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Haley Stevens espoused progressive ideas in last night’s Michigan Senate debate. That’s a familiar pattern. The post When in Doubt, Moderates Veer Left appeared first on The American Prospect.

In Michigan’s Democratic race for U.S. Senate, state Senator Mallory McMorrow was caught in the middle of—and ultimately squeezed out by—centrist Haley Stevens and progressive populist Abdul El-Sayed. Now, with McMorrow having suspended her campaign on Sunday, Stevens and El-Sayed are both vying for her supporters ahead of the August 4 primary—a head-to-head contest that reflects the growing division between the party establishment and the left. “The battle for the Democratic Party that we see nationally has come to Michigan,” said David Dulio, a professor of political science at Oakland University.So far, McMorrow has not endorsed either candidate for the seat. One Michigan political organizer shared a text conversation with The New Republic in which McMorrow confirmed she had no plans to endorse. Kelly Neumann, the former financial co-chair of McMorrow’s campaign, has the same impression. “I think she wants the people to make their own decision,” she said about McMorrow’s plans. “I think everybody knows in their heart where, where she would vote,” Neumann added. McMorrow didn’t respond to an inquiry.“Whoever wins this primary on August 4th will have my full support,” McMorrow wrote in a statement on X announcing her withdrawal from the race.El-Sayed, a former state public health official and TNR contributor in 2021–22, is running on a platform that includes Medicare for All and getting corporate PAC money out of politics. He’s picked up a number of progressive endorsements, including the likes of Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the United Auto Workers.Stevens is backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, and the EMILY’s List PAC, which endorses pro-choice women running for office. She’s focused on her legislative experience, having been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 2018.In a debate between the two on Tuesday night, they pushed each other on the role of money in politics. El-Sayed asked Stevens about the money her campaign has received from AIPAC, while Stevens pushed El-Sayed to release his tax returns. The two also sparred over energy costs. Both bemoaned that Michiganders have experienced power outages and high utility bills, but El-Sayed pointed out that Stevens has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Detroit Edison, the major utility company in southeastern Michigan; its PAC contributed $35,000 to Stevens’s campaigns for House, as well as $10,000 to a PAC associated with her.In their closing statements, they made their priorities clear. El-Sayed hammered on his economic populist message. “We need to take on oligopolies and billionaires,” he said. “We need to guarantee health care through Medicare for All.” He invited people to join his campaign, saying, “It’s the many versus the money.” Stevens made the pitch that she’s the right candidate to take down Republican Senator Mike Rogers in the general election: “I am fed up and fired up. Let’s go beat Mike Rogers, send him back to Florida a second time, and make sure that Michigan shines at the lawmaking table.”El-Sayed is hoping for a windfall of McMorrow supporters, writing on Sunday: “I welcome her supporters to our movement to stand up against money in politics, to put money back in pockets, and pass Medicare for All.”In a statement, Stevens praised McMorrow but didn’t explicitly ask McMorrow’s supporters to join her campaign. “Anyone who raises their hand to serve the people of Michigan and puts forward thoughtful ideas for how they would lead earns my respect,” she wrote. Caitlin Legacki, a spokesperson for her campaign, told me, “Now that it’s a two-person race, we have a chance to really go out and consolidate Haley’s voters, which includes Mallory’s remaining supporters who we’re all working really hard to try and woo.”Some Michiganders say that, anecdotally, McMorrow’s decision to drop out of the race has been a boon for El-Sayed. “We’re getting a lot of new Mallory people coming to the group,” said Wanda Hammoud, the board chair for One Fair Wage Action, about a pro-El-Sayed Facebook group she started. The group has over 21,000 members, and Hammoud said it jumped by 2,000 in just one day this week. “I’ve been pretty much an establishment Democrat, quite honestly,” said Neumann. Despite that, she said, “right off the bat, I knew immediately when I received the news that [McMorrow] was going to suspend her campaign that I was going to go to Abdul El-Sayed. I just knew that’s where I had to go. I’m looking for change.” (Neumann and the Stevens campaign sparred earlier this year when an old, controversial social-media post of Neumann’s resurfaced. Neumann blamed the Stevens campaign for publicizing the post to hurt McMorrow’s campaign.)El-Sayed has led in most polls since April. Most recently, a late-June Quantus Insights poll surveyed 433 likely voters and found 41 percent supporting El-Sayed, 36 percent supporting Stevens, 8 percent supporting McMorrow, and 16 percent undecided.“If endorsements from this point pretty much break equally, the tie goes to Abdul, because he was already leading in the polls,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “He just needs to keep the dynamics the way they were.”Since McMorrow dropped out, El-Sayed has received endorsements from Representative Analilia Mejia, Michigan state Senator Stephanie Chang, and Representative Maxwell Frost. On the day McMorrow left the race, Stevens received an endorsement from Attorney General Dana Nessel. Green expects more endorsements to come this week. He specifically has his eyes on Senator Elizabeth Warren, who endorsed McMorrow, and Jewish politicians like Andy Levin, who Green says could help draw Jewish voters to El-Sayed. Stevens, backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has called herself a “proud pro-Israel Democrat.” Meanwhile, El-Sayed is critical of Israel’s government and outspoken about the genocide in Gaza.If Warren endorses El-Sayed, Green said, “that would be a very high-profile, newsworthy signifier that McMorrow world is going Abdul’s direction.”

