In the wake of a disappointing election — if your preferred candidate won on Nov. 5, I encourage you to stop reading and cancel your voter registration — the prospect of engaging with politics once again can be markedly unattractive. My outlook on Nov. 6, 2024, mirrored exactly those of Nov. 10, 2016, and Nov. 5, 2014. But with that disappointment comes a great deal of hope: off-year elections!
Yes, that’s right — not every important American election happens in an even-numbered year. In fact, there are major bellwethers on the horizon before the next calendar change. First up: state supreme court elections.
State supreme court races
It’s important to remember that the U.S. Supreme Court has limited bandwidth and simply refuses to hear most cases it receives. As a result, the rulings of the lower courts, often state supreme courts, hold significant weight.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Justice Ann Walsh Bradley has declined to run for reelection in April, leaving ideological control of the courts up for grabs with this year’s election (the remaining justices are evenly split, with three conservatives and three liberals). In Pennsylvania, where the state court has a 4–2 Democratic majority, three Democrats are up for reelection, which could potentially flip the court to a 5–1 Republican majority.
Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are bellwethers, so they’ll provide a good indication of the electorate’s direction after months of the second Trump administration. Obviously, if you reside in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, vote for the liberal candidate judges.
The New York mayoral race
New York’s mayoral election will likely receive the most media attention, thanks to the personalities involved. Eric Adams, the Turkish-bribe-accepting, pillow-inspecting incumbent who is somehow still effective on housing policy, is up for reelection. Though a Democrat will almost surely win this race — although it’s worth noting a Republican held this office as recently as 2013 — the ranked-choice Democratic primary will reveal how Democratic voters in the nation’s largest city view their party’s future after a crushing defeat in November.
The progressive lane is crowded, but ranked-choice voting (RCV) manages this threat: Progressive City Comptroller Brad Lander, State Sen. Jessica Ramos, State Sen. Zellnor Myrnie and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani are all jockeying to carry the left-wing mantle. More centrist former City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who fought sexual misconduct allegations last time he ran, and Assemblyman Michael Blake will challenge Adams’ lane.
Surprisingly, Andrew Cuomo’s shadow looms over the race. While he has not announced at the time of writing, polling indicates that he could be a serious contender despite his scandal-ridden resignation.
The most important issue facing New York, as with all major urban centers in the United States, is the housing shortage. Supply has not kept pace with demand and real wage increases over the past few years have only accelerated the rise of housing prices. While temporary measures like evictions and foreclosure moratoria have been popular, they failed to address the root cause: There simply aren’t enough houses for the number of people in major cities. Unfortunately, many mayoral candidates focus instead on short-sighted, ultimately inflationary measures like rent freezes, subsidies and other demand-side policies that will only exacerbate the crisis.
There are three candidates who seem to understand that we can only build our way out: Incumbent Eric Adams as well as state senators Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrnie. Given Adams’ terrible personal record, I would urge New York readers planning to vote in the Democratic primary to rank Ramos and Myrnie as your top two choices.
The New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races
The final two elections I’ll mention are gubernatorial. In New Jersey, incumbent Democratic governor Phil Murphy is term-limited and many candidates are looking to take his mantle. Leading contenders include moderate Representative Rebecca “Mikie” Sherrill, the mayors of Newark and Jersey City, as well as obnoxiously centrist Democratic New Jersey Representative Josh Gottheimer, known for championing the SALT deduction, a giveaway to rich residents of blue states, and demanding university presidents resign over insufficiently pro-Israel statements.
I’d lean toward one of the mayors, but in any case, this primary will probably go to the most well-funded candidate.
Despite New Jersey’s Democratic lean, the state has been a target for ambitious conservatives in recent cycles — recall that Chris Christie was the former popular Republican governor. If Republicans can pull off an upset or even make it a closer race than expected, it will be seen as a major boon for Trump’s party.
The more competitive gubernatorial race is in Virginia, where the state’s unique ban on consecutive terms prevents popular Republican incumbent Glenn Youngkin from running again. In his stead, the likely party nominee is uber-conservative Lieutenant-Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, who criticized Trump for being an electoral liability — before caving to endorse him last year. She’ll likely face Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and representative known for her pragmatic approach — or untrustworthy doublespeak, depending on whom you ask.
Virginia is thought of as a safe Democratic state, so Youngkin’s election in 2021 was widely interpreted as a rebuke of the Biden administration propelled by suburban discontent with perceived left-wing educational policies. This year’s election will probably be analyzed in the same way.
For more information, you can always check Ballotpedia or the demented community of election X, both of which have a glut of statistical analysis. Otherwise, see you at the ballot box!
Akshay Seetharam HM ’27 is better known for making the weekly crosswords. He is greatly saddened by how his last op-ed aged after California voters rejected radical, far-left propositions like “banning slavery” and “raising wages.” He is usually a shill for the Democratic Party and finds disagreeing with them on housing policy very difficult.
Facebook Comments