We're recapping all of Tuesday's primary night action on this week's episode of "The Downballot""! Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard go coast-to-coast, setting the table in Texas' Senate race and picking apart the bloodbath in the state House. Then it's on to North Carolina, where GOP extremists dominated at all levels of the ballot—and where one notorious election fraudster is now on his way to Congress. We wrap with California, whose troublesome top-two primary system made its quirks felt in a whole bunch of races, from Senate on down.
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This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. "The Downballot" is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. Please subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review.
Beard: Primary season is upon us, and Tuesday was a big night.
Nir: It sure was. Super Tuesday's primaries, so many races, the two biggest states, California and Texas. We have a ton of elections to recap, so we are just going to dive right in.
Nir: Well, we had five states that conducted downballot primaries on Super Tuesday, and it is now game on in one of the biggest races in one of the biggest states. The Texas Senate race to hopefully unseat Ted Cruz is getting underway right away because Democratic Congressman Colin Allred kicked ass in his primary on Tuesday night.
Beard: Yeah, I don't think there was any question that he was going to come in first place, but the big question, obviously, in Texas was whether or not he would win over 50%, and if he didn't, he would be forced into a runoff obviously, and that would be additional months of primary campaign and all of that, but he got 59% of the primary vote, so he doesn't have to worry about a runoff and he can focus entirely on Ted Cruz between now and Election Day.
Nir: It really shows the power of TV advertising even in this day and age, especially in a primary. Allred far outspent his rivals on TV. He may have even been the only one who actually had enough money to run a serious TV ad campaign, but he totally crushed it. His nearest opponent got only 17% of the vote. And the other thing it demonstrated is just how strong a fundraiser Allred has been to date, but now I think his fundraising is going to get turbocharged because, as we saw with Beto O'Rourke in 2018, progressives love to hate Ted Cruz, with good reason.
He's one of the biggest scumbags that this country has ever sent to the United States Senate, and I am sure that Allred's fundraising has already been turbocharged just since Tuesday night. I think he's going to put together a really big first quarter and hopefully put this race on the map. And he'll really need to because given how much defense Democrats are playing and how expensive and big Texas is, Allred is going to need O'Rourke-level fundraising, or something in that realm, to convince Democrats, "Yeah, we actually have a shot here." And I think it's plausible.
Beard: Yeah, back in 2018, I don't remember if any national money ever came in towards the end, but really, from the beginning, the idea was O'Rourke needed to raise this amount of money to be able to go and do the campaign himself, without relying on the DSCC or any other groups to come in with multimillion-dollar ad buys, because Texas is so big that the investment is so great for a national group to really go into Texas. So O'Rourke did that. He raised the money to make this a competitive race, as we saw in 2018. He only lost by about 3 points. Allred, I think, has the ability to raise similar sums of money. Like you said, obviously, Cruz is an amazing figure to raise money against because he's so odious.
The other observation I wanted to make is I think, beyond the money, which obviously not discounting that at all, Allred was able to consolidate a ton of establishment support, and I think that's something that still matters, particularly in Democratic primaries. Obviously, we'll talk about some messy Republican primaries later on in the show, and really, it seems like sometimes the only thing that matters in Republican primaries is Trump. But in Democratic sides, he consolidated a lot of labor support, other groups, and was able to, I think, signal to Democratic voters that this was sort of the establishment Democratic candidate in a positive way. And I think a lot of Democratic primary voters still want that. They want somebody they can all get behind.
Nir: Yeah, you might even say that Democratic primary politics are still normal. They still function the way that you imagine that they should, the way that the poli-sci 101 textbook might claim that they do, and that's a healthy sign for democracy because voters can't spend all their time focusing on elections like we do. We're obviously crazy people. And you need to take clues in primaries from sources that you trust and that still works on the Democratic side.
Now, of course, you might argue on the Republican side, while Trump is the ultimate source they trust, but it's a total mess, though, when you have these GOP primaries with half a dozen candidates and all of them are claiming that they're Trump's guy, whether or not Trump has actually endorsed someone. So yeah, I think that we have a better signaling apparatus in Democratic primaries that has all but broken down on the GOP side, and that's a good thing for us.
Beard: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we see that pretty consistently over on the Democratic side.
