What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

When longtime Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida died in April, it fell to Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, to schedule a special election to fill the now-vacant 20th Congressional District.

Some states have strict timelines for filling vacancies: In New Mexico, now-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland resigned just three weeks before Hastings died, but the special election to fill her seat was held five months ago, on June 1.

Florida has no such laws, so DeSantis set a remarkably late date (Jan. 11, 2022), forcing House Democrats — already clinging to a narrow majority — to operate down one vote.

Today’s primary is the real contest in the heavily Democratic Fort Lauderdale/West Palm Beach district. But Hastings had no anointed successor, leading to a fractured field of 11 candidates with only the vaguest of front-runners and a lot of uncertainty.

The top six contenders are Broward County Commissioners Dale Holness and Barbara Sharief, state Sen. Perry Thurston, state Reps. Bobby DuBose and Omari Hardy and health care executive Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. The most recent public poll of the race (only the third all year) found Cherfilus-McCormick, Holness and Sharief bunched up at the top, at 15 percent, 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively, with Thurston close behind at 10 percent, and DuBose (6 percent) and Hardy (5 percent) further back.

Holness, Thurston and DuBose are running as more conventional candidates in the mold of Hastings, who was a feature of the South Florida political establishment. Sharief, a nurse practitioner, is running on her medical background and is one of two women in the race’s top tier; she also has some national support, from EMILY’s List and 314 Action.

Meanwhile, Hardy, an outspoken progressive with a large social media presence, has tried to market himself as “South Florida’s AOC.” But he’s the worst fundraiser of the top six candidates, and while he is getting some late help from a new Super PAC, it may be too little, too late.

And Cherfilus-McCormick, who lost no-shot primary bids against Hastings in 2018 and 2020, has spent millions of her own dollars — an amount equal to almost much as the rest of the field has spent combined.

In a low-turnout special election, that kind of advertising presence makes her a wild card.

Boston is electing a new mayor today, and either way, history will be made. The city has never elected a mayor who is not a white man, but both candidates today are women of color: City Councilor Michelle Wu and City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George.

On policy, though, they are pretty different: Wu, a protegee of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, is a progressive, while Essaibi George is more moderate à la President Biden. In a day full of elections pitting the progressive left against the Democratic establishment, this looks like it will be one of the left’s easier wins, as Wu leads Essaibi George by around 30 points in polling.

Virginians will also be voting for lieutenant governor and attorney general, and what happens at the top of the ticket in the governor’s race between McAuliffe and Youngkin will likely have a strong effect on the results in those races. That’s because recent elections in Virginia have seen very little split-ticket voting, so the two parties have won similar vote shares across all three contests.

In other words, don’t be surprised if the same party wins all three offices, although if the governor’s contest is extremely close, it’s possible we could see a split-party outcome.

But one way or another, each contest will make some history. In the lieutenant governor’s race, Virginia is guaranteed to elect its first woman to the position, as Democratic state Del. Hala Ayala faces former state Del. Winsome Sears, the Republican. Both candidates are women of color, as Ayala identifies as Afro Latina and Sears remains the only Black Republican woman ever to be elected to the House of Delegates, the state legislature’s lower chamber.

Meanwhile, the attorney general’s race will either reward longevity or make some of its own history, too. Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring is the one incumbent running statewide, and he’s seeking a third term in the office, having been elected in 2013 after a recount and then winning reelection in 2017. If Herring does win a third term, he will be the first attorney general to win three consecutive terms since the 1940s. But standing in his way is Republican state Del. Jason Miyares, whose mother fled Cuba in the 1960s. Should Miyares beat Herring, he would be the first Latino to hold the office.