Special Election megathread (4/30: NY-26)

[GALeftist]

https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/12/nina-turner-announces-bid-to-succeed-marcia-fudge-in-congress.html

Turner announced. Looks like she's picked up endorsements from the typical progressive groups as well as Ro Khanna, Cori Bush, and Keith Ellison. Based on comments from yesterday Bernie will also likely endorse soon. Progressives seem to be lining up thus far, let's see if it holds up or can get Turner over the finish line.

Also endorsed by Killer Mike, Danny Glover, and Charlamagne tha God lol

[GALeftist]

She's also been endorsed by the Ohio state senate minority leader Kenny Yuko fwiw.

[GALeftist]

Turner's the very clear front-runner.

I wouldn't go that far yet. She's got the national name, yes, but she's a big progressive in a district that hasn't been all that progressive to date. She's also gonna be going up against whomever Fudge & the Cuyahoga Democratic Party put their support behind, & that sure as hell won't be Turner. That's carried a TON of weight in this district before. This'll certainly be a fascinating & interesting primary to watch, though, but Turner definitely has an uphill battle in it.

To be fair, Dennis Kucinich represented a Cleveland district once upon a time, so while this district in particular might have been pretty establishment in the past, Cleveland's record is a lot more mixed. Also, this district also obviously became a mega Dem pack in 2010, so that might have changes the dynamics of it in primaries (pretty sure Fudge has been the representative for the entire decade).

If Turner does pull it off, though, she's probably got the seat for the foreseeable future. That seat is only getting more Titanium after redistricting, especially if the GOP cracks the snake by the lake.

[GALeftist]

How will redistricting affect this district in 2022? I assume Ohio will lose 2 EVs and I think they might split up Cleveland

Cleveland can't be split unless you do a dummymander with a bunch of bacon strips into rural areas.

Also isn't this district majority black? Probably runs into issues with the VRA. The 13th is way more at risk than this district, and like I said if they really want to go for broke they'll just try to nuke the 9th as well.

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1337749046518231040

Oh, I forgot to mention, it looks like Yang endorsed her, for whatever that's worth. Mark Ruffalo did too, adding to the progressive celebs.

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/marwilliamson/status/1338940000889569280

Tossup --> Titanium Nina

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1338970272129572864

Not a surprise by any means, but Bernie endorses Turner

[GALeftist]

Turner has raised $270k in the first 24 hours since announcing her campaign. This breaks the previous fundraising record for any Congressional race (previous holder was Wendy Davis).

Nut. This is particularly good because advertising dollars might actually influence the votes of low information primary voters, whereas I suspect that ads have almost no influence on the general elections at this point.

[GALeftist]

I don’t see how an endorsement that a person didn’t ask for  matter at all.  Sanders got endorsed by Evo Morales and Biden got endorsed by Vincente Fox. If you look you can find bad apples in everyone’s endorsement list

Evo Morales is popular among some segments of Bernie's base.

🙋

[GALeftist]

lol
https://twitter.com/AsInMarx/status/1356326821650960384

You love to see it

[GALeftist]

Obviously I was never one of the people who thought Turner was noncompetitive but one must wonder wtf the Cuyahoga Democrats are thinking. There are now four non-Turner Democrats running for this seat, which does nothing but split the moderate/establishment vote and risk a MI-13 scenario, plus there have been no high profile endorsements of anyone besides Nina Turner, plus she has way more money than everyone else combined. They might as well roll out the red carpet at this point.

[GALeftist]

Gross. She’s not even a democrat

If the Democrats in her district want to nominate her surely it's a moot point

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/danielmarans/status/1364213890972864513

This is a good get, and surprisingly this union backed Biden pretty heavily in 2020 apparently. It seems like Turner has very deep connections to Cleveland organized labor, which I think might have been overshadowed by all the progressive firebrandiness she's been doing since 2016.

If nothing else, I would really love to see donut twitter/KHive completely lose it and donate tons of money to whatever Republican grifter opposes her.

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/danielmarans/status/1364213890972864513

This is a good get, and surprisingly this union backed Biden pretty heavily in 2020 apparently. It seems like Turner has very deep connections to Cleveland organized labor, which I think might have been overshadowed by all the progressive firebrandiness she's been doing since 2016.

If nothing else, I would really love to see donut twitter/KHive completely lose it and donate tons of money to whatever Republican grifter opposes her.

Donut twitter?

Back in 2017, I think, Turner and some other people from Our Revolution tried to goto the DNC HQ to give some policy suggestions or something but were blocked by barricades. They were offered donuts and water, which Turner found insulting given that they weren't being heard, which led to a lot of centrist libs on Twitter adopting it as a symbol of antipathy towards the Bernie wing in general and Nina Turnr/Our Revolution specifically.

