Mind The Gap
From New York City to Florida, Democrats should focus on fighting Republicans, not each other.
If you are a free subscriber and you like what you’re reading, maybe it’s time to upgrade to a paid subscription.
This newsletter is 100% reader-supported, and your subscription helps me continue publishing.
Truth and Consequences is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
When you become a paid subscriber, you receive access to all my posts, the ability to comment on posts and engage in the Truth and Consequences community, and, above all, you get the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes with supporting independent journalism.
Just a quick heads up that today is primary day in New York, where I live, and I’ll be talking about the races there in greater detail tomorrow with a special guest.
Ordinarily, primaries in a blue city like New York wouldn’t get that much attention, but this year is different. Several candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are running against either incumbent members of the House or “establishment” candidates. The NYC primary is perhaps the best example of the growing party divide between the establishment and the left.
The Times sums up the lay of the land well:
Mr. Mamdani and allies are attempting to unseat two Democratic incumbents, Representatives Daniel Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, whom they view as too friendly to corporate donors and Israel. They want to lay claim to a third House seat. And down the ballot, they have designs on expanding the democratic socialist bloc in Albany.
If he prevails on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani, 34, will go a long way toward establishing socialists as a major faction in New York City politics and himself as a kingmaker capable of vaulting relatively unknown candidates to victory and sidelining erstwhile power brokers.
But a string of losses could be disastrous, weakening the mayor’s political standing just six months into his term, empowering political opponents and creating new ones.
His involvement has already alienated Black and Latino progressives, powerful labor unions and the left-leaning Working Families Party, all of which helped him get to City Hall and partnered with him as mayor. Some, like Representative Nydia Velázquez, have taken the rare step of publicly declaring they have lost trust in him.
The two big House races where Mamdani has planted his flag are the primaries between Espaillat and his Democratic Socialists of America challenger, Darializa Avila Chevalier, in NY-13, and NY-7, where Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso is facing off against another DSA challenger, Claire Valdez.
As the Times points out, Chevalier has “spent weeks apologizing for inflammatory old tweets, including saying that ‘all deportations are wrong’ and using crude language about Kamala Harris.” In an interview last week, Chevalier, who is a prison abolitionist, struggled to answer the question of whether she’d support sending murderers to prison.
What makes this race particularly problematic for Mamdani is that Espaillat endorsed him last Fall and the mayor promised to support him in his primary fight — only to reverse himself when it looked like Chevalier might prevail. In the process, Mamdani has alienated Hispanic politicians in New York (Espaillat is chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus) and gotten behind a candidate whom he clearly didn’t vet and who is a disaster.
I expect Chevalier to lose, which, truth be told, is probably the best outcome for Mamdani, since if she wins he’ll spend the next two years getting asked about the crazy things she says and does as a member of Congress.
The Reynoso-Valdez race is more of a toss-up. Still, the low early voting turnout among younger voters and the high turnout among Orthodox Jewish voters in the district (who are supporting Reynoso) could indicate that Reynoso might pull off a mini-upset.
In NY-10, where I live, incumbent Dan Goldman is facing off against former city comptroller Brad Lander.
Lander has an edge here because Mamdani endorsed him and, more importantly, he has long-time political roots in the district. Goldman had never run for office before he ran two years ago and has represented the district for only one term. So Lander likely always would have been favored in this race, even without Mamdani’s backing. Unfortunately, however, Lander has gone all in on attacking Goldman for being a supporter of Israel and taking money from AIPAC. Indeed, Lander has made Israel/Palestine a focal point of his campaign, even though, as he acknowledged to the New York Times last week, these attacks are activating anti-Semitic tropes.
