Two, No, THREE Big Special Elections Next Week!
Wisconsin's supreme court race is a 'spring general election,' but it's special to us.
As you may have noticed, Republicans are for some reason not terribly popular across America these days. And after this week’s surprise (OR WAS IT?) win by James Malone in a deep red Ohio Pennsylvania state Senate district that has never gone to a Democrat, there’s a hell of a lot of attention — and money — being focused on next Tuesday’s two special elections for open congressional seats in Florida, as well as the state supreme court race in Wisconsin. [Update: add “Ohio” and “Pennsylvania” to the states that Dok will inevitably switch with each other. Just how my brain does things.]
The two Florida elections will fill the seats previously held by the disgraced Republican Matt Gaetz, who resigned because everyone knows why, and Mike Waltz, who left Congress to become Donald Trump’s national security adviser. It is not yet known whether votes for Waltz will also go to Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg. The initial conventional wisdom was that both districts have such heavy Republican registration that they’d be easy wins for the GOP, but that was before the Trump administration started going off the rails, a few minutes after the inauguration. Republicans hope to win both seats, which would help pad out their slim majority in the House, but thanks to huge fundraising by Democrats, the GOP is starting to get a li’l bit nervous. That’s partly why Elon Money is sending a lot of fresh musk into Florida.
Elon and his election-buying cash machine are also trying to purchase the Wisconsin supreme court election, which will decide whether that state’s democracy-rescuing liberal majority remains intact. The 2023 election that elected Dem-backed Justice Janet Protasiewicz to the court, creating that liberal majority, was the most expensive judicial election in US history — until this year’s race blew it out of the water.
The math still favors the GOP candidates in both special elections in Florida. Congressional District 1, the seat formerly held by Gaetz, went to Trump by 38 points last fall; although Gaetz trailed Dear Leader by six points because he was Matt Goddamn Gaetz, he still won a 32-point victory over Democrat Gay Valimont, a gun violence prevention activist who’s running again in the special election. She’s up against Republican Jimmy Patronis, the state’s “chief financial officer” because why bother having a boring ol’ treasurer?
And in Congressional District 6, Trump won by 30 points, while Waltz thumped Democrat James David Stockton by 33. Democrat Josh Weil, a teacher, is running against Republican state Sen. Randy Fine, a rightwing dipshit who sponsored culture-war bills to end Disney’s special tax district (shifting the tax burden to local taxpayers) and to ban the scourge of “critical race theory,” which for some reason nobody talks about now that Republicans prefer freaking out about “DEI.”
On paper, these races should be slam dunks for the Republicans, both of whom have been endorsed by Trump, but oops, the Democrats are raising vast amounts of campaign contributions, with much of the cash coming from small donations by out-of-state donors. Valimont raised $6.3 million between January 9 and March 12, the most recent reporting deadline, compared to just $1.1 million for Patronis. Weil has done even better against Fine, pulling in $9.3 million in the same period, while Fine only brought in a bit under $600,000.
An anonymous GOP strategist griped to Politico that in the CD 6 race, “We are annoyed but not worried. Annoyed Fine hasn’t done jack shit for himself and is counting on the ecosystem to bail him out.”
And it turns out that even in Florida, people are kind of pissed at all the cuts to government jobs and services being pushed by Musk and his Awful Teen Bungle Force. CD 1 is home to a LOT of retired veterans — the most of any congressional district in the country —and while most voted for Trump, many aren’t so keen on seeing the VA dismantled. Valimont has made the GOP’s slash and burn tactics a central part of her campaign. Patronis, on the other hand, has tied himself to Trump no matter what, insisting that “Everything that President Trump has rolled out so far, we’ve been lockstep on. […] If Congress right now had a problem with what the president’s doing, you would see Congress act.”
Gosh, we hope Valimont is quoting that in stump speeches. Even if Republicans can’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat, Valimont and Weil could benefit if a lot of them were to stay home in disgust.
In the race between Weil and Fine, the numbers still very much favor Fine, but as we note, there’s also a perception that Fine might be trying to coast on the GOP registration advantage. It also may not help that in the 2024 presidential primary, Fine abandoned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, campaigning instead for Trump and claiming that DeSantis hadn’t done enough to stop antisemitism after the Hamas attack against Israel. Fine also doesn’t live in the district, but plans to move there. DeSantis first gained his national profile after winning the 6th Congressional District and being a loud asshole in Congress.
