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- [00:00]
A
We're going to have to reconsider what a statewide Troy Jackson looks like post transition or evolution. I'm not going to say transition. Oh, my God. Okay. What a statewide Troy Jackson looks like post evolution. Hello, and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druch. Democrats messy internal politics are on full display as we enter the final stretch of primary season. The Senate primary in Michigan is, of course, the main attraction. Over the weekend, Bernie Sanders and AOC campaigned across the state with Abdul El Said. Haley Stevens, who argued that Bernie Sanders was nowhere to be found when she was working with President Obama on the Michigan auto bailout, has a 12 to 1 TV spending advantage in the final five weeks of of that campaign. Also over the weekend, progressive Troy Jackson became the presumptive nominee in the race to replace Graham Platner on the ballot in Maine. He's been a longtime Bernie Sanders supporter and was seen as the clearest heir to Platner's movement. And this Tuesday will also feature a hotly contested primary in Arizona's 1st congressional district, one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country. We'll dive into all of that. We're also going to make sense of President Trump's primetime address on election security, or at least try to, and explain how the White House has been trying to shape the administration of the midterms. Here with me to discuss it all is head of research at 50 plus one, Mary Radcliffe. Welcome to the podcast, Mary.
- [01:39]
B
Good morning, Galen. Bright and early.
- [01:41]
A
Good morning. Yeah, we really are doing it early this morning. Nathaniel has an election administration conference to get to, which is why we're doing it so early this morning.
- [01:50]
C
My fault. Sorry, guys.
- [01:51]
A
I should mention managing editor of votebeat getting ready to do his real job, his day job. Nathaniel Rakic, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:00]
C
Thanks, Galen.
- [02:01]
A
So I am going to ask you all about that Thursday night primetime speech a little bit later on. But, Mary, you just got back from Michigan. So first of all, how was the air? I hear Mark Carney's blowing all kinds of smoke over in Michigan's direction these days.
- [02:17]
B
Yeah, it was pretty gross.
- [02:19]
A
It was bad in New York, too. But I was looking at Michigan and it was like, what was the air quality index like? Was it up towards 500 or something like that? It looked insane.
- [02:28]
B
So bad. It was so bad. And I drove home to Pittsburgh through all of that on Thursday, so it was just like the entire drive just blanketed in smoke. Even through Ohio. It was awful.
- [02:40]
A
Brutal. Okay, that was. That's one fire. There's another fire. Going on in Michigan. Did you see any of the primary campaign playing out while you were there? Any of these? I saw famous TV ads.
- [02:52]
B
Number of political ads on television? Yeah, I would say dominant Haley Stevens ads where I was, which was in the Detroit suburbs.
- [03:00]
A
I mean, did you get any sense of the vibe? Like, how would you describe. Is it. Is it positive campaigning, negative campaigning? What's the. And did you talk to. Did you talk to people on the ground? How's the mood in Michigan ahead of this primary?
- [03:15]
B
I'm mostly spending time with my family. And like, all my family members keep asking me who they should vote for. Some of them are voting in the GOP gubernatorial primary, and some of them are voting in the Democratic Senate primary, just depending on the partisanship of my family members. And all of them, both sides are asking me who they should vote for.
- [03:34]
A
Are you the trusted source? Like, when Mary Radcliffe endorses is like that, how the family goes.
- [03:41]
C
That is the equivalent of the Trump endorsement in the Radcliffe.
- [03:44]
B
Because of the nature of my job, what people are really asking me is, like, which of these candidates is better positioned to win in a general election? That's what they're actually asking me is for the strategic vote here, Are they
- [03:54]
C
actually interested in electability above all, or are they being like, hey, you know my politics? Like, which one of these candidates is a better fit for me?
- [04:01]
B
Yeah, no, they're more concerned about electability, particularly the Democratic family members of mine.
- [04:06]
C
Yeah.
- [04:07]
A
Do you feel comfortable sharing on this podcast who you told them is most electable in the Republican gubernatorial primary and the Democratic Senate primary?
- [04:15]
B
I really don't know how to assess the Republican gubernatorial primary. I don't have a lot of faith in either Perry Johnson or John James to defeat Jocelyn Benson. Generally speaking, I think Jocelyn Benson is probably too strong against either of those opponents on the Democratic side. That's. That's a really tricky question. I don't know that we have sufficient polling for us to have a good answer to that question. It appears, based on the polling that we do have, that Abdul Al Said has slightly higher performance in the. In the general election. But I should caveat by saying a lot of the polling is coming from organizations affiliated with Al Said or the Progressive Movement. So, like, it's hard to read that neutrally. So that's. That's a tough one.
- [04:58]
C
I also, like, I am not a big believer in polls. Guess what? At this point, we are four months out from the general election, so it's a little bit closer. But, like, you know, often, like, you know, People will look at polls in January and be like, oh, this candidate is doing two points better in this hypothetical general election matchup, therefore they're the most electable candidate. And I just don't think that is, you know, to coin a phrase, good use of data. Like, because obviously if it's actually two points, it's within the margin of error. But like you're asking people to make assessments based on candidates they really don't know much about. Like I think probably, I would imagine in Michigan people are just, have just started tuning in the last few weeks to this primary, which is on August 4th. I would personally more look at kind of candidates, electoral track records in the past as well as just generally their ideological positioning. Although I will say that a lot of the time we just don't know how like Abdul Al Said is a first time, well, he's not a first time candidate. He lost in a primary a few cycles ago, but he's never run in a general election before. And, and I think that we just don't know what kind of performer he's going to be. Personally. My prior is that Haley Stevens as the more moderate candidate would be a stronger general election performer. But at the same time, like Haley Stevens kind of famously is not super charismatic.
- [06:13]
A
And Abdul Alan, it's a very particular kind of charisma.
- [06:17]
B
Nathaniel, as a Misha Gander, I love listening to her talk. I love it, I love it.
- [06:22]
C
I'm not making fun of her accent. I think that the presentation in general is, is not there and like that might matter too. So I, I think, I think it's a hard call right now.
