Ballots are in the mail. Don't send them back until these five races unfold over the next few weeks
ELECTION MODE: Kaplan wins local club endorsement; Campaign finance roundup; AD20 PAC makes itself kinda known
ELECTION 2022
—HOLD YOUR HORSES—The all-vote-by-mail local elections appears to be with us for a long time. Destined to be one of many lasting legacies of the pandemic, vote-by-mail makes voting easier, but, perhaps, too easy. Vote-by-mail ballots will soon be arriving in your mailbox starting today. Voters have the ability to fill out their ballots and send them back ASAP. But you shouldn’t. When it comes to voting, serial procrastinators have it right. The inherent problem with early voting is that the narrative of many campaigns have not yet been fully revealed. It’s like voting on whether a novel is good when you’re only one-fourth through the book. Here’s the East Bay primary races that where you should you sit back and watch before casting your vote:
20TH ASSEMBLY DISTRICT
—This is the poster child for waiting to decide on a candidate. There’s three reasons why: (1) The seat is open after Assemblymember Bill Quirk’s decision not to run for re-election. Quirk made the decision in early December, so every candidate, except one (Jennifer Esteen), had a shorter window to begin their primary campaigns. (2) The three Democratic candidates for the seat are relatively unknown district-wide, are mostly progressive, and have almost equal amounts of campaign fundraising. (3) In addition, there are four Independent Expenditure (IE) Committees present in this primary race—two supporting Liz Ortega and two supporting Shawn Kumagai. The IEs are likely to build the narrative of this race over the next few weeks. The campaigns have not engaged in any negative narratives against each other. But, expect the IEs to do the dirty work. We saw a hint of this from one of the IEs supporting Kumagai. Check out the Mailbox section below for a breakdown of the mailer…
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