Endorsements: The Northeast (October 17)

Update 307 — Endorsements: The Northeast

Last month, 20/20 Vision endorsed 29 candidates for the next Congress, the first round of such endorsements.  Almost all of these candidates are in margin-of-error-tight races in districts currently held by Republicans. Candidates were endorsed based on disparate considerations but we mainly focused on candidates who are:

• running in flippable districts
• campaigning for progressive and forward-thinking economic policy
• refusing corporate PAC contributions
• female, under 40, first-time office seekers

This week, we review the 2018 endorsed candidates running for Congress in the Northeast states of Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Looking ahead to Friday, we will examine the implications of FSOC’s decision to de-designate Prudential, the last nonbank to shed this label, raising the question: are non-banks now a non-issue for systemic risk and Too Big to Fail?  

Best,

Dana

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United States Senate

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand  •  New York

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand began her political career in 2007 in the House of Representatives and in 2009 was appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton.  In a 2010 special election, Gillibrand secured her position and in 2012, she was elected to a full six-year term with 72 percent of the vote — a higher percentage of the vote than any other statewide candidate in New York.  From her early days in the Senate, Gillibrand has been increasingly outspoken, taking the lead to address sexual assault in the military and later moving on to a range of progressive economic issues.

She has been legislatively innovative on a surprisingly disparate set of issues, authoring a portion of the STOCK act — passed in 2012 — to address corruption in Congress, introducing the FAMILY Act in 2017 to improve paid family leave, and proposing the Postal Banking Act in 2018 to increase banking services for rural and impoverished areas.  Gillibrand has served the state with distinction and is likely to secure an easy victory next month against her Republican challenger.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren  •  Massachusetts

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been a leading voice for progressives in Congress since her election to the Senate in 2012.  Warren was a prominent figure in the Obama administration, where she headed the Oversight Council of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).  She also conceived and led in the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

As a member of the Senate, Warren has continued to address consumer protection issues, especially related to banking.  She, along with Ranking Member of Senate Banking, Sen. Sherrod Brown, led the opposition against the largest roll back of Dodd-Frank to-date, S. 2155.  Sen. Warren has been the progressive gold standard in the Senate on a multitude of issues. Recently, she has taken on President Trump and introduced legislation to curb the corruption that his presidency has brought to Washington.  She has represented the Commonwealth with dedication and energy and deserves re-election.

U.S. House of Representatives

Andy Kim (NJ-03)

• Cook PVI:  R+2
• 2018 Primary: Ran unopposed
• Total amount raised in 2018 cycle:  Kim $4.4 Million/Rep. MacArthur $3.6 Million

Andy Kim will challenge Rep. Tom MacArthur for his seat in NJ-03.  Both candidates ran unopposed in their primaries. Kim and MacArthur are tied neck-and-neck in the polls and Kim has been hitting the campaign trail recently with former Vice President Joe Biden. The district voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a margin of about six points, but voted for Obama both in 2008 and 2012. It is rated as a toss-up district and recent polls have the candidates within two points of each other.

Kim is a Rhodes Scholar and worked on national security and counterterrorism in both the State Department and the Obama White House. He is running on a broad swath of issues such as healthcare affordability, middle-class family tax relief, campaign finance reform, and ending gerrymandering. According to Kim, his major reason for running is due to the proposed cuts to the ACA — cuts that his opponent MacArthur would have voted for — which would take away coverage for his parents and unborn son.

Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11)

• Cook PVI:  R+3
• 2018 Primary: Sherrill 77/Harris 15
• Total amount raised in 2018 cycle: Sherrill $7 Million/Webber $1 Million

Mikie Sherrill is a former United States Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor running in NJ-11 for Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen’s open seat. Sherrill served in the Navy between 1994 and 2003, eventually being promoted to the position of lieutenant. After leaving the Navy, she earned her law degree and later joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey. Her opponent, Jay Webber, serves in the New Jersey Assembly and was previously Chairman of the New Jersey Republican party.

