What tight Democratic primaries reveal about midterm voters

0:00Kate Yoder:Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

0:22Kate Yoder:Today I stand before the people of Wisconsin after we rose from the ashes.

0:29Kieran Ramsey:What does the tug of war between the Democratic Party's establishment and progressive wing signal for midterms?

0:45Kieran Ramsey:It's Wednesday, August 12th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Kalyani Saxena. Today on the show, we'll get an update on the condition of former Marine Robert Gilman. He was freed from a Russian prison this week.

1:03Katrina Gamble:So he's improved a little, but he is still in very, very frail health.

1:08Kieran Ramsey:Also, we'll hear about a new category for heat waves. Yes, that's a real thing. It's a period of unusually warm weather, usually in the spring or the early summer, where the temperatures stay above freezing both day and night. But first, let's debrief on last night's whirlwind of primaries. Voters cast their ballots in Alabama, Connecticut, Minnesota, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin to choose the candidates they'd like to advance to the general election in November. Of particular importance, the Democratic primary for governor in Wisconsin. Progressives were hoping to see Francesca Hong take the nomination, which would have been another win for that wing of the party.

1:54Kieran Ramsey:And ahead of the election, she was leading the polls. But it was moderate David Crowley who eked out a victory. So what does all this mean for the direction of the Democratic Party, especially after much had been made of the progressive wins in New York and Michigan? Well, Indira Lakshmanan spoke with Katrina Gamble, CEO of Sojourn Strategies, a progressive consulting firm, about the primary and what might motivate voters ahead of the midterm election.

2:23Kate Yoder:Democrats are divided over whether the party should be moving left or appealing to centrists. Last night's mixed primary results underscore that. In Minnesota's U.S. Senate primary, progressive Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan condemned the Trump administration's harsh immigration tactics that killed two U.S. citizens on Minneapolis's streets. She was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and she won her race handily despite being outspent four to one by a moderate opponent with major outside funding. Here she is celebrating last night.

2:56Kieran Ramsey:We need to rip ICE apart and stop them from terrorizing our communities.

3:05Kate Yoder:In contrast, in neighboring Wisconsin, Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong was far ahead in the polls, but she lost her race to a moderate. For more on the mixed signals coming from Democratic voters, we're joined here in the studio in Washington by Katrina Gamble. She's founder and CEO of Sojourn Strategies, a progressive consulting firm. Katrina, thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me. So in Wisconsin, Francesca Hong had a double-digit lead in the polls, but she narrowly lost to David Crowley, an African-American moderate who had left the race and then just recently jumped back in. How did Crowley manage this dramatic comeback?

3:42Kate Yoder:Well, first, I think there are some questions about the accuracy of the polls. And so we have to investigate that to understand, was the lead as large as folks thought it was going into Election Day? Second, I think Hong struggled in a lot of ways on some of the issues that came up about whether or not we should cancel Thanksgiving and some of her language around abolishing ICE. And so in this moment where a lot of voters are really frustrated and they're looking for options, I think there was an opportunity there for Hong. But she kind of got in her own way. And Crowley had some strong endorsements from very key leaders like Representative Gwen Moore and obviously the current governor in Wisconsin with Evers.

4:24Kate Yoder:And ultimately, I think this idea of electability versus the progressive wing in this instance, folks leaned more towards the electability front. Well, you're teasing at something that I'm curious about, which is that unlike in neighboring Minnesota, where this progressive Peggy Flanagan won so easily, Hong did not get endorsements from Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Was she considered too radical for national progressive leaders? It's unclear if people thought that she was too radical. And in all of their public statements, many of them were saying that they were really only focused on federal elections.

4:59Kate Yoder:And so that's why they didn't get involved in the Wisconsin governor's race. And so I'm not sure if that is what was the case in Wisconsin. But one of the things that is clear is that Peggy Flanagan is a longtime candidate and elected official. So she was a strong candidate in Minnesota compared to some of the, I think, the missteps that happened late in the campaign with Hong. Yeah. All right. Good point. I'm also thinking about nearby Michigan, where fellow progressive Abdul El-Sayed won, but by a much tighter margin than polls had predicted. You referred to how accurate are polls. So is your takeaway that polls are just wrong or that young progressives are answering surveys but then failing to show up at the ballot box?

