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Welcome back to The Horse Race. I'm Henry Olson, and we're back in the saddle again after a couple of weeks off, much like our campaigns, which seem to be taking weeks off because of the coronavirus pandemic. That's going to be the topic of our main interview today, where I'll talk about both the pandemic and the political effects of it with Sean Trendy, Senior Elections Analyst for RealClearPolitics.com.
We'll also take a look at a new feature on the podcast, Primary Night in America. Yes, there are going to be six primaries next week, five on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and I'll run down the races that you should be watching and encourage you to be following me on Twitter on election night. And then finally, we have our regular feature of Ad of the Week, only this time it's four. Count them four, Ads of the Week, as I try and show you how to
How candidates who are running in districts that their party is usually the minority conduct their campaigns in order to appeal to people in the middle. The horses are at the starting gate. They're off. Well, there's not a whole lot of horses racing right now in America and around the world. And the reason why is because the track is shut down. It's shut down because of the pandemic.
And even though elections are taking place and people are running ads and have learned to do virtual fundraisers, the sort of in-person campaigning that we've become used to is not happening. Of course, there are a lot of conservatives out there who are wondering, how true is this?
You know, is COVID really as dangerous? Is it really as extensive as they say? And the fact that the media has put out so many, let's say, tall ones about President Trump and Republicans in the last few years makes their characterization of the pandemic difficult for many to accept.
So I've got somebody here who knows the truth. He is Sean Trendy, senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a man with serious statistical chops, and he has been spending a lot of his time during this pandemic-induced shutdown of election activity looking at the pandemic itself and tweets regularly about it on Twitter. Sean, welcome to the once and future horse race. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Well, let's get down to the brass tacks, which is, you know, there's a lot of conservatives who say it's not as real as people say, that it's not as extensive, that the testing is exaggerated, that the deaths are exaggerated. What do the data say?
So this is kind of a classic example of taking something with a bit of truth to it and blowing it up well past where it should be blown up to. You know, look, the media has hyped this more recently.
than it should be. You know, you have some people on the left who seem to think this is Captain Trips from a Stephen King novel where, you know, you get within 10 foot of someone within COVID and you're going to drop dead. I'm exaggerating, obviously, but this is sometimes how it plays. And that's not true. But at the same time, this is a very, very serious virus. Yeah.
Especially if you're old, and by old I mean 50 and over, it has a very real chance of killing you. And not only that, but they say things like kids don't die from it, which is true, but you hear this morph sometimes into kids don't get it, which is not. Kids do get it and they get hospitalized by it.
And, you know, obviously you have to do a cost benefit on everything. I think that is something, too, where media and the liberals don't do such a great job portraying things accurately. But when you're doing that cost benefit, the virus weighs heavily.
So what do the data show right now about the spread of COVID? You know, we hear a lot about, oh, those icky red states are going through a crisis.
How does crisis measure up to the crisis that we saw in March and April in the nice and virtuous blue states of Michigan and New Jersey and Connecticut? Has it reached that level? And can we trust the data that the states are putting out with respect to the extent of the spread?
So, yeah, when people talk about outbreaks in the red states now, I guess California has switched back to red and I missed it because it has done everything, quote unquote, right. And yet is getting hit pretty hard by this kind of second wave we're seeing. So.
I think the issue is it's not really a blue state or a red state thing, and it never was. The initial outbreak was in the northeast, densely populated. It was cold, so people were being forced indoors. Now we're having the second outbreak, which isn't so much red state as it is southern.
And you can almost watch it over the course of the last month kind of creep northward along with the temperatures. Kind of the same thing. Hot weather encourages people to stay inside. We know this virus spreads well in poorly ventilated spaces. There's some evidence that it spreads on air conditioning. So that explains it. But on the second question, kind of the bigger question of how they compare, I don't think they really do. The cases...
are higher now. But there's a grain of truth in something President Trump says repeatedly, which is we're just testing a lot more.
people forget that back when New York City was getting hit, it was a major milestone when we started testing 100,000, being able to test 100,000 people a day. And now we're testing almost a million people a day. So you're going to catch more mild cases, asymptomatic cases, you know, someone in the family gets sick and the whole family goes and gets tested and you catch the asymptomatic cases. That's how it is today. And where the
tell really is on this is deaths, because the deaths from COVID are nowhere near where they were in New York in kind of the first phase of the outbreak.
And that's one of the things I also want to harp on, which is one of the things people have said is that, you know, again, in the exaggeration realm of the of the right of the right is that.