Nir: So we're going to bounce down to some House races. In Texas's 18th Congressional District, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee bounced back from a very bad defeat in the race for mayor of Houston last year. She had a very stiff challenge from former City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards, who, in fact, was at one point a Jackson Lee intern, but the incumbent defeated Edwards 60 to 37, so she will earn another term. This is a safely blue seat. Edwards, though, I think acquitted herself well, and I would not be surprised to see her run again, especially if and when Jackson Lee does eventually decide to retire.
Beard: Yeah, I think this shows nothing more so than the power of incumbency. Obviously, Jackson Lee was not in a great spot, you would think, coming off a really bad mayoral loss and then filing just before the filing deadline because that was how the timing worked out. And Jackson Lee had obviously spent a lot of money on this mayoral race, didn't necessarily have the funds that she would've normally had for something like this, but she had been a congresswoman there for a long time, and that counts for a lot, obviously—a pretty comfortable win. But I do think that Edwards' showing is not embarrassing by any means, 37%, and I think she, as you said, put herself in a reasonable position for a future run in the area.
Now, incumbency doesn't always count for that much, as we're seeing on the Republican side over on the other side of the state, in Texas 23, which is part of El Paso and Southwest Texas, Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican, was forced into a runoff. He only got 45% against a number of challengers. The second-place candidate is YouTuber, Brandon Herrera, who's basically known for being a huge gun-rights activist and social media person. So apparently, the Republicans out in Southwest Texas are very interested in that, and I'm not happy with Tony Gonzales for some of the votes he's taken recently.
Nir: Yeah, Gonzales has expressed openness to gun-safety regulations. The Uvalde school massacre happened in his district, so of course, the idea of trying to protect children from being murdered—and I can't believe that I have to say that—is disgusting to Republicans, and therefore, they're punishing Gonzales. I have to say, I really have no idea how this runoff will play out. You think he's at 45%, that's pretty close to 50%, but the runoff is quite a while from now, it's at the end of May, and turnout is going to be much, much lower. And you'd think in an election like that that an insurgent outsider might actually have the chance to screw over an incumbent.
Then there's the question of who is going to come to play, if anyone, in this race. Will Establishment Republicans Group show up for Tony Gonzales? Republicans gerrymandered this district. It used to be very competitive, a real tossup seat. Now it leans quite Republican, but maybe it would be at risk of flipping if they go with Herrera instead of Gonzales. So maybe the Congressional Leadership Fund is going to get nervous here. It's going to be interesting, but really, I have to say, it sickens me, the reason that Gonzales is facing this runoff in the first place, not that I feel bad for him. I just feel disgusted by the Republican Party.
Beard: Yeah, absolutely. Now, there's about 30% of the electorate who didn't vote for Gonzales or Herrera, and obviously, Gonzales only needs about 5 out of that 30% to get to the 50% mark. Of course, turnout will also be different in the runoff election, but the problem is that all of those voters went and voted for a candidate who wasn't the incumbent. So it may be harder than you think to get that 5% because a lot of these people, they all know who Tony Gonzales is, he's their representative. They went and they voted against him. So he’s got to convince some of them, "Hey, maybe you voted for one of these lesser candidates, but I'm better than Herrera." So it's something that's doable, and I'm sure he'll have plenty of money, but by no means do I think he's safe.
Nir: Speaking of incumbents getting thwacked, it was an absolute bloodbath in the Texas state House on Tuesday night. And I feel we need to lay a little bit of groundwork here, but basically, you had three major Republican figures—Donald Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott, and Attorney General Ken Paxton—going after different sets of incumbents in the state House for different reasons. Now, for Paxton, he's been embarked on this revenge tour because the state House Republicans impeached him last year, though he was ultimately acquitted by the state Senate for corruption. So he was targeting all of the incumbent Republicans in the state House who wanted to take him down.
Abbott's motivation, quite different. He basically wants to allow taxpayer money to be used to pay for private schools. They like to dress this up by calling it a voucher, but that's exactly what this is. And his voucher plan has run into serious obstacles in the state legislature. So he went after anti-voucher Republicans. And then there's Donald Trump. I actually think that Trump maybe played perhaps the smallest role of the three. You never know what Trump's motivations are, except pure rage and loyalty. But in any event, those three guys went after a whole bunch of different Republicans, including the state House speaker, and a whole lot of them lost, and a whole bunch more are getting forced into runoffs.