If Republicans are really looking for election fraud, they might want to check on their own party members. In Massachusetts, the State Ballot Law Commission ruled last week to disqualify Republican candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general from the state’s primary election after they submitted allegedly forged signatures to get their names on the ballot. Adam Roof, executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, had filed objections to the veracity of the signatures collected by the campaigns of Anne Manning Martin, who is running for lieutenant governor, and Michael Walsh, who is running for attorney general. Candidates needed to gather 10,000 signatures to appear on the primary ballot. The commission invalidated 1,279 of Martin’s 10,692 signatures and 1,021 of Walsh’s 10,677 signatures.In Martin’s case, signature gatherer Joe Bronske allegedly used a list of registered Republican voters to forge hundreds of signatures. The allegedly forged signatures were first noticed by another Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, who had also hired Bronske and found he’d collected signatures from deceased voters. When deposed by an attorney for Shawn Oliver, one of Martin’s opponents, Bronske repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment, suggesting he had “something to hide,” according to the ruling. In Walsh’s case, a handwriting expert determined that many of the signatures from certain towns were “more likely than not written by the same person,” according to the commission’s ruling.Thousands of miles away in Florida, five people, including three elected officials, have been charged in connection with a scheme to allegedly create and distribute a fake voter guide.Ahead of the 2024 general election, residents in St. Johns County received flyers that listed the Republican Party’s “official 2024 membership-approved endorsements”—but included a very different list of candidates from the one the party actually supported. St. Johns County Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst, St. Augustine Beach city commissioner and former Mayor Dylan Rumrell, and Jamie Lynn Johnson each face two misdemeanor counts for conspiracy and producing a false voter guide. Brianna Jordan, Whitehurst’s campaign manager, was also charged with tampering with physical evidence. She allegedly tried to destroy the voter guides after the scheme was discovered.It shouldn’t be all that surprising that the recent instances of alleged voter fraud are coming from the Republican Party, the same party that idolizes a county clerk found guilty of tampering with voting machines, celebrates a rule-skirting billionaire, and bows at the altar of an election denier and alleged fraudster.

The Great American State Fair seemed to attract dozens of attendees ahead of America’s 250th-year Fourth of July celebration. Now it’s attracting no one.Meghan McCain, the daughter of late Arizona Senator John McCain, hosted the “Race2Win” quiz show at the sprawling semiquincentennial celebration Tuesday. But a picture of the game stage, as shared by McCain herself, illustrated that nobody had shown up to her event. Instead, McCain’s voice rang out to an empty field, speckled by just a few lonely chairs.“So cool to host @2waytvapp new game show ‘Race 2 Win’ at The Great American State Fair today!” she wrote on X.But even McCain couldn’t be bothered to show up to the event. The pundit’s image was broadcast onto large screens on the enormous stage while she remained in a presumably climate-controlled room, speaking with participants over Zoom.The event technicians overseeing the show couldn’t be bothered by its technicalities, either. Instead, they streamed McCain’s show as is on the two vertical monitors that bordered the stage, mangling the image while cutting off the text of a trivia question about the building materials used to construct the Capitol dome, due to the altered aspect ratio.Practically every component of Donald Trump’s wildly expensive plan to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary has turned out to be a dud. The $15 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool failed to rid the iconic monument of algae; a multiweek lineup of musical acts had to be canceled after practically every artist pulled themselves from the program; and a fleet of buses carrying a contemporary retelling of American history have failed to make a splash in their journey across the country.The Great American State Fair was supposed to be the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s America 250 celebration, yet even it is more of a Potemkin village than a sincere homage. The booths, which offered space for each state to represent its heritage and culture (visitors could pet a replica of a bison at the North Dakota pavilion, or walk away with a bag of chips from Maine), were ideologically pitted against the seismic presence of the federal government and Trump’s authoritarian expansion (banners featuring his grim face flanked the event, while a small-scale replica of his proposed “Triumphal Arc” sat center stage).The fair also suffered from power outages and dangerous technical failures that included large stage equipment falling behind dancers during rehearsal. But the extreme heat that consumed Washington over the weekend seemed to be the final blow to the expansive celebration: Even the thin crowds that did appear to watch the world record–shattering fireworks display were forced to leave the area for several hours due to an unprecedented weather advisory.