- [06:33]
B
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think, you know, if, if folks go back and watch portions of the, the Senate debate, the Democratic primary debate, it is clear that Haley Stevens is not as strong of a communicator as Abdul Al Said. Whether or not that's going to matter that much in a general election, I'm not sure. But like you can, you can clearly see from the debate performance that Al Said is like one of these folks that is like a very talented speaker and communicator. You know, these pop up from time to time. Now that doesn't necessarily mean I think that's going to push him over the finish line. But like it's definitely true that like in presentation Haley Stevens doesn't feel as smooth. Although I do love the accent.
- [07:12]
A
It's because of this really mushy thing going on, particularly in the Michigan Senate primary, which is that Abdul Al Said is making the pitch that he's the economic populist and he is working on behalf of working class Michiganders. You know, he wants Medicare for all, he wants to tax the rich, et cetera, et cetera. But his presentation is extremely polished. He went to Columbia, he is a doctor, he is a podcast host, kind of these more elite signifiers of status, if you will. Hailey Stevens is the more moderate candidate, but she's always talking about her family's Ford F150 and how they worked in landscaping. She has the accent. She is a little more awkward on the stump, I think. When I was talking to Jeffrey Skelly, our former colleague last Thursday, I referred to it as strained folksiness, which is not to say that she is not folksy, but the sort of like I'm gonna, they're gonna get a little bit of stick it to em kind of thing. Like there is an awkwardness there which people can find endearing or off putting. But the who can lay claim to be the candidate of the working class Michigander? It's very interesting because one sort of presentation and biography and the other one is more policy. And we're going to find, I mean, so far in polling it looks like Abdul El Sayed is more the candidate of elite Michiganders and Haley Stevens is more the candidate of working class Michiganders. But the polling is all over the place. So before I go too far into the narrative, Mary Queen of polls, can you help us digest some of the recent polling that we've been seeing?
- [08:53]
B
Yeah. So our polling average at 50 plus 1 has El Sayed up about 4 points in this race, which is not much of a lead.
- [09:03]
A
And it's been, especially given the volatility. I mean, the polling out last week was crazy.
- [09:07]
B
It's been a little flip floppy. So the Detroit News had a poll out last week from the Glenn Garif Group, their longtime pollster, that had Stevens ahead by seven. We also had a poll out last week from American Priorities, which is a super PAC that is backing El Sayad that had el sayed up by 13. So that is a 20 point difference between these two surveys. These are both surveys conducted after Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the race on July 5th. There's an additional survey from Tavern Research that was conducted independently after McMurra dropped it out that had when you included McMorrow in the race, El Sayed was up by three. When you took her out and asked just the head to head, Stevens was up by one. So suggesting perhaps that Haley Stevens stands to benefit from the relatively few number of Voters that planned to vote for McMorrow. That's a big mess, and it's all over the place. And it really comes down to sort of assumptions about what the likely electorate looks like that different pollsters are treating differently. And we really. It's a very difficult question to answer in Michigan because Michigan is an open primary state, so voters can select on the day of the election which primary to vote in, the Democratic or Republican primary. Because of that, it can be very, very tricky to get a feel for who's actually going to vote in those primaries. You can't just, like, poll registered Democrats and be done with it. Right. Like you can in. In states that have closed primary. So that's very tricky. I will note, you know, if we recall, in 2016, Michigan was a big surprise state. We, everyone expected Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic primary there, and Bernie Sanders, in fact, like, won that primary walking away.
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C
Oh, yeah.
- [10:50]
B
So it's quite possible that this goes really either way. It's very difficult to get a read on the primary electorate in Michigan.
- [10:56]
C
Yeah. The polling situation kind of reminds me of what we saw on the Democratic side in Texas earlier this year when we also had some polls showing Crockett up by a significant margin, some polls showing Talarico up by a significant margin. That race, obviously eventually was won by Talarico by, I want to say, like six or seven points. And the final polling average at 50 plus one was basically tied. So I guess I'm not necessarily. This doesn't necessarily give us any hints about which way it's going to go in Michigan, but I think it is instructive that pollsters are clearly struggling with their kind of likely voter models. And there's a lot of differences between pollsters in that regard. And so, you know, it's a tricky time to be polling, especially in primaries. Those are just really hard to figure out who's going to vote, as Mary pointed out.
- [11:42]
B
Yeah. When we released that Texas polling average at 50 plus 1, we also published an article about how unreliable Senate primary polling actually is. So I would encourage folks to go back in the 50 plus 1 archives and find that article. We did an analysis of historical Senate primary polls to show just, like, how. How difficult it is to poll these kinds of primary races. The error margins are very high, and these are the races where you're most likely to get a very surprising, like, upset outcome that you wouldn't have predicted based on the polling. So while we can look at the polls and say, like, you know, it looks like maybe Al Sayed has a slight advantage. I would not put very much stock in that.
- [12:22]
A
Right. I mean, part of the reason that these races can be so volatile is one, as you mentioned, there may be a bunch of independents who end up voting in the Democratic primary. There could even be Republicans who end up voting in the Democratic primary. On top of that, for the Democrats who are going to be voting, they may be okay with either of the candidates, but are just trying to pick the person that they think, as you already mentioned, will do best in the general election. And the signals may be conflicting. And so they could be truly deciding up until the last minute. The other thing that's going on here is it still wasn't that long ago that Mallory McMurra dropped out of the race and her supporters may still be figuring out who they would like to vote for. On top of that, we may get an actual endorsement from Mallory McMorrow or not. We have been getting, I mean, there was a surprise endorsement from Gary Peters, the incumbent Democratic senator there. People did not expect him to endorse. He ended up endorsing Haley Stevens. I think the cavalry, sort of the establishment cavalry is coming out for Haley Stevens in a bigger way than we've seen in some of these other establishment versus progressive races so far, which is making this such like a crown jewel in the intra party fight this cycle. Because, you know, Grant Platter ended up walking away with it. Janet Mills wasn't really even putting up a fight at the end. In some of these other races, it's been on blue turf where there isn't really as much of an establishment enthusiasm to push back against the progressives. And here it's a very different dynamic.