How do we know that these people who have died with COVID actually died from COVID? That I had one person tell me that hospitals are incentivized to label deaths as COVID because they get federal aid. And of course, we know that a number of states, if not all of them, have labeled COVID as a cause as if the patient tests with COVID, whether or not the cause was respiratory failure or something.
How accurate can we, how much faith can we place in the death figures as being relatively accurate with respect to the severity of the pandemic? Yes, I hate to both sides things, but both sides have been accusing the other of bad faith in this. And it's, I think,
both sides have a bit of a point. You know, the right, as you said, points out that there can be a difference between death from COVID versus death with COVID, especially since nursing homes tend to be the low side of outbreaks. If you have someone with, you know, terminal cancer given a month to live and then they test positive for COVID, you know, you can chalk that up as a COVID death. And I don't know if that's really correct.
On the other hand, you have people on the left pointing out that some of these states seem to be playing games the other way. You know, in Florida, they were trying not to count people who were visiting from New York as COVID cases for PR purposes. Yeah.
So in the end, I kind of think it's a wash. Like, I do think there's probably some over-coding of cases. At the same time, I don't know that the incentives are exactly what people think they are because no one wants their state to be the worst state in the country for deaths. No one wants to be overseeing a state that's in an economic depression. So overall, I basically trust the data that we're given.
And that brings me to another point, which is that there's been the rumor that there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people dying because they're so afraid of going in for treatment that there's more people who are dying from suicide or cancer than are dying from COVID. Is there any data that backs up that assertion?
It really doesn't look that way. I mean, look, there is evidence that suicides and stuff are up. And I absolutely believe that the shutdowns, the lockdowns, and then fear of going outside probably...
contribute to other causes of death. But as far as evidence that the excess deaths from non-COVID causes are so great that they swamp the value of having a shutdown or of social distancing or masks, which I really don't get the objection to, I just don't see it.
So where do you think we go from here? A lot of these southern states have started to see declines or plateauing of the number of cases. None seem to have reported the – well, hospitals seem to have been taxed. There's none of the crisis that one saw in New York City when the hospitals were overloaded.
Where do you think we go from here for the remainder of the summer with respect to the actual spread of the disease and its effect on day-to-day life?
So I think we probably continue to see this decline, especially as we get into the fall and weather begins to cool off. And so people aren't so uncomfortable with masks. They don't feel the pressure. You know, when they go out to eat, they can eat out on the patio. Don't feel like they have to be in the hyper air conditioned restaurant.
You know, I think we probably see something like we saw in the spring, viral loads, you know, viral spread decreases and declines, and we kind of have a lull in it. Whether we get a massive second wave in the fall or early winter, I don't know. You know, I think we have public health interventions in place that probably keep us from getting hit as badly as we did last year. But this virus has confounded expectations time and again. So I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, that's one thing we're seeing is that Asian countries that did extremely well are seeing recurrence of the virus, that European countries who had been lauded for their shutdowns are beginning to see cases tick up again as the heat ticks up, although Europe doesn't have anywhere near the extent of central air and air conditioning as the United States does. Is this just a case that this is unfortunately something that we probably have to live with
for the foreseeable future.
Yeah, that doesn't mean that there aren't things you can do. You know, I want to emphasize that there is kind of a nihilistic strain in some of the commentary like, oh, we can't we can't beat it. So just let her rip. And I don't know that I subscribe to that point of view. But but at a certain point, you know, viruses and pathogens are all around us. And all the intervention, most of the interventions have have downsides. You know, if you lock down, we know that most of the viral spread
occurred within homes in New York City the last time. And so by forcing families to shelter together indoors, you were inadvertently probably getting a lot of people sick. So to a certain degree, yeah, I think the virus is going to do what it's going to do, and it's not very well understood. So
It's a global phenomenon. So even if you tamp it down in the U.S., India is exploding right now. So it's not it's just not going to go away until and I say until if there is a vaccine for it. And that's one of the things that I just want to kind of leave a final note here on is that.
It would be very odd. A lot of the talk that you hear is, oh, this is a conspiracy to get Trump out of office. But you take a look around the world and every country seems to have the same problem. Every country's public health officials pretty much say the same thing. And every country is just in a different place on the when do we have it and how is it rising continuum.
