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- [00:00]
A
One topic that I forgot to include is the Gramplatner sexting scandal. Are you aware that there was a sexting scandal?
- [00:07]
B
This is the first time hearing of this.
- [00:09]
A
Okay, so, Jacob, here's the thing. When a man loves a woman very much, but also loves himself too much,
- [00:19]
B
when the story was like, one person said there were a dozen, but the campaign was like, no, it was only.
- [00:24]
A
No, there were six.
- [00:25]
B
It was only six.
- [00:26]
A
Yeah.
- [00:27]
B
The precision here is almost more worrisome than anything else. It's like, it doesn't make it better once it's, you know, any more than. Really, once it's more than any. You're just going to clip this for the cold open. So I'm not even not trying to get myself in trouble. Here's what I'll say. I think that there is a difference.
- [00:46]
A
So, Jacob, what is the appropriate number of extramarital sex? Hello, and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druck, and we are back to our regularly scheduled programming. I was in Ireland last week for a wedding, and I managed to record a crossover podcast with the folks at the Irish Times. So get ready for some Irish politics in the feed in the near future. But for now, we're going to catch up on what's going on here in the usa. We're going to kick things off with a little look back at what I missed. So, Ken Paxton is officially taking on James Talarico in the Texas Senate race this fall. We'll get into what that general election will look like. Also, the whole time I was away, I kept getting notifications on my phone suggesting the US And Iran had reached a deal. And then new notifications saying. Actually, just kidding. So we're going to see if our guests today can tell me what the hell is going on. Oh, and that 2024 DNC autopsy report came out while I was on the way to the airport. I did not, dear listener, read it while on vacation, so. So you can hear me react to it in real time on the podcast today. Plus, what's up with that Graham Platner sexting scandal? Then we are going to turn our sights towards Tuesday's primaries. It's a big day as far as this year's contests go. We've got the governor's race in California, the LA mayoral race, House primaries in brand new California congressional districts and elsewhere, and some notable primaries statewide in Montana and Iowa. Here with me to dig into all of it is head of research at 50 plus one, Mary Radcliffe. Welcome to the podcast, Mary.
- [02:22]
C
Hey, Galen. I Hope you had a relaxing trip.
- [02:25]
A
I did. It was a great trip. I'll send you some pictures later on. It was unseasonably warm and sunny in Ireland for May. We really lucked out. Also here with us is deputy editor at Inside Elections, Jacob Hrabashkin. Welcome to the podcast, Jacob.
- [02:40]
B
How's it going?
- [02:41]
A
It's going well. You know, I've got that, I've got that post vacation glow. We'll see how long it lasts into this conversation because we're going to kick things off with a sexting scandal. Okay, so for this first half of the show that we're going to do a lot of this stuff, I have some sense of what has happened because I left the notifications on, on my phone, but don't know some of the details or necessarily how seriously to take it. So from what I understand, there was a report about Graham Platner's wife speaking with a campaign aide back in the fall saying, you know, there was, there was some sexting that Graham Platner did on the side of his marriage and it ended up coming out in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. And, you know, this aide said that there was something like a dozen sexting situations. Graham Platner's campaign said, no, that's a lie. It was more like 6. So I guess first question is the main primary is next week. Is there time for a new Democrat to launch a write in campaign? Uh, no, I'm kidding. How seriously should Democrats be taking this whole sexting scandal on top of obviously the other opposition research and sort of criticisms of, of Graham Platner's past that have already come out.
- [04:01]
B
It's just the latest thing in a long line of things that make Democrats nervous about the general election Here. This is a candidate who was not vetted by anyone except, you know, clearly his own, his own campaign team to some extent, and who we continue to learn new things about. Now, for the purposes of the Democratic primary, that has not mattered to his political success. But we don't know how things will play in a general election. I do think that people right now are making a mistake when they say, well, because he was able to beat Janet Mills in the primary and bully her out of that race, essentially the sitting governor and the choice of national Democrats, that means that these things in his past don't matter. Not quite. They don't matter within the Democratic primary electorate. But the general election is a much wider pool and there are voters there who still have to make up their minds and who have not been, you know, exposed to all the attacks that Republicans are going to levy on him yet. And so when I talk to Democrats here and in Maine, there's still a lot of trepidation about what's out there. What more could come out about Graham Platner ahead of the general election, now that we know that there was sexting going on with multiple different people, whether it was 6 or 12 or whatever the number was, I think it's a reasonable question to ask now will those messages come out? And what do the messages say? And whatever is in those conversations are going to be fuel for the conversation that is going to keep going from now till election day. And Republicans are going to be very, very good about, to the extent that they have research dripping that out piece by piece to make sure that he never gets past the point where he has to be talking about all of these things. And that can be, that can be very damaging. Arguably, you know, perhaps better for things to come out earlier in the race than later. Like we saw with Cal Cunningham when, you know, his sexts leaked in October of 2020 and tanked his campaign.
- [06:11]
C
But yeah, I mean, that's the question that I have been ruminating on with respect to the race in Maine because we have lots of examples of candidates with various sorts of scandals, not just sexting scandals. But if you take of a piece, all of this Graham Platner stuff, you think back to candidates like Todd Aiken in Missouri, you think back to Christine o' Donnell and as you mentioned, Cal Cunningham, all that stuff, the damaging stuff came out after the primaries had, had ended and there was nothing that the party could do about it. So I find it fascinating to see this all coming out before the primary and, and voters not responding to it the way that we have seen in general elections in the past. And I think you're right, Jacob. The key question is like, if this is coming out very early, can Platner maneuver to be like, okay, we've, we've handled that. Yeah, yeah, I did some stuff that's done now we move on and talk about other issues because I think like, it's potentially a benefit to Platner that all of this is coming out soon enough?
- [07:15]
B
Yeah.
- [07:15]
A
Does it mean that there's just so much stuff that this is coming out now and more will come out later? Or is it almost like you said, a benefit? I do have to say one of the names that wasn't mentioned in the list of scandal plagued candidates is of course Donald Trump. And a lot of his scandals came out during the primary, Republican primary. Voters supported him despite that, and it ended up ultimately not mattering once. I mean, not that it didn't matter. I think a Republican candidate probably could have done even better against Hillary Clinton in 2016 if they had not been plagued by scandal in the way that Donald Trump was. But I think people look at that and say, well, if he can kind of play this working class authenticity thing and try to make it a more populist campaign, where the criticism from the media or the establishment Republicans almost becomes part of the battle that he's waging for the soul of Maine's working class, or whatever it may be, is the Trump template there for him to take advantage of? I think that's probably what a lot of people are thinking about right now. And I'm curious for your thoughts.
