Political Roundup for May 31st, 2018

Check back at noon ET today for our preview of next week’s California Primary.

National:

Culture War: Josh Kraushaar has a nice piece in the National Journal pointing out that the Democrats seem to be taking a considerably more narrow view of the acceptable levels of ideological diversity on cultural issues within their ranks. This is actually a rather common pattern for parties, as a similar sort of narrowing of acceptability happened to the Democrats in the 1960s and 70s (leading to the loss of the then century-strong stranglehold on the South) and the GOP in the late 1980s and 90s (where the Religious Right Culture war drove away the Northern Suburbanites who had formed the backbone of the party since basically its formation). These differences can be papered over by a party outside of power and unifying opposition to Trump, but will probably flare up should the Democrats find themselves back in power in the next decade or so.

Congress:

NY-11: Trump has endorsed incumbent Dan Donovan (R) for Congress in his primary against former GOP Congressman Michael Grimm. In classic Trump fashion, he did so by twitter and included a pretty glaring factual error—Donovan was one of the few house Republicans who voted against Trump’s tax reform package last year. Still, Grimm’s main campaign narrative is that he is the more reliable Trump ally, so this is a pretty big blow to someone already dealing with the stigma of being a convicted felon.

TX-Sen: A new Quinnipiac Poll has considerably better news for the GOP than their previous one. Ted Cruz is up 11 points on Beto O’Rourke, 50-39, including a surprisingly healthy 46-44 margin with Texas Hispanics. The poll also has Republican Incumbent Greg Abbott up 53-34 on Lupe Valdez for Governor and Trump at a 47/47 approval rating.

UT-Sen: Romney has admitted that he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, saying that he wrote in his wife’s name instead. In most other states that would be a terrible thing to admit ahead of a GOP Senate Primary, but Utah is probably the only state in the country where that would be a passable offense.

VA-10: Dan Helmer is clearly not interested in making a boring or conventional run for Congress. The Democrat running for this NOVA suburban seat has released a new add that compares Trump to Osama Bin Laden and claiming that the greatest threat to American Democracy “Lives in the White House”. Helmer has become famous for his, let’s say unconventional ads that include a lame Top Gun parody and a video of him just buying an Assault Rifle to critique America’s lax gun laws.

State & Local:

CA-Gov: Another poll of the race has shown Republican John Cox in a comfortable 2nd place in the “primary” election next week. The poll has prohibitive Front-Runner Gavin Newsom (D) in first with 33%, followed by Cox at 20% and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) in third with 13%.

CT-Treasurer: Arunan Arulampalam (D) has withdrawn his candidacy for this position, citing not wanting to fight a “racially divisive primary” for the nomination. That is code for Arulampalam, who is Sri Lankan by ethnicity, seeing no realistic way to break one of America’s weirdest political traditions, which is that Connecticut Democrats *always* nominate an African-American for this seat. Ever since 1962, every single Democratic nominee for this relatively unimportant row office has been Black, and with Arulampalam’s exit Shawn Wooden (who is black) is the clear front-runner for the nod. The most amusing part of this is that Arulampalam is technically African-American as well, in that he was born in what is now Zimbabwe back when it was still a British Colony!

ERA: In the ultimate display of pandering for the sake of pandering, the Illinois Legislature has decided to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. You know, the one from the 1970s that was basically a reiteration of the already-existing 14th amendment that was pushed heavily by the Feminist movement before falling a few states short of the 3/4ths requirement needed to actually become an amendment. What makes this so amusing is that the deadline for this actually accomplishing anything was around 30 years ago. I am looking forward to what is probably the Illinois State legislature’s next act–passing a “Slavery was Bad” amendment.

MI-Ballot: 7 candidates might be forced off the Michigan Primary ballot for failure to submit the required signatures. Of the 7, the most notable are Paul Clements, the previous D nominee for MI-6, Matt Morgan, the only Democrat running in MI-1, and Kristine Bonds, a Republican running for the open MI-11.

NM-Gov: Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, generally considered the front runner for the D Primary for Governor, has been revealed to have had a major financial stake in a high-risk insurance pool. While this is bad optically for Grisham (removing the need for these kinds of pools was one of the main purposes of Obamacare), the real issue is whether or not she used her political power to push to keep New Mexico’s pool open even as most other states closed theirs during the Obamacare rollout in 2014.

SC-Gov: In the race against incumbent Governor Henry McMaster (R), 5 of the 7 candidates looking to replace him from both parties failed to properly file their financial disclosure forms by Tuesday’s deadline. That includes all 3 Democrats running, and two of McMaster’s 4 Republican primary challengers. While this does not disqualify them from the ballot in any way, it does serve as a healthy indicator of who is actually a serious candidate for the seat.