I can't imagine the entire world is trying to create a conspiracy. It seems to be much likelier to believe your eyes, which is this is real. This is a problem. It kills people much more than flu. It's not the black death and everything else we're still learning. And that's the progress of science. Yeah. I mean, so kind of two things. I mean, my, my, our nanny, uh,
you know, made a sad choice. And thankfully, uh, she wasn't coming to our house when this happened. She went to a sad choice is what we tell our kids when you make a bad decision. Uh, but you know, she went to a, uh, concert and she got it. Uh, and she is a healthy 40 year old woman who works out every day and she wound up in the hospital for three days. Uh, so I can say with my own two eyes, uh, and she's still not completely on her feet that, that,
this really does happen and can do bad things to you. Uh, even if you're relatively young, um, as far as the, and I actually don't think she dislikes the president, so I'm pretty sure she's not acting. Um, but the, uh, the other thing is that, you know, yeah, it would have to be, it, it, it didn't even necessarily have to hurt president Trump. Um,
You know, his initial the initial reaction was to rally around the flag with him. His job approval was up to 48 percent, which was the highest it had been. Sixty percent of people told Gallup they approved of his handling of the virus. And he just kind of made misstep after misstep, didn't seem to be dialed in to what was really going on. And I mean, in a way, he kind of blew it.
I know a lot of your listeners don't want to hear that, and I'll get a lot of angry emails because of it, but there was definitely a path for a president, a Republican president, to be in office right now and turn this into a win. That's one of the things that as a political analyst, I look at polls all around the developed world. And left, right, center, almost every leader saw dramatic increases in their job approval ratings.
in European countries or other countries where they test parties rather than individuals and ballot tests. Most of those leaders saw increases, sometimes dramatic increases for their parties. Even in sharply divided Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud was doing much better in the polls in the first three months before they had their second wave. And now he's back down to earth.
And Donald Trump stands out as the exception almost around the world, almost to a person. He is the only person, I believe, who has seen a decline in his job approval rating and a decline in his presidential head to head tests since covid starting rather than the increase.
Do you ascribe that to his missteps as you put them? And if you do, what are the missteps that contributed to that? And now that there's a second wave, does he have a chance to do a do-over? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to be a...
You know, it's not even necessarily the results that people clue into, because I kind of think most people get, you know, this is a once in a century virus that there was no kind of instruction manual on exactly how to help. I mean, you remember early on, people were saying, absolutely, don't wear masks, but
You know, now we've kind of figured out that'd be a good thing. People were telling us to leave our packages, sit on our doorstep for three days because they were afraid it would be, you know, surface fomite transfer. And now we know that that very rarely happens. So I think people kind of get that. What they want to see is empathy.
And competence. And by competence, like I said, I don't even mean results. I mean, just seeming like you have a good handle on the problem, you know, and you can kind of see it in this fight over. And part of this is just the president's pettiness. You see it in the fight over hydroxychloroquine.
Um, he should just let that go, even if he's right. And I act, I'm actually of the opinion that we don't really know how well that drug works. Um, there was some promising, it was more promising at the beginning than it was today. Um, but you know, just, just the, the evidence isn't as good as he says, and yet he's just like fixated on this thing and it makes him say dumb, dumb things. Um,
and, and, but that's just the nature of his entire presidency. Like, like I hate to say he should have done X, Y, and Z when in a lot of times that would require an entirely different president Trump. Um, but,
But just, you know, you can see it. Andrew Cuomo had a terrible performance and his job approval is up. Even people who are very polarizing, like Ron DeSantis, you know, early on was still above 50 percent in his job approval. But Trump just squandered it. He needed to show empathy.
You know, when Mitt Romney got sick, not say, oh, I'm really, you know, sarcastically, oh, I'm really concerned about him. Or when Mitt Romney was isolating. But, you know, it's just kind of who he is.
The other thing I want to say one other thing, which is in a way this this virus was tailor made for him. Right. Like there's nothing in what Trump campaigned on in 2016 that doesn't feed into this virus. Like he's he campaigned on not being afraid to spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. So like he could have done six trillion dollars in stimulus and probably bought his way to reelection, you know.
You know, and of course, a foreign virus, some of the if he had been less ham fisted about it, you know, I think there's an argument for not having a wide open border. Better safe than sorry. You know, a lot of these things he can move into an argument for reelection, but he just hasn't been able to do it.
Yeah. And so where do you see the state of the race right now? Another thing conservatives talk about is don't believe those polls. You know, the fact polls show Trump is down by nine points. It's all a lie. What do you think? I mean, I can buy that.
that there is some social desirability bias going in with that or non-response bias going on right now that Republicans or conservatives don't want to answer the phone. You know, we see this, we see things like that happen around major news stories that go poorly or well for one party or the other. At the same time, you know, the polls were,
The national polls were good in 2016. Some of the state polls were off, but we have a pretty good idea why that's the case. And then the polls were pretty good in 2017, 2018, and 2019. So my expectation is not for there to be a poll error of more than a point or two this time around. Mm-hmm.
