Voters in Massachusetts Like Their Politicians Aged, Like a Fine Wine

Voters in Massachusetts headed to the polls yesterday to choose the Democrats who will represent them for the next 2 years (or more). Here are the results:

U.S. Senate: The marquee race of the night, of course, was the Democratic U.S. Senate primary between the elderly and progressive Sen. Ed Markey (80) and the younger and more centrist Rep. Seth Moulton (47). Polls suggested Markey would win in a walk, by about 30 points. But the only poll that counts is the ballots, and when they were counted... Markey had won in a walk, by 30 points. With 95% reporting, it's 65% fo the Senator, 35% for the Representative. It was lopsided enough that, after the polls closed, the AP took 4 whole minutes to call the race. Markey's next victim will be Marine Corps veteran and attorney John Deaton, who was unopposed yesterday.

MA-01: Rep. Richard Neal (D) isn't quite as far-left as Markey, but he's certainly lefty, and he's also a long-serving old fella, as he is 77 and has been in Congress since 1989. He faced a "time for someone younger" challenge from teacher Jeromie Whalen (39), who is about as lefty as Neal (or perhaps a shade more lefty), meaning the race was mostly about generational change. Neal came out on top, 54%-46%, and can now sign an extension on his lease in D.C., since the Republicans did not field a candidate for this seat.

MA-06: This is the seat that Moulton vacated in his unsuccessful attempt at getting a promotion. It was a six-way race, and the winner is former Biden administration official Dan Koh, who took 41% of the vote, outdistancing his nearest competitor by 12%. Koh leaned into his relationships with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, which may not work everywhere, but seems to work fine in Massachusetts. Koh's opponent, in this D+11 district, is veteran and attorney Micah Quinney Jones, who was unopposed yesterday.

MA-08: Another race featuring a more lefty old-timer facing off against a more centrist young whippersnapper. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D) is 71, and is looking for a fourteenth term. He was challenged in his primary by lawyer Stephen Roach (39), who decreed that it is time for new blood. This was closer than the Senate race, but Lynch still came out on top 55%-45%. His opponent in November will be Robert Gerald Burke (R), who was unopposed. Despite being a perennial candidate (this is his third run for this seat), he has yet to create a website, so you can't like his chances, particularly given that the district is D+15.

MA-09: There are no Republicans holding statewide office in Massachusetts right now. The two U.S. Senators are both Democrats. And all nine members of the House delegation are Democrats. The best chance the GOP has at a foothold is probably this district, which isn't quite in "swing" range, but is close, at D+6 (the other eight House districts are even bluer). In the Democratic primary, the 73-year-old Rep. Bill Keating had a challenger, blue-collar jack-of-all-trades Craig Swallow. And it was a rout, with the Representative taking almost 78% of the vote. The Republican in the race is Tyler MacAllister, who is a fisherman and Mattapoisett Select Board member, and who was unopposed. Maybe MacAllister will win this thing, or maybe he'll at least keep it close, but we doubt it. That said if any Republican is going to send so much as a single dollar to the Bay State, it should go to him.

Governor: Gov. Maura Healey (D) was unopposed, so the state's Democratic voters are stuck with her, even though, at 55 years of age, she's barely even AARP-eligible. Her Republican opponent is going to be Army veteran and businessman Michael Minogue, who beat Marine Corps veteran and businessman Brian Shortsleeve yesterday, 75.3% to 24.2%. We will tell you three things. First, Minogue is the much more right-wing of the two GOP candidates. Second, Massachusetts, as a state, is D+14. Third, about 250,000 Republicans cast ballots yesterday, as compared to about 900,000 Democrats. Readers presumably don't need our help reading the tea leaves here.

Can we draw any conclusions from what happened in Massachusetts yesterday? Sure. Labor is still a key voting bloc in Massachusetts, is very well organized, is pretty lefty, and tends to favor "the devil you know." This is not especially generalizable to any other state, however. Well, ok, maybe some of the upper Midwest states.