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C
Well, and I mean, so most of the ideological fights that we've seen on the Democratic side, the cycle, of course, have been on the House level. This is a Senate seat, so it's kind of inherently more valuable. There are fewer of them. But also it's a swing Senate seat. Right. This, like you mentioned, this is not a deep blue seat. And so I think that there is a lot of nervousness about nominating an out and out progressive in an important swing Senate race in particular, that maybe wouldn't. There wouldn't be as much urgency to stop a progressive in a dark blue district. You know, I think there are a lot of moderates in the Democratic Party obviously who would prefer not to see those people in the House because they're going to make governing hard or because they think that Republicans are going to paint all Democrats with the most extreme brush. But in this case, like, you know, they're. They're putting a Senate seat on the line and to be clear, like El said, may very well still win. It looks like it's going to be a good year for Democrats. He may end up even being more electable than Haley Stevens. We don't know. But. But I think that's what you're seeing here and in, like the Wisconsin governor's race, for instance.
- [14:47]
A
Yeah, well, since you brought up the Wisconsin governor's race, do you like what I did there? Speaking my language? There's a really interesting dynamic going on there because Sarah Rodriguez, who was maybe ascending a little bit in the polls, recently dropped out abruptly because of campaign finance issues. Essentially, the campaign had done incorrect accounting, which probably meant that they had filed incorrect reports and that they also didn't have the cash on hand that they thought they had going into the final stretch of the August primary in Wisconsin. So, Nathaniel, what's happened there?
- [15:26]
C
Her dropping out left, basically, the two front runners, who really, they were the two front runners anyway, are Mandela Barnes, who's the former lieutenant governor, who of course ran for Senate in Wisconsin back in 2022 and lost by a point or two. And he's also on the more progressive side of things. I think that a lot of Democrats felt that his statements about defunding the cost them that race. And then the other front runner is State Senator Francesca Hong, who is a loud and proud progressive, represents the Madison area and the legislature. I think that Hong, she is kind of officially affiliated with the dsa, and so I think she is a little bit to the left of Barnes, but Barnes is still, you know, plenty progressive. And so basically establishment Democrats were left kind of without a candidate there. And so what actually ended up happening was that David Crowley, who is the Milwaukee county executive, who had run for governor before but had dropped out of the race and endorsed Rodriguez, he got back into the race as a reaction to Sarah Rodriguez dropping out. So I would still think that Democrats will.
- [16:24]
A
And Tony Evers endorsed the sitting governor of Wisconsin. And he had previously said that he wasn't really going to wade into this.
- [16:31]
C
Similar to Gary.
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A
So similar to Gary after all. Right, Exactly.
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C
So I think that's another race where, I think that's a race actually where it is more likely than not the Democrats will nominate a progressive candidate. And we will see how that works out and whether kind of the. The factor of it being a pretty good year for Democrats can outweigh the fact that traditionally progressives do tend to do worse in general elections than Moderates.
- [16:57]
A
There's also another test that is basically now set, which is the main Senate race. Over the weekend, delegates were selected to go to the Democratic Party convention where Democrats would choose a replacement for Graham Platner on the ballot. Essentially, Troy Jackson, who had been pretty heavily involved in Graham Platner's campaign, long supporter of Bernie Sanders, supported him back in 2016, was a super delegate to the Democratic convention back then and cast his ballot for Bernie Sanders. He ended up kind of walking away with the delegate counts, which led to Shena Bellows and Nirav Shah dropping out of that race, leaving him as the presumptive nominee. Now he's maybe, I mean, Bernie Sanders is actually a very good comparison point for Troy Jackson because he's long been an economic populist. He comes from a northern logging community in Maine and has long been involved in labor and unions and things like that, but does historically have votes that are not progressive at all. So, for example, voting against same sex marriage, supporting guns, having a good rating with the nra, not initially supporting abortion, things like that. And he, he's progressed on those to the point where he is now a sort of fully aligned progressive, but has a history of being a more cross pressured figure.
- [18:24]
C
Yeah, I don't, I don't think I would call him a progressive. I think populist is more the, the word. I mean, yeah, obviously all these terms are, are reductive and, you know, we use them because we don't have, you know, unlimited time on this podcast and, and things like that. But, but no, I mean, he is much more about kind of like projecting those working class vibes than, I think, having particularly progressive viewpoints. I think he's probably a mainstream Democrat ideologically. But like, he's very much like Platner in that, you know, he's. Yeah, like you said, he's like a, you know, gruff.
- [18:57]
A
I think he's. No, no, no, hold on, hold on. I think he's to the left of Democrats ideologically. I mean, when he was president of the main Senate, he was oftentimes putting forward economic policies that were vetoed by economics Mills because they were too far to the left. So I would say, quote, unquote, too far to the left. According to Janet Mills. I'm not passing judgment on whatever he was trying to pursue on the economy. I think he's to the left of the center with the left of the center of the Democratic Party. On social issues, he's been very much to the right and has sort of gotten his social policies or Positions in order to now look like basically from a position perspective, any other progressive candidate, from a biography perspective, he's more of a nuanced character.
- [19:46]
B
Yeah, but I think that goes to Nathaniel's point that like perhaps a better characterization is populist rather than progressive. Right. Like when you're talking about those economic issues.
- [19:56]
A
Well then what do we call Bernie Sanders? Not a progressive because like Bernie Sanders used to support immigration restrictivism, he used to support guns.
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C
I think Sanders is a good comparison. Both northern New Englanders who, you know, cater to their areas. No, I would call him a progressive, obviously.
- [20:11]
B
And I would say like Sanders, like it's worth noting that historically Troy Jackson has been an electoral over performer. Right? He has, he has done quite a lot better in his district than statewide or presidential Democratic candidates in that district. So like that's perhaps a point in his favor that like whatever this nuanced thing is that he's doing that appeals to the people of northern Maine, like it, it seems to be working.