So when we see I haven't looked today, but yesterday I looked yesterday being Tuesday and real clear politics average, your flagship, I want to say not publication, but your flagship item had Trump down by nine points. So what you're saying is maybe eight, maybe seven as far as polling error is concerned. But that still leaves him.
incredibly far behind. And there's only so much he can lose the popular vote by and win the electoral college. So I have to ask, do you see a path back for Trump? Or are we simply kind of like, is this one of those like a football game where it's the end of the third quarter, it comes down by 32 points and they're going to score, but they ain't going to win?
So I do think, I think there's a path to victory. I mean, I'd say maybe one in five chance he wins. Um, you know, the, some perspective is in order. Um, you know, right now we have Biden up 8.4. So we've gotten some relatively good polls for Trump. His job approval, uh, seems to have flattened and now even ticked back up a little bit. Um, uh,
And even though he, let's say he's down 8.4, let's say there's a poll error of a point or two. So he's really down six to seven points.
We do have to remember, he can probably win while losing the popular vote by two or three points, which is what we saw in 2016. So shave another two points off that, and he's maybe down four. Now you're just talking about getting 2% of the electorate to change their minds. Now, that's not going to happen if we go into Election Day and cases are surging in states. So a lot of this is out of his control. What he needs to have happen is for...
the virus not to come back in the fall for, for the fall to just be kind of a lull from COVID for the economy to surge. Cause there's a lot of low hanging fruit as people reopen, he needs for a stimulus bill to pass of some sort to help, you know, goose that economy. So there's a lot of things that are kind of outside of his control that have to happen for him to have a legit chance of winning. But again,
I don't think he's down 32. I think he's down maybe one or two touchdowns in a field goal, which is still imposing in the big leagues, to mix a metaphor, but doable. It's more like the Patriots who surmounted a deficit that was
pretty large to beat the Falcons. Yeah. But that then brings me a question. You know, the Falcons have a reputation for haplessness. Um, and, uh, is Joe Biden, the political equivalent of the Atlanta Falcons, or does he have a little more steel to him? Joe Biden, uh, is extremely lucky right now. Um, because this pandemic has allowed him to hide in the basement as people kind of quip. I think that's a little bit unfair. Um,
But he hasn't had to go out and do large off the cuff appearances because he is, you know, I will not engage in diagnosis or conspiracy theories about his health. I think that's wildly irresponsible. At the same time, I think you have to be.
grossly naive to have followed his career as long as I have and not observe that he's lost a step or three. And so by being able to stay out of the spotlight, he has been able to become kind of generic Democrat and generic Democrat or generic Republican always polls better, almost always polls better than the regular candidate. And so he has benefited from the lack of a campaign quite a bit.
You know, the Trump campaign through its television ads have tried to make him not be generic Democrat, but rather be that that spicy Indian food you tried once and swore you were never going to have again. I saw one ad over the weekend with an elderly white woman who is looking at a
figure trying to break into her house and calls 911 and is put on hold because of defunding of the police, to which the narrator says, Joe Biden, blah, blah, blah. Can the president, without recovering himself from
First, make Biden an issue, make him not generic Democrat, or does he need to physician heal thyself before he can diagnose the ill purported political ills of Joe Biden?
So part of the problem is that the best ad is one that, the best attack is one that rings true. That really kind of reveals and encapsulates some general weakness of the candidate. And
You know, that's why I think of the Britney Spears ad, like apparently against Barack Obama, like, you know, basically comparing him to a pop star. Apparently the Obama campaign was legitimately concerned about that ad because the knock on Obama was that he just wasn't prepared enough to be president after two years in the Senate. And, you know, McCain was getting some traction with it before the economy collapsed. Yeah.