- [08:16]
B
Nobody else can make it work like Trump can. I think that the last decade is littered with candidates who have tried and failed to do the Trump playbook when it comes to personal scandal, when it comes to those kinds of vulnerabilities, and it just, it never works. Trump is unto himself, and he is able to avoid taking heat for things that would have sank a million other political careers. That said, I think ultimately, right, like, campaigns are choices, they're decisions between discrete candidates, right? You can't vote for somebody who's not on the ballot. I mean, you can, but they aren't going to win. And so the reason why I think you can't count Platner out is because his opponent, Susan Collins, has a lot of challenges herself politically. Voters in Maine are gonna have to decide whether they're willing to vote for someone who they might have questions about their behavior, their morality, their judgment versus somebody who they can't abide by politically and who they feel, you know, they can no longer support. That's a trade off. It's a conversation. It's a negotiation that voters are going to have to make in their minds. But I think there's no doubt that Democrats are hampered by the fact that Platner has all this baggage. I think it's a useful thought experiment because I think people are getting a little bit over their skis here. Graham Platner without the Reddit history, without the sexting. Think about who that candidate is and where they are in this race right now. And you can't make the argument that that person wouldn't be doing significantly better, Right.
- [10:00]
A
Like, if Jared golden had run, if Democrats got their way.
- [10:04]
B
Oh, well, look, I, I think Goldin and Platner have, have A. A lot of at least superficial similarities. I do think they have some important differences. Golden is a politician.
- [10:12]
C
Yes. Yeah. I mean, part of Graham Platner's appeal, like Trump, as you mentioned, Galen, is that outsider perspective, this outsider populist kind of thing that I don't think golden could credibly make that argument.
- [10:25]
B
And the other thing I'll say, and the reason why I think this for two reasons. Why I think this particular moment is probably the most perilous for Platner, probably since the first story about the Reddit history broke is one, because by virtue of what we're talking about, there will be more shoes to drop. Right. People are going to work very hard to try and find the women that he was talking to. They're gonna work very hard to try and find the messages, to uncover them, to embarrass him. And so what we know now, there were unknown unknowns to channel my Donald Rumsfeld here, we had unknown unknowns, which was, what more is there out there about Graham Platner? Now we have a known unknown. There are text messages, there are conversations, and will those come out, and in what form, and what will we learn? That's dangerous. That's gonna keep people awake at night. But the second thing that I think makes this perilous is that the Platner respons the Reddit stories to all the comments that he made on, you know, women and black people and rural voters and. Right. Like all of the things that he's been hit on so far, the response has essentially been, he was at a very low point in his life. He was suffering deeply from ptsd. He was, you know, an alcoholic. He really was going through a lot of challenges. He has gotten his life together. He found Amy, he got married. He's, like, made a good thing out of a bad situation. And he is a man reformed. He's a different person than he was when he said all these things. And now we've got something that happened not that long ago after he came back to Maine, after he was at the oyster farm, after he got married. Right. And so it. It starts to chip away at this image of somebody who has changed, somebody who has reformed.
- [12:11]
C
I don't. I don't necessarily agree with that, because I think these are fundamentally two different kinds of scandal. Right. If you look at the Reddit comments, we are not talking about difficulties in one's personal relationships there. Right. This is a diff. This is a thing of a different character, I would say, than like, saying some controversial stuff online versus Cheating on your wife or whatever we're calling this. Those are, are things of a different character. So I don't necessarily think that like behaving in a different kind of behavior that is perceived to be immoral by the public obviates the like explanation for the previous behavior. I think they're different. I just think, I think they're good, but I think they're different.
- [12:54]
B
I think it just makes it a little bit more challenging to make the kind of the renewed character argument.
- [13:00]
A
I think whether he can still present as this redeemed character will be interesting. I take the point. I do wanna move on.
- [13:08]
C
Can I say one thing before we move on, Galen? Cause I know you were joking earlier about someone launching a last minute writing campaign or whatever. I just want to be very clear. Janet Mills name remains on the ballot in Maine. Maine Democrats do have a choice. They're going to make that choice. If this is the choice that they make. That's, I mean the voters get to decide elections. That's what it is. So like there is actually a path, if voters were angry enough at Graham Platner to get someone else on the ballot in November.
- [13:36]
B
I think that the, the dynamic there is somewhat similar to the dynamic in the general election, which is that it's still even. That's a choice between Graham Platner and Janet Mills. And they clearly didn't want Janet Mills. And so I think Platner's gonna win. Walking away. I, I think it'll be interesting to see what percentage of voters still pull the ballot for, for Mills to send a message. Because I, I talked to a couple main Democrats when I was writing about this race last week who volunteered that they, they were like, I'm gonna vote for Graham in the general, but in the primary, I, I'm going to vote for Mills to send a message that there are still a lot of us out there that he needs to win over. And so I'll be interested to see, you know, if she gets 5%, that's one thing. If she gets 30%, you know, that's, that's another thing. And I think that sends a message to his campaign that they've got work to do if they want to win the general election. Because the way to win a general election in Maine, you have to, you can't just do the like, I'm going to win over Trump voters thing, right? The way that Susan Collins has won in the past is by peeling independents and soft Democrats, particularly women, particularly women with college degrees, older women and women who live in Southern Maine. Right. It's not like Susan Collins wins by blowing out the doors in Bangor and the county and kind of the most conservative and rural parts. She does really well there. But relative to kind of how other Republicans perform in the state, her strength is in Democratic leaning constituencies. And so you have to get those people who are back into the fold if you want to win a general election. And maybe those people are going to be so pissed off at Susan Collins this time that none of this matters. That's a real possibility. They will overlook anything that they know about Platner because they can no longer abide by Susan Collins. That's what the data says right now. That's why he's showing up as, you know, a leader in all of the polling that we have out of this race. But that's the path that he needs to go down. You can't win a general election in Maine just by winning over a couple more lobster men or guys up in Northern Maine.
- [15:41]
A
Okay. On the topic of competitive Senate races this fall, while I was away, Ken Paxton officially became the Republican nominee for the Senate race in Texas. I was looking this morning on the Inside Elections website and saw, Jacob, that that race is rated as likely Republican even after last Tuesday's primary. Is that going to get updated or are you sticking by that rating?