Beard: Yeah, so Speaker Dade Phelan, he's been forced into a runoff. He's got a very well-funded challenger, David Covey. He's actually trailing in this first round, 46 to 43, so he's got a lot to make up as the incumbent here to get to 50% in that runoff. So he's in a very difficult position. There's six Texas House Republicans who were opposed by Abbott, where Abbott endorsed their opponents, who lost outright, and another four were forced into runoff. So, like we said, being an incumbent that's forced into a runoff, that can be a difficult position.
Not that you can't win, particularly if you're close to 50, but it's really tough. There were also some other races where there were some strange alliances, where Abbott sided with some of the incumbents who had voted to impeach Paxton. So Paxton had endorsed some of the challengers. So it gets a little messy in there, but there was some clear evidence that Abbott and Paxton's advocacy for these more extreme Republicans was working and was bringing in a more hard-right turn to the Texas House.
Nir: Yeah, several other Paxton targets also lost, though the Texas Tribune, interestingly, they looked at the subset of races where Abbott and Paxton were on opposite sides, and Abbott got the better of Paxton, for sure. I think that Abbott's side won about half of them. There were, I think, around eight, and Paxton won one and the rest are going to runoffs. But no matter what, Beard, like you were saying, a crazier, more disturbing brand of Republican is going to be taking office in January of next year.
And it's really remarkable to think about. This is a state that Donald Trump won by 6 points, and the Republicans in leadership there are as bug-nuts crazy as the Republicans in Idaho. And you really got to wonder if at some point they're going to pay a price. Democrats have been hoping and praying and dreaming and fantasizing that that day will come, basically, every two years. And I don't necessarily know that 2024 is going to be different, but, man, either the dam is going to burst or Republicans will have essentially managed to do away with democracy before it happens.
Beard: So the state House is currently 86 Republicans to 64 Democrats, so Democrats need to pick up 11 seats to force a tie in the state House. I haven't looked, and I don't know if anybody's been able to look. Obviously, there's a lot of runoffs still to happen. How many of these incumbent losses are in seats that could potentially be competitive? I know at least a couple are in Trump +1, Trump +2 districts.
So it's very possible that this turns into some districts that were held by incumbent Republicans ended up being very competitive races that Democrats could potentially pick off. Whether that gets them anywhere close to the 75 number, who knows. But one of the problems Republicans may have is if Democrats do pick up seats, this whole idea to have this more conservative Texas House, if you defeat some Republicans but then half of them turn into Democrats, you maybe have not actually made that much progress into getting your majority of crazy Republicans if Democrats are able to succeed.
Nir: Well, I really hope you're right. There's one other piece of this Ken Paxton jihad that we need to mention before we move on to the other states on the docket. Voters also voted out three Republican judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Texas actually has two state Supreme Courts. It's one of only two states that do. The other is Oklahoma. Civil cases get appealed to the state Supreme Court, but criminal cases get appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. And this court had previously crossed Paxton.
It had said that the attorney general's office didn't have the power to unilaterally prosecute voter fraud, that he had to have the assent of local prosecutors, and these three judges who lost primaries had all ruled against Paxton in that case. But I almost wonder if there's another angle here, which is that Paxton is finally going on trial next month for a securities fraud indictment. He was indicted in 2015. It's absolutely astonishing. It has taken nine years for this case to come to trial. It's absolutely ridiculous. I could easily believe that Paxton is trying to line the bench and the state House with allies so that if he is convicted, that he has powerful people willing to do his bidding to get him off the hook.
Beard: Absolutely. I don't think you're going to find much better examples in the country of why judges should not be elected and should certainly not be elected in partisan primaries like this. Obviously, Ken Paxton has these criminal cases against him, and the idea that he can go and advocate and make a big difference in the election of the judges who will hear the appeals of his criminal case and get three of them defeated, even if it's about the voter fraud case, is what he claims, but the idea that Ken Paxton has affected who is on this court who is going to rule on his case is wild and is so inappropriate that it's really unbelievable.