And so I think the problem that he has with Biden is that there's kind of two archetypes Republicans run against, that Democrats are liberal elitists or Democrats are radicals. And over the course of his career, Joe Biden has always been like,
plum dead at the center of the Democratic Party ideologically, wherever the Democratic Party happens to be. He's almost more of a party guy than he is an ideologue. And we haven't had one of those as a Democratic nominee in a long time. He's also the first Democratic nominee not to have an Ivy League degree since Walter Mondale. So the usual attacks on the Democratic nominee as something special just don't really resonate. I think
The Trump campaign was probably on to something, you know, trying to show him as a swamp creature that, you know, and that that was why Trump was trying to get Ukraine to reopen the investigation into Hunter. And that was the Where's Hunter campaign they were running. But, of course, impeachment kind of.
complicated that for him. So it's a tough campaign to run against Biden. He needs some things to happen to help him. Where do you see the Senate race going right now? Clearly, a lot of Republicans are looking and saying, well, it'd be nice if Trump won, but he doesn't look like he's going to win. But if we hold the Senate, we can limit the damage. Where do you see the Senate standing right now? So...
I think there are four – so Democrats need to pick up three seats, Matt, and they're going to lose the Alabama seats, so really four seats. And you look, and it's pretty easy to see where those four seats come from. And that's assuming they win the presidency to the vice president. Yes. Yeah, yeah. If they don't win the presidency, then whatever. Yeah.
If they don't win the presidency, they're not going to win the Senate. I can say that with a fair degree of confidence. But, you know, you look at it and yeah, those four seats are plain as punch. You've got you've got Maine, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina. Like those are four seats where the Republican seems to be down.
you know, period, full stop. And so there's, there's your, there's your path to the Senate. Now getting beyond that, you start looking at States like Georgia and Iowa and Montana where things are close, but you kind of, I don't know, like those are tough States and,
for Democrats. And I do think it's important to point out there is a big difference between a Democratic-controlled Senate and a Joe Manchin-controlled Senate, which is what that, which is what, they say it's 50-50 and the vice president will be the tiebreaker, but it ain't. It's 49-50 and Joe Manchin, and he's going to decide how far things go.
Well, that's an interesting I hadn't quite heard that one. But that's actually right, you know, is that he would have to decide on a lot of issues because he's the person who is more of a centrist who represents a state that Trump will win in a landslide, won in a massive landslide. And he barely won reelection last time by campaigning as the person who isn't.
the person beholden to the National Party. Yeah. Parting thought, let's jump ahead for just a second, which is what do you think? You've expressed some thoughts on Twitter about if Trump loses his effect on the Republican Party in the ensuing four years, if Trump loses his
One, what do you think the likely effect will be? And two, does the margin of his defeat affect the degree of his influence? You know, a lot of people say, well, if he loses, it breaks the spell. His supporters turn against him because the whole benefit of Trump is that he wins. And I just I think that's wishful thinking. I remember thinking that after he lost Iowa, like, OK, he's he's he's.
he's a loser now. And then he turns around and blows the roof off in New Hampshire, uh, in South Carolina. He, he lost the house in a time of peace and prosperity. Um, and no one turned against him. So I think if he loses, if he wants to be the Republican nominee in 2024, he is probably the front runner for it. Um, I think his supporters, uh,
He has a large enough core of support that I don't think he's guaranteed to be the nominee, but he'll be the frontrunner. A lot of them will be convinced that it was stolen from him by vote fraud, even if he loses by 10 points. And even if he doesn't run, I mean, there is nothing... Donald Trump doesn't care about the Republican Party. He wasn't a Republican until fairly recently.
And he cares a lot about himself. So I don't think he's going quietly. And once he is no longer president, the media has every incentive to go back to amplifying his every word. So even if he's not running for president, he's going to loom large over the Republican primary in 2024. Well, we've gone from death to political destruction to being haunted frequently.
John, you're the cheeriest man I've known in a long time. But thank you very much for rejoining me on the horse race. I would love to have you back during the fall. I'll be happy to come back. Okay. ♪♪♪
There may not be a lot of campaigning going on, but there's a lot of elections going on. And this week we're bringing to you a new feature, Primary Night in America. Yes, Tuesday, August 4th, is going to have five, count them, five separate primaries.
And on Thursday, August 6th, Tennessee will join in the fun. So we're going to run down what you should watch for, and you should follow me on Twitter. That's at Henry Olson EPPC, where I will be live tweeting analyses of all the key races.
Let's start with the races and the states that close at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. That's the states of Michigan, Missouri, and Kansas. All eyes of the political world are going to be on Kansas because there are four, count them, four interesting races.