Israel and AIPAC are popular targets for conspiracy-mongers. A Democratic House candidate in Texas, Maureen Galindo, recently pledged to turn a former ICE detention facility into a prison for “American Zionists,” most of whom she says are probably pedophiles. (She denies she is antisemitic.) Criticizing AIPAC may now be good politics on the left, but it remains fraught, especially at a time of rising anti-Jewish sentiment around the world. “I feel queasy talking about it, given the antisemitic tropes at play here about Jews and money and power,” Lander says. “But I have to.”
Suffice it to say, I’m not voting for Lander, who is acting like a Pick Me Jew for anti-Zionists and anti-Semites. I am genuinely appalled by the race he is running and his apparent willingness to play on anti-Semitic tropes and cater to leftist voters who are virulently anti-Zionist. But he is likely to win.
As for the other races, they will tell us a great deal not only about Mamdani’s political strengths but also about the power of these DSA candidates, even in blue cities like New York. Mamdani has made a huge bet here. I’m not sure it’s going to pay off — and even if all his candidates win, is pissing off so many Hispanic politicos a good idea? This power play by Mamdani could all come back to haunt him in a few years.
In general, it’s better for Democrats that this kind of intraparty fighting is happening in a solid blue city, so there’s no chance of potentially handing seats to Republicans. But that doesn’t mean it’s helping the party. When Democrats should be focused on defeating Trump, they are spending a lot of time (perhaps too much time) fighting with each other. And even worse, they are elevating candidates like Chevalier who Republicans can turn into poster children for liberal/leftist excess.
Don’t Attack Your Own
Mike Grunwald, who used to write about politics for the Washington Post and Politico, and was a guest on the newsletter last year to talk about his latest book, “We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate,” is a good friend. He’s literally the reason I ended up at the Boston Globe for six years as a political columnist.
So it pains me that I’m about to dump on him. But since he literally encouraged me to do it, I don’t feel so bad!
Mike has an op-ed in the New York Times today about the Florida governor’s race. He argues that Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Jolly is not doing enough to differentiate himself from the party's liberal and unpopular policy positions.
Mr. Jolly believes Floridians are so exhausted by ferocious Republican culture wars over book bans and rainbow crosswalks that he can prevail simply by promising normalcy, decency and affordability. But while that may sound like a safe strategy, counting on a massive blue wave in a red state carries risks of its own. If Mr. Jolly wants to win a state Mr. Trump won three times and Gov. Ron DeSantis won in a 19-point landslide, he’ll need to persuade voters who have been increasingly hostile to Democrats that he’s a different kind of Democrat.
Many Democrats outside blue America are facing the same challenge; polls consistently show that Mr. Trump’s struggles have tarnished the Republican brand without reviving theirs. But some of them are at least trying to woo swing voters by tacking away from their party’s base, as Mr. Trump did in 2024 by pledging not to cut Medicare or Social Security, and as former President Bill Clinton did in 1992 with his attack on the rapper Sister Souljah’s anti-white rhetoric. The Senate candidate James Talarico has called out Democratic weakness on border security and hostility to oil and gas in Texas, while Mary Peltola has pushed gun rights in her Alaska Senate race.
As a fifth-generation Floridian, son of a Baptist pastor and former Republican who was fighting abortion and Obamacare in Congress just a decade ago, Mr. Jolly ought to be perfectly positioned to show independence from the Democratic brand. He hasn’t, though. He now supports abortion and Obamacare; he says he left the G.O.P. not because the party changed but because he changed. He told me he doesn’t think governors should wade into children’s sports issues, and pledges on the stump to “stop the attacks on the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community.” He doesn’t even describe himself as a “moderate” or a “centrist” anymore; the closest he’ll come is “pragmatist.” Several of his signature proposals are, he says, “pretty far left,” including a cap on utility rate increases, a government-run property insurance fund and huge new investments in K-12 public schools.
So on the surface this argument makes sense. Florida voters are not fond of Democrats, so the more Jolly can triangulate himself as a different kind of Democrat — and distance himself from the party’s more unpopular positions — the better off he’ll be.