Nir: Well, Beard, we could bang our heads against the wall ranting about Texas Republicans for many, many hours, but I think we need to change gears and bang our heads against the wall about North Carolina Republicans.
Beard: Yes, my favorite pastime. So North Carolina was another state that had its primaries. It has a governor's race, of course, this year, probably the most important governor's race in the nation, but we had a pretty good idea of who the nominees were going to be on the Democratic side, Attorney General Josh Stein, and on the Republican side, Lieutenant Gov. Mark Robinson. They had been the favorites since they declared, and they easily advanced, both comfortably over 50% against opposition.
Robinson, of course, is a crazy person, for lack of a better term. He's embraced countless conspiracy theories. He's denied Joe Biden's victory, of course. He's got a list of shockingly offensive statements targeting Jews, Muslims, women, the LGBTQ community, the civil rights movement. It's just like a whole load of craziness for years and years, and the Republican primary voters in North Carolina just eat it up. And meanwhile, Josh Stein is just your pretty conventional attorney general Democrat who wants to run a competent government.
Nir: We talk about Looney Tunes Republicans all the time, and some are nuttier than others, and sometimes you just get this one perfect quote that really encapsulates just what a freakazoid these guys are. Robinson posted on Facebook a number of years ago, and this post is still up by the way, he said, "I don't believe the moon landing was faked, and I don't believe 9/11 was an inside job, but if I found both were true, I wouldn't be surprised." He is like moon-landing-truther curious, and he is now the GOP's nominee in one of the biggest swing states in the nation.
Beard: And I do think, obviously, he's the lieutenant governor, he won an election, but from North Carolina, I know a lot of these Council of State races, we call all of these statewide offices below the governor “Council of State,” like lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, et cetera. They don't get a lot of attention, particularly. They're elected in a presidential year, so you've got the presidential race, you've got the governor's race, which gets a ton of attention, maybe federal races, but these Council of State races, they don't get a ton of attention.
So the fact that he won in 2020, it's not the same degree of attention that he's going to receive as a major-party nominee for governor. So I think he's going to be in for a rude awakening for how this campaign is going to go. Obviously, I'm very hopeful that Stein just kicks his butt the way we saw [Josh] Shapiro kick [Doug] Mastriano's butt in Pennsylvania in 2022—just a good candidate going up against a crazy person, and just wiping the floor with them. That would be incredible. I think North Carolina's not as movable in terms of big swings as Pennsylvania might be, so I don't expect that much of a blowout, but hopefully, Stein can get a good victory here.
Nir: I want to pick up on something you mentioned. It's instructive that you mentioned Shapiro because Stein, like Shapiro, is Jewish and he would be North Carolina's first Jewish governor. Robinson would be the state's first Black governor. Robinson is a total antisemite. He has approvingly quoted Adolf Hitler, and at this time of rising antisemitism, I really am scared to see where his mouth takes him in this election.
But I am also hopeful that if he does once again step in it on this front, that he really pays a price because it's one thing to spout off this antisemitic bullshit just into the ether, but it's quite another when you are going up against a high-profile Jewish opponent. And really, North Carolina Republicans are going to finally find out whether there is a price to pay for extremism. They always behave as though North Carolina is a dark-red, R+20 state, and we know it's not, and this is going to be the true test.
Beard: And talking about those Council of State races, the governor's race is not the only place where Republicans have nominated crazy folks. So Republicans actually have the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, which is one of the Council of State offices. Catherine Truitt is the incumbent Republican, but she lost her primary in a 52-48 upset to homeschooler Michele Morrow, who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6th, has attacked public schools—the thing that she would be in charge of, as, quote, “indoctrination centers.”
So clearly decided, "Hey, we don't need a public school teacher," which Truitt is a former public school teacher, "to be in charge of the public schools, even if she's a Republican. We need someone further to the right, somebody who hates public schools, to be in charge of them." And then pro-MAGA attorney Luke Farley won the GOP primary for the Labor Commissioner's office against the state rep. who was the party-establishment choice. So as we've seen with Republican primary voters, they love to go with the far-right crazies.