Next week, it is New Hampshire and Rhode Island. And then, a week later, the First State (i.e., Delaware) brings up the rear. (Z)

Boy, Do Voters Hate Data Centers

There was actually one other interesting election result last night, though it was not in Massachusetts, and it's not going to make too many headlines. Independence, MO, is most famous as the hometown of Harry S. Truman, but recently, it's been a subject of interest for a different reason. Nebius wanted to build a data center there, and after much bitter debate, the city council voted 5-4 to approve the plan, along with some generous tax rebates for Nebius. Voters there were not happy, and the two members among the five "yea" votes who were up for reelection this year were both sent packing in the primaries. That wasn't quite enough, however, as the town's voters mounted a recall effort for the third of the five (no, not Hugh; he was Third OF Five). The target was Councilman John Perkins, and yesterday he was tossed out on his ear, by 68% of the voters. Sorry, John.

How about some more evidence that data centers have become increasingly toxic (metaphorically)? Ok. There have been a couple of instructive polls on the question in the last week or so. The first of those is from Politico, and it reports that 41% of respondents would oppose a data center being built within 3 miles of their house, as compared to 24% who would support it. We are approaching 2-to-1-against territory, which is not good news for data-center builders and the politicians who support them. Even worse, Politico also asked this question in January, and back then it was 37% support and 28% oppose. In other words, in the same poll, data centers went from a net of +9 in support to a net of -17, for a shift of -26 in just over 6 months. That is known as "going in the wrong direction," at least if you're in the data-center business.

The other poll is from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and it has similar results to the Politico poll, with 46% of respondents opposing data centers and just 26% supporting. And this poll also has some additional context. The pollster asked about other kinds of projects, and they all did better than the data centers. People very much like new housing (58% for, vs. 15% against), new roads and highways (48% vs. 18%) and, interestingly, new solar farms (47% vs. 22%) and wind farms (43% vs. 22%). In fact, every type of project the pollster asked about had net positive support, except for the data centers and their net -20.

More proof? Happy to oblige. Among the people who read polls are politicians, and they can very clearly see the writing that is currently on the wall. For example, back in November of last year, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) issued a press release celebrating a deal he'd made with Google to invest $40 billion in data centers in Texas. Last week, on the other hand, Abbott ordered an "immediate" pause on data center approval. That might mean "a pause until after the elections," or "a pause until we can figure some things out" or even "a temporary pause that will become permanent." We don't know which it is, although we doubt it is the third one.

Similarly, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) issued a memo last week in which it warned interested parties that the Ohio U.S. Senate race has become all about AI and data centers, and that the seat may be slipping away as a result. Not only would the loss of the seat be disastrous, the memo warns, but "If [Sen. Jon Husted, R-OH] loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice—and they will not go near the next one." The memo also observes that "This has become a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle."

Although the purpose of that memo is to rally all hands on deck, and to get the AI companies to pony up big-time to save Husted, we think that the (NRSC) is right that this is just going to get worse for the AI companies and their supporters. The primary issues right now are that data centers kill jobs (this is the main theme of the Ohio Senate race) and that they suck up lots of water and electricity. However, it's clear a reckoning is coming in terms of their propensity to pollute. It's not as obvious as those Gilded Age-style smokestacks with their billowy, black smoke, but the data centers do put out vast amounts of carbon. and they also produce cancer-causing PFAS. In other words, the data centers aren't just metaphorically toxic, they are also literally toxic. Anti-data-center politicians have noticed this, and have begun harping on it. As people become more aware, it is not going to improve those poll numbers above.

There is, of course, one fellow who is still all aboard the data center train. That would be one Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America. We do not know what his motivation is. Maybe there's a grift angle (there usually is, when this kind of money is involved). Maybe he thinks the data centers will be a monument to him and his presidency. Maybe he somehow thinks that data-center deals will somehow insta-fix what's wrong with the economy and with his approval numbers, the way that a vague deal for Venezuelan oil supposedly will. Could be all of these things. We just don't know.

What we do know is that Trump's not even willing to wait until the midterms are over, when it will be harder for voters to punish pro-data-center politicians. So, Trump has gone all-in on whipping support, and trying to make this into a MAGA-loyalty-test issue. For example, he sent this tweet on his pro-toxicity (all forms) social media platform:

The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign. The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can't believe it is happening! President DJT

He's since done a few interviews where he reiterated this point.

By and large, Trump's efforts to impose this on Republicans will not work. They've played along for a long time, but his power is clearly waning, and they're also not interested in political suicide missions. Indeed, the pushback has already begun; to take one example, among several, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) was asked about Trump's message, and he (lightly) mocked the President, saying, "I guess I'm backwards and poor."