- [20:37]
A
Well, I think the interesting point is that it's actually no longer nuanced. It used to be nuanced, which I think means that we're going to have to reconsider what a statewide Troy Jackson looks like post evolution. I mean, because we saw this with Bernie Sanders, right. In 2016 it was all about the economy. In 2020 he had adopted far more of the culturally left positions and, and was no longer winning all of the white working class voters that he was winning in the primary against Hillary Clinton. This time around, Joe Biden was winning those voters and he was winning all of the out and out progressives.
- [21:11]
C
Yeah, no, that's a fair point. And I do think that we and everybody should probably be using more nuanced terms and, and then you know, progressive or, or whatever. Because I do think that it is. I think that like economic populism slash progressivism is actually probably a good thing in a general election. But I think it is those social issues that are really kind of what will around somebody's neck. I do think that Jackson probably has still some of that like his brand. He's been in elected office for a while up there in northern Maine. And so I think that he probably still has some of that moderate cred on social issues, even though he has changed, as you say. But also I don't expect him, like you said, Galen, to overperform by 30 points, which is literally what he did in 2020. His state senate seat was Trump plus 12 district and he won it by 18 points. Points.
- [21:57]
A
Yeah. I'll, I will say the way, if we're talking about presentation, as we did in the Michigan Senate race, I would say he's kind of a combination of Haley Stevens and Abdul said in that he has the folksiness for sure. If you hear him talk like he genuinely. He does not sound like he's working off of talking points. He kind of just sounds like he's shooting the shit with whatever journalist he's talking to. You know, he wears a dad hat and has, I don't know, Northwood's dad's vibes, but then has all of those economic. And then the thing is, he also, if we're talking about voters without a four year college degree, he has an associate's degree. So he does not himself have a bachelor's degree. He comes from, I think, five generations of loggers and himself worked in logging, which is how he originally got involved in labor and that sort of thing. So his biography is extremely. That kind of thing. In many ways, he is the more authentic version of what Graham Platner purported to be in Maine.
- [22:56]
C
Yes, yes, yes.
- [22:57]
B
I mean, he's not as dynamic of a speaker as Graham Platner, you know, when we think about presentation. But, like, I think that's probably okay.
- [23:06]
C
Yeah, those, those types of candidates don't come around all the time.
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A
Given that we now have a very likely matchup between Susan Collins and Troy Jackson, how should we be thinking about that race? I mean, the, the race Raiders, I don't think have dived back in to readjust their race ratings yet. Do we have any head to head polling, Mary?
- [23:27]
B
Since Platner dropped out, we've really only had, I think, two surveys looking at this race, and neither of them are from neutral parties. Both of them are from parties that were backing Nirav Shah. One of them shows Jackson trailing Collins by two. The other shows Jackson leading Collins by one. I think we need to wait for more information. Right. Like that was during the active campaign. Those are coming from parties that explicitly backed an opponent of Troy Jackson's. So, like, we have to be patient. We don't have the data yet.
- [24:02]
C
Yeah, I think that, you know, my prior is that this was a toss up before and it is gonna continue to be a toss up, roughly a toss up. You can quibble, I guess, with, you know, top D or tilt R or whatever. But. But I do think, like, I think, I think the race has obviously the potential to evolve in one way or another, which is that Jackson is a new candidate, at least to Southern Maine. And I think that they're going to get to know him and we'll see how he is on the trail and how strong his campaign operation ends up being. There is a world I can see. You know, I've kind of been of the position that if Graham Platner with all of his baggage was tied with Susan Collins, then like a Democrat without that baggage could probably do pretty well. Susan Collins is not as popular as she used to be in Maine. Her approval ratings are underwater. And I wouldn't be surprised if a generic Democrat ends up beating her by, you know, six or seven points without too much fuss. On the flip side of things, I do think it is noteworthy. I talked about Jackson's history of electorally overperforming, but it's not with the types of voters who I think would be the most the key to winning this race for Democrats. Right. So friend of the podcast Jacob Ashkin, did an article a while back a few months ago for Inside Elections that looked at who the split ticket voters were who are voting Democratic for president and for Susan Collins for the Senate. And it's not the Northwoods, you know, working class people. It is kind of like affluent people in like the Portland area and Southern Maine, you know, educated women, things like that, who, who you know, kind of see themselves in Collins and see somebody who is reasonable. And that is like it's not to say that Troy Jackson can't find another path to win or that he can't win over those voters, but like that is the lowest hanging fruit. Right. If you are already voting Democratic in a presidential race, then you know, that's those are the voters you probably want to win over to, to win a Senate race against Susan Collins. So I'm keeping an eye on that, that he is not the best fit in that way, even though he fits a certain stereotype of Mainers in another way.
- [26:02]
B
Yeah. The other thing I would raise here is like I mentioned earlier about how Platner is just like a very dynamic speaker and really captured a lot of energy, particularly among like the more activist side of the Democratic Party. You can see that nationally. But you can also see that he was really activating like some voters in Maine that, that were really energized by his campaign. I'm curious to see how those voters respond to what's going on here. There may just be some voters that are like, you know what? Platner was my guy. He brought me into this thing. No one else is going to do it for me and just sit it out. So I think it'll you know, we're talking about in that category, sort of like younger voters. A lot of like younger college educated voters, I think are the ones that are really like activated by that kind of dynamism. So I'm just sort of curious to see if those voters get frustrated, dejected, and just quit.
- [26:54]
A
You know, I think that's a good question. I do think that the party is a little bit less divided over this than something like a Bernie Sanders presidential candidacy. Because there's really no one on the progressive left right now who's saying that Graham Platner should have stayed in. I mean, Bernie Sanders was calling for him to get out before he got out. And so you're not seeing either high profile. And AOC never endorsed in this race anyway. So you're not seeing high profile progressives, nor are you really seeing progressive influencers saying Graham Platner really should have stayed in. I mean, people are more saying what Troy Jackson himself is saying, which is like, I believed Graham Platner when he told me I had nothing to be worried about. He lied to me and he lied to a lot of other people as well. So Troy Jackson is trying to embody the frustration that I think a lot of people have with I believed in something. It turned out the thing that I believed in wasn't the whole story, but we gotta move on kind of thing. And I, you know, I, I would be less inclined to believe there's something of like an, you know, uncommitted protest vote in a race like this also because the, I don't know what you want to call it, like sometimes it gets referred to as the downwardly mobile urban left, which is the most sort of DSA inclined part of the Democratic Party. Party got their candidate, they got Troy Jackson. They did not get a more sort of Portland centric, educated suburban pitch. They got a, you know, northern Maine logger.