- [16:08]
B
Well, look, we update our ratings all the time as we get more information. For the moment, we're holding it at likely Republican. Why are we doing that? I think two reasons. The first is, as we've talked about on this podcast before, Galen, I have been the biggest John cornyn Skeptic in D.C. for a little over a year. Pretty much ever since Ken Paxton got in the race, I have been pretty adamant that John Cornyn was going to lose. I mean, we've talked about this before and so take your victory lot.
- [16:34]
A
You were right, like a year in
- [16:36]
B
advance to a certain extent. I think the Cornyn loss was already a little baked in to our rating there. I candidly, I think it was probably more likely that we would have shifted it the other direction if Cornyn had won. You know, I think that would have been a bigger update to our priors than a Paxton victory. So that's point one. Point two is that I want to see how Republican voters start to consolidate now that they're done with the primary. We've been in this weird zone since March where the Democratic primary was over and the Republican primary was still raging. And so James Talarico has had three months to. Not three months, but a month and A half, two months to consolidate his vote, to raise money, to work really hard at bringing in Crockett voters into his coalition. No mistake that he's campaigning with Obama, doing things like that to address some of his weaknesses. And Republicans haven't had that opportunity yet. They've still been at each other's throats. And we know that there will be some level of consolidation that is going to happen now that Ken Paxton is the nominee. We've already seen that happening at the elite levels here in D.C. you've got Tim Scott and the NRSC, which were the most savage, most brutal anti Paxton people across this primary lining up behind him. Obviously the President has put his political weight behind him. So let's give it a couple weeks and see if, if Paxton can consolidate the vote. There was a poll out from Democratic firm a couple days ago that found that I think a third of Cornyn voters said that they were going to vote for Talarico in the general election and that was enough to give Talarico a three point lead in the top line. I am skeptical that a third of John Cornyn voters are going to vote for Talarico in the general election. I think that number will come down as the general election will becomes a little bit more clear and framed as this Democrat versus Republican race. And we'll see what that looks like. It's very possible that we continue to move this race if Talarico remains very competitive in the polling. But I want to see how the dust settles and then we'll go from there.
- [18:36]
C
Yeah, I tend to agree, I agree with some of that analysis, but I think there's also some other factors here. So if you look at the polling, we only have the one survey since the GOP runoff was finished. But if you just look over the last couple months, what you see is Talarico is pulling at roughly 45 or so percent. In this most recent survey it was 47%. 45 or 47% is not enough for Talarico to win a general election in Texas. He needs to get that number up to 49% because you're going to bleed some voters off to the Libertarian candidate in this race. And so it's not clear to me exactly if Talarico is going to be able to push past that, that level of 45%. If he stays stuck at 45% and the GOP voters slowly consolidate around Paxton, Talarico will stay right where he's polling and Paxton will slowly creep up. So I agree. I think that there's some wait and see, that needs to happen here. The other flag that I want to just throw, I'm like, how a Paxton versus a Cornyn win matters in the general election, particularly in Texas, in is money. John Cornyn is a prodigious fundraiser, one of the best fundraisers in the Senate. Ken Paxton has quite a lot of detractors, and Texas is a very expensive state to compete in. So I don't mean to say Ken Paxton's not going to raise buckets of money. He absolutely is. Cornyn already raised all the buckets of money and had it sitting around to spend in this general election. So Ken Paxton has a lot of work to do here in order to get that consolidation and to get up on the airwaves. Talarico has gobs of cash that he's been able to raise from enthusiastic Democrats who are very excited about the concept of blexus. And so I think that's actually one of the, like, underlooked stories of the Paxton win in the. In the runoff here, is that the money race has significantly shifted.
- [20:33]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, Paxton has raised $7 million since he started his campaign, as of, you know, the last filing, which was a couple weeks ago. And I think Talarico had raised 40 million through the end of March. So there's going to be a significant hard dollar disparity. One thing that Republicans are trying to figure out now is where is the money going to come from to boost Ken Paxton on the outside side, on the independent expenditure side, because Republicans have defense all across the country that they have to support. They've got to spend in Maine, they've got to spend in North Carolina. They want to go on offense in Michigan and Georgia. They've got Ohio, they've got Alaska, they've got Iowa. They've got other states that they have to take care of. I think a lot of eyes are turning now to MAGA Inc. Which is the Trump super PAC that's sitting on. You know, I can't remember if it's 200 million or 300 million, but it's a lot of money. And, you know, I talk to Republicans in D.C. who say, okay, you break it, you buy it, essentially, and Trump got Paxton over the finish line here. So it's up to the Trump machine to provide the funds to help him go toe to toe with Talarico, whereas we're going to spend money on North Carolina and these other places that are more competitive. And we'll see if that plays out. We'll see if Trump is willing to part with that cash in Maga, Inc. Or at the rnc. But it's going to take resources away from other more competitive races that Republicans are trying to win.
- [22:04]
A
Well, you know, we love a wait and see on this podcast. So we'll have to get back together in a few weeks after the dust has settled and see whether or not Republicans have consolidated behind Ken Paxton. I do want to talk about a couple more things before we cast forward to Tuesday's primaries, which is I mentioned I have not read the DNC autopsy report. I also haven't read any coverage of it, so I don't have to play dumb. I actually am dumb when it comes to this topic. Mary, what did it say and was it right?
- [22:34]
C
Well, it's kind of hard to say what it said, Galen, because it wasn't finished.
- [22:38]
A
Oh, no, wait, Really? I didn't know that.
- [22:41]
C
The reason that the DNC never released the autopsy report is no one ever finished the autopsy report at the dnc. It was released. This was a quixotic document, Galen. It's, it's a interesting thing going on here. So it was released with all these, like, little red notes all over it. There was a section titled conclusion, and next to it was just a little red note that was like, this section was not completed by the author. Right. Like, just all over it. Like, this appears to be factually inaccurate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So the DNC didn't really do an autopsy report. What's fascinating about what was released, the partial report that was published here is it really seemed to omit what, what seemed to have been a lot of the key factors actually, in what happened in the 2024 election. So there is no mention in this partial, incomplete document, for example, of Joe Biden's debate with Donald Trump. They just don't talk about it. In fact, they talk about Biden very little. They seem to have missed the point. I think that they, they realized they missed the point. They decided this document has missed the point, we're not going to complete it, and that's what caused all of the dust up to begin with.
