You’re reading The TNR Blue Book. Get daily scoops, strategy, and developments inside the liberal ideas factory delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for free. |
|
|
|
GOOD MORNING, HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING: So much for polls, eh? Francesca Hong’s supposed 20-point lead over David Crowley in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary vaporized in a matter of days as Crowley eked out a roughly 3,200-vote win last night (out of nearly 800,000 cast). Maybe the polls were wrong about Hong’s lead all along, or maybe a lot of voters got nervous about Hong’s November viability after some old tweets emerged about the police and Thanksgiving. GOP nominee Tom Tiffany was undoubtedly planning on talking about those two topics (plus communism) nonstop until November 3. Now he can’t. MILWAUKEE ABSENTEES: Crowley benefited to some extent from the late counting of Milwaukee County absentee ballots, which are apparently taken to one central location and counted en bloc late at night. He picked up about 1,200 votes in the absentee count—interesting because while Milwaukee is his home base, some absentee ballots were presumably cast during the 10-day period in July when he’d briefly dropped out of the race. PROGRESSIVE WINS: In other results, the party’s progressive wing still had a pretty good night. Peggy Flanagan pasted the AIPAC- and crypto-friendly Angie Craig in the Minnesota Democratic Senate primary, showing clearly what Democratic primary voters don’t want in 2026 (and 2028, probably), and Matt Little, the most progressive of the three candidates to succeed Craig in the 2nd district, prevailed handily. PILLOW TALK: Pour one out for Mike Lindell, who lost the Minnesota GOP gubernatorial primary. He trailed state House Speaker Lisa Demuth by 11 points. But, true to form, Lindell—who wanted Donald Trump to declare martial law in 2020 and had to pay a voting-systems employee $2.3 million in a defamation case—has not conceded, instead alleging unspecified anomalies in the count. THERE IS SOME JUSTICE IN THE WORLD: By the way, Lindell’s net worth, once pegged at north of $200 million, is now reported to be zero. MORE ON TRUMP’S AIR FORCE ONE STUNT: You may have seen some right-wingers trying to compare what Donald Trump did in Ankara, Turkey, to something Bill Clinton did in Pakistan in March 2000. Don’t buy it. Yes, Clinton secretly boarded a different plane in that global hotspot, but the press was informed, and human beings were not used as a decoy. USA Today’s Susan Page, who was covering the trip in 2000, told The Washington Post her version of events, and former Clinton press aide Joe Lockhart took to Facebook to debunk the right-wing spin. And Trump, of course, can’t stop lying about it. |
Could Jon Husted be Sherrod Brown’s ideal opponent? |
Sherrod Brown | Daniel Lozada/Bloomberg/Getty Images |
We’re taking a look outside of Washington during Congress’s recess, highlighting some of the top battleground House and Senate races. Today, we’re focused on Ohio, where former Senator Sherrod Brown is fighting to represent the state once again in the U.S. Senate. Brown, who served three Senate terms before losing to Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024, is running against Jon Husted, whom the governor appointed to fill the state’s other Senate seat—the one JD Vance vacated when he was elected vice president that year. Since taking the seat last year, Husted has consistently voted for President Donald Trump’s agenda, repeatedly voting against resolutions that sought to curb the war in Iran. Husted previously served as Ohio’s lieutenant governor and, before that, Ohio’s secretary of state. Despite this history, "not that many people know who he is in Ohio, to be honest," said David Cohen, professor of political science at the University of Akron. "Jon Husted is a bit of a mystery to a lot of people." What they do know about him tends to be negative, Cohen added, citing his "lockstep" votes for Trump’s agenda, contributions from Epstein associate and billionaire Les Wexner (the Husted campaign has pledged to donate them), and his testimony in a corruption case involving the utility company FirstEnergy. Husted testified in March for the defense in the FirstEnergy case, which Cohen called "Ohio’s biggest political scandal in history." The central allegation of the ongoing case is that FirstEnergy funneled some $60 million to various state GOP politicians to pass a bill favorable to its interests. Husted has not been accused of wrongdoing in the case. His testimony involved a dinner between the then–governor elect and FirstEnergy executives. Before the scandal was public, Husted’s 2017 campaign for governor received support in the form of dark money contributions from FirstEnergy. Brown’s campaign has emphasized Husted’s role in the FirstEnergy trial, his past campaign contributions from Wexner, and his support for building data centers in Ohio. "It’s a no-lose issue for Democrats," Cohen explained. "Data centers are universally hated by people on the left and on the right and in the middle." Husted’s adherence to Trump’s agenda could be the biggest gift of all for Brown’s campaign. The war in Iran and subsequent cost of living increases are deeply unpopular among voters, and could be