The Republican Senate race is one that is attracting national spending, including from the Democrats. That's because former Secretary of State Chris Kobach is a leading contender and Republicans are afraid and Democrats are hopeful that he will win this.
the primary and thereby cause many moderate Republicans to vote for the Democrat. That's what happened in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign where Kobach was a big loser in normally red Kansas to the Democratic opponent precisely because he is a polarizing figure. However, Republican attempts to keep Kobach out are being hampered by the fact that there are two, count them two, big spending opponents. The establishment is largely behind
Representative Roger Marshall, who is giving up his safe congressional seat in Kansas 1 to take Kobach on, but he is facing a big spending self-funder, a man named Hamilton, who is spending millions of dollars in order to make him the Senate candidate for the Republicans. All three are going at it with one another, and Kobach's lack of cash has been helped by the fact that Democratic super PACs are spending millions of dollars trying
to say that he is too conservative. Remember that this is a tactic that partisans play when they're trying to affect the other party's primary. Their seemingly negative attacks on a candidate are meant to boost that candidate's standing among the other party's primary electorate.
We don't know who's going to win here, but it's a simple plurality. We'll get one of these three through. If Chris Kobach is the winner, Democrats will target the seat big time. But if Roger Marshall or Hamilton win, then it looks like it's going to be safe sailing for the Republicans. Democrats haven't won a U.S. Senate seat in Kansas since 1932.
Three House seats have primaries that will be watched that day. Kansas 1, the one that Marshall is giving up, is a very safe Republican seat and features Bill Clifford versus former Lieutenant Governor Tracy Mann. Kansas 2 is a Republican-held seat that's incumbent Steve Watkins barely won in 2018, and he is facing a challenge from his own party, State Treasurer Jake LaTurner.
Why is Watkins facing that challenge? Well, perhaps it's because he's an outsider who waltzed into the district and won a multi-candidate primary with the plurality of the vote and doesn't have many ties to Kansas Republicans. Perhaps it's also because he's currently under indictment. Yes, the sitting congressman is under indictment for, wait for it, voter fraud. You see, it seems that he registered to vote at a business address that he claims is his residence, but it's not actually his residence.
So under threat of indictment, LaTurner is—not threat of indictment, under actual indictment, LaTurner is hammering the incumbent over this. Incumbent Republicans and establishment Republicans hope that LaTurner can kick Watkins out because if Watkins stays in, they worry that he'll lose the seat this go-around. Kansas III is the final primary, and that's a three-way Republican race between three women, Amanda Adkins, Sarah Hart Weir, and Adrienne Foster.
There's no polling here, so we don't know who's going to come out or who is favored, but any of the three have enough money to make it a serious race. The winner will take on Sharice Davids, who kicked out Kevin Yoder in one of the 42 seats that the Democrats picked up from Republicans last time. This is a suburban Kansas City seat that used to be marginal and lean towards the Republicans, but as many seats like this nationwide, it has trended to the left in recent years and voted...
for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and gave Davids a comfortable victory. Whoever prevails from this primary is going to have a hard campaign ahead of them in order to unseat Davids in what is shaping up to be another Democratic year. Michigan also closes at 8 p.m., and here there are three House races that
Michigan 10 is a safe Republican seat being vacated, and there's a three-way primary going on here. State Representative Shane Hernandez has the endorsement of the Club for Growth, but Lisa McClain and Doug Slocum have also raised enough money to be competitive.
The club has a good record during primaries, but not a perfect one. The winner will go on to be the next congressman from this district, as this is a safe Republican seat on what's called the thumb of Michigan, that portion that sticks up into Lake Huron that's north of Detroit and its suburbs.
Michigan 14 will be another seat that is watched. That's Rashida or Michigan 13. That's Rashida Tlaib versus Brenda Jones. These two matched off two years ago and Tlaib won the primary extremely narrowly. But her controversial and flamboyant status as one of the squad has earned a rematch with Jones.
Tlaib is well ahead with money and is ahead in some of the polls, but this is a notoriously difficult-to-poll district, and it would surprise no one if she was held close because she was somebody who was held to a very narrow win the first time around. Expect Tlaib to win and expect reverberations to occur if somehow she loses.
The third seat is in the central time zone, and it won't close until 9 p.m. Eastern time. And this is the open seat that is being vacated by Republican-turned-independent-turned-libertarian-turned-non-candidate Justin Amash.
This is a two-way race between state representative Lynn Afandoulis and a business person named Peter Major. Major has outraised Afandoulis, but Afandoulis is a state representative, and that usually means a base within the district that can provide votes independent of money.
We'll watch this race. Again, this is a seat that will likely go Republican, particularly if it's not a three-way race, which it won't be because Amash is not running. But it is one that is marginal enough as Grand Rapids, the major city in this district, has been trending to the left, as many other medium and large metropolitan areas have during the Trump administration. Either candidate would be favored to win, but don't be surprised if the Democrats target in the fall.