- [23:55]
A
So it was not that they had come to some sort of grand conclusions that looked bad for the Democratic Party and therefore didn't want to release it. It was that they didn't do the job in the first place.
- [24:07]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hmm.
- [24:09]
A
Okay, Jacob, do you want to get in here? Or if not, we can just move right along.
- [24:13]
B
Look, I, I hate to kick an autopsy while it's down, but there are glaring holes here. It does not talk at all about Biden's age. It does not talk at all about the way in which Biden, as Mary said, bungled that debate and then stuck around for another month and then handed the reins over to Kamala Harris. It does not talk through how any of that affected the race. To me, or.
- [24:39]
C
Or the way in which Harris was nominated.
- [24:41]
B
Yes, yes, exactly. To me, that. That is the defining story of the election in a lot of ways. There's been a lot of conversation about how it doesn't mention Gaza at all. It doesn't mention Israel, Palestine policy at all. And that's a real frustration of people who, you know, feel that that played a major role in the election as well. It's totally. It's incomplete. Right. I mean, there are just portions of it that are missing, and then there are factual errors that. That are just kind of embarrassing. You know, they. They talk about how Democrats won only two gubernatorial races. Washington, North Carolina, conveniently forgetting Joe Biden's home state of Delaware, which they also won. It's not like that race has, like, major import, but it's. It's little things like that that they just completely missed that. That call into question the process by which this report was generated. They say that Mark Robinson won 45% of the vote in North Carolina. On the next page, it says Robinson won 43% of the vote in North Carolina. In reality, Robinson only won 40% of the vote. So they got. They put two different numbers there, neither of which were correct.
- [25:53]
C
And these all have these little red notes next to them, Right. Like that. That whoever at the DNC was reviewing this document highlighted. This is factually inaccurate.
- [26:02]
B
Look, I'm. I'm not one to like Monday morning DNC chair here too much, but I think Ken Martin should have when this got to his desk a year ago. Right. Or, you know, seven months ago, whenever it was. I think his first response should have been, go back and do it again, finish it. And when Paul Rivera, the author of this report, allegedly, according to Ken, Ken Martin said, no, he should have publicly said, I got the report. It's unsatisfactory. Were gonna put it out just for transparency. But essentially doing what they did now just six months earlier, or instead of
- [26:44]
C
put it out for transparency, say, I got the report. It's unsatisfactory. We are hiring a different team or assigning a different team to look into this. Yeah, just start over.
- [26:55]
B
Exactly.
- [26:56]
A
Again, I didn't read it. So I'm just. To any extent that I'm doing Monday morning quarterbacking here, it seems Pretty wild to me that the autopsy report started with Kamala Harris, seemingly started with Kamala Harris's candidacy. Because by the time we get to the summer of 2024, in retrospect, it seems like that election was lost. And it's not only because Joe Biden was old. It was because of the ways that Joe Biden's presidency had already failed and left him deeply unpopular. And I am curious how the Democratic establishment views things like, of course, circumstances and history are always going to play a role, but views things like the border, views things like the American rescue plan and the role that it played in spurring inflation, and views things like Palestine and. And the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And, like, is there anybody who within the Democratic establishment wants to take, like, a hard, critical look at the way that the presidency failed in order to learn lessons not just about how to get Americans on your side, but to do a good job in governance once you actually have power? Because the. The two are not unrelated. Right. Like, if you do a shit job, that's what's great about democracy. Right. If you do a shit job, you don't get rewarded. And so that seems pretty crazy to me that any autopsy wouldn't begin with, like, the start of Joe Biden's presidency. But maybe, maybe. Maybe that's not the job for the dnc. I don't know.
- [28:37]
C
Yeah. I mean, I think this continues a pattern that we have seen over the last several years of Democratic Party elites being very uncomfortable discussing Joe Biden at all. Right. The party was behind the Biden presidency. I mean, we all remember this, right? Like, as you said, this is basically the defining story of the 2024 campaign was like, the president is very old.
- [29:00]
B
Yeah.
- [29:01]
C
And the party establishment basically pretended that wasn't a concern for Americans, pushed his presidency. Even after the debate, for several weeks, a lot of party establishment folks were pushing his presidency, and then even when he dropped out, declined to acknowledge that there was, in fact, any problem. Right. Like, they spent all of 2024 and the years preceding doing exactly that, and they are continuing to do that.
- [29:26]
A
Okay, two more things on my docket before we get to Tuesday's primaries. Can anyone explain to me what's going on with this Iran deal?
- [29:34]
C
No.
- [29:34]
B
No.
- [29:35]
C
Nobody on the planet can explain to you what's going on with the Iran deal.
- [29:39]
A
We've taken plenty of time to describe the incompetencies of the Democratic Party on today's podcast. So I think we. We. We might as well say this seems like a pretty incompetent process as far as things go, like, are we at war again? I couldn't really figure that out from the sporadic notifications that I was getting.
- [29:59]
B
Galen, we actually haven't been at War since 1945.
- [30:03]
C
Well, there is a ceasefire, but occasionally we throw missiles at each other, but there's not like a campaign ongoing. It's just that occasionally we're exchanging a
- [30:13]
B
little bit of fire just to remind each other that we're there.
- [30:18]
A
And is the president just as unpopular as when I left for Ireland?
- [30:23]
C
Yeah, basically.
- [30:24]
A
Okay. All right, wait. And on that topic, how serious is this Republican showdown over the Department of Justice weaponization fund? I read something about Republican senators saying that they're not going to fund immigration enforcement while they had to cancel the vote. Yeah, over a billion dollar weaponization fund at the Department of Justice which would direct money towards people who have, according to the Department of Justice or according to the executive branch, been the victims of political persecution. The suggestion is that money could go to the Trump family, to the perpetrators of January 6th and the like. Are sort of Republicans going to actually prevent this from happening?
- [31:08]
C
Well, as of right now, the courts have prevented it from happening. We'll see if that stands. Far be it for me to predict what the Supreme Court will do with this kind of a case, but as of right now, federal court has ruled that the settlement can't go through and that they have to go back to the lawsuit and decide whether or not this lawsuit can proceed. There's some question about whether. I am not a lawyer, so I am so sorry, lawyers listening to me speaking, if I screw up some of the details here. But there's a question about whether you can have a lawsuit where there is no adversarial relationship between the two parties. So that is some, like, parsing of legalese in.
