National
The going primary contests this week were mostly uneventful, as two small states awarded delegates in the Democratic contest.
President Joe Biden (D-DE) won the caucuses in Wyoming, the nation’s least-populous state. Only 397 people voted in the caucus, 95.7% cast ballots for Biden. The “Uncommitted” option received 3.3% of the vote, while the now-suspended Marianne Williamson (D-CA) received just two votes, as did David Olscamp (D-CO).
Olscamp is running a long-shot bid for the White House, naming himself “America’s Dark Horse Candidate.”
Biden won all thirteen delegates available and carried twenty-two counties. Results for Lincoln County, home to Kemmerer and Afton, are not available, but it is assumed Biden will win the county when data is reported.
Biden also won the Alaska Primary, which wasn’t much of a win as it was a formality. The state Democratic Party shifted the contest from a mail-in primary to a video conference across the state’s forty House districts. The party made the change after Congressman Dean Phillips (D, MN-03) suspended his campaign. Biden was the only qualified candidate in the race.
Biden won all of Alaska’s fifteen delegates. He now sits with 3,073 delegates, more than the amount required to be declared the party’s presumptive nominee.
The GOP will hold their caucuses in Wyoming on April 20 and their primary in Puerto Rico on April 21. The next big contest is the Pennsylvania primary, where both parties will hold their respective contests.
In other election news, Democrats maintained their control of the Michigan House with two special election wins on Tuesday night.
Democrats gained control of both chambers of the Michigan legislature in 2022, forming a trifecta with Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) at the helm. Two vacancies kept the House in a deadlock, with each party holding fifty-four seats. Democrats were expected to easily retain both seats, barring surprise upsets from the GOP.
While Democrats did hold both seats, they did so with slight underperformance. In District 13, just north of downtown Detroit, State Representative-elect Mai Xiong (D) won with 65.6% of the vote, down from a 67% win by her predecessor in 2022.
In District 25, halfway between Detroit and Ann Arbor, State Representative elect-Peter Herzberg won with 59.6% of the vote. His predecessor was elected with 63% of the vote in 2022.
While the underperformances aren’t drastic, it might lend some clues to the state of local politics in Michigan. If suburban communities continue to drift to the right in certain precincts, even slightly, it could help former President Donald Trump (R-FL) carry the state he so historically carried in 2016, but lost in 2020. Trump was the first Republican to carry Michigan since George H. W. Bush (R-TX) did so in 1988.
Trump has consistently led the polls and polling aggregates in Michigan since last year.
State-level elections are often seen as one of the greatest bellwethers for results down the road. The Michigan special elections are also a welcome change for the GOP, who have been underperforming in state-level special elections all year.
Moving to the U.S. Senate, a perennially-sleepy Senate race might just be one of the top races of the 2024 election cycle.
Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) shocked the political world in February when he announced his bid for the open U.S. Senate in the deep-blue seat being vacated by Senator Ben Cardin (D). Hogan did a complete turnaround in his political aspirations, keeping observers in suspense as it seemed he would mount a challenge against Trump for the Republican Presidential nomination. Hogan opposed Trump in 2016 and 2020 and has served as a vocal critic of the national positions of the Republican Party.
A self-proclaimed moderate, Hogan scored perhaps the largest upset of the 2014 election cycle by winning the open governor’s seat in Maryland by four points. Maryland had only elected one Republican governor – 2002 – since Spiro Agnew (R) was elected in 1966. Agnew would later serve as Richard Nixon’s (R-CA) Vice President.
Hogan was re-elected in 2018 by a convincing twelve-point margin amidst a national blue wave. His favorability ratings have remained high even after his departure from the office.
Maryland is one of the bluest states in the country. In addition to not backing a Republican nominee since 1988, Maryland has backed Democrats by double-digits in every election since then. No Republican has achieved more than 40% of the vote since George W. Bush (R-TX) in 2004. Trump’s 32% margin in 2020 is one of the worst for any Republican in history. Biden flipped three counties and all but one of Maryland’s twenty-three counties swung left that election.
Maryland’s strongly-Democratic profile has been mirrored in its Senate elections, which now increasingly mirror presidential elections results overall. Republicans have not won a Senate race in Maryland since 1980, and the seat that Hogan is contesting has not elected a Republican since 1977. Since then, Maryland has produced top names in Senate politics, including Paul Sarbanes (D), for whom the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is partially named, and Barbara Mikulski (D), the third-longest-serving female in U.S. history.