Finally, Missouri has one race that will be worth watching, and that is the rematch between incumbent Representative Lucius Clay and Cora Bush. Bush is a left-wing challenger supported by Justice Democrats who...
challenged Clay in 2018, lost 57 to 37, but is back for a rematch. Clay must be taking it seriously because he just put up a negative ad against Bush in the St. Louis media market. This is a city of St. Louis, heavily African-American district. Both candidates are African-American, and the winner will go on to be the next congressperson. If Bush does pull an upset, it's a sign that the left...
progressive movement within the Democratic Party continues apace and that even a long-term congressperson whose father held the seat for decades before him is capable of being felled.
Arizona will close an hour later, and there's only one race to watch here. Arizona won as a rural seat in the northeastern part of the state, and incumbent Tomo Halloran is facing a challenge from his left from a former Flagstaff city councilor. No one expects Halloran to lose, but again, take a look at the margin, take a look to see whether an upset can happen. Challengers like this have tended to fall short in other races, but if Putsova, the
35%, 40%, it would be again a sign that the left has a stronghold even against regularly popular incumbents. Washington is the state that closes last being on the Pacific Coast. There aren't very many interesting primaries here, but the thing to watch is the percentage of the vote. That's because Washington, like California, does not have partisan primaries. They send the top two candidates regardless of party onto the general election.
Washington's primary results have often proved to be an accurate predictor of the general election. So savvy political operators look at races that they expect to be close and see, do the combined totals of Republicans and Democrats match what is expected? Washington 3 is a target for both parties, and Jamie Herrera Butler, the Republican incumbent, will need to show that
strength here in order to continue to be rated as the favorite. She's going to have to come close to or break 50 percent of the vote. If she's losing after this primary, expect the national press to start moving this in the Democratic's favor. The other seat to watch is Washington 5, which is the home to Kathy McMorris Rogers.
She was pushed close in 2018, but not terribly close. She should break 50% in the primary. If she doesn't, it's a sign that a blue wave is coming to even normally Republican eastern Washington. The one primary race to watch here is Washington 10. It's an open Democratic seat being vacated by retiring Republicans.
Representative Denny Heck. Five Democrats have money. It could be two Democrats who make it through to the final because Republicans are not seriously contesting the seat. It's impossible in a race like this to predict who those two people will be, but whoever emerges
As the final two will go off, if it is one Democrat versus one Republican, the Democrat will be the next congressperson. If it's Democrat on Democrat, then the winner in November will become the congressperson. And finally, on Thursday, we have two races to look for in the volunteer state. The open Senate seat being vacated by Lamar Alexander is being contested by former Ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty.
and a medical professional named Manny Sethi. The race is supposedly close. That's what polls are showing, even though Hagerty has been endorsed by President Trump. Don't be surprised to see either candidate be able to prevail. Either candidate will be rated the extremely heavy favorite, if not a lock, on the Senate seat in the fall.
And finally, eastern Tennessee has elected Republicans since the end of the Civil War. This isn't hotbed conservative country. This is union country. This is where people who don't – it's one of the poor congressional districts in the country. But people vote for the Republican Party the way their ancestors have since 1866.
Phil Roe has vacated the seat. It is an open multi-candidate race. Six Republicans have money. Many more are running. There is no runoff. Don't be surprised if the next congressman from eastern Tennessee gets through with merely 20 or 25 percent of the primary vote. That's it for Primary Night in America. And I look forward to hearing you and watching you respond to me on Twitter on both election nights at Henry Olson EPPC.
Finally, this week on Ad of the Week, we're going to look at four ads. Yes, we're going to look at four. That's because I want to show you how candidates who are trying to win in districts that don't favor their parties win.
strike similar themes in order to appeal to the voters they need, the voter who's willing to cross party lines and support somebody who normally would not be of the party that they back. We're going to look at four Democrats running in districts that Donald Trump carried, some of them by quite large margins, and see what common themes each strikes. The first two ads we're going to listen to are from Shakhtar,
Torres Small, hope I pronounced that correctly, from New Mexico's 2nd Congressional District, which is a rural and heavily conservative district in the southern part of New Mexico. And Anthony Brindisi from New York 22, who represents a conservative and rural part of upstate New York. First, Torres Small. In this crisis, New Mexicans have each other's backs. That's why I worked with Republicans, Democrats, and President Trump to pass the coronavirus relief plan.