[GALeftist]

If nothing else, I would really love to see donut twitter/KHive completely lose it and donate tons of money to whatever Republican grifter opposes her.

Obsessed. Kamala is VP and some of y'all still bring these people up no matter how irrelevant they are to the topic at hand.

I can show you numerous examples of pretty prominent members of her Twitter fanbase attacking Turner, if you like. That aside, it was just a silly speculation, I frankly don't actually care much what they do.

[GALeftist]

ugh, can OH-11 Dems not get anyone better than Nina Turner?

What's wrong with Nina Turner? She's awesome.

I mean, she compared voting for Biden to literally "eating a bowl of sh*t," not-so-subtly encouraged people to vote for Jill Stein in 2016, & never even won a contested election (before this primary, that is). Even if one tends to agree with her more often than not on matters of policy, it can't be denied that she can quite literally put a bad taste in people's mouths.

To be fair, I think she said that voting for Biden was life eating half the bowl instead of the whole thing.

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/ninaturner/status/1374737867847704581

Nina Turner endorsed by CPC. Not particularly surprising, I guess, but it is notable that Turner seems to be getting support even from mainstream progressives.

[GALeftist]

I've said it before, but the Cuyahoga Democrats really blew it on this one. This was definitely a winnable race, if they'd focused on some of Turner's edgier comments on the Democratic establishment, and now it's way too late to turn it around in my estimation.

[GALeftist]

Trump +14, nothing to see here. Bet Pelosi's happy though.

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/KosichJohn/status/1390305904055046150

I can't believe Turner is becoming the established politician's favorite.

Why not?

Look at the first few pages. The (I think reasonable at the time) consensus was that the so-called establishment would line up behind anyone except Turner in the primary, rendering her an extreme long shot. Obviously, the opposite ended up happening somehow.

[GALeftist]

In my case, I think it was more that I foolishly assumed the Cuyahoga County Dems might have there act together for once and that I didn’t anticipate Turner reinventing herself as an establishmentarian (props to her for pulling that off btw

It helps to have enormous amounts of money.  Funny how people all over the country are donating tons of cash to Turner so she can use it to distance herself from them and lie to voters that she was never really one of them.

[credit: Tenor]

No one cares that Turner is going to win the primary

Damn, all these coping red avatars could've fooled me.

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1405193935526506499

El Oh El

[GALeftist]

My take is that this endorsement will have minimal impact on the race. Almost no one who isn't terminally online has even thought about Hillary Clinton in like half a decade, and she's done this before with a rather poor track record (e.g. Eliot Engel).

[GALeftist]

Anyone remember a year and a half ago, when Cenk Uygur ran for Congress and all of Bernieworld endorsed him?  And then it "came out" (actually this has been known about him for all along, but it finally got some press attention) that Cenk was a raging misogynist asshole with a history of saying really, truly vile and disgusting things and throwing manbaby temper tantrums?  And then Bernie, Nina, and the rest of Bernieworld had to do a 180 and un-endorse him and pretend this was news to them?

I guess I'm the only one who remembers because now Nina is out there doing events with Cenk.  I guess she forgot a year ago when she distanced herself from him because of all the horrible, toxic, misogynistic s--t he said.

Oh, also here's a clip of Nina nodding along and agreeing with Killer Mike as he accuses Jim Clyburn of being "incredibly stupid" and "caring more about his sponsors than the people who voted to get him there."  You might think this clip is from a year ago, before Nina adopted her new public image.  Actually, it's from this week.  But nobody in OH-11 will see this clip, they only get to see the fake Nina that her media team is spending millions of dollars to sell to the district.  This real Nina is for her leftist audience online.

P.S. she doesn't actually live in OH-11.  She lives in Maryland and has for years.  Has Nina even been back to Cleveland during this race?  The primary debate was on Zoom.  As far as I can tell from the events section of her Facebook page, she's done multiple events in Hawaii but none in Cleveland.

None of this will matter, though.  None of it will break through.  She has an entire presidential campaign apparatus behind her Congressional primary run, and she's using it to drown OH-11 in false advertising portraying her as the polar opposite of everything she portrayed herself as for the last five years.

[GALeftist]

I really don't understand why Nina Turner has turned into this Tulsi like figure in the minds of so many of y'all (and evidently in the mind of Mr. Clyburn as well). Yeah, she's used hyperbolic language in the past, but honestly I would bet she voted for Hillary in 2016 and just never admitted to it. In this primary, she has primarily tied herself to Berniecrats/the Squad nationally and the Ohio Democratic establishment locally. Neither group suggests to me that she will be anything other that a normal progressive Democrat in terms of voting record a la AOC.