In this edition: Democrats vs. socialism in Buffalo, six easy steps to steal the presidency, and liberals get organized in Hawaii.
Yes, I had wings while I was in Buffalo, you can stop asking me, and this is The Trailer.
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BUFFALO — In his first, second, third and fourth campaigns for mayor, Byron Brown met some resistance in the city's Old First Ward. On Saturday, marching through its streets for a “halfway to St. Patrick's Day” parade, voters in the White working-class neighborhood welcomed Brown as a savior.
“Keep it up,” said Patrick Gorman, 49, hugging the mayor and reminiscing about a picture they'd taken together 15 years ago.
“He's been very good for Buffalo,” said Sharon Hall, 72, whose family pulled the mayor over to their picnic spot to thank him.
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“Save us!” said Greg Kuminski, 49, hoisting a can of Labatt Blue, as if joining the mayor in a toast.
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“The support is overwhelming,” said Brown.
It was a warm reception for a Democrat who, thanks to a bungled primary campaign and a doomed series of lawsuits, will not appear on Buffalo's Nov. 2 ballot. Instead Brown, 62, is running as a write-in candidate against India Walton, the 39-year old community organizer who, after winning the Democratic primary in June, looked certain to become the city's first socialist mayor. The mayor's allies have poured resources into a campaign to beat Walton with independents, Republicans and Democrats who can be convinced that she would send Buffalo hurtling toward chaos.
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“He really is not a nice person,” Walton said in an interview at her downtown campaign office. “In my opinion, if he were really trying to do what's best for this community, he would have conceded. He would have facilitated a productive transition.” Alone on the ballot — Republicans did not field a candidate — Walton must defeat the mayor again, and with a larger electorate.
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The race between Brown and Walton — two other write-in candidates appeared in a debate last week but have little campaign infrastructure — is a test for New York's increasingly well-organized left, and for a style of business-friendly Democratic politics that the rest of the party remains more comfortable with. The anti-socialism messaging that Republicans deploy against Democrats is being deployed in Buffalo by Democrats against a Democratic nominee.
“It's the same story since 2016,” said Jeremy Zellner, 42, the chairman of the Erie County Democratic Party, which has supported Walton since she won the primary. “You're seeing the Bernie Sanders types who India is aligned with, versus the party establishment. The difference is that as soon as she won the nomination, I was on board.”
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Walton, who previously ran a nonprofit that bought vacant land to protect it from developers, wanted to scale that up citywide, put new scrutiny on the police department and prioritize local worker co-ops over courting large corporations to come to Buffalo. Brown, who like Walton is Black, warned that Walton would make the city more dangerous, and end the “Buffalo renaissance” that had people moving to the city, albeit slowly, after decades of decline.
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“There were a lot people, after the primaries, who said: ‘If Ms. Walton is mayor, I will move out of the city of Buffalo, I will move my business out of the city,’” Brown said in an interview. “There was even some concern that we might be downgraded on our credit rating, if there wasn't confidence that we could win this race.”
Brown, by his own admission, failed to make that argument in the primary. First elected in 2005, he had never faced a credible challenge, from the right or the left. He was floated as a potential history-making replacement for Hillary Clinton when she left the Senate — he had already been Buffalo's first Black mayor — and led the state Democratic Party in Andrew M. Cuomo's second term as governor.
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Republicans, focused on other races in surrounding Erie County, did not expect Brown to be overwhelmed by Walton, backed by left-wing campaign organizations that saw opportunity: People's Action, Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party. The mayor had political vulnerabilities, including a long-running FBI probe of corruption at city hall — unwelcome attention, though it did not involve him — and lasting anger over a 2020 incident in which a Black Lives Matter activist was injured by police. While Walton campaigned, Brown barely acknowledged her, then watched as she beat him by nearly 5 points.
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“People feel good about the energy they see from me now,” Brown said. He had lost 10 pounds since June, he added, after the scramble to win a write-in campaign began.