Nir: Yeah, the GOP slate, from top to bottom in North Carolina this year, is going to be completely freaking wild. And we also have to mention the attorney general's race. This is a super important post. This is the job that Josh Stein currently holds. Republicans nominated far-right extremist Dan Bishop, congressman. He didn't have any opposition to the primary. He was the author of the notorious H.B. 2. This is the infamous, quote-unquote, “bathroom bill” that led to the GOP losing the governor's race, unquestionably, in 2016. Roy Cooper ousting Pat McCrory. And he's going to go up against Democratic Congressman Jeff Jackson, who was gerrymandered out of his seat last year by Republicans. Jackson won his primary, and this is a good story, I'm sure he didn't enjoy dealing with this, but Republicans tried to rat-fuck that primary. They spent more than a million dollars to promote his main opponent, thinking that she would be easier to defeat in the general election.
Well, Jackson prevailed 55 to 33, and it really just goes to show you, well, a couple of things. First off, it's awesome that the GOP wasted a million bucks on this, but second, I just think that Democrats have a much better understanding of what it is that makes GOP primary voters tick than the reverse. And when Republicans try to meddle in Democratic primaries, it's really hard to think of examples when it works. And just simply trying to push the supposedly, quote-unquote, “more progressive” option was not really going to be the answer—kind of like what we were saying earlier, Beard, about how establishment signals still matter so much in Democratic primaries—and it was very clear that Jackson was the guy. And yeah, I just think that Democrats are always going to have greater success elevating MAGA nuts in GOP primaries than the other way around.
Beard: And I don't want to come off too insulting to Republican primary voters, but literally, usually, what Democrats do is just say, "Crazy person is too conservative for a location." And it just perks everyone up in the Republican Party. They're like, "You think he's too conservative? That's right up my alley. He is too conservative, you think? I'm going to vote for that guy!" It's not hard.
Nir: It's funny that you mention that because Democrats at least go through the motion of those fake attacks: "too close to Trump, loves the Second Amendment too much." But when Republicans try to pull this same kind of stunt, it's almost like they're running positive ads in favor of these candidates. I don't know why that maybe fig leaf of fake attacks by Democrats just feels a little bit more upright to me, as opposed to Republicans pretending to be all in for these lefty Dems.
Beard: Yeah, the reality is you can't just run an ad saying, "Democratic candidate is too progressive for this area," and have a bunch of Democrats be like, "Oh, let's go vote for that person." That's not how Democratic primary voters think. Sometimes they may vote for the more progressive candidate, but it's usually going to be about issues and it's going to be like, "Do we think this person is a good candidate who can win?" There just tends to be a lot more that goes into it.
Nir: That's really, really funny. That's such a good point because imagine if you had a Republican ad saying, "So-and-so is too liberal for North Carolina." Your median Democratic primary voter might sit back and think, "Oh wow, wait, hold on. What if they're too liberal? I should vote for the other candidate because we got to beat the Republicans."
Beard: Yeah, absolutely.
Nir: So we're going to switch gears a little bit to talk about one of the worst of the worst Republicans, but not just because he's a far-right loony, but because he tried to steal an election, or at least his top consultant did. Mark Harris, you'll recall from 2018, had his election results thrown out after one of his consultants orchestrated a massive scheme to interfere with absentee ballots in that race. Well, somehow he won his primary on Tuesday night, just barely. In North Carolina, you only need to clear 30% to avoid a runoff, and Mark Harris won 30.4% in the open 8th Congressional District. This is the seat that Dan Bishop has left open to run for attorney general.
A bunch of conservative billionaires actually spent seven figures to try to stop Harris. It's not exactly clear why they didn't like him, except for the fact that maybe they just think that election thieves shouldn't be in Congress. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not giving—
Beard: Too much credit.
Nir: —GOP billionaires way too much credit. But here's the thing now, because of Republican gerrymandering, this is a very solidly Republican seat and Harris's Democratic opponent, I was just looking up after the primary, hasn't reported raising any money. So this guy is almost certainly going to wind up in Congress now after he couldn't get to Congress because state officials threw out his election entirely and held a new election. I'm just absolutely gobsmacked.
Beard: Yeah, I guess there's nothing Republican voters like more than a candidate who screams about having the election stolen from them when they were the ones actually trying to steal an election. It fits a little too well almost. But I do think it really goes to show that the 30% margin for a runoff is pretty strange. North Carolina went to this a few years ago. It used to be 40%. A long time ago, it was 50%, but when I was growing up, it was 40%, and that at least had some logic to it.
