Despite the intense focus the past couple of months on pro-Palestinian protests, many of which were championed by the far-left wing of the Democratic Party, the self-proclaimed progressive bloc has struggled to churn out victories at the ballot box.
Oregon’s Democratic primary served up the latest example of this uphill fight, as the more traditional liberal wing won two contested primaries. State Rep. Janelle Bynum, with the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, crushed a progressive favorite, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, by about 40 percentage points.
And in a safely Democratic seat around Portland, state Rep. Maxine Dexter won by 15 percentage points with the backing of centrist donors who sought to defeat Susheela Jayapal, a former Multnomah County commissioner whose sister is Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The seat is being vacated by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a mostly reliable ally of Democratic leadership over the past 28 years.
Those races mirrored several other recent elections that featured ideological clashes for Democrats in House primaries without an incumbent running.
In a Maryland seat south of Baltimore, former U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn ran on his heroism from the 2021 Capitol attack, raising more than $4.5 million, and won the endorsement of the Progressive caucus’ PAC. But Dunn lost by more than 10 percentage points to a seasoned state senator, Sarah Elfreth, who received backing from pro-Israel groups.
And in that state’s lone swing district, stretching north and west of Washington, Democrats nominated April McClain Delaney, a former Biden administration lawyer whose husband used to represent the district, over a younger state delegate who accused her family of being too close to Republicans.
Instead of running from that attack, Delaney embraced a “common-sense, common ground campaign theme.”
“I really campaigned to be a problem solver, and I’m going to deliver on that in Congress,” she said.
Essentially, today’s 213-member Democratic caucus breaks down into a few categories, the largest of which are traditionally liberal lawmakers who come from cities or inner suburbs and are comfortable with incremental victories in helping the working class. There are dozens of moderates who are more friendly toward business but believe in socially liberal values.
And there are dozens of far-left liberals, hailing from the progressive caucus or the small-knit “Squad,” who have clashed with leaders for not pushing for a more purely liberal agenda. This group has been on the rise over the past half decade, both at the ballot box and inside the caucus.
But now, at this stage of the primary calendar, this wing is facing tough political headwinds.
Stumping for her friend Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) in Pittsburgh last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) summed up the defensive posture at the moment.
“Tuesday is the first of the rest of these races,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “So, Pittsburgh, what you’re doing on Tuesday is sending a message to the country.”
Lee went on to win by more than 20 percentage points, even though one centrist super PAC that supports Israel financed ads for her opponent. But that group spent a relatively modest amount compared with what’s been spent by allies of Israel in other races, such as the multimillion-dollar campaigns against Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) in their primaries later in the summer.
It’s quite a turnabout in the House Democratic caucus, where the establishment has been on the defensive ever since Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset in June 2018 over an 18-year veteran, Joseph Crowley, who served in leadership and was eyed as a potential future House speaker.
A couple of months later, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) defeated a 20-year incumbent, Michael E. Capuano, launching the Squad of young progressives who wanted to shake things up.
In 2020, three veteran incumbents – William Lacy Clay (Mo.), Eliot L. Engel (N.Y.) and Daniel Lipinski (Ill.) – lost to challengers on the left.
And in 2022, then-Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), a 14-year incumbent and senior member of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, lost to McLeod-Skinner in a challenge from his left.
She went on to lose the general election to Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R) in a district that President Biden comfortably won in 2020, setting the table for this year’s decision by the DCCC to get behind Bynum as the more electable candidate in November.
Progressive caucus members understandably complain that so many of these races are getting financed by super PACs associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Those contributors – including many large Republican donors – are upset about the cease-fire demands.
It’s prompted the far-left liberals to accuse their more moderate counterparts of relying on conservative dollars to win Democratic primaries. “Israel has been used by right-wing – particularly MAGA – Republicans as a wedge issue,” Lee told The Washington Post’s Dylan Wells two days before her primary.
These failures at the polls come at a time when the Squad view on the war in Gaza has become far more mainstream among Democrats.
Originally just a niche element of Democrats called for a cease-fire soon after Israel retaliated against Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. But now, based on one antiwar group’s estimate, more than 80 House Democrats support a cease-fire, about 40 percent of the caucus. In addition, 26 Senate Democrats, a majority of the caucus in the chamber, support that demand.
Their support of protests, particularly on college campuses over the past two months, commanded national media attention and prompted the most senior public officials to take positions on the movement. At almost every public event that Biden or Vice President Harris appear at, some pro-Palestinian protesters will show up, as happened to Harris in Philadelphia a few days ago.
That’s helping to push Democratic voters against Israel’s handling of the war, with a recent poll showing just 53 percent of Democrats supporting Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
“What we’re seeing slowly but surely is not voters catching up to the Squad – it is other Democratic politicians catching up to where voters have been for months,” Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, told Wells last month.
Despite those gains, on the policy front, these progressives have not been able to gain ground in primary elections.
The group Justice Democrats works to elect liberals to Congress, using their support of Ocasio-Cortez six years ago to springboard into a prominent position on the spectrum of liberal political groups. In a notable sign of how much defense they are playing, the Justice Democrats website does not list any new candidates that it is supporting, just a dozen incumbents.
Some Democrats believe their voters have a buyer’s remorse of how far leftward the party moved since four years ago.
Privately, senior Democratic advisers are not declaring a full victory and worry that some veteran Democrats might get caught politically asleep. Some Democratic veterans began bracing for far-left challengers many months ago.
Rep. William J. Pascrell (D-N.J.) faces Mohamed T. Khairullah, New Jersey’s longest-serving Muslim mayor, next month in his bid to win a 15th term in the safely Democratic seat in North Jersey. The top issue Khairullah’s top issue, “International Human Rights Law,” links to a page devoted to his backing for a “permanent cease-fire” in Gaza.
As of mid-May, Pascrell, 87, had already spent $700,000 on the race, including payouts several months ago to a prominent polling firm and hiring a seasoned opposition research firm.
New Jersey’s most endangered incumbent, Rep. Robert Menendez Jr. (D), is facing a much different type of primary challenge, one that is less ideological and more about the criminal trial against his father, Sen. Bob Menendez (D).
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), seeking a ninth term in the increasingly diverse Northern Virginia suburbs, is up against Ahsan Nasar, a first-time candidate who serves as a judge advocate in the U.S. Army Reserve and worked at the Government Accountability Office. Nasar cites Connolly’s “unwillingness to more forcefully call for a cease-fire” as a prime reason for running in the June 18 primary.
By the end of March, Connolly, 74, had already spent more than $800,000 on his campaign and had a stockpile of $3.9 million in his campaign to spend down the stretch.
Nasar, by comparison, had just $38,000 left for the final two and a half months of the campaign.
If one of these long-shot challengers knocks off Pascrell, Connolly or some other Democrat, the tide might turn back toward the far-left faction.
For now, however, this season might be best summed up by Delaney’s two ads that ran in the final two months of her primary contest. She boasted of working for Biden, showing a picture of the two of them in both ads, and she focused on protecting children from online predators and improving their mental health.
She never mentioned Israel or Gaza.
“Common sense, common ground to protect our kids,” she said in the second ad. “I’m April McClain Delaney, and I approve this message.”
(c) Washington Post
