someone who makes Sarah Palin look like Eleanor Roosevelt. She is highly likely to win; the district is strongly Republican.
Massachusetts: The day after Jamaal Bowman ran up the score on Rep. Eliot Engel (NY–16), I got a call from Alex Morse, the mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts. He’s running from the left against Richard Neal (MA–01), the chair of Ways and Means whose indolent pursuit of Trump’s taxes was frustrating. Morse called me months ago and I told him I’d wait to see Bowman’s result before making a commitment to another insurgency. Morse, who said he’d been at Bowman’s Campaign HQ for Election Day, wanted to make sure I remembered my pledge. I had. I even told him so when I picked up the phone.
Minutes from June 21 meeting
Naomi reviewed material on the most effective strategies for GOTV. Postcarding is effective, letter writing more so. (Vote Forward, for letters.) There does not seem to be a problem with contacting people too much, as long as it isn’t an intrusive method like texting. Gentle social pressure and reviewing the actual voting process are better than partisanship. Email Naomi to get postcard addresses for TJ Cox.
I reviewed several upcoming Democratic primaries. Tomorrow we see if tortoise Charles Booker has overtaken hare Amy McGrath for KY-Sen. I tend to put more credence in the polls showing both of them far behind Moscow Mitch than those showing McGrath even with him. There were also several primaries in New York with racial and generational overtones. The NY Times, against type, mostly endorsed youth.
Links to Senate candidates in big bang-for-buck races. Greenfield (Iowa). Bullock (Montana). Cunningham (NC). And rather than donate to Biden generically, we can funnel donations through groups that will push him in a desirable direction. Example: Clean Energy for Biden. (Unfortunately, their name and URL are too easy to misread as “clean energy forbidden”, which is the Republican plan.)
Judy spoke again about the malign Alameda County sheriff. At this point we are trying to remove his support in the county Board of Supervisors. This year the key election is in District One. The progressive candidate in the General Election is Vinnie Bacon, a member of the Fremont City Council.
Bruce is keeping an eye on developments in Indivisible California. Much of the recent call was on Black Lives Matter.
Zoom link for June 21
Happy Father’s day, and here is the link.
Andrew Lazarus is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Indivisible Elmwood
Time: Jun 21, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 826 2208 2171
Password: 797426
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While cleaning out my Inbox
My Inbox has also lost weight during the Quarantine, dropping from 54,000 emails to under 30,000, and still shrinking. I just ran across two old emails from “Aaron (the Give Smart guy)” from January, 2019 on the Democrats’ chances to retake the Senate.
Let’s say, we are in much better shape now than it looked then. He expected Doug Jones to lose, meaning we needed four flips. Still the case.
Only Colorado seemed likely. Arizona seemed better-than-even. Maine, worse-than-even, although he correctly predicted Sara Gideon as the strongest challenger to Collins. Montana he correctly predicted as tier-one if Bullock entered after his Presidential campaign collapsed (against Conventional Wisdom, came to pass). North Carolina, Iowa, and Georgia were where the Dems needed to catch up. (We have. In none of those three did he even mention the eventual winner of the D primary.)
I’ve decided to take another look at the Kentucky Senate primary. Charles Booker is getting local endorsements while Amy McGrath keeps running the same two-issue campaign: part personal determination, part Mitch McConnell is evil. I’m not sure that plays well in the long run. McGrath can, of course, turn her $10MM warchest on her primary opponents.
Georgia update
With the pace of news nowadays, I had to Google to learn that Jon Ossoff just cleared the 50 per cent threshold to avoid a runoff. His nearest challenger, Mayor Teresa Tomlinson, had about 15%. Two other candidates won their home counties but trailed even further statewide.
I’m less optimistic about Ossoff than Conventional Wisdom Today, both from the election intrinsics and the certainty that in Georgia the mechanics of voting will be tainted by malice aforethought on top of incompetence.
Indivisible Elmwood 