On to the Midterms 🤯😱🌻✡️😱🤯

Yesterday:   Republicans lost bigly last night. Trump who never takes responsibility for anything that doesn’t go his way, posted IN CAPS, of course, that the losses were because he wasn’t on the ballot and because of the shutdown.  While the part about him not being on the ballot was literally true, the winners did their best to make it seem like he was, putting him and his policies front and center in their races.  As to the shutdown it looks like his efforts to shift responsibility for it to the “radical” Democrat fell flat. By the way, though the shutdown is still on and is now record setting, there has been some movement with some behind the scenes talks among moderate Democrats and some Republicans, so something might break soon which isn’t to say that Trump is being all that cooperative.  Yesterday, despite a court order and assertions from some in his administration that SNAP funding would be turned back on, Trump first said that it was only coming on half-way and then shocked many in the White House and his party by saying that he wouldn’t turn it back on at all because hunger is a good thing?         

Virginia:  As expected, former Congresswoman/CIA agent Abigail Spanberger won the Governor’s race, easily defeating her Republican opponent Winsome Earle-Sears by 15 points. By comparison, in 2021 the current Governor Republican Glenn Youngkin who couldn’t run for reelection because Virginia Governors can’t serve consecutive terms beat his Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe by less than 2 points. Approximately 150,000 more voters participated yesterday than in 2021.  Less expected, Democrat Jay Jones won the Attorney General’s race, defeating Republican incumbent Jason Miyares by 7 points despite the resurfacing of some earlier totally inappropriate texts in which he had jokingly suggested that then Virginia House Speaker Republican Todd Gilbert deserved “bullets to the head.” Because of those texts a lot of Democratic politicians including former President Obama had distanced themselves from Jones.

New Jersey: Despite some late polling that suggested that New Jersey’s gubernatorial race would be a squeaker and a barrage of awful ads that portrayed the former Navy pilot as indecisive and weak, Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill also scored an impressive victory, beating her Republican opponent Jack Ciatarelli by 13 points.  By comparison, in 2011 the current term limited two term Governor Democrat Phil Murphy won his reelection, also over Ciatarelli, by a little over 3 points. It’s also notable that it’s been a long time since one party has been able to retain the NJ governorship for more than two terms.  As in Virginia, turnout was up in NJ, with almost 600,000 more voters casting their ballots.  Significantly, Sherrill picked up many of the Hudson Valley Hispanic voters who deserted Kamala Harris for Trump in the 2023 presidential election, achieving levels that exceeded those achieved by Biden in 2020.  If Sherrill’s Hispanic pick-up spills over to other states in the 2026 midterms, Republicans will be in bigly trouble. Maybe the dragging and beating up of “brown” people at the direction of Stephen “Goebbels” Miller, Homeland Barbie Kristi Noem, Cava bag Tom Homan, and all those wannabee chunky and brutal INS storm troopers isn’t going over quite as well as Trump thinks.         

California:  Proposition 20, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s tit for tat response to Texas’ elimination of about 5 Democratic Congressional seats passed easily.  The proposition authorizing the redrawing of California’s Congressional districts was approved with 4.8 million or 62.8% of those who voted pretty much saying “screw you Texas” versus 2.1 million or 36.2 in opposition.  As a result, Democrats are expected to pick up the 5 seats they expect to lose in Texas.  Anticipating the loss, even before the results were in, Trump posted on Truth Social that the election was rigged.  Of course he did.   

Pennsylvania and Georgia:  The election in perennial battleground Pennsylvania was also consequential. Voters approved the retention of three state Supreme Court justices, preserving Democrats’ 5-2 majority on the state’s high court. Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht all survived an up-or-down vote to keep their seats on the bench. Dougherty and Wecht each won another 10-year term, while Donohue will serve until 2027, when she’ll reach the mandatory retirement age of 75. As a result, Democrats will control the courts at least through the midterms when we know that Trump and his cohorts will be launching lawsuits right and left.  In Georgia, Democrats flipped two Public Service Commission seats that haven’t gone blue in twenty-five years. That bodes well for Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff who is up for reelection in 2026 in what is expected to be one of the Senate’s most costly and competitive races.

New York City 🍎:  Saving my least favorite election for last, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani will be the next Mayor of the Big Apple because at the end of the day in NYC the winner of the Democratic primary almost always wins the Mayor election especially when the Republican candidate is an eccentric cat guy.  Also, that free bus and no rent increase promise is deceptively alluring. Mamdani won 50.4% of the vote, beating former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 41.6% and cat guy Republican Curtis Sliwa’s 7.1%.  In an attempt to sway some of those voters in heavily Republican Staten Island who were “wasting” their votes on Sliwa as well as a few of what he called those “stupid” Jews voting for Mamdani, Trump weighed in with an unhinged social media post endorsing “bad Democrat” Cuomo over “Communist” Mamdani before same day voting started. He also threatened to defund New York if Mamdani won. We’ll probably never really know if his endorsement carried any weight, but odds are if it did, he offended as many voters as he convinced. By NYC standards voter turnout was high with 2.1 million casting ballots as opposed to the 1.15 million who voted in 2021. Despite the large turnout, Mamdani’s share of the electorate was actually way lower than what Democrats typically achieve in Mayoral general elections. By comparison, outgoing Mayor Adams picked up 67% of the vote in 2021 and former two-term Mayor Bill de Blasio won with 67% in 2017 and 73% in 2013.  Cuomo garnered more votes than either Adams or de Blasio did in their winning elections.  Last night during his victory speech Mamdani ridiculed Trump, saying “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: turn the volume up!”  That may be funny, and Trump is deserving of lots of ridicule, but Mamdani needs to be better than that because he’s not Gavin Newsom, Trump holds lots of purse strings, and despite his promises, Mamdani may try, but he isn’t going to be able to make up lost funds by taxing rich New Yorkers more and more.  Moreover, his populist plans are going to cost a lot in what is already a very resource constrained environment.  We also better hope that Mamdani isn’t able to move forward with some of his other plans because he’s already alienated a lot of New Yorkers with his promises to boycott companies that do business with Israel (that’s lots of companies), divest Israel related holdings from New York City pension funds (something that incoming comptroller Mark Levine has said he won’t do), arrest Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (probably not within his powers), and displace Cornell’s joint Roosevelt Island campus with Israel’s Technion Institute of Technology. How lovely to be a New Yorker, a crazy man running the country and a Hamas friendly ideologue running our city.