It’d be one of the marquee House races of the cycle and could easily go either way, but right now I’d say Levin by ~2-4%
Probably James. Levin probably would have won last year, but now he is the guy that carpet bagged to another seat and lost.
I think the Macomb County Sheriff or one of the state senators would be a stronger challenger.
Just to think that Ron Kind, Sander Levin, Tom Suozzi, and Ann Kirkpatrick not running for re-election cost the Democrats the House.
I actually think Anne Kirkpatrick was a weak incumbent. She underperformed expectations in 2018 and 2020. Plus, IIRC she retired b/c her alcoholism had gotten so out of control that she had to be hospitalized due to injuries sustained during an incident where she was fall down drunk and had to spent ~1 month in an alcohol abuse treatment program. It’s really sad and she definitely made the right decision by retiring to focus on her recovery. That said, Engel was also a much stronger candidate.
I think Kind not running for Senate arguably cost us a filibuster/DINO-proof Senate majority, but I’d argue that part of what cost is that seat is that Pfaff received almost no significant outside help (which makes his showing all the more impressive). It’s much like how completely blowing off Levin’s open seat cost us that election. It’s pretty clear Marlinga would have narrowly won if the National Democratic Party made a serious play to contest the seat. Fortunately, James will be perpetually vulnerable whenever he faces a decent opponent, so we’ll get another chance here.
You’ve definitely got a point with Suozzi though. He needs to just accept that he’s never gonna be Governor b/c this the second time he’s screwed up his political career by launching a hopelessly doomed gadfly ConservaDem campaign for Governor. I know it’s an open secret that Suozzi wants to be President some day, but no one - not even Nassau County Democratic primary voters - wants him as their Governor.
Anyway, I’d argue what cost Democrats the House was…
Right-wing hyper-partisan judicial activism in New York by rogue judges: The hyper-partisan Republican majority on New York’s highest court abused their authority and betrayed their oaths of office in an effort to seize control of the redistricting process from the legislature so as to ensure a lower court’s Republican partisan hack judge could impose a more Republican-friendly map. At a minimum, this likely cost Democrats the Williams, D’Esposito, and Santos seats. It may’ve also cost us one or both of Lawler and LaLota’s districts. Malliotakis (assuming she bothers seeking re-election and/or isn’t cut loose altogether by national Republicans) and Molinaro probably still win though.
Beyond which, the Supreme Court abused its authority and once again completely abandoned all pretense of giving a crap about Stare Decisis to prevent the creation of new minority-majority districts in Alabama and Louisiana. IIRC there may’ve been a case about creating one in Georgia as well (I don’t remember though, so I could easily be mistaken). If so and if it is was clearcut as in the Alabama and Louisiana cases, then we also would’ve held the House but for the absurdly flagrant abuse of the shadow docket for partisan political purposes by the Republican bloc on SCOTUS (sans Roberts IIRC and given his foaming at the mouth hatred for all things VRA, his refusal to go along with the other five - at least re: the Alabama case - speaks volumes about how ridiculous staying the lower court rulings were with this).
At the very least, even if I’m mistaken about Georgia, that’s two safe Democratic seats we didn’t have b/c of SCOTUS’ partisan judicial activism. And when you combine that with DeSantis violating Florida’s state constitution to eliminate Lawson’s seat, you get Republicans also holding the House due to deliberate efforts to deny African-Americans fair representation in Congress through unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in Florida and by running roughshod over the VRA to disenfranchise African-Americans in Louisiana and Alabama.
Poll