- [28:23]
B
Yeah, well, we'll wait for more information.
- [28:27]
A
We will wait for more information. Okay, let's talk about Arizona before we move on to election Ed administration. So the Michigan and Wisconsin primaries are in August, but Arizona is actually voting this Tuesday. And while there is not a Senate primary there, there is a gubernatorial primary, which we've actually already talked about on this podcast. On the Republican side, there are also hotly contested races on the congressional level. So, Nathaniel, what are we watching for there?
- [28:54]
C
Yeah, I think the main race to watch is for Arizona's first district. This is a swing district in the general election. Trump carried it by 3 points, but Biden carried it back in 2020. David Schweikart, who is going to run for governor, is leaving this district behind. He's a Republican. So this good pickup opportunity for Democrats on that Democratic primary, there are two main candidates. So there's Amy Shaw, who ran against Schweikart last time out and didn't do so well. He underperformed Kamala Harris, which is not something that a lot of House Democrats did in 2024. So there are some concerns that he's a weaker candidate. And his main opponent is Marlene Galan woods, who's a former journalist and the wife of a former Republican attorney general in Arizona. She has kind of gotten along.
- [29:41]
A
Her husband was a never Trumper, basically left kind of parted ways with Republicans in 2016.
- [29:47]
C
Yes. And so she is probably, you know, I would say, like the establishment candidate, even though there's really not an ideological divide here. They're both pretty moderate. Amish Shah, when he was in the legislature, voted with Republicans on a couple of priorities that kind of pissed off some Democrats. And Glan woods is, is kind of more centrist by virtue of her background. But you know, the kind of some Democratic adjacent groups, Democratic establishment adjacent groups have gotten behind Glan Woods. It's a close race, but I would probably rather be her. But we will see. I think this is more, this is a race because it's less about ideology and more, I think, about electability in that there is concern that Shaw is not as strong of a candidate based on his 2024 performance.
- [30:31]
A
And I'll just mention here, for the sake of whimsy, I don't know how this, how much this actually matters to listeners, but Marlene Galan woods is a former local news anchor, which has, I think we've noted before, has some appeal. Like local news is the most trusted source of news in the country, essentially. And local news anchors tend to be pretty good communicators. And so while on last week's podcast we mentioned that podcast host is one of the least attractive qualities that a candidate can have. If you look at the empirical data, local news host or local news anchor seems to be one of the more attractive ones. So I'll just mention that. Mary, I know you're also watching another congressional district in Arizona.
- [31:16]
B
Yeah, I think this one hasn't really been on folks radar, but we did get a survey out a couple of weeks ago that sort of piqued my interest here. So I'm looking at the 4th congressional district. This is currently represented by Greg Stanton. He's a Democrat. This is a Phoenix area district that's very blue. Very unlikely to vote for a Republican in the general election. Greg Stanton is running for, I believe will be his fifth term. He was first elected in 2018, and he has one of these leftist DSA challengers backed by our revolution, you know, in Kai Newkirk. And no one had really been paying attention to this, but this survey came out from the super pac, a fight worth having. They have been supporting a lot of DSA challengers in races across the country. They supported the bevy of candidates we had in New York and are supporting El sayed a bunch of other folks. Anyway, they had a survey out that had Newkirk within eight points of Greg Stanton. It's hard to say. Like, this is one poll of. I'm looking at 50 plus 1 right now. It is one of exactly two polls we have in this district. The other one came from the Stanton campaign. So this race could be not close, and it could be close, I think. We don't really know, but I think it's one to add to our. Our pile of, like, Democratic Civil War intraparty conflict, just to keep an eye on. I expect Stanton to win the primary, but, like, I wouldn't be super shocked if Newkirk performs better than. Than folks might have expected.
- [32:47]
A
Yeah, and the margins are interesting here, too. I mean, we've seen more, not even necessarily establishment candidates, but just incumbent candidates who aren't really paying attention to their challengers all that much suddenly get 30 to 40 points or, you know, something like that as a challenger. And so maybe even if there isn't an upset here, it's worth looking at the margin to get a sense of the backlash or dismay within the Democratic Party with the establishment.
- [33:17]
B
Yeah, exactly. I just would put this on our, like, Dem intraparty conflict pile as a data point that we should not, not overlook.
- [33:27]
A
Okay, well, we'll certainly come back to it. The GD Politics podcast only exists because so many of you have decided that thoughtful political coverage is worth supporting. What we're trying to do here is build a place for curious people, people who see politics as something to understand, not just something to fight about. A place where curiosity, rigor, and a sense of humor light the way. There are no paywalls around free episodes like this one because I want as many people as possible to hear them. But the paid subscribers are the reason I get to keep making these episodes. If you'd like to support the show, you'll also get a pretty good deal in return for 8 bucks a month or 80 bucks a year. You'll get twice as many episodes each week, access to our paid subscriber chat, and the chance to help shape future episodes with your questions and ideas. If GD Politics has become a part of your week, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber at gdpolitics. Com. Independent journalism only works when the people who value it choose to support it. Thanks as always for listening. I want to talk about the primetime address that President Trump gave on election administration, both because it's, it's worthwhile dissecting it, and also because we have Nathaniel Brinkich with us whose job it is to dissect it. So, Nathaniel, I have to cop to the fact that I did not watch Trump's primetime speech last Thursday. I read some of the coverage. In fact, I read your coverage.
- [34:52]
C
Oh, thank you, Galen.
- [34:53]
A
For listeners and hosts who did not watch it, what should we take away from his speech?
