California 36th district Congresswoman Jane Harman is being challenged in the Democratic primary by left-wing Democrat Marcy Winograd. Harman has paid some political price for her strong positions on national security issues. Speaker Nancy Pelosi removed her as the lead Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee; Harman had been ranking minority member from to , but Pelosi denied her the chairmanship when Democrats won their majority in 2006, instead naming Silvestre Reyes of Texas, whose knowledge of the issues was far inferior to Harman’s. Also in 2006 Winograd ran against Harman in the Democratic primary, attacking her for her support of the Iraq war resolution, and held Harman to a 62%-38% victory—by no means an overwhelming margin for an incumbent in a primary.
Harman was unopposed in the 2008 primary, but this year Winograd is running again. It looks like one key issue will be Israel. Harman’s colleague Henry Waxman, of the 30th district and Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has sent out a letter criticizing Winograd for a February 2008 speech in which she, as Politico writes, “lamenting the violence from both sides of the Middle East conflict, deemed a two-state solution ‘unrealistic’ and ‘fundamentally wrong’ and called for a one-state solution in which Israel and Palestine would coexist.”
