Levis 🌻🌻🌻

Primarily Yours:  New York State dominated the primary news yesterday. Due to the results of the 2020 census, the Empire state lost one House seat and was put in the position of having to redraw its district lines to accommodate the shrinkage in its House delegation.  After state courts ruled that the state’s initial efforts at redistricting were gerrymandered to favor Democrats the lines had to be redrawn again. As a result of the delayed finalization of the new district lines, the state’s primary process was bifurcated, with yesterday’s House races separated from the gubernatorial and local contests that were held back in June. In New York City, the upper west side district held by septuagenarian House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler was more or less merged with the seat held by septuagenarian House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney.  Aided by endorsements from the NY Times, and Senators Schumer and Warren, yesterday Nadler easily emerged victorious, beating the well-liked and respected Maloney and perennial challenger Suraj Patel who’d positioned himself as the new blood option. In a newly drawn lower Manhattan/northwest Brooklyn district former prosecutor/Levi Strauss heir Dan Goldman who had represented House Democrats in the first of the Former Guy’s two impeachment trials narrowly beat out a crowded field that included a few progressive favorites including Representative Mondaire Jones who as a result of the domino effect of the state’s redistricting had given up on running in a newly drawn version of his prior district in order to avoid going head to head with DSCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney, another one of the candidates impacted by the shifting sands. For his part Sean Patrick Maloney, no relative of Carolyn Maloney, easily fended off a challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed progressive Alessandra Biaggi to clinch his primary.  On the Republican side, running in the Buffalo suburbs with the endorsement of NYS Congresswoman/third in House Republican leadership Elise Stefanik, Carl Paladino best known for complimenting Adolf Hitler, yes that Hitler, and for a disgusting comment about Michele Obama that involved gorillas in Zimbabwe, was narrowly beaten by his Republican challenger and will hopefully go back into the hold that he crept out of, though not soon enough for me. And lastly, well at least for New York, in an election that was not a primary but instead was a special election to fill the seat vacated by former Democratic Congressman Antonio Delgado who left the House to become Lieutenant Governor,  Democrat Pat Ryan beat the better known Republican candidate Marc Molinaro. Those results are notable because their swing district which includes Dutchess and Ulster counties is considered a bell weather, one that Republicans thought that they could retake, well at least they thought so before the Supreme Court overturned Roe.  Ryan shrewdly made the Dobbs “handmaiden” decision an issue and even though Molinaro is relatively moderate, Ryan’s strategy worked.  Of course this being New York, the district that Ryan just won has also been redrawn and both he and Molinaro will be running in November in different districts. Then there’s Florida, the place where New Yorker’s go to kvetch.  Former Governor one time Republican Charlie Crist won the Democratic primary over pot advocate/Agricultural Secretary Nikki Fried.  Crist will face off against current Governor/culture warrior/presidential wannabee Ron DeSantis in November, in a race that at least right now appears to be DeSanti’s to lose.   On the Senate side Congresswoman Val Demings easily won her Democratic primary, to be honest I didn’t even realize that she had an opponent.  Demings will face off against Marco Rubio in November and though she appears to be slightly ahead in the polls right now, she’s facing an uphill battle because in Florida polls are notoriously wrong.  

Oh, Those Files:  It’s hard to keep track of what’s going on in the saga related to those files that the Former Guy took with him to Mar a Lago and that’s the point.  Though it’s clear that the FG was up to no good and that taking the files was a bigly violation of a whole bunch of laws, the FG and his team of kraken wannabee lawyers are doing their best, and by best think worst, to muddy the waters.  Their story and the FG’s defense has gone from denying that there were any purloined files to admitting there were but saying that nothing in the files was confidential to an admission that there probably was secret stuff but that the FG had declassified all of it before leaving office, and that anyway the FBI’s “raid” was mean and unprecedented so there.  While the FG, his lawyers and a good number of his media friends continue to try to make the story about how he’s a victim of Biden, the DOJ and those thugs in the FBI who they now want to defund, more and more keeps coming out about how the DOJ treated the FG with kid gloves, giving him multiple opportunities to turn in the purloined files some of which were found hidden in his closet (near that orange makeup?), and that they only resorted to sending in the FBI once it became clear that the FG who actually got involved in sorting through some of his stolen stuff, wasn’t cooperating and that some of what he took was putting the country’s security, including the sources and methods of obtaining that information, at risk.  As to those kraken lawyer wannabees, one of their most recent filings with the courts was so flawed that a put upon judge kicked it back for a mulligan and the other filing, the one that seeks to get the exhibits to the Mar a Lago warrant released isn’t expected to result in anything more than a highly redacted sheaf of papers that will leave out much, if not all of what the FG is hoping to see.  Frankly, the bigger question is why hasn’t the FBI searched the closets and safes in Trump Tower and Bedminster, or even Ivana’s grave?     

Viral Musings:  Get ready to roll up your sleeves again soon. Both Pfizer and Moderna have applied for Emergency Use Authorizations for their revamped COVID boosters, bivalent ones that protect against original COVID and the BA 4 and 5 variants.