- [35:02]
C
Yeah, so basically Trump had touted this as a big speech about like election integrity and he was going to make a very big announcement and it was going to be shocking and you know, they were going to present like new evidence that was going to blow the whole thing wide open. As folks obviously know, Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence that there are, there was fraud in the 2020 election that cost him that election. And he basically got up there and used, you know, what is arguably his, you know, most potent power, the, the kind of the power of, to give a primetime address that reaches millions of people to basically rehash a lot of the same lies that he has made about and a lot of conspiracy theories that have kind of existed in conservative ecosystems for a while. So he made several claims, I think, to, to kind of check through them all. One thing that he said was that basically US Voting systems are like sitting open to like foreign hackers and you know, Russia and China have the capability to hack our voting machines. So and to when he said this, he kind of released a bunch of declassified intelligence documents that he argued, said that the reality is they were a lot more nu than that. So we have known for a while that certain aspects of election administration are vulnerable to hacking, which isn't to say they are like sitting open, but like, you know, if you are a really skilled hacker, you can get in there. But we're talking about things like a lot public facing election websites, you know, in probably a worst case scenario like voter registration databases. But of course there are things built into those systems so that if somebody changes them or somebody gets access to them, we would notice the voting machines Which I think was clearly the implication that Trump was making the idea that, that like votes could be changed. Those are virtually impossible to hack. They are localized. There are obviously thousands, if not millions of voting machines are across the country. Even if you could get into, you know, the one at the church down the block here and change those votes, it wouldn't change all the rest of the votes. And those machines are like walled off from the Internet. And so it's just the reports that he released were very clear that, you know, this is a different beast we should say here.
- [37:09]
A
Like 98% of voting, even when there is a machine involved, involves also a paper ballot. So if there was ever the suspicion that there was some sort of hacking, you can count the paper ballots or if there's any irregularity, and we have done this many times in America. Yeah, you can count the actual paper ballots, right?
- [37:31]
B
Yeah, many, many of these voting machines are actually just like big fancy scanners, Right?
- [37:36]
C
Right, exactly. Yeah. Even if this did happen in 2020, which again, it didn't, we would have caught it in the many, many recounts, audits that happened of the paper ballots after that election because it was so, so widely litigated. So that was one claim. Another claim he said was that China has acquired 220 million voter records. He wasn't quite clear about this, but of course, as probably listened to this podcast know, voter files are public to some extent. Right. Like you can pay Wisconsin to get a list of the Register with kind of limited personal information. Anybody can do that. So.
- [38:10]
B
And the price is not.
- [38:12]
C
It depends, but yes.
- [38:14]
A
How much does it cost me?
- [38:15]
B
Well, I mean, in some states it's as low as 10 or 20 bucks. Basically you're just paying a fee to have someone like go find the file you requested and like attach it in an email. Right. Like you're paying for someone's time to do that. In other states it's completely free.
- [38:29]
C
So obviously there's a wide kind of range of outcomes here, which is that if China, China bought a voter file that is publicly available, that is not, I would say, cause to get up and have a give a primetime address. If China had like hacked things, then that is more problematic. But again, the, the kind of, the evidence isn't there for that. He also claimed that there are 270,000 non citizen voters on the voter rolls that based on the documents he released, appeared to be based on his administration running the public voter rolls through the SAVE program, which is a DHS database that is kind of connected to different like citizenship databases. Database. This database has already been shown to have a lot of false positive because there are a lot of Joe Smiths in the United States, for instance, especially with the public voter rolls, if that is indeed what he did. And it was kind of vague because the public voter rolls have such limited data. You're not going to be able to like, be like, oh, this is definitely the right Joe Smith, because his Social Security number matches. Like, they don't have that. Obviously, some people's Social Security numbers are not public information. And so, so it's not surprising that you would get some shockingly high number of, of false positives. In the past, when these numbers have been investigated on a kind of case by case basis, they have found, of course, that the vast majority of those people are indeed citizens and maybe, you know, just had duplicate names or maybe they just became a citizen. So the database hadn't been updated in time. So basically, long story short, Trump just kind of regurgitated or kind of reframed a lot of things that had already been known about the election. It was a lot of smoke, a lot of ado about nothing. Nothing. Obviously, the kind of main effect of this is to continue to put pressure on election officials and to potentially intimidate voters about the 2026 midterms. We know that Trump is trying to change the law in various ways by executive order, which has been stopped in court, and also by trying to pass the Save America act to really kind of restrict voting in the ways that he wants, like getting rid of mail ballots and stuff like that, or at least heavily restricting them. But so far are none, it's important to note none of that has actually kind of happened and been implemented yet. And, but, but it still means that, you know, by getting up there and put using the power of the bully pulpit to cast out on elections, I think that that is A, irresponsible for democracy, but also B, kind of shows how desperate he is getting because we are getting close to the elections and how eager he is to do this. And as we all know, kind of somebody who is desperate, who maybe has a lot of power or at least a big microphone that can be, you know, there, there could be trouble ahead in the midterms, which is, of course, is something that we have talked about before.
- [41:04]
A
Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about the midterms specifically, but Mary, I know you've delved into. Nathaniel said that this is dangerous insofar as it sort of intimidates voters or compels voters to distrust American democracy and Our electoral system. You've been looking into polling already. You know, there' not a lot of trust in the integrity.
- [41:27]
B
Yeah. After the speech on Thursday, I wrote a piece on Friday looking into sort of where we're at in terms of how people are viewing our democracy. And I found the results very dispiriting. I want to highlight in particular this survey from YouGov that was conducted in mid July, July 8th through 10th. They had a bunch of different kinds of shenanigans that could happen around elections. And they asked respondents whether or not they thought these problems would occur in the upcoming midterm. Specifically, respondents could say, probably will, but it won't change the results of the election. Probably will, and it will change the results of the election or probably not. And on almost every. On every issue they asked, it was nearly a majority or a majority of Americans said these things will probably happen. So the kinds of things people are expecting to happen in the midterms. I'm so sorry to tell you guys this. It makes me so sad. Vote counts will be tampered with. 49% said will probably happen. Some ballots will not be counted. 54% said will probably happen. Some people who are eligible will be prevented from voting. 49% said will probably happen. There will be voter fraud. 50% officials will not accept results. 53%. The good news, I guess, is that on none of these issues, none of them did respondents say that it would be enough to change the results of the election. So people are expecting these shenanigans, generally not expecting them to change the results. But people are primed to accept these kinds of. Of lies. Right. Like we. I mean, it's probably true, actually, in almost every election that some ballots will not be counted and some people who are eligible will be unable to vote. But like, vote counts being tampered with at, at 49% saying this is probably going to happen. Like, I, I don't like it.