- [31:44]
A
I have that same theoretical question about. I have that same theoretical question about podcasts sometimes. Like, is it a podcast if everyone just goes around the circle agreeing? We gotta, you know, you gotta, you gotta have some adversarial views at some point. I don't know if we've managed to disagree enough on this podcast, but maybe we will in the next segment. Who knows?
- [32:03]
B
Yeah, Galen, I think what we're seeing right now is that Republicans are starting to. There's a glimmer of understanding that Congress is actually really powerful when it wants to be. The story of the Trump years, certainly, but arguably the last 30 years of American politics has been even longer. Probably half century of American politics has been Congress slowly ceding its power to the executive branch kind of Very gradually over time. But when push comes to shove, Congress can do things like not pass bills and not appropriate funds and launch investigations and impeach people. And those are powerful tools that they have at their disposal. And this is one instance in which Congress is starting to potentially put its foot down. I don't think you can extricate this from the fact that Trump has embarked on this retribution campaign, his quote, so called revenge tour that has already ousted two Republican senators and at least one, one and a half if you want to count Dan Crenshaw, members of the House Republican Conference. And he's only operating on a for seat majority in the Senate right now. So he has made enemies or free agents out of Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn. He already has essentially an enemy in Mitch McConnell and he's got Susan Collins who's trying very, very hard to win reelection. That's four senators right there who could very easily block any and everything that Trump wants to get through the Senate from, from now on. So I think it's.
- [33:38]
C
And, and you did not mention Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski.
- [33:42]
B
There you go.
- [33:42]
C
Yeah. So now we've got six.
- [33:43]
B
Now we've got six. You've got. I think this is at the same moment that Trump is flexing his muscle within Republican primaries. He is facing perhaps the most serious fractures in his legislative coalition that he's faced certainly in this term and arguably outside of a few moments, you know, in the first, at the beginning of the first term as well.
- [34:10]
C
To get to your, like the specific question you asked, how serious is this? I think it's quite serious for Trump and it's not just on this anti weaponization stuff. Those six, you know, enemies slash free agents, slash independent thinkers, whatever you want to call caucus. Yeah, those six senators are sticking around through till at least until January 3rd and some longer. Right. So this is going to continue. This is serious enough that they had to cancel the vote on the immigration spending deal because the Senate was absolutely going to pass an amendment to that bill that would put guardrails or stop the creation of this anti weaponization fund. I don't know exactly the text of the amendment because they canceled the votes so that we didn't have to talk about it. Right. They didn't want to talk about it. There was reporting of like a screaming match between the Senate GOP caucus and the acting Attorney General. Like really like folks letting him have it. They let like 20 people speak. Usually in this meeting there's like three people who say anything. So yes, this seems to be actually serious. And it seems like, you know, now that primaries are ending and we are moving on to the general election campaign, Senators are able to back off of their bear hug of Trump a little bit here because those pressures of the primary are over whether they won or lost.
- [35:30]
A
Yeah, well, I'm glad to hear that some folks had some fun while I was on vacation. All right, let's move on to Tuesday's primaries. GD Politics is powered by you, the listeners. If you enjoy the show, the data driven analysis, the genuine curiosity and lack of partisan bs, and yes, sometimes the silliness too, please consider becoming a paid subscriber@gdpolitics.com paid subscribers help make the podcast possible and they also get twice the number of episodes and access to the paid subscriber chat where you can send me whatever questions you've got. Independent political media only works if the people who value it support it. So if GD Politics is part of your week, head to GDPolitics.com and become a paid subscriber. That's GDPolitics.com I so appreciate it. Thank you. We're going to talk about Tuesday's primaries. I should say here that we're going to do a reaction, I believe, on Wednesday morning. So if we don't get to everything here, we will cover it after the fact when we have all of the information so that, well, California is voting. So who am I kidding? We won't have all of the information on Wednesday, but we will have more information than we have now. And we are going to start with California. The governor's race there has been all kinds of topsy turvy. At one point, Democrats worried they might be locked out of the general election with two Republicans advancing in the top two primary. But now it looks possible that two Democrats could advance to the general with Democrats Javier Becerra and Tom Steyer both in the top three alongside Republican Steve Hilton. How are you? I mean, we don't have to extend all the way back to the start of things when it was like seemed like it might be Katie Porter's to lose, then it might be Eric Swalwell's to lose, then it might be Tom Steyer's to lose. Now it looks like it's Javier Becerra's to lose. I mean, truly like a who's who of afterthought. Democrats kind of rising to the top and then falling. But what are you guys making? How are you making sense of the race in this moment? Like, how seriously are you taking the idea that Republicans could be Locked out
- [37:32]
C
seriously enough that I wrote a whole article about this, a 50 plus one.
- [37:36]
A
Galen, love to hear it.
- [37:37]
C
And I should say, actually I wrote that article like three or four weeks ago. So I'm glad to see everyone catching up.
- [37:42]
A
Ever, ever. Prescient.
- [37:45]
C
No, I mean I think there's a very real possibility of a lockout for Republicans at the, at the top of the ticket. I don't think that's the likeliest outcome. I think I would expect Steve Hilton to have one of the spots in the, in the November general. I mean if you look in the early polling of this race, because there were so many Democrats on the ballot, we had quite a lot of undecideds in the early going of this race. And as is often the case in these like many person primaries where there's lots and lots of people, you do see sort of little waves, wavelets, boomlets of, of people growing and falling. Think about presidential primaries and you'll know what I mean. We see this kind of thing happen all the time. There's just like a little like, oh, this person's rising and then they just fade right back into the background. I mean, I think the story is really, after Swalwell dropped out, Democrats figured out that they have to consolidate around candidates. They looked around and they said, Javier Becerra seems like, seems like a name
- [38:43]
A
that I've heard before.
- [38:43]
C
A name I've heard before. He's had a lot of jobs in the government, which seems good. That's fine.
- [38:49]
A
Maybe good to Democrats. Although I maybe, I don't know. Yeah, what do Democrats want? The Graham Platner or the Javier Becerra?
- [38:58]
C
But yeah, I frankly find it much more interesting that Tom Steyer has continued to pull as well as he has in this race. It's, it's surprising to me that California Democrats. Yes, but it's surprising to me that California Democrats are like excited about voting for a billionaire that wouldn't have class trader.
- [39:16]
A
It's the class traitor billionaire. He's running to the left of Javier Becerra. He's like, I elect me. I know what all the billionaires are up to. And also wink, wink, I might even spend my own money on statewide referenda in order to tax those billionaires or tax the corporations or whatever. I mean, it's an interesting sort of mirror to Trump kind of play almost
- [39:39]
C
of like, oh yeah, there's some very direct Tom Steyer ads that are like, Tom Steyer cannot be bought. Which is exactly the kind of thing we saw with Trump.