The pressure was on Walton within days of the primary. A local ABC News affiliate revealed that she had once been accused of $295 worth of food stamp fraud, that she and an ex-husband once owed $749 in back taxes — both bills were repaid — and that she'd once had her license and car registration suspended.
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Walton acknowledged all of it, saying that “everything that I've been through has prepared me to lead.” Brown said he was not focusing on her past, apart from arguing that she had “no relevant experience” and “no relevant qualifications” to run the city. Still, Walton regretted not defining herself before Brown and the media could, and her reputation was damaged. By mid-August, public polling showed Brown ahead of Walton.
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“She's a criminal,” said James Slattery, 54, a Brown voter who did not say what party he belonged to when asked why he supported the mayor. Asked to explain the problem he had with Walton, he simply said, “Socialism.”
Brown, like other incumbents seeking a way back after losing primaries, sought out a broader electorate that included voters like that. Just over 23,000 Democrats had voted in the primary, less than a fourth of all registered voters. While Trump won just 19 percent of the vote in Buffalo, that added up to nearly 19,000 ballots — more than were cast for either Democrat in the June primary. “Write Down Byron Brown” signs, visible in the east Buffalo neighborhoods where the mayor's career began, have been appearing on lawns underneath “thin blue line” flags.
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“We've pretty much ignored party affiliation,” said Christopher Scanlon, a Democratic council member whose district covers the Old First Ward, and who has endorsed Brown. “We want everyone to get out and vote.”
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Brown has worked to keep Democratic and labor allies on his side, with frequent success; Gov. Kathy Hochul, who grew up in Buffalo's suburbs and started her political career in Erie County, has stayed neutral.
Brown has separately tried to force his way onto the ballot. In New York, the deadline for new party ballot access was May; in August, Brown began circulating petitions for a new Buffalo Party, ready to argue in court that the early deadline was unconstitutional.
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The gambit did not work, but it shook up the race, putting the “Write down Byron Brown” campaign on ice for a few weeks and drawing mostly negative attention. Initially, a judge whose brother had donated more than $11,000 to Brown's campaigns ruled that he could appear on the ballot. Walton appealed, and two more courts sided with her. After a delay, Brown-free ballots were printed, both candidates had spent tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers and some voters were left wondering why he picked the fight at all.
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“He's been a good mayor,” said Dru Hites, 68, who had supported Brown in the past but was voting for Walton in November. “But he's been arrogant. It's against the rules to do what he did with the ballot.”
Walton and her allies on the left saw another advantage in the ballot fight: It revealed the breadth of Republican and developer support for Brown. According to the Investigative Post, one-third of signatures for the Buffalo Party were collected by Republicans and members of the Conservative Party, some of whom did not live in Buffalo.
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“We had the intuition that this was a Republican-backed write-in campaign,” Walton said. “It was very telling.”
Brown had been open about courting non-Democrats, and even put some in his administration. Kevin Helfer, the Republican who lost to Brown in 2005, became the city's parking commissioner five years later, and still holds that role. But he was sensitive about being connected to the region's right-wing fringe, and distanced himself from local GOP activist Carl Paladino, widely loathed by Democrats, as he pledged to “destroy” Walton. Paladino returned the favor by calling him a “mope” and urging other businesspeople unhappy with the primary result to “stay home” and “let the chips fall where they may.”
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That helped Walton, who has continued to expand her campaign, hiring new manager Drisana Hughes on Monday. Some unions stuck with the mayor, while she got the support of Workers United Upstate New York, the union working to organize a Starbucks for the first time ever.
“She's the Democratic nominee, and she has the interest of working people in mind,” said Gary Bonadonna, the union's leader, after making the endorsement.
The Erie County Democratic Party has also stuck with Walton, with signs naming her as the “Democratic nominee” papering its office and planted throughout the city. But the party is ready to welcome Brown back if he wins in November. Given that a Democrat will still run Buffalo come January regardless of whether Walton or Brown wins, county party chief Zellner said Democrats are focused on winning countywide down-ballot races, in which Republicans are competitive, and already running against Walton.
