As Democrats seek to maintain their congressional majorities in November’s elections, they won’t only campaign against Republicans. In some races, they will first compete against one another, as some activists seek to push the party to the left.
Last week, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York unveiled a plan to protect incumbent Democrats from challenges within the party, as some of those challenges gain traction.
Two of those intraparty challenges come from Justice Democrats, the same political action committee that helped launch the career of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The PAC proclaims on its website that “the squad is growing,” a reference to far-left House lawmakers Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley. The group, comprised in part by former Bernie Sanders staffers, says it is “working to transform the Democratic Party” but supporting primary challengers “against out-of-touch Democratic incumbents” and holding Democratic lawmakers “accountable to our issues.”
The group helped organize Ocasio-Cortez’s efforts to unseat Democratic incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley in 2018, who was the No. 4 Democrat in the House at the time. But Ocasio-Cortez was one of 12 candidates recruited by the PAC that cycle and the only one who went on to win her general election. Other candidates it endorsed that year were elected to Congress as well.
Now, the PAC is seeking to grow the Squad by targeting solidly liberal blue-state lawmakers as liberal activists grow frustrated with Congress and President Joe Biden’s administration and what they see as a lack of action on some of their key issues, including failure to pass Build Back Better, a social spending and climate bill.
In New York, Justice Democrats is targeting Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a longtime lawmaker on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, by backing her primary challenger, community organizer and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Rana Abdelhamid.
Abdelhamid told the New York Times last year that Maloney has been in office “longer than I’ve been alive” and that her case against the incumbent “is that Carolyn Maloney is not a progressive.” Maloney disputed that characterization, calling herself “a recognized progressive national leader” in her House biography.
The district is just a few miles from Ocasio-Cortez’s, and Justice Democrats is trying to replicate its previous success.
In Illinois, Justice Democrats will support a primary challenge from Kina Collins, a gun violence prevention activist, against Rep. Danny Davis in the state’s 7th Congressional District, the most Democratic in the state.
Both candidates criticized the party for backing incumbents, arguing the districts they are running in are seeking more liberal representation.
In response to the news that Jeffries would make a round of endorsements and spending to protect incumbents, Abdelhamid wrote on Twitter, “I wish our party’s leadership would fight as hard to protect our majority in Congress as they do to stop women of color from trying to represent our communities.”
Collins wrote on Twitter last week that “the community is with us.”
“My opponent has his corporate donors, but we’ve got the people,” she said.
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DIM BULBS OF THE WEEK
San Francisco Board of Education President Gabriela Lopez
Voters in San Francisco delivered a significant blow to the far Left by recalling three school board members last week by substantial margins. If school closures and mask mandates weren’t enough, the board also made an effort to rename 44 schools in the district, eliminating villains whose names were linked to historical racism or oppression. That included President Abraham Lincoln. The board rescinded the plan, but the carryover from such absurdities led to the recall. One of those recalled, Gabriela Lopez, tweeted that “white supremacists are enjoying this” and tried to say it was part of the recall. Last we checked, San Francisco, where Joe Biden received 86% of the vote, is not exactly a hotbed of white supremacist activity.
Sen. Tom Cotton
The Arkansas Republican is currently blocking the confirmation of U.S. attorneys in a battle over four U.S. Marshalls getting sued over actions they took during the riots in Portland, Oregon, in 2020. During a recent floor speech, he said of Democrats, “It’s your party that voted in lockstep for the First Step Act that let thousands of violent felons back on the street who have now committed innumerable violent crimes.” Oops. Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin reminded his colleague the First Step Act passed in 2018 when Republicans held a majority in Congress and a Republican, Donald Trump, was in the White House. To his credit, Cotton conceded the point and said, “The First Step Act was the worst mistake of the Trump administration.”