DeSantis isn’t mad, he really isn’t, although his comments on the race are something less than a stirring endorsement. He said that only the “liberal media” are framing the election as a referendum on Trump, you see.
“It’s a candidate-specific issue,” DeSantis said. “I think the district is so overwhelmingly Republican that there’s literally — it’s almost impossible for somebody with an ‘R’ by their name to lose that district. I would anticipate a Republican candidate is still going to be successful. Do I think they’ll be able to get even close to the margins that I received or President Trump received? No. Is that a reflection on the president? Absolutely not. It’s a reflection of the candidate running in that race.”
So yes, both these races could turn out to be squeakers. Should be interesting to see if this time around, Democrats really can capitalize on just how widely Republicans are despised.
Wisconsin: Big Doin’s In The Badger Badger Badger State!
Supreme court elections in Wisconsin are officially nonpartisan, but of course nothing is really nonpartisan anymore, including breakfast cereals. Tuesday’s race will determine whether the state supreme court keeps its current liberal majority, which has done a bang-up job of bringing back democracy in the Badger State by finally dumping the Republican gerrymander that created an artificial GOP supermajority for over a decade. And as we’ve noted previously, Musk is dumping a metric fuckton of money ($17 million at latest count) into the state to support grody Republican-backed Brad Schimel, a huge MAGA fan who claims the state Supremes “screwed” Trump by not reversing the 2020 election for him, thought that pardoning the January 6 rioters was hunky-dory, and insists that his opponent, Democratic-backed Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, is an “expert on lawfare” because she doesn’t support Republican voter suppression schemes.
Does Crawford have a campaign site we can feature prominently? She sure does!
At stake is whether the Wisconsin SCOTUS will revive the state’s 1849 abortion law, which makes “the willful killing of an unborn quick child” a felony, with no exceptions for rape or incest, and would impose a 15-year prison sentence on anyone performing the procedure. Plus all the democracy stuff. Schimel is a fan, because of course he is.
So far, early voting in the election is way ahead of the 2023 election that flipped the state supreme court to liberal control, the AP reports:
As of Tuesday, with just a week to go until the final day of voting, nearly 48% more early ballots have been cast compared with the same point two years ago, according to data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. More than 345,000 voters had returned ballots, either by mail or in person, compared with about 233,000 at this point two years ago during another race for a Supreme Court seat.
Republicans have even been urging their supporters to vote early, even if early voting is of the Devil, and they’ve all shrieked over the fact that Crawford has received campaign support from George Soros. Because Wisconsin doesn’t actually have partisan voter registration, it’s impossible to tell how much of the early vote is being turned out by either party. But D-leaning areas are having very high turnout:
Milwaukee County, the state’s largest county and the one that is home to the most Democrats, led all counties in ballots returned with 54,750. That is more than 46% ahead of this point two years ago. Liberal Dane County, the state’s second largest county and home to the state capital of Madison and the University of Wisconsin, has also seen a 46% increase.
That said, Republican-leaning counties have also seen high turnout, so who knows? We’re inclined to think Wisconsin doesn’t want to throw doctors in jail, and that Elno’s role in wrecking the federal government will be a greater negative than all the money he’s pumping into the state, so we’re cautiously optimistic.
[Politico / AP / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / NBC News / Florida Phoenix / Gay Valimont for Congress / Josh Weil for Congress / AP / AP / Crawford for Wisconsin]
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In keeping with the header picture, I should also note that Josh Weil has a cat named "Chatterbox"
Also yes, of course the D state senate win Tuesday was Pennsylvania, not Ohio, and I was looking right at our headline when I typed "Ohio." It's the only brain I have, unfortunately.
Being the direct opposition of Moms For Liberty, I have had more than my share of experience with Randy Fine, who is a vile human of the lowest quality.
Good Randy Fine self own tho: On his FB profile a few years ago he stated "My pronouns are You. Are. A. Fucking. Moron."
Florida journalist responded: "Good to know. We'll refer to you by your chosen pronouns".