Hogan has raised $3.1 million in just two months of his candidacy. The Democratic primary is between Congressman David Trone (D, MD-06) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D). Trone is one of the wealthiest members of Congress and has loaned his campaign $41.7 million since the start of the primary race. Trone represents Maryland’s panhandle and some suburban D.C. areas in Congress.
Despite Maryland’s dark blue hue, Hogan has consistently outpolled both Trone and Alsobrooks. A March 12 poll of 1,004 registered voters conducted by The Washington Post showed Hogan leading Alsobrooks by fourteen points and Trone by twelve. Such numbers are considered outliers, especially for such an uncompetitive state.
However, a March 24 poll of 800 registered voters conducted by Goucher College found Hogan leading Alsobrooks by four points and Trone by one, still an unfathomable margin for a Republican in Maryland.
But it appears that Democrats will have to funnel money to one of their most unexpected locales, as an April 10 poll of 1,292 likely voters conducted by OpinionWorks found Hogan leading Alsobrooks by eighteen points and Trone by thirteen.
However, Hogan does not have history on his side. Immensely popular governors of state’s opposite their party’s political ideology have made runs for Senate races that appear as toss-ups and many don’t come close.
In 2002, Governor Linda Lingle (R) was elected as Hawaii’s first Republican governor since 1959. In 2006, she became the only governor in the state’s history to be re-elected, as she won with 62.5% of the vote. She would later lose the 2012 Senate race in Hawaii by twenty-five points.
In 2006, former Governor Phil Bredesen (D) was re-elected governor of Tennessee by a near-70% margin. To date, he is the last Democrat to win a statewide contest in Tennessee. In 2018, it seemed realistic he could stage an upset and flip Tennessee’s open Senate seat blue to become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the state since 1988. Bredesen lost by eleven points.
While History is not on Hogan’s side, he still remains the best Republican to contest this seat. He remains popular among Democrats and liberal-minded voters, as he won many of them in his two gubernatorial elections. However, the era of increasing partisanship might doom any chance of candidacy he has. With Biden at the top of the ticket and the Senate results likely to mirror the presidential results, Hogan’s task appears, in some ways, impossible.
State
Budget negotiations are still underway, but Governor Kathy Hochul (D) said Monday that she and state legislators have agreed to a draft budget totalling $237 billion, more than the original $233 billion budget proposed in January.
Current proposals retain the $2.4 billion allocated for New York City’s migrant crisis. Additionally, the budget seeks to address housing and rent control, with a new tax incentive to spur affordable housing in NYC, as well as rent caps at 5% plus inflation or a maximum of 10% to prevent landlords from price gouging tenants.
Of top concern, the framework of the budget retains the “hold harmless” provision and will not reduce education aid for school districts that have seen drops in enrollment. However, Hochul is optimistic about overhauling the State’s school-aid formula in the near future.
Another initiative in the budget would allow local government authorities to shut down illegal cannabis shops as the State grapples with the massive influx of license requests.
Local
Congressman Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) recently sponsored a bipartisan bill to support wildlife rescue and rehabilitation efforts.
The Wildlife Rescue, Rehabilitation, and Reintroduction Act of 2024 would support “rescue, rehabilitation, reintroduction, and conservation efforts by zoos and aquariums.”
The legislation would “establish a Rescue and Recovery Grant Program, with supported expenses including facility costs, food, veterinary care, direct animal care staff, transportation costs, reintroduction efforts, developing networks of facilities qualified to conduct these activities, and more.”
The bill would also codify all aspects of the Wildlife Confiscations Network and would designate the network as a single point of contact for federal wildlife law enforcement.
Finally, the bill would develop a partnership approach between the federal government and organizations who seek to rescue, rehabilitate, and reintroduce threatened and endangered species.
“Zoos and aquariums play a pivotal role in the conservation of threatened and endangered species, especially as instances of wildlife trafficking continue to rise. The Wildlife Rescue, Rehabilitation, and Reintroduction Act would ensure qualified facilities have the resources and tools they need to effectively perform this important work,” said Garbarino.