There are other countries that use a runoff system that use 40% under sort of the idea that if a candidate surpasses 40%, they've at least got a healthy percentage of the voters behind them, so you don't need to necessarily go to a runoff. But 30% is so low. I'm like, "Why bother? Why have it at all? Because he got 30.4% of the vote, and that's sending him onto Congress.” So that threshold is very odd to me, but I guess he's going to be a congressman. I don't know.
Nir: Yeah, I think, though that threshold suggests to me that in a one-on-one race, he could be in a heap of trouble, especially against a well-funded opponent. The wild thing though, Beard, is that there are two other Republican primaries for open congressional seats that are going to runoffs where no candidate managed to get 30% of the vote. That's really strange. And also, the GOP race for lieutenant governor, same thing. No candidate even got 20% of the vote in that race. So I'd be like, "Are Republicans just going to keep lowering the primary runoff threshold? At 15%?" You know what? You could either get rid of it, or have instant-runoff voting. This is getting silly.
Beard: Yeah, there are plenty of states that just don't have a runoff, and that's not a perfect system either, obviously. Sometimes someone can win in a primary election with a very low percentage of the vote, but this system is just weird. So that's enough talking about North Carolina. We do have a few other states to talk about. So we're going to go to Alabama, where, obviously, the interesting races were as a result of the redistricting where Alabama 2 is now a second seat that is likely to send a Democrat to Congress. So that's now open because the Republican who represented it moved to the redistricted Alabama 1, resulting in an incumbent-on-incumbent matchup that was Rep. Barry Moore and Rep. Jerry Carl. So they faced each other in the Republican primary on Tuesday night, and Moore, from the old Alabama 2, actually narrowly defeated Carl, 51.5% to 48.5%. Moore, of course, is the more crazier Freedom Caucus guy.
So I guess it's no surprise that he ended up winning, even though he represented a smaller percentage of the new district than Carl did. And you can really see it on the map. The counties around Mobile where Carl was the representative went really heavily for Carl, while the counties on the eastern side went really heavily for Moore. And given the proportions, you would calculate it out to think that, "Oh, if this portion went heavy for Carl and this portion went heavy for Moore, Carl should actually be ahead in the end." But Moore was able to goose up his margins in his area and cut into Carl's margins just enough that he was able to pull it out. And I think him being the more conservative Freedom Caucus member is probably a big reason why he was able to pull it out when you would've probably thought Carl was the favorite.
And then just north of Alabama 1, of course, is the new Alabama 2, which, like I mentioned, is going to be sending, hopefully, a Democrat to Congress. There, we're going to runoff. There were a bunch of Democratic candidates. The leading candidate is Shomari Figures. He got 43.5% of the vote. And then in second place is state Rep. Anthony Daniels. He got 22.4% of the vote. So he's got a lot to make up if he's going to be able to catch Figures in the runoff and try to win this primary. He's going to really need to consolidate the voters who didn't vote for Figures in the first round.
Nir: The last state on the list on today's episode of "The Downballot" is the biggest one of them all, California. Before we get into it, Beard, we have to emphasize, it is so important to emphasize, California takes a long time to count its votes. If you see hot takes, even medium takes, even lukewarm takes, about what California's vote means over the next two weeks, it is too early. It will take at least that long for almost all the votes to get tallied. And you're going to see some ridiculous crap out there trying to add up the total D vote versus the total R vote in key districts or key races. But there's a very good chance that if you see Republicans leading in a particular race, things might balance out over the next couple of weeks. Now, they may not. There have been elections in the past where Republicans retain their edge or even increase their edge, generally speaking, after California's top-two primary.
But more often than not, Democrats have tended to perform better in large part because more liberal voters tend to wait until later to turn in their ballots. It's a strange phenomenon. Seems that young people are more in the habit of waiting to the last minute, and young people tend to lean further to the left. So I would not be at all surprised if we see a very different picture a couple of weeks from now. And also to that point, most races haven't been called yet. The races that we're looking at for the most part remain uncalled, either both slots in the top-two primary or the second slot. Though we do have one very big call in the very biggest race.