5:46Kate Yoder:I don't think that polls are necessarily wrong, but I do think that the polls that are happening right now are not used to measuring this surge in progressive voters. We've seen a lot of a lot of folks showing up in elections in this primary season. Primaries are low turnout elections. Midterm primaries are particularly low turnout elections. But we've seen over the last few months with high turnout and the polls may have not just adjusted to the shifts of who's showing up on election day to really capture what's happening across the political landscape. Interesting. Well, it seems like the Democratic socialists and the progressives of the Midwest, at least, have been attracting highly educated voters in affluent cities, but struggling with rural voters and black voters in the same states.

6:30Kate Yoder:What lessons are you drawing from that for the progressive wing of the party? I think that what the work is to do is to have more organizing and communication to those particular communities. The research that we've done where we really kind of lean into understanding this increased level of frustration and distrust among many voters is that people are looking for folks who see them, who understand them. And so I think as the progressive wing continues to do its organizing, I think Hong did a great job of that. She started building some inroads at 7000 volunteers. they are speaking to the issues that those voters care about.

7:05Kate Yoder:I think it's just about how do you continue to build inroads and strengthen trust and relationships in those communities. I'm thinking about how in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, the massive protests against ICE really helped propel Flanagan's Senate campaign to victory. But I'm also thinking about the larger issue of disaffected voters, people who've lost trust or never even had trust in the political system. So tell us, you've done a recent study on disaffected voters. How do Democrats and Republicans, for that matter, need to reach these folks ahead of the midterms? Some interesting findings that we found from that research is that disaffected voters, unsurprisingly, they're very young, they're low resourced, and a large number of them, 52 percent, identify as working class.

7:49Kate Yoder:And when we talked to them in focus groups, they said that they feel like politicians don't understand what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck. So for candidates who can speak to working class values and get really specific about how they're going to address the economic strain of those folks, then I think they have an opportunity to bring them into voting for them or supporting their agendas. It sounds like you're saying affordability is the key issue on both sides. In the half minute we have left, what other issues do you see motivating voters on the left and the right for the upcoming midterms?

8:20Kate Yoder:I think it's affordability. I think it's issues around health care. And honestly, I think it's about building trust. The biggest thing that we heard in our research was that they feel like that they can't trust politicians. And so the folks who can actually make that authentic connection are the ones that will be able to make a difference. That's Katrina Gamble. She's founder and CEO of Sojoin Strategies, a progressive consulting firm. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.

8:46Kieran Ramsey:Coming up next, 32-year-old Robert Gilman, an American, former Marine, and teacher, is back home after being imprisoned in Russia for more than four years. After the break, Scott Tong speaks with Kieran Ramsey, chief investigative officer with Global Reach, a nonprofit that pushed for Gilman's release. Stick around.

9:13Robert Gilman:An American teacher who spent four years in Russian captivity is back on American soil as of yesterday. Robert Gilman of Massachusetts is 32 years old, former Marine. He was considered gravely ill, and his family credits the Trump administration and others for his release. The nonprofit Global Reach works to secure Americans held abroad and advocated for Gilman's release. And with us now is Global Reach Chief Investigative Officer Kieran Ramsey. Kieran, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Scott. Let me ask you about his medical condition now. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts said in a statement that Robert Gilman in June was diagnosed with a disassociative stupor.

9:52Robert Gilman:Non-responsive and unable to interact or to eat, he was essentially catatonic. How is he now?

9:58Katrina Gamble:So he's improved a little, but he is still in very, very frail health. If you've seen any of the pictures that have been posted online by the White House, you can see the before and after photos of just how much weight he's lost, just how frail he looks. and then the reports that we're receiving from the family who has been with him now since he landed in San Antonio are that he's got a long, long road ahead for recovery.

10:24Robert Gilman:Robert Gilman was arrested four years ago in Russia, accused of kicking a police officer. Why was he in Russia in the first place?

