- Men won both the Republican and Democrat nominations for the state’s 1st Congressional District on Tuesday, which retiring Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter left open.
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- Former Democratic state lawmaker Molly Kelly became the 15th woman this year to earn a major party nod for governor. But the battle for control of the purple state is far from over. Recent polls show that Republican Gov. Chris Sununu is about 20 percentage points ahead of Kelly.
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- The New York Democratic Party sent out a mailer accusing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon of ignoring anti-Semitism. Nixon refuted the allegations and is, in fact, raising her two sons Jewish.
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Bagelgate: Apparently, Nixon doesn’t want New Yorkers’ votes after all. Just one day before her primary, she made the horrifying misstep of ordering a cinnamon raisin bagel with lox and, to add insult to injury, capers. (There’s even video evidence. It’s not for the faint of stomach.)
- Democratic attorney general hopeful Zephyr Teachout gets an ultrasound in her latest campaign ad, placing her among the wave of female politicians emphasizing how motherhood impacts their candidacies.
- New York state Senate candidate and Democratic Socialists of America member Julia Salazar just keeps getting hammered with reports that she misled people about her background. To recap: She was reportedly once arrested for impersonating and stealing from a revered Mets player’s ex-wife, keeps changing her story about her conversion to Judaism, and apparently had a $600,000-plus trust fund after claiming she comes from a working-class background.
If you’re confused about Salazar, you’re not the only one. I could fill this newsletter with the slew of eye-popping controversies that broke this week alone. Instead, I’ll defer to Rolling Stone’s Tana Ganeva, who followed Salazar throughout the summer. Ganeva writes:More than anything, Salazar’s scandal-plagued campaign might raise questions about the DSA’s vetting process as it becomes a far more prominent voice in national and state politics. But was Salazar the wrong candidate for the DSA to back in this race? Or was she unfairly targeted in a series of attacks fueled by sexism, anxiety about her leftist platform, and the obsession with digging up dirt on a hot-shot insurgent campaign?
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No one seems to care all that much about Lupe Valdez’s groundbreaking campaign. Valdez was Dallas County’s first female, Latino, and lesbian sheriff; she’s now the first woman of color to snag a Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Texas and the first Latina to do so nationwide. But Gromer Jeffers Jr., of the Dallas Morning News, writes:
The contest for governor is usually the marquee matchup in Texas' midterm elections. But this time around, the contest between Abbott and Valdez is being described by some analysts as the least anticipated governor's race in Lone Star State history and one that is already over.Lacking the money, star power and organization of another statewide Democratic candidate, U.S. Senate hopeful Beto O'Rourke, Valdez has been relegated to piecing together a campaign on the fly.
FYI: Even if Valdez doesn’t win, she could propel non-voting Latinos — a group Texas Monthly calls “the ‘sleeping giant’ of Texas politics”— to vote for down-ballot candidates.
“When I got up on that stage and I saw over 200 people there, I actually started crying because, for me, seeing all that love, when I was — two decades ago, I was a little girl picking up cans with my mom so we could survive. It doesn’t register in my brain at times.”
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