- [39:48]
B
Yeah, yeah, I Mean, Galen, to your question, I think the, the, about the, the potential lockout, I think the, the, the most important figure is what is the total Republican vote that's available to these candidates? Because there are two major Republican candidates, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. If there were only one of them, right. That Republican would, would, would get spot in the general election. It's the fact that there are two who are running real campaigns that create the possibility of a D versus D or an R versus R. But that's, you know, we've moved past that. But there are going to be a ton of other Republicans on the ballot. And the question, and you know, how, how much does that vote fracture? I think there are going to be 10 other Republicans on the ballot. Those candidates are going to win not very much vote. But if you total it up, you know, it could be enough to keep Hilton under whatever he needs to get to the general election.
- [40:43]
C
To be fair, there are more Democrats on the ballot.
- [40:45]
B
That's true. Yes, yes, no. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it goes, it absolutely goes both ways. But I do think there's something to be said in the polling that when people poll California, they still give the list of like eight Democrats that conceivably could quit. Right. Like, Tony Thurmond is not going to win this race, but like, he still gets name checked on the polls.
- [41:05]
C
So Antonio Villaraigosa, also.
- [41:08]
B
Villaraigosa, you know, so, so when you get a poll, you get, you get Becerra, you get Stier, you get Porter, you get Mahan, you get Villaraigosa, you get Tony Thurmond. I don't know if you still get other people as well. And then you get Steve Hilton or Chad Bianco. So if you're a Republican, you're. Right now in polling, you're being constrained to these two choices. When you get your ballot, you will have a lot of other choices. How much does, how much drop off is there? And is the total Republican vote here, is it 35%, which is roughly what it was in 2018, or is it closer to 40%, which is closer to where it was in 2022 in the primary? And I think that that could make a difference as well here. But no, there's a real possibility that it's Steyer and Becerra in the general election. And no matter what the outcome is, we're probably not going to know for.
- [41:57]
C
Yeah, I was going to say, I can't wait to show up on Wednesday.
- [42:01]
B
The votes don't actually have to be certified until a month after primary day. So we could be waiting a long time.
- [42:07]
C
And. And there's a very decent chance that on Wednesday morning we do not know who will be in the runoff for California's gubernatorial election because it just takes a long time to count votes in
- [42:17]
A
California for the sake of election nerd. So, I mean, there are interesting motivations here, which is I think the Republican Party would like to see, of course, a Republican in the general election, and Steve Hilton may well boost turnout in other races, down ballot, et cetera, et cetera. But, like, from an election nerd perspective, I'm totally rooting for Javier Becerra versus Tom Steyer because Steve Hilton would not win the governorship. And watching Tom Steyer and Javier Becerra go at it for the next however many months before the general would be very fascinating. Like, would they be able to have debates about policy? Would it be about identity, like billionaire versus sort of like first modern Latino governor of California? And when it comes to my own selfish interests in covering California elections, I am going to, I believe for the first time mention Spencer Pratt's name on this podcast. You know, I've dabbled in reality television. I'll just say, of course, Spencer Pratt is a reality star from the hills back in the day. He is running in a top two primary against Democratic incumbent Karen Bass and Democratic challenger Nithya Rahman, who is a city council member at the moment. And this is again, seems to be a race where, like, any of those three could end up in the top two. Is that right?
- [43:39]
C
I'd be quite surprised if Karen Bass does not end up in the top two here. I believe she leads pretty much all of the polling. I mean, it's not like a good lead. It's like 30 to 27 to 24 or whatever.
- [43:50]
A
Yeah.
- [43:51]
C
But I believe Karen Bass is ahead in pretty much all the polling. There may be one survey that came out late last week that had Pratt up by one over Bass, but did have Bass in that second spot.
- [44:02]
A
So, I mean, it's pretty striking though, like how on, I mean, Karen Bass, you know, being in the lead with 30% as the incumbent Democrat in such a Democratic city, I think really speaks to folks frustration with, I mean, the wildfires, the response to the wildfires, and then daily life in Los Angeles when it comes to housing, homelessness, all of that, all of the stuff that we're talking about in California for, I guess,
- [44:28]
B
decades at this point, what this tells me and what the polling tells me, and maybe we'll see what the results are, is that a more credible challenger to Karen Bass probably could have won this election. Not easily, but more straightforwardly than either Nithya Raman or Spencer Pratt could. I'm thinking specifically of Rick Caruso, who was the runner up in the mayoral race four years ago, the billionaire developer who ran as a Democrat. I think that if he had run this time, I think he could have won. I think if you had seen another kind of outsider candidate, I don't think. Right. Like, it's not like Bob Iger or Willow Bay are gonna, you know, run for mayor of la, but like, somebody like that, in that kind of mold. There's no shortage of wealthy, civically minded Angelenos who are interested in the direction of the city.
- [45:23]
A
Chelsea Handler, you can still do the right thing.
- [45:26]
B
But none of them ran. And so what we're ending up with is Nithya Raman, who I think, you know, she's trying to kind of do what Zoran did in New York, but I don't think she has kind of the same kind of political chops. And you've got Spencer Pratt, who is not going to be mayor of Los Angeles.
- [45:42]
C
No, definitely not.
- [45:43]
B
I just did.
- [45:44]
A
Meghan McCain told me he's gonna be the next mayor of Los Angeles.
- [45:47]
C
The amount of he might make it to the November election. Absolutely.
- [45:52]
B
Sure. And, you know, in the same way that Steve Hilton is not gonna be governor of Cal. This is Los Angeles, and this is not the Los Angeles of like, the 1970s or 19. Like, I just. The amount of coverage that this race has gotten and Spencer Pratt has gotten in particular, is so outsized relative to his chances of becoming mayor, which are effectively zero. Does not matter whether he's running against Nithya Rahman or whether he's running against Karen Bass in the general election. If he makes it that far, he is not going to win. LA is not going to elect a Republican mayor, and they're certainly not going to elect Spencer Pratt as. As that Republican mayor. Maybe if Arnold ran. Right. If Arnold ran, then I would buy LA voting for him. Right.