And now, Brindisi. I'm a ninth generation farmer here in the Mohawk Valley.
The COVID pandemic is as bad as I've ever seen in my life. When schools and restaurants are closed, they don't buy milk. That's just one of the ways upstate New York has been hit so hard. That's why I fought for direct payments to family farms and to speed up payments for upstate small businesses. It's not about politics for Anthony. He does what's right for upstate New York. And I really have a great admiration for him for that. I'm Anthony Brindisi, and I approve this message. The ads strike three hours.
Similar themes. Torres Small notes that she works with Republicans, Democrats and even President Trump to bring relief to her constituents in New Mexico, too. Brindisi has a farmer talking and says it's not about politics with Anthony. In other words, don't put the party label on this guy. He, like Torres Small, puts you first.
Both mentioned COVID relief as key elements of their message. Both are, again, working above party to bring support for people who need it. And finally, both mentioned the same two groups as the sorts of people they're trying to help, small businesses and
and farmers. Now, that makes sense in these districts because neither is the home to a large metropolitan district. Both have large percentages of farmers and both have large percentages of small businesses, presumably small business owners and small business employees who might be open normally to voting for Republican but will be grateful to the Democratic incumbent for what they allegedly were able to do.
Bipartisanship, support for person in the ground, identity with important local interests. These are three characteristics of a successful or potentially successful appeal to win a district that the party that is opposing you normally carries.
Now let's listen to two ads from other Democrats representing more urban seats. We're talking about Kendra Horn in Oklahoma 5, which is Oklahoma City and its surrounding suburbs, and Elaine Luria, who represents Virginia Beach and the military complex in the Virginia Beach metropolitan area. First, Kendra Horn.
I'm the mayor. I make decisions for Oklahomans every day, just like Kendra Horn. We were going to lose the bridge that leads to the middle school.
I reached out for resources. No one took me seriously. Then Kendra Horn was elected and she got right to work. When it got bad after the flood, Kendra made it happen, worked with the Army Corps and saved our bridge. I'm a Republican. She's a Democrat. But we both stand up for Oklahoma. I'm Kendra Horn and I approve this message. And now, Elaine Luria.
My mom is the strongest woman I've ever met. So it was obvious what I call my restaurant. Besides, the wings are her recipe. Small business is the backbone of a community. And our Congresswoman Elaine Luria was a small business owner. She's fighting for transparency in small business loans. So the money goes to, you know, actual small businesses and not big corporations. She's a strong mom, and I know.
Note that both are running some of the same themes that Torres Small and Brindisi had, but a little bit different flair. For Horn, she's talking about a local bridge and has a Republican mayor. Again, that bipartisanship, don't look at the party, look at the person message.
Now, why isn't she talking about something like a small business or a farm? Well, what she's trying to show here is that she's looking out for the community. Oklahoma City is the largest city in Oklahoma, and it's the major metropolitan area. It does have large businesses, and that's not something that Kendra Horn wants to particularly talk about.
What she's doing is talking about a simple issue that people can grasp, a local bridge that needs fixing that she's paying attention to. Again, similar to the themes that Torres, Small, and Brindisi are striking, but tailored to the specific demographics of her district. Elaine Luria has something similar. She, too, is talking about small business, but her themes,
district has a large African-American population. So what she does with this ad is have an interracial family, a black mother and a white son. And the ad is showing pictures of blacks and whites working together.
in the restaurant that he is talking about. Again, she's talking about small business. There's no mention of her partisan identification. But between the nature of the business and the nature of the picture, she's sending a message that both talks to her coalition and also talks to the potential person who might be open to voting for somebody on the basis of person rather than party. These are all key elements if you're trying to win a district where the partisan trend doesn't
does not favor you. You need to say things that will get your coalition interested, but not such red meat that will annoy the partisans of the other side. Note that none of these candidates are talking about things like Medicare for all. None of these candidates are talking about things that excite the progressive base. They're talking about things that cut across party lines and often emphasize cutting across party lines.
We don't know whether any of these candidates are going to win. Some of them are in districts that even in a bad Republican year, one can expect a Republican to put up a fighting challenge and maybe even win. Because even in bad years, the opposing party bearing the brunt of a bad year usually picks up a few seats. But if
These candidates have a chance to win, and they do. The ad techniques that they are employing are classic examples of how to do it. And that's why these four ads are the ads of the week. That's it for this week's Horse Race. Join me again soon as I will go over more primary nights in America and talk about the state of American politics on the eve of the national conventions. I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you in the winner's circle.
Thank you.