“People here think socialism is ridiculous,” said Frank Bogulski, 50, a Republican candidate for county legislature in a suburban district. “There's an epidemic of violence in the inner city, and they’re worried it could spread.”
Brown, said Bogulski, had kept “a steady hand on the wheel” and did not worry voters outside the city as much. While Brown accused Walton of wanting to defund the police, the party was investing to make Kimberly Beaty, a longtime police officer, the county's first Black female sheriff.
“We're doing whatever India is asking of us, and helping her,” Zellner said. “But that race is not a race that is critical for this organization. Holding that majority in the legislature, winning that sheriff's office, and also winning our controller's office is critical. We have limited resources that we're prioritizing.”
Walton's resources are limited too. She would welcome visits from supporters like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), she said, as the campaign had not initially planned to have such a competitive general election. The campaign had also accrued expenses she did not expect when she entered the race. For a few weeks, she said, she had hired security to stay with her at large events. On Thursday, just as the mayor's Buffalo Party gambit was losing in court, she ran an errand, and said she was recognized and confronted by an angry voter.
“He chucked his hot cup of coffee at me, and he flipped me off,” said Walton, who stands five feet tall. “You don't have to vote for me. You don't have to even like me. But I have not done anything wrong and I cannot for the life of me understand why people are so angry at me. It's not like I cheated. I didn't steal anything. I ran a clean campaign and I won. And someone wants to harm me, physically? All of that when I'm trying to do the right thing.”
Reading list
“Two GOP operatives indicted for allegedly routing money from Russian national to support Trump campaign,” by Felicia Sonmez and Isaac Stanley-Becker
Yes, this is still happening.
“India Walton still has a general election to win, and Buffalo’s elite aren’t making it easy,” by Justin Sondel
Another view from the ground in Buffalo.
“Think all politics are local? The California recall says most politics are now national,” by Dan Balz
How partisan pro-vaccine appeals gave Gavin Newsom a landslide win.
“‘It’s spreading’: Phony election fraud conspiracies infect midterms,” by David Siders and Zach Montellaro
Conceding defeat? That's so 2019.
“Virginia Republicans push early voting in race for governor in a shift from last year,” by Karina Elwood
The GOP tries to get its base trusting pre-Election Day voting again.
2020, continued
Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's “Peril,” which hits bookstores today, includes scoop after scoop about the 2020 election and the 45th president's attempts to subvert it. For the first time, it reveals a six-point memo from John Eastman, a conservative attorney who was not in Trump's fold before the election, which laid out his thinking on how Vice President Mike Pence could toss out the electoral votes from seven states that backed Joe Biden.
Starting from the premise that the Electoral Count Act is “likely unconstitutional,” it suggested that Pence could accept challenges to the seven states — Republicans had endorsed rival slates of electors in each — and discount the states entirely, giving Donald Trump a 232-222 majority of the 454 remaining electors. If that were challenged, Eastman suggested that the House, where each state gets a single vote, could install Trump again, and there would have been little but “howls” from the Democrats.
“The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission — either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court,” Eastman wrote. “Let the other side challenge his actions in court.”
Eastman's role wasn't a secret on Jan. 6, and neither was his legal theory. As Matt Gertz of Media Matters noted, Eastman appeared on former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon's podcast that day to insist that the electors from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were “illegally” awarded, and that Pence could have acted. (New Mexico is the odd man out here: Biden's 10-point win faced no serious legal challenge, but Republicans issued their own alternate elector list anyway.)
In Wisconsin, where Republicans have empowered former Judge Michael Gableman to probe the 2020 election, a video released Monday seemed to answer conservative questions about the process — which only began after Trump pressured House Speaker Robin Vos to start it. Over five minutes, Gableman explained that his effort could not overturn the election but that every election official needed to cooperate with his probe to determine whether fraud had occurred.