- [43:22]
A
Yeah. I mean, and I imagine there are different partisan splits on different questions.
- [43:27]
B
Yeah, for sure.
- [43:28]
A
Like people who are eligible to vote not being able to have their ballots cast. I imagine that's something like a majority of Democrats say they expect that to happen. 66% vote count tampered with is more of a majority Republican in position. Am I right on that? Okay. Yeah, I know, I know the country we're dealing with. All right.
- [43:48]
B
Yeah. Vote counts being tampered with. Forty percent of Democrats said that was. That would probably happen. Whereas you have 61% among Republicans, some people who are eligible being prevented from voting. As I said, you have 66% of Democrats, 33% of Republicans. The one thing everyone agrees about, actually, and I didn't mention this in my broad overview because it's not like official election stuff, is that false information will be spread about the elections that's in the 70s across the board.
- [44:15]
A
That's also like already happened, so.
- [44:18]
B
Oh yeah,
- [44:20]
C
yes.
- [44:21]
A
Unfortunately, when we look towards election day itself, I know that there are broad concerns and I worry sometimes, you know, like in these poll, in the polls that Mary has just mentioned, when people kind of overdo it in terms of fears about election integrity because then it actually creates fertile ground for, you know, there to be a sort of a rejection or a broader distress even when there shouldn't be. So what are you kind of hearing about in terms of concerns and what are you actually worried about?
- [44:54]
C
It's wise to think about this in three buckets. There's the before the election, the during the election and the after the election. So we are starting to close the book on the before the election period. Right. Obviously election day is in November, which is still a few months away, but people are going to start voting in September, which isn't too far away. Obviously the primaries are already underway, but election officials have to start making preparations for the general election pretty soon, like, you know, in like about a month. And the time is basically has basically run out to make any kind of substantive policy changes to the way people vote to the, to election laws and stuff like that. Trump's executive orders have been held up in court. I do not expect that to change. The Save America act is not going to pass because the Senate is not going to abolish the filibuster. It's clear that that is a non starter. Trump, as I mentioned, has kind of gotten increasingly desperate in the last couple of weeks trying to pull every lever at his disposal to pressure states to change the laws or to get laws to be changed. So for instance, his administration has reportedly talked about like threatening to withhold disaster relief funds unless states change their election laws. It is again, probably functionally too late for states to do that. Some Republican controlled states have already made some small changes like passing proof of citizenship requirements. But I think any action on that front that is going to happen has already happened. The administration also sent letters to state election officials last week, two weeks ago, basically threatening them with criminal prosecution if they knowingly have non citizens on their voting rolls. So again, they are really trying to pressure them to get rid of the non citizens on their voter rolls, which again do not exist or at least exist in such small quantities that, you know, they are negligible. And states are already actively looking for those. That is a continuing process that has happened long before Donald Trump came on the scene. So that's the kind of before election stuff, the during election stuff.
- [46:47]
B
Can I just throw in there, like, one quick survey result?
- [46:51]
C
Of course.
- [46:51]
B
There's this beautiful and wonderful body of research from an organization called Bright Line Watch. They do surveys both of the American public and of political science experts. And I just wanted to flag, in their latest survey of political science experts, they ask about a bunch of different things that are happening. They ask whether or not those things are a threat to democracy. Among experts, 93% said. Said that calls to nationalize voting. So to take these things like Nathaniel's describing and put them under federal control, 93% of experts said that is a threat to our democracy. 85% rated it as a serious or extraordinary threat. So, like, these things like Nathaniel's describing them very casually. I just want to flag that. Like, people who know what they're talking about say this is an extremely serious problem. So, anyway, carry on.
- [47:42]
C
Um, but, yes, and then. So that's the before the.
- [47:45]
A
Wow. Way to be. Way to be such a downer on a Monday, Mary.
- [47:48]
B
I know I told you this whole piece I wrote on Friday is really sad to me.
- [47:52]
C
It's, it's, it's both. It is definitely depressing, but also kind of to your point, Galen, it is important not to go too far because, like, nothing has changed yet substantively other than the environment, which I guess was already pretty negative. So people should not be worried. Worried. I mean, they can be a little bit worried, but, like, you should still vote. Your vote is still in all likelihood going to count and all that. But anyway, as I say, that the during and after election stuff, I think is just frankly extremely unpredictable. Right? These are things like ICE agents showing up at polling places. It's things like Trump, somebody in the Trump administration trying to impound voting machines or like ballots after a couple days, after the election. It's things like legal efforts to overturn the election result that, that Trump might not like. These things are obviously very much in the air. They could happen. It wouldn't shock me. They could also not happen. They would. That wouldn't shock me either. And it's just we don't have a model for this stuff, unfortunately. You know, we would love to have that, you know, here on the GD politics, slash, you know, former 538 politics. But that is I think what a lot of people are worried about. But the only, and I know this is so unsatisfying, but you just have to have such a, you have to embrace the uncertainty about it and the range is so wide from really this is all going to be a nothing burger to a like 5 alarm fire for democracy. And I think people, the best thing that people can do is educate themselves about their rights, educate themselves about who runs election elections and what, you know, what can and can't be done to affect election results. Go be a poll worker if you want to learn more or feel like you're kind of helping the system.
- [49:30]
B
It's really fun.
- [49:30]
C
Fun. Yeah. Mary and I have both been poll workers. It is fun. It's interesting. But yeah, you know, we will, we'll obviously be covering it very closely at Vote Beat and I'll happily come on the program to talk to you about it, Galen. But yeah, we'll see. The president's address did not quiet concern, even though he did not make any actions kind of toward the 2026 election, it certainly did not quiet any concerns that he is interested in monkeying with it in the future.