But I think Mike’s argument overemphasizes the importance of ideological positioning. Indeed, Jolly’s efforts to de-ideologize this race and unify Democrats behind him are arguably the smart political play.
Jolly was previously a Republican congressman before switching to the Democratic Party and running for governor. He, at least in theory, already has credibility with Republicans and independents as someone who’s not a traditional Democrat. Moreover, as a guy who switched parties, he also needs to reassure Democratic partisans that he's on their side. Attacking liberal Democratic positions, unpopular ones, feels like a risky, counter-productive strategy that could alienate Democrats. What’s the upside of doing that, especially since the only way Jolly wins is if Democrats turn out in droves?
Moreover, Jolly is not running for Senate. He’s running for governor. And while we live in a highly partisan political environment, voters have shown a willingness to cross party lines in gubernatorial elections. Unlike federal elections, where partisan affiliation almost always determines the outcome, voters tend to be slightly less ideological and more pragmatic in governor’s races. So it makes sense that Jolly would describe himself as a results-oriented pragmatist, rarely mention Trump, and avoid hot-button social and cultural issues.
Mike is right that Talarico in Texas has talked about the importance of border security and Peltola in Alaska has not shied away from a pro-gun stance, but neither of them is highlighting these positions. Indeed, on Peltola’s website, I couldn’t find any reference to her views on gun rights.
Indeed, Peltola’s first ad is all about positioning her as someone who understands the experiences of ordinary Alaskans.
As for Talarico, here’s an excerpt from his website on immigration and border security:
Our border should be like a front porch — it should have a welcome mat out front and a lock on the door. We can both welcome the stranger — refugees, asylum seekers, and folks who want to contribute to our economy and pursue the American dream — and we can keep people out who mean to do us harm.
We should be cracking down on the cartels, not our communities. We should be deporting gang members, not small business owners. We should be hunting down human traffickers, not moms and babies. We should be stopping illegal immigration, not curtailing avenues for immigrants to legally migrate to America and make our country richer and stronger.
This is not really criticism of Democrats, and it’s the kind of language that one might even expect a swing state Democratic candidate to use.
Indeed, Talarico has publicly criticized Democrats for failing to prioritize border security, but it’s hardly at the forefront of his campaign. Indeed, his first ad, which premiered this week, is focused on “lowering costs.”
Both Talarico and Peltola are, as Mike says in the piece about Jolly, focused “on the costs of housing, health care and electricity.”
Finally, Mike argues that Jolly believes “Floridians are so desperate for change that they’ll finally give a Democratic governor a chance. It’s possible. But they might be more desperate if they thought the Democrat on the ballot was different from the Democrats they’ve been rejecting for years.”
This argument might be true, but there’s not much evidence to back it up. Certainly, in last year’s off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia and in special elections, Democratic candidates didn’t spend much time attacking their own.
But here’s the thing: if voters responded to the kind of Democratic triangulation that Mike is advocating for, they’d all be doing it. Every political ad run by Democrats is based on reams of polling data and is focus-group-tested to death. If the data showed that this type of positioning worked, then I feel confident more Democrats would do it. That they’re not should tell us something. My pet theory of politics is that the people who work on campaigns have a better sense of what works than political pundits — and we should generally give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to political strategy.
Having said all this, Jolly is still a long shot to win because Florida has become an increasingly red state. Any Democrat running in a state that Trump won by 13 points in 2024 is facing an uphill fight. Maybe trashing the liberal wing of the party will win over some Republicans. But, honestly, in a political environment where Trump is deeply unpopular, Democrats are leading in the congressional ballot and have been consistently overperforming in special elections (and that’s true of both liberal and moderate Democrats), I don’t see the point in creating problems and opening divisions within one’s own political coalition. It feels like too cute by half.
With 4.5 months until Election Day, Democrats need to keep their eyes on the prize and focus on their real political enemy — Trump and the GOP. They’ll have plenty of time after November to get their own house in order.
Musical Interlude