“The responsibility to demonstrate that our elections were conducted with fairness, inclusivity and accountability is on the government and on the private, for-profit interests that did work for the government,” Gableman said.
Trump himself has continued to ask states to undo the election results, seizing on any report of discrepancies in audits unfolding now 10 months since ballots were cast and counted. In a Friday letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump pointed at an audit of ballots in Fulton County, and its inability to confirm the chain of custody for thousands of ballots — which the audit's supporters have cited as a reason to check the entire ballot cache for counterfeits.
“I would respectfully request that your department check this and, if true, along with many other claims of voter fraud and voter irregularities, start the process of decertifying the election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner,” Trump wrote.
Ad watch
Byron Brown, “Police.” The only TV ad running in Buffalo's race for mayor right now is this one for the incumbent mayor waging a write-in campaign, with a lineup of police officers warning that Democratic nominee India Walton would eliminate their jobs with budget cuts. The focus is not just on public safety, but racial equity — two officers, finishing each other's point, say that “since the city is required to lay off the newest officers first,” any attrition in the police force would affect “women and people of color.”
Terry McAuliffe, “Doctor.” The Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia keeps using paid media to emphasize his pandemic mitigation stances: He favors mandates for educators and masks in schools, and GOP nominee Glenn Youngkin does not. “Just like Donald Trump, Glenn Youngkin won't listen to doctors and scientists,” says a McAuliffe-supporting doctor, Joseph Sakran. Youngkin has tried to settle the issue by saying he'd let Virginians choose the vaccine, and would recommend they get it.
Republican State Leadership Committee, “Partners.” This ad does something fairly uncommon, and something becoming more common, to go after Alex Askew, a Democratic state delegate in Virginia. It quotes Askew saying that Democrats in the commonwealth can “run on the record that President Biden and our folks and partners in Washington, D.C., are doing.” That's not something you often see — references to the president in GOP ads have been far less frequent than references to famously left-wing members of Congress, and indeed, Missouri Rep. Cori Bush (D) appears here with a quote about “defunding the police.” The ad's kicker is something we've started to see more of: Askew makes a wry-sounding remark about being “attached to the Washington liberal Democrats,” and the ad plays it straight.
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Poll watch
“Do you think Joe Biden is a strong leader, or not?” (Fox News, 1,002 registered voters)
Yes: 45% (-4 since October 2020)
No: 53% (+8)
Even before a withdrawal from Afghanistan that went far worse than the president had suggested it could, criticism of Biden began to find a theme. It's about competence, with Republicans pointing to problems that did not exist yet (the aftermath of the Taliban peace deal), or disappeared temporarily (an increase in gas prices) under Donald Trump. Fox's top line finds Biden's approval rating basically even, better for him than some other national polling. But for the first time since the campaign, pollsters asked voters how they rated Biden's strength overall, and found it flagging. Sixteen percent of people who voted for Biden say he is not a “strong leader,” while twice as many people in that group say they disapprove of “how the Biden administration handled the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
2021 Virginia gubernatorial election (Washington Post/Schar School, 728 likely voters, 907 registered voters)
Likely voters:
Terry McAuliffe (D): 50%
Glenn Youngkin (R): 47%
Registered voters:
Terry McAuliffe (D): 49%
Glenn Youngkin (R): 42%
The Post's first look at the Virginia race found what every other pollster has: a small lead for the Democrat, partially contingent on whether Democrats get excited about voting. The president's approval rating in Virginia has slipped to roughly 50-50 among registered voters, which means Youngkin is not winning every Virginian with a negative view of the president. McAuliffe holds leads on handling the pandemic and abortion rights; Youngkin leads, albeit narrowly, on crime and taxes. The Republican's biography-heavy ad blitz has also given him a lead on “the economy,” which McAuliffe tried to hack away at in last week's debate by warning that antiabortion legislation could cost the state jobs. (Princess Blanding, a Black police reform activist, is on the ballot as the Liberation Party candidate but has gotten little attention and no debate invitations.)
