It is the final weekend before the first major series of weeks where congressional primaries are happening. In addition to a number of primaries happening in May and June 2024, most of them are among the most consequential where there are primary challengers to incumbent Congressmen, meaning that the question of how bad the turnover in the next Congress will be answered after months of speculation. However, in the lead up to this Tuesday the 7th when Indiana will have their primaries, I will be covering some stories regarding gubernatorial news leading into 2026, ballot access and third parties, an indictment of a sitting Congressman, and new polling. Let’s get into the stories.
Starting off with the gubernatorial news, California governor Gavin Newsom learned a precious lesson this past week: never give the public an inch on public opinion. He asked Californians to submit designs for a new California one-dollar coin in what was supposed to be a symbolic, commemorative occasion. One would expect in a less sarcastic and moderated-debate climate that California residents would submit a proposal with a bear, the Golden Gate Bridge, nature, the beach, the Los Angeles skyline, or something else to the Golden State. Instead, they submitted designs including homeless encampments and other sharp critiques of the current Governor indicating that those who were engaged with politics were not going to give him an optical victory on something as simple as a coin. Nevertheless, there were probably some less controversial options that will be chosen for political as well as pragmatic reasons for state government officials.
Newsom gets hilarious reality check after turning to public for new state coin design (msn.com)
In Arizona, one major decision that has flown under the radar has been the decision-making process for the lieutenant governor position, a newly created position that was affirmed by voters via Proposition 131, that would create a clear line of succession after the Governor that would come before the Secretary of State. This has been a major source of controversy during the years of 2018-2022 when Katie Hobbs, now Governor, was the Democratic Secretary of State and was next in line to become Governor after then-Governor Doug Ducey (R-AZ). This leaves two questions: who does Hobbs choose and how does this rankle the feathers of Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D-AZ) who could see his standing in the line of succession in the state executive branch fall from second to third with the addition of the new position. As an additional question, how does the state GOP use the lieutenant governor position when choosing their gubernatorial nominee to balance out their ticket to make them more electable or ideological ahead of 2026? Time will tell.
2026 Arizona gubernatorial election – Wikipedia
Arizona Proposition 131, Create Office of Lieutenant Governor Amendment (2022) – Ballotpedia
In Michigan, when Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) was brought out for the NFL draft, the crowd reception was openly cold if not hostile. Whereas some governors receive mixed reception or a milquetoast sign of respect, Whitmer has received a large amount of backlash because of her handling of COVID and the lockdowns which kept people from buying “non-essential items” such as gardening items in stores. This was when she also flaunted her own rules regarding COVID and dodged implementing transparency rules to cover up a water crisis of her own doing in Western Michigan because the backlash would be similar to that of what former Governor Rick Snyder (R-MI) suffered at the end of his final term. In short, being booed on live television isn’t a great way for the DNC to have faith that middle America, middle-class NFL-watching white voters in particular, are going to receive you well in 2028 if you decide to run for President.
In Utah, the recent convention of state delegates saw the rallying behind state senator Phil Lyman (R-UT) for the gubernatorial endorsement over incumbent Spencer Cox (R-UT), but Cox had gotten enough signatures to make the ballot without relying heavily on the convention. Among those who had an opinion on the governor candidates, 81% said that they would rally behind Cox versus those in single digits for Lyman suggesting that Cox is almost guaranteed to win re-nomination when the primary comes up. The same type of situation happened when Congresswoman Celeste Maloy (R-UT) navigated the Republican convention after not getting the primary signatures to automatically make the ballot, giving her a clear advantage in the primary over her main opponent Colby Jenkins (R-UT). In short, the will of the general electorate will bring more moderate candidates to the general election in Utah as opposed to the more ideologically driven delegates at the Republican convention.
2024 Utah gubernatorial election – Wikipedia
In terms of politicians being on their worst behavior, Tiffany Henyard, the mayor of Dolton, Illinois, reportedly has had her crack team of lawyers defending her against investigations of improper spending on trips, among finance-related issues, withdraw from helping her. While this doesn’t mean that she will face criminal charges without the ability to have some legal counsel, this does suggest that the toxicity of being associated with her as well as the general mood of the case brought against her is fairly negative. Usually, lawyers only turn away from clients if the public pressure if too great for even the paycheck at the end to justify the means. The entire reason that the worst people in society are assigned a public defender are because no one would defend them otherwise if it was left up to the public whether a controversial or unpopular person deserved to be defended. While the assumption of innocence must be assumed unless a guilty verdict is read, the negativity coming from her situation is starting to manifest.
‘America’s Worst Mayor’ Tiffany Henyard abandoned by law firm representing her (msn.com)
In the U.S. House of Representatives, the Democratic Party just won back a vacant House seat in the Buffalo, NY area with state senator Tim Kennedy (D-NY) bringing them closer to the incremental crawl of overcoming Speaker Mike Johnson’s narrow majority. However, Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) was recently hit with an indictment from the Department of Justice with charges that could amount to over 100 years in jail. With Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) not wanting to lose an easy seat for Republicans to flip in South Texas over his controversial baggage (scandal-plagued parties usually underperform their usual margins) and fall back below the point of potentially flipping the House by stealth, he could avoid pressuring Cuellar to resign allowing him to keep the seat so long as he’s able to. This would mean that he would be a damaged incumbent in November against the Republican nominee which will be heavily financed by the NRCC seeing an opportunity owing to the area’s demographics and opportunistic nature of the event. The question becomes if the GOP underperforms their baseline and risks losing the seat anyway despite this advantage.
Also, there will be a special election for the late Donald Payne, Jr.’s seat in Congress, a safe Democratic seat based in North Jersey. The Democratic primary will be on July 16th which will almost certainly determine the special election winner given that the number of Democrats in the district outnumber Republicans by a large margin. The general election will be on September 18th.
In third-party politics news, the Constitution Party chose activist Randall Terry as their nominee for the 2024 general election reflecting a downgrade in name recognition from the more controversial, but galvanizing-the-base Don Blankenship in 2020. This comes as the Robert Kennedy Jr. campaign has managed to secure ballot access in California under the American Independent Party, a far-right party that has a high membership because of the confusion owing to the terms “Independent” and “unaffiliated” which is what voters not associated with a political party are called. This is significant because RFK, Jr. could theoretically get on multiple state ballots through several small parties like the American Independent Party and take a significant number of votes away from both Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the November election.
Concluding on some last-minute polling, the race for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District on the Republican side appears to be coming down to Blake Masters and Abe Hamadeh in an increasingly ugly primary battle. The primary has boiled down between some supporters of Masters engaging in racial stereotyping of Hamadeh whereas Hamadeh faces his own baggage of not being as capable a fundraiser as Masters. This comes as both engaged in election denial in the 2022 election cycle and lost their statewide races in winnable contests for the GOP. Blake Masters currently has about 26% of the vote compared to Hamadeh’s 16% according to the American Principles Project polling.
In the Virginia 10th Congressional District Democratic primary for the largely Democratic seat, the polling so far has suggested a wide-open race that could be decided by very few votes making every vote especially critical. This comes as the primary is a test of support for Jewish candidates in the form of Eileen Filler-Corn (D-VA), the former Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, who forsook the governorship in 2025 to seek this open congressional race as a top-tier candidate with internal support from Democratic forces. According to one “informed” poll, Filler-Corn only manages about 4% while one of her opponents Jennifer Boysko (D-VA) gets 14%. All that can be said is that the wide-open candidate field is a true toss-up.
2024 United States House of Representatives elections in Virginia – Wikipedia
2024 United States House of Representatives elections in Arizona – Wikipedia
The Conservatarian Millennial 