The problem Republicans have is that the Democrats have taken this issue and run with it, and are wielding it as a club, the way Sherrod Brown is in Ohio. And it is really, really hard for the members of a political party to disclaim an issue effectively if the sitting president from that party keeps trumpeting that issue. So, the GOP really, really needs to get Trump to shut up about this, and to stop sending tweets like that. If they can't do it (and, let's be honest, they probably can't), then this is yet another way that he might cost the Republicans control of the Senate. (Z)

Republicans Will Probably Get Their Anti-DSA Messaging Bill

There was some very inside-baseball, soap-opera drama on The Hill yesterday. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) really wants to bring a bunch of bills to the floor, but he did not seem to have the votes for a procedural rule to do so. Still, he either rolled the dice yesterday, or he knew something that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) did not, because when the votes were counted, the rule to advance the bills to the floor had been approved 210-208. Two Democratic members crossed the aisle, and did so without giving any of their colleagues a heads-up.

The two aisle-crossers were Jared Golden (D-ME) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA). If you had to guess two names, these would be the two you should have guessed. The motivation for their votes was not pork, exactly, but it WAS a different non-kosher foodstuff. Golden, who is retiring, and so did not do this to "make a statement" in advance of the elections, struck a deal where a pro-lobster-industry bill he's been flogging was included in the rules package. Gluesenkamp Perez says she voted as she did in order to support Golden's bill. Presumably that means she was supporting Golden himself, or maybe the people of Maine, because there is no lobster industry in Washington.

Many Democratic members of the House yesterday were very angry at their two colleagues, particularly with the lack of advance notice. And it's not a great look for Jeffries; something like this would be nearly inconceivable under the iron-fisted leadership of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Still, this will soon pass. Golden, again, is retiring, and Gluesenkamp Perez has a permanent hall pass to be a thorn in the side of her caucus, since that is necessary to keeping her R+2 seat.

Of greater significance, potentially, is that one of the bills that will now come up for a vote is an anti-Democratic Socialists of America messaging bill. Sponsored by the appropriately named Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO), the resolution is basically a long list of reasons that the Democratic Socialists are evil. If Democrats vote for it, then Republicans running against DSA candidates, or against DSA-friendly candidates, will say, "See? Even the other Democrats hate them!" If the Democrats vote against it, then Republicans running against those Democrats will say, "Hm. I guess my opponent is just fine with de-funding the police."

That said, the Republicans aren't quite as savvy as they might have you believe. In their desperation to kowtow to the Dear Leader, they also jammed a provision in there that calls for the passage of the SAVE Act. It doesn't mean anything; it's just a sop to Donald Trump. However, it gives Democrats cover to vote against the whole measure. "My primary concern is safeguarding elections, and I cannot vote for any bill that puts democracy at risk," they can say. Plus, there's still the amendments process, which affords a chance for some additional blue-team maneuvering.

The House has only a couple of dozen days left in session before it effectively shuts down for the midterms. There is a theory of politics that says, "If you want to do well in the elections, use that time to achieve something substantive." It would seem that Johnson & Co. are more adherents of the, "Nah, a few show bills are more than enough" school of thinking. (Z)

Team Trump Is Trying Its Best to Interfere with the Midterms

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin hasn't yet really settled into his new job, and yet he's already very unpopular in MAGA world, for various reasons. That means he really needs to shore up his position by pandering to the boss. To that end, he made some very big statements about "proven" voter fraud, declaring "We've identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in just four states." The four states in question are Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and California, and this total is not a new "revelation"—it's actually just parroting what Donald Trump said in his "voter fraud" speech back in July.

Of that 250,000, the total for Nevada is allegedly 15,903. This is from statements that Mullin himself made back in July. However, the media have laid hands on internal DHS documents, and found that the actual number of cases DHS has uncovered in Nevada is... 185. That is about 1% of the claimed number, which is rather low, given that DHS staffers have been looking under every rock for fraudulent ballots (and note, most "fraudulent" ballots involve accidental acts of fraud, not deliberate ones).

Still, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again, right? So, with Mullin working hard to cover his ass protect election "integrity," he announced this week that DHS will mount a "coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review." In other words, it's crunch time.

Of course, given that there's already been plenty of surging, DHS undoubtedly isn't going to find anything substantive. Certainly not the quarter-million fraudulent votes that both Mullin and Trump have claimed. Mullin's goal here is, again, very obvious: He's trying to quiet the MAGA doubters. As to Trump, and the others in the administration who are enabled by these kinds of shenanigans, the purpose is either to lay the groundwork for some sort of federal intervention in elections (the worse option) or to give Trump fuel for carping about how his team didn't actually lose (the less bad, albeit very annoying, option).