- [49:57]
A
Yeah. Nathaniel, I want to just stress one more point before we end here, which is you said that we don't know what will happen on election day or in the days after. Of course, of course we don't. And the last election for which Donald Trump was president ended in a disastrous way for the country. So I understand people's concerns. What are the layers of backstops for actual election day and the daily days after? Because, you know, as fucked up as January 6th was, the system ultimately did hold. Right. Important to remember there. What are the backstops in place to ensure that the system holds no matter what happens on the day or in the days after election 2026?
- [50:43]
C
Yeah, I would say two broad categories of things. And one is the kind of hyperlocalization of elections. So as folks know, elections are not administered on the federal level. They're often not even administered on the state level level. They're administered on the local level, whether that's on the county or even city and town level. Every little locality runs its own elections. And so if you, and you know, every polling place is distinct. And so again, in the same way that, you know, if you decided you wanted to hack a voting machine or hack an election, you'd have to hack thousands of jurisdictions in order for it to matter. Similarly, if you want to be sending troops to any polling places, you're going to have to do that. On such a wide scale in order for it to matter, or I should say in order for it to affect the outcome, I think it would matter even if it was just one. And like, frankly, there just isn't the manpower for that. Right. Even if that's something Donald Trump decided that he wanted to do when he wakes up on election Day. So, so there is that. There's the fact that elections are certified on a local level. And the, and the vast, vast majority of election officials are really dedicated to their tasks, both because they love their job and believe in democracy, and also because they're legally obligated to do it and can get thrown in jail if they don't certify elections and count votes properly, even in the rare cases when you do have kind of a rogue election official. So right now in Michigan, in Antrim county, there is a county clerk who took it upon herself. She's a kind of a MAGA aligned county clerk. She took it upon herself to delete voter registrations of people she felt were ineligible or really shouldn't explain why she did it. I assume that was why she did it. But the system worked because the city clerks in her district were like, why are these voters disappearing for my roles. And the Secretary of State of Michigan who maintains the voter rol was able to go in and look at the like, basically the log of changes that this person made and revert them. So there are many layers of checks like that because you're going kind of up and down the scale like that. And then the other big check is, is of course the judiciary. And I know that for some listeners that may not be super reassuring. Obviously the, the court system, certainly the Supreme Court, but also many layers of the court system are quite conservative leaning at this point and fairly friendly to Trump. I do think that overturning an election without evidence is a, is a bridge too far. Right.
- [53:01]
A
So if, well not just think like there's a pretty clear track record with 2020.
- [53:06]
C
Yes, I think that there are more. Trump has appointed more judges now than he had in 2020. And so I think that the judiciary is probably going to be a little more sympathetic to his arguments now. But I do think that there is a big difference between even something like undoing the Voting Rights act and, and, you know, agreeing with the idea that there was massive fraud and we should redo an election or reverse the results of an election. I think more to complain, I think
- [53:34]
A
there's like literally no comparison. But we can, we'll, we'll save that fight for another day. Nathaniel.
- [53:38]
C
But I also, sure. But I also think that the Supreme Court isn't even the, the main issue, because for things like if two days after the election, Trump sends in the FBI or the National Guard or somebody to impound a voting machine in Houston or something like that, because he thinks that there's probably fraud, a court, they can get on the phone, like the local election officials can get on the phone with a court to get an order to stop that, like, immediately. And that is, that's really where the rubber meets the road. And kind of the question is whether those agents kind of obey that court order and whether what they've done with the machines in the meantime, like, who has physical possession of them. But I do not think that courts would sign off on any kind because these, these actions would be so extraordinary. You would need extraordinary evidence, and the evidence just doesn't exist exist for that to justify that. So I think, I do think I do also, at the end of the day, Galen, trust the judiciary to, to block this. I think the question is more about if the, the biggest thing that keeps me up at night is if the National Guard takes control of a, a voting machine, even for a few hours. Can you still count the, or ballots, let's say, can you still count those ballots in the election? Again, if it's just one or like 300 ballots in one polling place, that isn't necessarily going to be enough to change the results of an election, but it's still, I think, again, like a pret.
- [54:54]
A
Concerned. Yeah, yeah.
- [54:56]
B
And people deserve to have their votes counted. I'm gonna be Debbie Downer again for a minute here. I, I mean, I completely agree with Nathaniel. I think, you know, the fact that we have like, this decentralized system where local election administrators are like, each individually doing their thing, you cannot really like, hack the whole system because you would have to hack like, thousands and thousands of jurisdictions and whatever like that. I, I think listeners to this podcast who, like us, are big fans of democracy and think democracy is good, feel reassured by that. I just going to flag one more polling result. This comes from a Marquette Law school poll in June. 38% of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence or quite a lot of confidence in the people who administer elections in their state. 28% say they have very little or no confidence at all in their local elections officials. 29% of Republicans, just less than a third of Republicans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the people that administer elections in their state. So listeners to this podcast are probably like democracy is good and going fine. My bigger concern is with the large numbers of American voters who are not going to be listening to the GD Politics podcast that do not trust their local elections administration. If, if, if someone, somewhere, maybe it's Donald Trump wants to spread falsehoods and lies, which again, voters are pretty sure are going to happen anyways, there's probably a receptive audience for it out there. And that is my bigger concern is what happens with those people.
- [56:32]
A
Yeah, well, we're going to be covering that story and doing the best we can to inform people as it all plays out out. So I understand we're ending on a red, cheery note. I But you know, I understand, I understand we can't always, we can't always be rainbows and butterflies here on the GD Politics podcast, as much as I would love for it to be that way. But nonetheless, I want to say a big thank you for walking us through all of that, Mary and Nathaniel. I appreciate it.
- [56:59]
C
Anytime, Galen.
- [57:00]
B
Thanks Galen.
- [57:01]
A
My name is Galen Druke. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdp politics.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes. You can also join in our paid subscriber chat and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. And you ensure that we can keep making a podcast that prioritizes curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. Also, be a friend of the POD and go give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts, maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.