Beard: And California Senate, which was a race that had been sort of set up as this titanic struggle between a number of well-known Democrats for this open Senate seat in California, sort of petered out in the end. Rep. Adam Schiff had a big money advantage. He basically had the lead for the first slot in the top-two runoff for the entire time. He has placed first with the votes counted so far, with 33% of the vote. The question was, of course, "Was there going to be a second Democrat in this runoff, which would lead to a lot of Democrat-on-Democrat ads and money being spent?" But that didn't end up happening.
Republican Steve Garvey, who Adam Schiff spent a lot of time and money trying to drag into the runoff along with him, did so. Garvey is just behind Schiff in the current vote count. He's got 32% of the vote, so he's going to advance. He's almost certainly going to lose in November. It's California in a D-vs.-R statewide race. Schiff is probably going to wipe the floor with Garvey. And the other Democratic representatives who ran fell quite a ways behind. Katie Porter currently has 14%. Barbara Lee currently has 7%. Obviously, those figures may change as more vote comes in, but clearly, Schiff and Garvey are way far ahead and are going to be the ones to advance.
Nir: There are a few layers to this race. To me, I find it sad and disappointing that Porter and Lee are ending their congressional careers this way, especially Lee who is quite a bit older. This is almost certainly going to be the last race she'll ever run. Porter potentially could come back in some way, shape, or form. And it was very hard from the very beginning of this race to understand what their path to one of the top two slots ever was. Schiff just had incredible profile. And leading Trump's impeachment was an extraordinary thing to have on his résumé, and he was always going to have that plus more money. And those are really, really difficult things to overcome. And in the end, things played out, I think, pretty much exactly as we thought from early on in the race. But there may be a silver lining here.
There were a lot of people understandably upset with Adam Schiff for trying to ensure that Garvey would be his opponent. I wasn't one of them. We've said how much we despise the top-two system. Schiff was just playing by the rules that exist. But had there been, let's say, a race between Schiff and Porter, that would've been an expensive battle, unpredictable, and a ton of resources would've gone to that race. Instead now, look, Schiff will still raise a lot of money, but no one has to worry about the outcome here. Schiff is definitely going to beat Garvey. So some amount of money, some amount of attention and resources that would have gone to California, now hopefully can be spread around to other races elsewhere in the country.
Beard: Yeah, I guarantee you the DSCC and the DCCC are on the phone with Adam Schiff being like, "Hey, buddy, some of that money that you have that you're not going to need anymore, let's spread it across to some Democrats who really need it in some very competitive races."
Nir: Beard, I'm curious for your take on something. Some folks have said that turnout could be higher among Democratic voters in an all-D Senate race, which could potentially affect races further down the ballot, particularly House races. There are obviously several targeted GOP-held House seats that Democrats are hoping to flip. I'm a bit skeptical of that because this wouldn't have been the first time that we saw a D-on-D race. In fact, there was one in 2018 for the last time that Dianne Feinstein ran when she ran against Kevin de León. Maybe we might mention him again at the end of the show. And Democrats, of course, flipped a ton of seats in 2018. So I'm a little skeptical of that take, but maybe that was a wave year. Maybe it's a little different in 2024. I don't know. What do you think?
Beard: I'm pretty skeptical about anything downballot affecting turnout in a presidential year. I think the presidential race dominates so much, and so many people go out and vote. Turnout is much higher in a presidential year than in any other year, including in states that are not competitive. This is not just a swing-state phenomenon where turnout is high in Michigan and North Carolina and Arizona, or something. Millions and millions of people who only vote in presidential years in New York and California and Nebraska go out and vote because it's voting for president. It's the one that everybody knows.
So I would be pretty surprised if two Democratic campaigns in the Senate race would do a lot of turnout, particularly because they would be primarily focused on persuasion. I would think a Democrat-on-Democratic campaign is not going to try to out-turnout voters because it's going to be hard to know who your voters are, because it's not a traditional D-vs.-R race. So you have to focus more on persuasion because you have no guarantee like, "Oh, this group of people are our supporters. We just have to get them to vote." How do you know that if you have this theoretical Porter-Schiff race? Who are the Porter voters you need to turn out? You're not going to know, so you're going to have to focus on persuasion. So I don't really buy that argument.
Nir: Fair.