Meanwhile, Trump and his lackeys at the USPS are still fighting to block mail-in ballots from states that refuse to release lists of voters to the government. As we noted yesterday, those efforts are tied up in court right now. And if the current issues somehow get worked out in the manner the White House wants (not likely, certainly not in time for this election), some new issues presented themselves yesterday.

Those new issues are courtesy of a whistleblower at USPS who sent a 20-page letter to some person or entity, with the letter eventually ending up in the hands of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who released it publicly. Blumenthal is the ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, so was an appropriate recipient for the letter.

What the complaint reveals, in so many words, is that the hastily assembled system the USPS put together to "vet" mail-in ballots is exactly the sh**show that you think it is. In fact, that's exactly how it's described in the letter. The whole setup is full of problems, which the whistleblower believes is a feature, not a bug, designed to depress turnout. The revelation that will particularly cause people (e.g., judges) to sit up and take notice is that it's possible that a whole tranche of entirely valid ballots could be rejected because there is one invalid ballot among them.

Again, the whole USPS mail-in-ballot scheme already has all sorts of legal problems that are not likely to be unsnarled anytime soon, if ever. But now it's got massive practical and logistical problems, too. There is just no way a judge can sign off on this until such point that the USPS accounts for itself, and offers some proof-of-concept that it can actually do the job, if it is indeed asked to.

We pass along all of this news because it is wise to be informed and to be vigilant. But we encourage readers not to be too concerned about it, at least not right now. First, because this administration is predictably incompetent. They have been trying to put their thumbs on the scale for elections for, what, four or five different cycles at this point, and have never had any success. Why would this election be different?

On top of that, the courts are still substantially reliable as a bulwark against this kind of nonsense. As to the USPS stuff, we just don't believe that the legal aspects of that can plausibly be worked out before ballots go out and begin to be cast. And they will probably never be "worked out," since what Trump is trying to do is plainly unlawful. Meanwhile, Trump has piled up an unbelievable string of losses in court where he had big claims of voter fraud, but no proof. Even his friends on the Supreme Court weren't buying what he was selling. Again, why would this election be different?

Finally, even if Trump & Co. actually succeed in their schemes, it's not clear they will have the effect Trump wants. To take the obvious example, there's no clear reason to think that screwing around with mail-in ballots, mostly in blue states, will help the GOP. Urban voters, who skew very blue, could skip mail-in voting altogether to avoid the risk, or could show up to vote on Election Day if they haven't gotten proof of receipt of their absentee ballot. Rural voters, who skew red, can't exercise either of those options as easily. Trump is simply unwilling, or unable, to game these things out. (Z)

The Reviews Are in on the Venezuela Deal...

...And they are not good.

Because of the wild and wacky way the weekend unfolded, it should have been (Z) who wrote up the news of the Venezuela oil deal. In the end, of course, it ended up being (V). That said, the outline (Z) had developed mirrored almost exactly what (V) completely independently wrote, namely: (1) this is socialism, (2) this is colonialism and (3) this just can't work. Both of us also were more than a little perplexed by approving items we read from non-right-wing media (like this one from CNN's David Goldman). Neither of us is exactly an expert on the petroleum industry, so we wondered: Are we missing something... or are they?

Maybe it takes a little time to unpack things. Or maybe this story is a little too tricky for the weekend shift to handle. But now, the serious analyses have started to roll in, and they are almost universally negative. Here's a sample of some headlines:

• The Economist: "The Devil's Business: America's murky deal to secure a fifth of Venezuela's oil"
• Reuters: "Trump's oil deal with Venezuela raises red flags for some major producers, sources say"
• CNBC: "Trump announced a massive oil deal with Venezuela. Why it won't lower gas prices anytime soon"
• Politico: "'Who knows if it will survive': Experts question how long Trump's Venezuela oil deal will last"
• The CATO Institute: "Everything About the US-Venezuela Oil Deal Is Troubling"
• The Washington Post: "Trump said his deal with Venezuela would lower gas prices. Will it?"
• CNN: "Why Venezuela probably won't solve America's emergency oil problem"

That last piece was written by the very same David Goldman who, just 2 days earlier, wrote that the oil deal was an "unusual solution" that could very well benefit both countries. The reality is that if ExxonMobil puts tens of billions of dollars into an unstable country, in 10 years world oil production might go up a few percent.