- [46:36]
C
I mean, honestly, I think Spencer Pratt might be the best thing that has happened to Karen Bass. Because if Karen Bass was walked out of this primary, I mean, we've just discussed how deeply unpopular she is. If she came out of this primary having to go to a general election against Nithya Rahman, and it's a Democrat versus a Democrat, seems like she would lose. According to the unpopular, that's a real serious risk for her. If Spencer Pratt, if she has to face Spencer Pratt in a general. Like she's heaving a sigh of relief because, yeah, as Jacob said, Los Angeles is not going to vote for a Republican for mayor. It's not happening.
- [47:12]
B
Yeah. And that's why we've seen Pratt's bass allies start to run those kind of like, Spencer Pratt is too conservative.
- [47:19]
A
Too conservative for Los Angeles. It's like all Republicans get out and vote for Spencer Pratt. Keep Nithya Rahman out of the run.
- [47:25]
C
Up 12 Republicans.
- [47:28]
B
I think his vote share will be an interesting, like, you know, dissatisfaction meter. He's not gonna win. It's not happening.
- [47:36]
A
Okay, so we are going to talk about the upper chamber, but I want to put a little respect on the lower chamber first. So let's talk about House races before we actually talk about Senate primaries tomorrow. And we're gonna. This is gonna be a speed round. So what? Maybe I'll give you up to three. Jacob, I know you're a House nerd. Up to three House races that you are going to be watching tomorrow that are emblematic of something going on within the parties.
- [48:04]
B
It is like picking from my children, which I have so many of three races. Okay, what am I watching? California 22. This is David Valadao, Central Valley district. This is a seat the Democrats drew to be a little bit more favorable to them when they gerrymandered California in response to Texas. It's also a seat that they want to pick up for the majority. This is a heavily Hispanic district that Trump would have carried in 2024, but voted for Biden and Clinton. There is a progressive candidate, Randy Villegas, backed by Bernie Sanders and people like that. There is a more moderate candidate, a state legislator named Jasmeet Baines, who was known as kind of a valleycrat, one of the more conservative Democrats in the state legislature. She is supported by the DCCC in D.C. and kind of the national Democratic apparatus. This is going to be a really interesting case of like, can, you know, first of all, who do Democrats want as their standard bearer? And if it is Randy Villegas, can a progressive, like a true outspoken progressive like he is winning in a district that has moved away from Democrats in years past. So that's, that's one race that I am focusing on this, this coming Tuesday. You've also got in New Jersey, the open seat race for Bonnie Watson, Coleman's district, which is a Trenton based seat that is open because Coleman is retiring. You have a very crowded field. The field here breaks out kind of in. In three different directions. You've got four Candid, have strong geographic bases and political operations in this area that are all running. And then you've got Sue Altman, who ran in a neighboring district and who's the former director of the state level Working Families alliance, the WFP affiliate in New Jersey. And you've got Adam Hamaway, who is the most progressive candidate. He's a surgeon. He was endorsed by Tammy Duckworth as well as kind of the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. I think it's gonna be very interesting if he gets the nomination here and it's a solid Democratic seat. And then you asked me for a third one, which I have won.
- [50:20]
A
You can forfeit. You can forfeit. Mary, go ahead.
- [50:23]
C
I would just flag the primary in California's 11th. This is the race to succeed Nancy Pelosi, who is retiring after a long and storied career. And there's some interesting dynamics here. So there's, I believe there's one Republican on the ballot, but it's, it's a bunch of Democrats running against each other. The polling leader is Scott Wiener, who is state senator in, in the area. And behind Weiner, you've got two candidates, they're pulling maybe 10 to 15 points behind that are Connie Chan, who is the San Francisco supervisor, and Saikat Chakrabarti, who used to be chief of staff for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. So with these three candidates, you've got sort of really different wings of the party so late in the game. Nancy Pelosi has endorsed Connie Chan, who, as I said, has been pulling behind and often in third place in this race. Chakrabarti, who is affiliated with, as I mentioned, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has also been holding his own there in the 20s. But this, this third candidate who, like, doesn't have that as much of that, like, institutional support we think of from like the key players. Right. He's got endorsements from like a handful of local Democratic officials, but no one who's like a real heavy hitter like Nancy Pelosi or in Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. And so I'm just sort of curious, like, I'm not sure why he's been the polling leader. I'm not sure exactly what his appeal is, but whether or not the Nancy Pelosi endorsement of Connie Chan can help improve her chances. Which two of these candidates will be going off to the November runoff?
- [51:56]
B
If, if I, I mean, I, so my, my, my perspective on this race, I think is, is a little different. I think, you know, the reason why Scott Wiener has been successful so far is because he has wanted this seat for a very, very, very long time. He's also been in office a long time. I mean, he's now, he has a 15 year career in San Francisco politics. He's in the state Senate now. He used to be a supervisor. He has been raising money to run to succeed Pelosi for long before Pelosi was officially headed to the exits. And so he started with a cash on hand advantage that he has used to promote his candidacy. He has really deep relationships with a lot of the local political apparatus here. He has the endorsement of the state party. He's very involved in LGBTQ politics. And so he's got that operation behind him. And again, he's like when the stories were written about Pelosi retirement, essentially, anytime for the last decade, they've always mentioned two names, which are Christine Pelosi, her daughter, and Scott Wiener. And that is, I think, why he's out front.
- [53:10]
C
Yeah. What I am more interested in is why Saikat Chakrabarti has been so far behind, which is not what we've necessarily seen in other races where you have this sort of working families party type candidate this cycle. So far. Right. We've seen a lot of those candidates do quite well and some win. So this is what I'm watching. I'm wondering if, if Chakrabarti outperforms his polls. I'm wondering if the late endorsement of Connie Chan by Nancy Pelosi actually serves to push her up. I'm sort of just curious how those dynamics, particularly in the second place candidates, like, what is going to be important to voters in this district.
- [53:47]
B
Yeah. And I think the thing about Soycott is that like he, he's a bit of a cipher, right? He, he's a political operative, but he's also an incredibly wealthy engineer. He was one of the first employees at Stripe. And so he, he is a billionaire many, many, many times over. He's poured about $8 million of his own money into the campaign so far. And he, he doesn't have the same kind of local political relationships that either Connie Chan or Scott Weiner do. And even on the progressive national side, which he has secured a lot of progressive national endorsements from groups like Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement. The circumstances under which he left AOC's office have continued to dog him in this race. And even before then, he was AOC's first chief of staff. He helped co found Justice Democrats, which was the organization that helped her get elected back in 2018. But it was not a particularly Amicable split. By all available reporting, she has not endorsed him. She has very pointedly not endorsed him, I would say. And if you go back, there are stories about kind of the difficulty that he had working in her office. And so even as he has consolidated some level of progressive support there, I do think that there's a little bit of a fracture. You know, I don't think he hasn't gotten the Bernie Sanders endorsement. Like there are. There are certain things that, you know, I think are maybe giving people some pause. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm fascinated by this race. It's. It's one of the most Democratic districts in the country. Right. So it'll be two Democrats here. You know, the Republican candidate won't win more than, I don't know, 8 to 10% of the vote.