Biden job approval (Selzer & Co, 805 Iowa adults)
Disapprove: 62% (+10 since June)
Approve: 31% (-12)
This is not just the worst approval rating Biden has seen in a state where he campaigned last year — it's the worst presidential approval rating the pollster has found since the doldrums of George W. Bush's administration. While voters are most sour on Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal, the movement has been driven by a collapse of faith in Biden's pandemic response, steeper than we've seen in any poll. In the summer, Biden enjoyed a nine-point lead on the question. In September, that fell to a 24-point deficit. All of that occurred while a special election in Ankeny, part of the suburban Des Moines region where Democrats have made gains, went to the GOP by a narrower margin than the Trump-Biden race.
In the states
Ohio. A sixth well-established Republican has entered the state's 2022 U.S. Senate primary: Matt Dolan, a state senator best known for being a partial owner of the Cleveland Indians. Dolan had spent months exploring a potential bid, and jumped in as the scramble for the party's nationalist/outsider lane got even more crowded — Josh Mandel, J.D. Vance, Mike Gibbons and Bernie Moreno are all running in it. While Mandel had been a state representative and state treasurer, no other Republican in the race has held elected office.
“I'm the only candidate in this field who has a positive record of producing for Ohio,” Dolan, told WVXU. “The only one who has actually done things.”
Dolan was greeted with an eye-rolling statement from Donald Trump, which criticized the baseball team for planning a name change, to the Guardians, next year. “Matt Dolan, the son of the owner of the team, said he is against Cancel Culture,” Trump said. “Do those two things really work together? In any event, I know of at least one person in the race who I won’t be endorsing.”
Nevada. Former senator Dean Heller joined the 2022 GOP primary for governor Monday, seeking a comeback after his charmed political career was halted by a 2018 loss to Sen. Jacky Rosen (D). Former Democrat and North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee and Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo were already in the race, but Heller is the first candidate with experience as an elected Republican, and he told reporters at his campaign launch that he would govern as a conservative. “As governor, I'll get the most conservative abortion laws that we can have in this state, regardless with who's controlling the legislature at the time,” he said.
California. Los Angeles City Council member Kevin de Leon jumped in the 2022 race for mayor, centering on his story as a child of immigrants and his work to set up housing for the region's homeless population. “The people of Los Angeles deserve to know that they are not alone, that their next mayor knows what housing insecurity feels like,” de Leon said at his announcement. One day earlier, Jessica Lall of the Central City Association joined the race, but de Leon is better-known, both for a 2018 run for U.S. Senate and from clashes between liberals and moderates on the city council.
Meet a PAC
What it is: Our Hawaii Action, a nonprofit launched Monday in Honolulu.
What it's doing: Running ads to pressure Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii), who represents the most safely Democratic district of any moderate, demanding that the bipartisan infrastructure bill be passed before budget reconciliation is finished. (Biden carried it with 64 percent of the vote.) In radio ads, it warns that Case may prevent “historic investments in health and education” and “tank Joe Biden's presidency.” The effort raised money quickly, and is spending more than $100,000 on ads and mail.
Who's behind it: A coalition of liberals in Hawaii, including Kaniela Ing, a former state legislator and democratic socialist who ran for the seat now held by Case in 2018. In an interview, Ing emphasized that the group was not taking a position on Case's reelection. “It's not personal,” he said, “but Ed Case's position here comes from his own personal agenda, not from the people of Hawaii. And that doesn't happen if we have stronger political infrastructure in Hawaii.”
How it's working: Asked to respond, Case's campaign pointed to a newsletter he published for constituents on Monday. “Some who disagree with my positions and efforts have begun running ads,” he said. “Although I accept full debate and strong disagreement, I don’t accept the intentional misinformation woven throughout these ads. So straight from me: this is what’s going on, what I think and what I’m doing to find the best overall way forward for our Hawai’i and country.”
Countdown
… 42 days until elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and primaries in Florida’s 20th Congressional District
… 102 days until the election in Florida's 20th Congressional District