State Legislature Special Election Megathread v3

[walleye26]

Hey guys, we have an Alabama special on Tuesday, 1/19. Looks safe R. https://news.ballotpedia.org/2021/01/11/special-election-to-be-held-jan-19-in-alabama-state-house-district/

TX 68th HD is titanium R following that on Jan 23.

IA Sen 41 is on Jan 26th, Miller-Meeks old district, should be Lean/Likely R.

WI has two specials on April 6. I am in SD-13, Fitzgerald’s senate district, and AD-89 up north is also open following Nygren’s resignation. 89 is safe R, but something weird is happening in SD-13. I live here, and there is an independent “Trump Conservative” party member named Spencer Zimmerman who is running. I doubt he gets more than 2% of the vote, but if there is a high Dem turnout in the Dane county portion here, as well as an unexpected protest vote, there is a tiny chance they could win it. For now, Safe R, unless something weird happens.

[walleye26]

WI has two specials on April 6. I am in SD-13, Fitzgerald’s senate district, and AD-89 up north is also open following Nygren’s resignation. 89 is safe R, but something weird is happening in SD-13. I live here, and there is an independent “Trump Conservative” party member named Spencer Zimmerman who is running. I doubt he gets more than 2% of the vote, but if there is a high Dem turnout in the Dane county portion here, as well as an unexpected protest vote, there is a tiny chance they could win it. For now, Safe R, unless something weird happens.

Zimmerman is a perennial candidate who I don’t believe even lives in the district.  He seems to consistently get around 2% of the vote when he runs as a 3rd party/independent.  He doesn’t seem likely to significantly affect the outcome.  Pretty close to Safe R I’d say.

Did not know he was a perennial candidate. That probably makes it safe R, but the margins still are going to be worth watching.

[walleye26]

Nobody posted the Alabama results from Tuesday:

AL-HD-33:

Ben Robbins (R)
2,232    68.19%

Fred Crum (D)
1,037    31.68%

https://www2.alabamavotes.gov/electionnight/statewideResultsByContest.aspx?ecode=1001110

Not actually a bad result for Dems, since in 2018 it was 67-33 for the GOP.

[walleye26]

Will be interesting to see the Iowa election result tonight. Today at my home (Dodge County, WI) we got over 6” of snow with 30mph winds. It was a blizzard. Parts of Iowa and Northern Illinois were much worse, so if the GOP voters waited until Election Day, that will help Dems.

[walleye26]

Here in Wisconsin SD-13 (Fitzgerald’s old seat) I’ve been getting pummeled with mail. Jagler has been sending out mail a ton and I recently got one from Mary Winker, the Democrat. Still safe R, but the results will be interesting to see.

[walleye26]

I know that this is a special state legislature thread, but I wanted to include the Wausau (my hometown!) school board election here too, in addition to WI’s two specials next Tuesday. What is happening in Wausau is an exceptionally brutal school board campaign, and it’s one of the most bitter I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.
Wausau (about 40,000 people) started the year virtually, as did many others before slowly transitioning to a hybrid model. Some Wausau students open enrolled in neighboring farm districts who were in person to start.

Enter the conflict: Wausau school board President Tricia Zunker (the Dem nominee for WI-7 last year) along with two others are up for re-election. The local GOP has slammed them for keeping everything virtual to start the year and for Wausau losing enrollment. Three challengers, Karen Vanderburg, Jon Creisher, and Cody Nikolai are running a joint campaign (something I haven’t seen before) with the slogan “Restoring Confidence.” They want a full reopening and have been slamming the Wausau school board for various Covid measures. It’s caused a complete cluster***k in Wausau: tempers have flown at school board meetings, the three challengers are accused of being bankrolled by the local GOP (they have raised large amounts of money) and have had ethics complaints lodged against them for not disclosing who is paying for their ads (the three said their printer forgot to put the “paid for by” at the bottom of their yard signs and are essentially accusing the media of a hit job). It’s a mess.

Kevin Hermening, the Marathon County GOP chairman, said “Tricia Zunker as Wausau School Board President is a waste of physical space on this planet. She is heartless, doesn’t understand science, hasn’t read a single research article about the failure of online schooling in the spring.” In addition, he implied she did illegal things for raising funds for her Congressional race (without evidence) and predicted an indictment. For what, I’m not sure. In the post Trump era, welcome to local politics.

Anyway, since it’s my hometown, I wanted to add this.