In the end, it is just impossible to believe that this arrangement, which came out of nowhere, could really and truly come together. Certainly not on the timeline that Trump wants (i.e., having an impact on U.S. fuel prices before the elections), and likely not at all. Beyond all the large and obvious problems we pointed out in our earlier piece (the Venezuelan people could rebel, oil companies may not want to invest at this level, etc.), there are a million moving pieces that this White House surely could not anticipate. Yeah, maybe if they got the world's greatest oil logistics expert in the Oval Office, and really listened, but that's not what Team Trump does. These are not detail-oriented people.

To take an example, there was an interesting story about unintended consequences that is not directly about Venezuelan oil, but is certainly adjacent. Thanks to the situation in Iran, energy producers are trying to find new routes to move their product around the world, or new markets to which they might ship their product. To that end, the Panama Canal has seen a dramatic increase in the number of ships that want to pass through.

The problem here is that the number of ships that can pass through the Canal each day is limited, and most of the slots are claimed well in advance. So, a shipping company that wants to pass through, and does not have a pre-secured slot, has to bid on the small number of available openings. Before the Iran War, a bid of $150,000 was almost always a winner. In the first month or so of the Iran War, that doubled (and then some). Last week, a new record was set: $4.6 million. On Monday, a new record was set: $5.3 million. Needless to say, these costs will ultimately be passed on to consumers, one way or another.

Any attempt to re-wire the world's oil economy is going to include hundreds of situations like this, and we doubt the administration has anticipated any of them. Heck, the fact that the Panama Canal can only handle so many ships per day could very well be one of those problems. If there is a need to move lots of oil from Venezuela (east of the Canal) to refineries in, say, California (west of the Canal) then Houston, we have a problem.

Of course, the real proof is in the pudding. And in the days since the deal was announced, the price of gas in the United States has... gone up. It's not a huge amount, but it's not zero either. On the day that Trump made his announcement, a gallon was going for a little over $4.10 on average, and now it's up to a little over $4.15. That's actually a pretty substantive jump, for less than a week's worth of time. And it suggests that Trump's hope of taming prices at the pump really is just a pipe dream (a pipeline dream?). (Z & V)

Today's Senate Polls

No surprise in New Mexico, it is well and truly a blue state now. Slight surprise in Michigan; the Republicans are trying to make Abdul El-Sayed Public Boogeyman #1, and today's polls suggest it's not working very well.

Take a good look at today's map. It is probably the maximal best map for the Democrats. It shows them flipping Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas. But we haven't even hit Labor Day and the hundreds of millions of dollars of dark and super PAC money that will flow afterwards. If you want to do a thought exercise about "what is the next easiest state for the Democrats to flip?", the tipping-point state table is the place to look. The next easiest state for the Democrats can be found be reading down from the top and it is the first one that is not blue. Today it is Mississippi, where Scott Colom is only 3 points behind Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Mississippi has the largest percentage of Blacks of any state (38%). Colom is Black and Hyde-Smith is white. To see which state is easiest for the Republicans to pick off, read the table from the bottom upward and it is the first blue state, Iowa today. The hands indicate what is needed for the majority. For example, the Democrats could lose Texas and Iowa and still hit 51. (Z)

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Michigan	Abdul El-Sayed	49%	Mike Rogers	45%	Aug 26	Aug 28	Abacus Data
Michigan	Abdul El-Sayed	50%	Mike Rogers	45%	Aug 10	Aug 20	YouGov
New Mexico	Ben Ray Lujan*	53%	Larry Marker	38%	Aug 21	Aug 28	Research and Polling

* Denotes incumbent

---

Previous report         Next report

---

If you wish to contact us, please use one of these addresses. For the first two, please include your initials and city.

• questions@electoral-vote.com    For questions about politics, civics, history, etc. to be answered on a Saturday
• comments@electoral-vote.com   For "letters to the editor" for possible publication on a Sunday
• corrections@electoral-vote.com To tell us about typos or factual errors we should fix
• items@electoral-vote.com            For general suggestions, ideas, etc.
• Guidelines for questions (Saturdays) and letters (Sundays)

To download a poster about the site to hang up, please click here.

---

Email a link to a friend.

---The Votemaster and Zenger