10:32Katrina Gamble:So here's where the tragedy starts. He was never intending to stay in Russia. He was actually transiting through. He was on his way to a teaching job in Moldova. He's an international teacher and English is a second language teacher. While there transiting, he became really ill, had to stay in Moscow and recover. And luckily, he does have some distant relatives that he was able to stay with. But then one day in January, he went to go get his passport renewed at Moscow, the embassy in Moscow. While going there, he became violently ill again. But this time, Russian police came on to him, thought he was drunk and proceeded to assault him.

11:10Katrina Gamble:Now, of course, they turned it around and said he assaulted them.

11:14Robert Gilman:Now, Mr. Gilman spent a short amount of time in the Marine Corps. Do you think that is a reason he was imprisoned?

11:22Katrina Gamble:So tragically, we know Russia has a long, long history of targeting Americans in their games of hostage diplomacy. But more specifically, we know they target former Marines. If you look back at the cases of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, both spent years in captivity. Yeah.

11:39Robert Gilman:Senator Markey's statement on this says Gilman, quote, was subjected to physical torture, force medication and provocations by Russian authorities. What more do you know about how he was treated there?

11:55Katrina Gamble:So it's really something of nightmares when we heard the reports over these last number of months, if not year, that he was subject to severe physical harshness, if not outright torture. 16-hour sessions of forced exercise. He was drugged. And then he was presented with some of the most ridiculous claims. But when you're cut off from the outside world, you have no idea. But they told him that he would have to fight for the Russian army against the Ukrainians in order to be released. And then they also added that a Russian hit team was en route to Boston to assault his father and that he ended up in a wheelchair as a result.

12:35Katrina Gamble:So you can just imagine all of that compounding on him.

12:39Robert Gilman:Yeah. Karen, have you been able to speak to him at all by phone or otherwise?

12:45Katrina Gamble:So we have not. We've been letting the family and the government handling everything at this point. We are very grateful the fact that his mom has been with him since his flight from Russia to the U.S., which was very therapeutic for him to have his mom right there by his side. And then the family has since had a very quick reunion on the tarmac in San Antonio. They'll be having a longer reunion today. But Mr. Gilman is going to be in a hospital setting for some time while he recuperates from all of this.

13:15Robert Gilman:The Trump administration was involved in negotiating for his release, which reportedly includes a pardon from Russian President Putin. What can you tell us about the negotiations and why Gilman has been released now?

13:31Katrina Gamble:Well, this was the work of some very hard-fought, quiet diplomacy on the part of President Trump and Steve Whitcoff, his special envoy, including Secretary of State Rubio, and even the CIA director was involved. And they were able to convince President Putin that, look, he is not to be a chit or some pawn, Mr. Gilman, in the great power competition. Releasing him is not a concession. The Russians wouldn't lose any major geopolitical position by releasing him. They just needed to give him a humanitarian release because, again, to have a former Marine die in a Russian prison would not be a good thing.

14:10Robert Gilman:And just to understand, then, there's been no prisoner swap, no compensation here?

14:16Katrina Gamble:No, there has not been. But also, we still have 10 other Americans, five of whom my firm represents, still stuck in Russian prisons. We want to see them out, too.

14:26Robert Gilman:Kieran Ramsey is Chief Investigative Officer with Global Reach. It's a nonprofit working to secure Americans held abroad. Kieran, thanks for the time.

14:36Katrina Gamble:Thanks very much for having me.

14:40Kieran Ramsey:Coming up, there's a new blisteringly hot term entering the lexicon. That's right. I'm talking about snow eaters, a term scientists have coined to refer to unseasonably warm weather that rapidly melts snow packs in the U.S. These heat waves are hitting in the spring and early summer, with some pretty ugly consequences. We'll hear more about the snow eaters in just a moment.

15:17Robert Gilman:When a weather pattern changes dramatically, does it help to put a name to it? Many scientists think so, and they have coined a term for a recurring heat wave in the American West, the snow eater. It's the focus of a new study trying to define it and observe it. Let's talk about what the snow eater is and whether the term will catch on with Kate Yoder reporting on this for our editorial partners at Grist. Kate, good to have you back.