Primary voters in seven states, including California and New Jersey, go to the polls Tuesday to select their party’s candidates for state positions, including governors of New Mexico and South Dakota; for the mayor of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country, and for dozens of seats in the House.
Crime is very much on the minds of Californians: San Franciscans are deciding whether to fire their district attorney, and the Angels are weighing whether to elect a longtime Democrat or a former multimillionaire Republican who promises to crack down on crime and crime. homelessness. and clean up the city.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, is not expected to face much opposition as he seeks an eighth term this November at the age of 89. Other races offer more drama.
Here’s what to look for in Tuesday’s contests in New Jersey, Mississippi, Iowa, South Dakota, New Mexico, Montana, and California:
A real map of the battlefield appears
In most parts of the country, the redistribution of congressional districts reinforced the concerns of both parties. Tuesday will show much of the remaining battlefield. Of the 53 seats in the House that the non-partisan political report Cook sees at stake, nine are in California, New Mexico and Iowa.
And for once, Democrats will be watching the districts where they can play offensively: four Republican House seats in California, now occupied by Representatives David Valadao, Mike Garcia, Michelle Steel and Young Kim, and one in New Mexico, in hands of Yvette Herrell.
If these races don’t add a bit of suspense to Tuesday’s vote, California’s unusual primary system could give political obsessives a very late night. Under the system, established under former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the two best voters on the night of the primaries will face off in November, regardless of party.
Invariably, some races end with a Republican facing a Republican or a Democrat with a Democrat, leaving a party out of place. It could be guaranteed that some seats will change hands depending on Tuesday’s results.
Democratic miscalculations and missed opportunities
In New Mexico, Democrats with full control of the state capital in Santa Fe had a chance, making a safe seat in the picturesque northern part of the state less secure by submerging the district’s boundaries to the south, with the hope to occupy the Republican seat in southern New Mexico.
But in a bad Democratic year, they may have exaggerated their hand: instead of waiting for a sweep of the three seats in the state House, Democrats are now worried that Republicans might occupy that seat and take another. .
The redistribution of districts in California was in the hands of a non-partisan commission, which put Democrats in position to occupy some Republican seats and elect the first Hispanic representatives in the Central Valley.
But Democrats could also lose some seats in the House, including Katie Porter, one of the party’s rising stars. In addition to Ms. Porter, Rep. Mike Levin on the Southern California coast is sweating for re-election, and a new seat in Central California, District 13, should be Democratic in a normal year, but that’s not the case. that.
Democrats had also hoped to make a play for the Iowa Senate seat held by Mr. Grassley. But Mr. Grassley chose to run for re-election, although he would be 95 at the end of his next term. And Democrat favorite Abby Finkenauer, 33, who has served in the House, has even fought to get to the polls.
Lack of ethics can be costly. Except when they are not.
Rep. Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat, had the heavyweight elements of foreign policy in his party. He was the director of Human Rights Watch in Washington before becoming a senior human rights officer in the State Department of the Obama administration.
Malinowski focused his attention on election politics in 2018, beating a moderate Republican, Leonard Lance, in that Democratic wave that year. In 2020, he surpassed Thomas Kean Jr., the son and namesake of a popular former New Jersey governor, by 5,311 votes.
The operations of Rep. Tom Malinowski’s actions were investigated by the House Ethics Committee. Credit … Photo of Graeme Jennings Pool
On Tuesday, Mr Kean is the most likely favorite to win his party’s nomination to challenge Mr Malinowski again, but this time, the Democrat is one of the most threatened incumbents in the House, thanks to three factors. The Redistricted made his narrowly Democratic seat Republican.
Despite the loss of Mr. Kean in 2020, the governor’s son is a strong opponent in a state where surnames matter (Robert J. Menendez, son of Senator Bob Menendez, is the big favorite in the Democratic primary for another seat in the House). And Mr. Malinowski admitted that he had not properly disclosed thousands of dollars in stock transactions, the subject of an investigation by the House Ethics Committee.
On the other hand, another candidate with a history of checkered ethics, Ryan Zinke, is expected to win his Republican primary and return to the House from Montana’s first district. Mr. Zinke left Washington in 2018 as Mr. Home Secretary. Trump under a cloud of research on conflicts of interest and questionable taxpayer spending.
Trump’s swing and lack in South Dakota
Former President Donald J. Trump vowed to punish Sen. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, for not sufficiently promoting the lie that Mr. Trump had won re-election in 2020. “South Dakota does not like weakness. It will be in 2022 in the primaries, the political career is over! the former president declared on Twitter in December 2020, before being exclusive to the platform.
Senator John Thune at the Capitol in May. Credit … Shuran Huang for The New York Times
But South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem chose to run for re-election instead of in the Senate, and no serious rival listened to Mr. Trump to take over Mr. Thune. As a result, Republican voters in South Dakota are likely to easily nominate Mr. Thune – dismissed by Mr. Trump as “only name Republican” and “Mitch’s boy” – for re-election, elevating him as Mitch McConnell’s apparent heir. of Kentucky, the Republican leader of the Senate.
They will also put Ms. Noem in a position to run for president or, if Mr. Trump shows up, to make a run for vice president.
Law and order on the Left Coast
Los Angeles and San Francisco are famously rich and liberal, but the rise in homelessness and a growing sense of disorder have troubled voters in both cities, just as California was withdrawing from its tough crime policies of the past.
Crime rates are not approaching the heights of the 1990s, but city dwellers have spent the past two and a half years of the pandemic increasingly struggling with shattered business districts, sordid tent camps, crushing and economic inequalities.
In Los Angeles, the race for mayor Eric Garcetti, who has a limited term, has been set up as a showdown between the local Democratic establishment and the bewildered landlords.
Rep. Karen Bass, a longtime Black Congress Caucus president and longtime party advocate, and Rick Caruso, a former Republican billionaire who served on the city’s police commission, are favorites. Mr. Caruso has spent tens of millions of dollars on television, radio and digital ads depicting Los Angeles as a traumatized hellish landscape haunted by crime.
Protesters in San Francisco urged voters to remember Chesa Boudin, the district’s progressive prosecutor. Credit … Jim Wilson / The New York Times
In San Francisco, the negligence of the persistent pandemic and a jump in anti-Asian hate crimes have launched a campaign to remember Chesa Boudin, a progressive who was elected district attorney with the promise to remove the city from its dependence on imprisonment. As in Los Angeles, some of the city’s wealthiest residents endorse San Francisco’s call for crackdown on criminals. But he has taken advantage of the fears of the middle class.
More broadly, the race for attorney general in California will test the abandonment of the state of mass imprisonment and its appetite for leaders outside the Democratic Party. The incumbent, Rob Bonta, a progressive Democrat appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2021 when Xavier Becerra joined the Biden administration, is running for a full term. Two Republicans and an independent Republican face him in November.
The independent, Anne Marie Schubert, is the Sacramento County District Attorney and prosecuted the Golden State killer. She has strong support for law enforcement and is widely seen as a moderate. Still, of the three candidates who argue that progressive reforms have made California less secure, she is the only one without the support of a major party.