Sherrill is campaigning on reducing the cost of college tuition, living, and healthcare, as well as protecting and expanding Social Security and Medicare. She has criticized the 2017 GOP tax plan, asserting that it does not provide necessary relief to middle-class families. She also advocates for campaign finance reform, such as overturning Citizens United. With three other candidates running for the seat, the race is crowded. Sherrill continues to narrowly lead in the polls by two to four points and has raised and spent more than twice as much as Webber.

Antonio Delgado (NY-19)

• Cook PVI:  R+2
• 2018 Primary: Delgado 22/Ryan 18
• Total amount raised in 2018 cycle: Delgado $6.5 Million/Faso $3.3 Million

Antonio Delgado is running in NY-19, a district seen as one of the best pickup opportunities for Democrats in the country. Delgado is facing off against GOP incumbent, Rep. John Faso. A Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Law graduate, Delgado is running on a progressive agenda, taking the No-Corporate PAC money pledge and campaigning hard on healthcare, advocating for a public option to the ACA. The healthcare angle is particularly effective against Faso, who voted for the disastrous American Health Care Act of 2017 and is incorrigible in his pursuit to destroy the ACA.

Faso and his campaign originally planned to run on tax cuts, but because the messaging is not resonating with voters, they are going for fear and gutter tactics such as ad hominem attacks on Delgado’s stint in the music industry. In September, Delgado received endorsements by both President Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden. An independent Monmouth poll in September has Delgado up 45 to 43 with a lot of room to grow despite the barrage of Republican attack ads. As of September 30, Delgado’s campaign has raised over $6 million, and in the past three months, outraised Faso by nearly $3 million.

Mary Gay Scanlon (PA-05)

• Cook PVI:  D+13
• 2018 Primary: Scanlon 28/Lunkenheimer 15
• Total amount raised in 2018 cycle: Scanlon $1.6 Million/Kim $459K

Mary Gay Scanlon is the Democratic candidate running for the House in PA-05. She will face Pearl Kim, a former assistant District Attorney and a Senior Deputy Attorney General for Pennsylvania. The district was redrawn by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 2018 after a decision that the old district was unconstitutionally gerrymandered; the open seat is now rated by Cook Political Report as a Likely D pick up. Scanlon is out-raising her challenger by a factor of four and is viewed as the likely winner of the general election, but an entrenched county GOP machine and midterm voter turnout make the election more competitive than national polling suggests.

Scanlon is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law school and has been a civil rights attorney for over 35 years. She leads a pro bono program for low-income citizens that received the 2018 Pro Bono Publico Award from the American Bar Association for providing outstanding legal services to the disadvantaged. As a candidate, Scanlon is running on expanding resources for public schools, student loan reform, repairing and expanding the ACA, ending the gender pay gap, and creating new jobs through reinvesting in our nation’s infrastructure programs.

Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06)

• Cook PVI:  D+2
• 2018 Primary: Ran Unopposed
• Total amount raised in 2018 cycle:  Houlahan $3.7 Million/McCauley $240K

Chrissy Houlahan ran unopposed in her primary to become the Democratic candidate for PA-06. Though a political outsider, Houlahan offers a wide array of policy and leadership experience. A Stanford and MIT-educated industrial engineer, she served as COO of AND1 Basketball, where she grew revenue from $4 million to over $250 million. Houlahan is also no stranger to serving her country and community, having spent sixteen years in the U.S. Air Force as Captain and one year teaching chemistry in North Philadelphia as a Teach for America Corps member.

Her policy priorities include increasing access to affordable healthcare, increasing funding for education, and campaign finance reform. Should Houlahan win come November, as polling suggests, she will help end Pennsylvania’s all-male Congressional delegation. At the end of the June, Houlahan had raised an extraordinary $2.8 million compared to Republican tax attorney Greg McCauley’s $174,000.