- [55:23]
C
Oh, they have to split it with the independent candidate, too.
- [55:25]
B
Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, does. Does this late endorsement from Pelosi for Connie Chan push her into the top two? I don't know. I will say everyone knew that Pelosi was supporting Chan from the moment Chan got in the race. That much had been kind of pretty clear in local political circles. But obviously the official stamp of approval does count for something. Whether it's enough to overcome what is a significant financial disadvantage remains to be seen.
- [55:56]
C
Yeah. Because what's known in local political circles is not going to make it to the voters.
- [56:00]
B
That is generally true. I think this is a district where the Democratic primary electorate is super plugged in. Right. We can talk about New York 12 at some point on this podcast, but I would put. I would put California 11 up there with New York 12 in terms of places where your rank and file Democratic primary voter is very aware of internal politics in a way that, like California 22. Right. You know, voters in that district are not going to the polls being like, well, you know, the WFP is alleging that the D trip is using shell packs to funnel money into anti Randy Vieg. Like, that's not happening there. But this seat, I think, is a little bit more plugged in.
- [56:44]
A
Okay. I promise we are going to get to Montana and more when we reconvene to speak on Wednesday. But before I end this podcast, I have to give Mary the opportunity to talk about Iowa. And it's going to be like a speed preview of the races in Iowa because, of course, there's both an interesting Senate Democratic primary and an interesting Republican gubernatorial primary. And Iowa has sort of like, put itself in an increasingly interesting situation overall when it comes to the 2026 elections. But Mary, the floor is yours.
- [57:20]
C
Yeah, I'll just briefly outline the two races. I'll start with the Senate Democratic primaries. So there's two candidates running to take on what will likely be Ashley Hinson on the Republican side. Those are Josh Turek and Zach Walsh. Up until about the end of April or so, it looked like Walls had a pretty significant advantage in this. In this race. But then at the end of April and throughout May, Turek got the endorsement of Vote Vets, which is a, like a big super PAC with lots and lots of money, and they started spending lots of money on ads for Turek that they claim have really turned things around. And in the polling that we've gotten since then, Turk has been ahead in many cases by double digits. Flag. All of the polling that's been conducted in that period has been sponsored either by the Turk campaign or Vote Vets itself. So while it looks like Turk has an advantage coming into this race, we don't actually have recent polling that I would say is very reliable in order to really disentangle the dynamic here. I believe that either candidate could win this race because I. I believe both of these are actually quite strong candidates. Both of them are members of state legislature that are known to Iowa voters. I think both of them have a pretty credible case to make heading into November. So that will be fascinating to see if in fact Vote Vets is right and they manage to move this poll from Walls ahead by double digits over to Turkica head by double digits. So that's what's happening in the Senate Democratic primary, GOP gubernatorial primary. I know some of you are probably going to be surprised to hear me mention it because it's been generally assumed in the background that Feenstra is going to win this. So Randy Feenstra is sitting congressman from Iowa's 4th congressional district, running to become the governor of Iowa. And everyone sort of assumed, okay, it's Feenstra. But in recent months, we have had actually no polling on this race. So I think people kind of stopped paying attention to it. And in that time, what has happened is another candidate, Zach Lane, has slowly been improving his chances. He is a MAHA type candidate. He was endorsed by the MAHA pac. He's been endorsed by Turning Point Action. He, in the most recent reporting period, raised more money than Randy Feenstra in Iowa.
- [59:47]
A
And Feenstra is endorsed by Donald Trump. Right.
- [59:50]
C
We'll get there. Last week, a poll came out that had Lane ahead by three points over Feenstra, after which Donald Trump promptly endorsed Randy Feenstra. Right so Trump had not bothered to endorse in this race until it became clear that Lane is actually quite competitive. As an added wrench, there is a third candidate that appears to be getting double digits in this. In this race. M. Steen. Unlikely that we'll see Steen take. Take the top spot here, but again, pulling double digits. Now, why does all of this matter? Obviously, you want to win, right? And in Iowa, if no candidate gets 35% of the vote in a primary, the race then goes to state convention to be decided by delegates that were previously chosen at caucuses no one was paying attention to. So Feenstra in the. In the latest poll was pulling three points behind Lane at. At 24. If Feenstra is going to avoid a contested convention, he needs to get 35%. Lane appears to be taking a significant amount of the vote. Steen is taking a significant amount of the vote, and there are several other candidates on the ballot that are going to dribble off some of these the. The vote as well. So the contest in Iowa is not a contest to win. It's a contest to get 35% plus one vote. And it's unclear at this point if any candidate is going to be able to achieve that. That.
- [61:10]
A
Ooh. So we might get to cover a contested convention after all. But just in Iowa.
- [61:16]
B
In Iowa, which. Which has not happened in a very, very, very long time to be. It isn't like everyone's used to this process. It doesn't. It doesn't typically happen.
- [61:25]
C
It's possible that by Donald Trump coming in last week, after we saw polling that showed Lane doing particularly well here, it's possible that that is all Feenstrani needs, is that Trump endorsement.
- [61:37]
B
Yeah. No, it could be messy. And of course, the other thing that's going on here that makes all of this a little bit more salient is that Democrats have a really, really strong candidate for the governor's race. In Rob sand, the state auditor, who is awaiting whoever emerges from this Republican primary, there's a real chance that Rob sand could win this race. And the longer Republicans take to sort out their champion and the more damaged that person is heading into the general election, it only increases Sand's strength.
- [62:07]
C
Yeah, that's right. I will note that this is the only gubernatorial primary in the country that the Republican Governors association has spent money in before the primary is over.
- [62:18]
A
All right, well, we're gonna see how everything shakes out on Wednesday with caveats about California, but we're gonna leave it there for today. Thank you so much for joining me Jacob and Mary.
- [62:27]
C
Thanks Galen.
- [62:28]
B
Thank you.
- [62:29]
A
My name is Galen Drook. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.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 us, maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.