[walleye26]

Tomorrow is special Election Day (as well as State Super) in WI. Important development in the SD-13 special election (where I live.) Although the Democrat, Melissa Winker, faces extremely long odds in this contest (Baldwin even lost this district by 6 in 2018) she got a bit of good news last week. Don Pridemore, a Republican who lost the primary to Jagler (he got 33% of the vote in the GOP primary) announced he is waging an aggressive write in campaign. He’s even getting people writing in letters to the editor now. Pridemore was a state assemblyman, so he has some name ID in this district. Trump Conservative Party candidate Spencer Zimmerman is also running.
Although Zimmerman probably won’t get more than 3%, Pridemore could draw in a fair amount (closer to 10 perhaps?) and spoil Jagler’s win.
https://www.wiscnews.com/bdc/opinion/letters/letter-write-in-pridemore-on-ballot/article_559d85b7-8cc9-5d46-8831-c5bbd0ff9894.html
http://

[walleye26]

Yes, I expect Jagler to win by about 15-20, but I think it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on margins in places like Beaver Dam and Columbus. Special elections are just so unpredictable and the fact that Pridemore is going on some write-in offensive against Jagler is interesting.

[walleye26]

Winker has a small lead in SD-13, but half of Dane’s precincts are in, and 60% of Waukesha’s.

[walleye26]

WI AD-37 will be July 13. That’s Jagler’s old seat. Likely R, contains Watertown, Columbus, parts of De Forest and a few townships of Dane County, and Waterloo.

[walleye26]

Here’s the local article on the WI assembly race:
https://www.channel3000.com/special-election-to-fill-wisconsin-assembly-vacancy/

[walleye26]

WI has a special today for an Assembly seat which includes a portion of Dane along with mostly conservative rural areas.

The special election in AD-37 happens today.  It was 56-41 R in 2020, which was a D swing from 62-38 R in 2016 (the 2018 race was uncontested as the D was kicked off the ballot).  The district includes a portion of Dane County including DeForest, Columbia County (only Columbus), and portions of Jefferson and Dodge.  The Dem will have to run it up in Dane and Columbia in order to have any chance at an upset.  There is an ideologically conservative independent candidate from DeForest who got 3% in 2020 and is running again.  The D and R are both from Columbus.

Penterman (R) leading Adams (D) roughly 50-48 with all of Dane/Columbia/Dodge reporting.  It's only the strongly R Jefferson remaining.  There won't be an upset, but we'll see what the final margin looks like.

I just checked Jefferson County’s website, and Penterman has 1,089 votes to Adams (D) 675, with one small precinct in Watertown still out. The two-person percentage should be about 55-45 when all said and done. Adams also won Waterloo 149-113, which I believe Trump won.

[walleye26]

SD-08 should be a flip based on WI Dems historically overperforming in special elections.

It's historically republican so more republican downballot though

Yeah, the seat is in all 3 WOW counties (and a little bit of northern MKE county), so it’ll be hard for Dems to win (it was Trump +5) but with recent trends towards the Democrats, this is a pickup possibility for them. I still think they fall about 2-3 points short though.

[walleye26]

This Tuesday (7/18) will feature a special election in WI assembly district 24 (Grafton, portions of Mequon, the village of Germantown, and parts of Menominee Falls). Trump won this district by 16 in 2020, but Evers narrowed that a few points and Janet only lost it by low double digits.

While the Republican candidate is heavily favored, this is a district trending left. The margin will be interesting to see.

[walleye26]

This Tuesday (7/18) will feature a special election in WI assembly district 24 (Grafton, portions of Mequon, the village of Germantown, and parts of Menominee Falls). Trump won this district by 16 in 2020, but Evers narrowed that a few points and Janet only lost it by low double digits.

While the Republican candidate is heavily favored, this is a district trending left. The margin will be interesting to see.

https://decisiondeskhq.com/election-results-wisconsin-state-assembly-24-special-election/

Trump +16, looks like another major GOP underperformance in the suburbs. Dems continue to make gains in the WOW.

It also looks like the Democratic candidate outright won the Menominee Falls portion of the district. I was expecting him to do better in the Ozaukee County portion, but he only lost it by 5 to the GOP candidate. The fact that he got nearly 42% in Germantown is nuts for a Dem. I know it’s only one special election, but yeah, Trump won this by 16 and the GOP candidate winning by 7 is absolutely awful for the WISGOP.

[walleye26]

Madison County is probably one of the places Biden could flip in Alabama. Jones won it in 2017, it was close in 2020, and had a big trend leftward 16-20. I think Trump only won it by 8. Since then, I think some of this stuff that the Alabama Supreme Court and Senator Tuberville have done probably have turned off some people there.