Beard: Now, we have a couple of congressional races that we're going to talk about. Things have not been called in these races, so of course, more vote is going to come in and things may change, but we just want to highlight them because they are the ones that matter in terms of top-two, and Democrats, in particular, are not getting locked out of the top-two runoff. Now, California's 22nd District is a district that we've talked about before, where there was concerns here. The Democrats’ favored candidate—former Assemblyman Rudy Salas ran in 2022—narrowly lost to the GOP incumbent Rep. David Valadao. So he was running for a rematch, but there was another Democratic elected official in the race. So there was some concern that he may get locked out by Valadao and Valadao's primary opponent who's a further right-wing guy. But at least in the initial vote, it looks like Salas is going to be okay.
Valadao is leading the current vote, with about 34%, Salas has 28%, the third-place candidate—that far-right Republican—has 22%. So barring something pretty unexpected in terms of the late vote, I think Salas should be good to advance and face Valadao in what should be a very, very competitive race. The other race that I want to flag at the congressional level is one that nobody really had any sort of eye on, and that was an open seat—California's 31st District. And this race had two main Republicans and a ton of Democrats. It had six Democrats. But it's a safely Democratic seat. The seat is not competitive by any means, but because of this top-two system, and because of the number of Democrats running in this open seat, which you often see, we've talked about North Carolina lieutenant governor's race and how nobody got 20% because there were so many Republican candidates running in the primary.
So just like here, there are so many Democrats running in the primary that there is a real risk that Democrats could have—and even could still be—locked out of this safely Democratic seat. Gil Cisneros, who is a former representative who lost and is back to reclaim a different seat than the one that he once had, he's leading narrowly. He's got, as of recording, 21.35% of the vote. So he's just over 21%. But the next two slots are the two Republicans who ran, and they have 21% of the vote and 19% of the vote. So Cisneros is only about 2.5% above the third-place candidate, who does not advance to the runoff. So you could imagine just a slightly different situation here where one of the other Democrats did a little bit better and Cisneros did a little bit worse, and he's down here, 18.5% instead of 21% and there are two Republicans advancing in a safe Democratic district.
Now, again, there are lots and lots of votes to count. The hope, obviously, is that there are more Democratic than Republican votes out there, and Cisneros will comfortably pad his lead a little bit. But this just goes to show how risky the top-two system is when a safely Democratic seat could conceivably had two Republicans advance to the top-two runoff.
Nir: This is just a coincidence, but the very first time that a top-two lockout reared its head, and it was super unexpected, was in 2012, which was the first year that California used this new top-two system, and Democrats wound up not advancing to the November general election for a very winnable congressional district. And ironically, that district was also numbered California's 31st.
Beard: Oh, wow.
Nir: Yeah. Now, those two districts have nothing in common. They do not overlap at all geographically. They just happen to share the same district number. California tends to pretty dramatically renumber its districts every 10 years, following redistricting. That was a really painful race. I certainly hope we don't have a repeat of that now, but the leading Democrat who wound up getting locked out of that race, he won two years later, and that's Pete Aguilar. And that's actually not a bad pedigree, because now he's one of the top Democrats in the House. So I'm not saying that Gil Cisneros, if he'll get locked out in 2024, he'll come back in 2026 and then he'll jump to the top ranks of leadership. We obviously don't want any kind of disaster like that. It really is just a coincidence that these two districts share a number. But my point is we have been dealing with this problem for a freaking long time, and it sucks, and it has to end.
Beard: Yeah. Just imagine Pete Aguilar with another two years of experience in Congress. That's what we lost. But yeah, we'll obviously continue to track these California races, and once we've got a fuller vote, we can have a better analysis of the primary results.
Nir: There are a ton more races we could have talked about. We have to wrap up this segment now. Like we've said, it'll still be a while before we know the final answers in a lot of these California races. So follow us at Daily Kos Elections, sign up for our newsletter, dailykos.com/morningdigest. We will be covering every single race call as it happens, and I'm sure we'll be talking about the late-called races in coming episodes. And then in a couple of weeks, we have two more states with big primaries. Illinois and Ohio are on the docket, so we're going to be discussing plenty more primaries in the weeks ahead.
Beard: That's all from us this week. "The Downballot" comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Drew Roderick, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.