enough of a motivator for Democrats to turn out for Brown and independents to push him over the edge. The unpopularity of Trump and his agenda has created "an opportunity that we haven’t seen really for 20 years since 2006, when the Bush administration was struggling so badly in the wake of Katrina and other things," Cohen said. "I think it’s possible not only [for] Sherrod Brown, but you may see a clean sweep of the statewide Democratic candidates this year." Husted and other Ohio Republicans also risk being damaged by the scandal around Representative Max Miller, who is accused of abusing his daughter and ex-wife (who is the daughter of Ohio’s senior senator, Moreno). Miller, who represents Ohio’s 7th congressional district, has persisted with his reelection campaign, despite the allegations. Voters’ distaste for Miller could boost his Democratic challenger Brian Poindexter, as well as Brown, particularly if some Republican voters simply stay home. Husted avoided commenting on Miller’s candidacy until late last week, when he called on Miller to step aside. But despite the favorable environment, Brown still faces a tight race. Ohio has become redder over the past decade. Trump won the state in all three of his presidential elections. Republicans control all statewide offices, both chambers of the state’s legislature, and the majority of the state’s House delegation. The Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss-up, and polls from June are split, with one showing Husted up three points, another showing Brown up three points, and a third with Brown up four points. Brown lost to Moreno in 2024 by just 3.6 percentage points. In that race, Brown lost eight counties that he won in 2018: Ashtabula, Erie, Lake, Mahoning, Ottawa, Portage, Trumbull, and Wood. All eyes will be on those northern counties this November. In 2024, Brown was plagued by negative ads that attacked him for his support for transgender people. He also struggled to maintain distance from Kamala Harris, who was running at the top of the ticket. Ultimately, Brown received 120,000 more votes than Harris did in 2024, outperforming her by over seven percentage points. Experts expect Brown to handily win the state’s blue urban areas. But he’ll need to shrink Husted’s margins in the red suburban and rural parts of the state, too. Suburban areas, home to about half of the state’s population, tend to have lots of independent voters, who Cohen says "are just kind of ripe for capture by Sherrod Brown and by Democrats in general" in 2026. The task isn’t necessarily to win these counties outright, but rather to siphon enough votes away from Husted in these crucial districts to carry the state as a whole. |
Greg Sargent talks with elections expert Rick Hasen about Trump’s "national emergency" threat on his Daily Blast podcast.… Felipe De La Hoz updates us on ICE’s airports crackdown.… Edith Olmsted on Samuel Alito’s fossil fuel millions—and his refusal to recuse himself from an upcoming case involving Exxon. |
Wisconsin’s Francesca Hong may have gotten most of the Democratic gubernatorial headlines this week, but in the Southwest, two other party hopefuls are making unusual pitches to the public as well. In Texas, a central component of gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa’s message, writes the Houston Chronicle’s Jeremy Wallace, is that she’s the only thing standing between America and a near-permanent GOP majority in Congress via gerrymandering and new census counts. (Wallace breaks down the numbers.) In Arizona on Tuesday, Governor Katie Hobbs announced the running mate pick that she’s been teasing for over a week, naming former Republican Mesa Mayor John Giles to her ticket. Giles, an independent now, split with his party in 2021 over a nondiscrimination ordinance intended to protect LGBTQ+ residents and endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024. He is also, the Arizona Capitol Times notes, "a member of the typically conservative Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a religious affiliation he shares with Hobbs’ opponent, Congressman Andy Biggs." Is a new, underwater front opening in the data center wars? Maine Public profiles a new proposal to build a "submerged" data center in Passamaquoddy Bay. The idea was famously tested in Microsoft’s Project Natick off the coast of Scotland in a pilot program that hasn’t been active in years; Maine Public notes that "earlier this year, another submerged data center was reportedly deployed in China." Residents of Eastport, Maine, who worry about damage to the local economy, particularly if the data center heat drives out the lobsters, are having none of it. "Speakers from across the political spectrum lambasted the idea" at a recent gathering, Maine Public reports. One of the more memorable quotes, from Eastport City Manager Brian Schuth: "I have said it’s the equivalent of an idea scrawled on a bar napkin." Of note: Both chambers of Maine’s state legislature passed a temporary moratorium on data centers larger than 20 megawatts this past spring—a measure spearheaded by state Democrats—only for Democratic Governor Janet Mills to veto. The measure would not have affected Passamaquoddy Bay, though, as the application by developer DeepGreen Western Passage would not meet this threshold. |
|
|
