When a handful of anti-abortion Democrats were the last remaining obstacle to Obamacare’s passage, most were swayed by a last-minute compromise. Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., held firm and voted against his party’s signature healthcare law.
Now that Democrats are eyeing their first House majority since that Congress, some liberals hope Lipinski will not be part of it. A broad coalition of progressive groups is backing Lipinski’s challenger, businesswoman and nonprofit executive Marie Newman, in one of the most important primaries to watch this year.
It’s one of the few worries Democrats have in a midterm election year where they have a lot of early advantages. The party boasts a convincing lead in most generic ballot polling, although it has receded somewhat as public approval of the Republican-passed tax cut has increased. Fundraising, with the significant exception of the Democratic National Committee, has been robust. Candidate recruitment has gone well.
The flip side of successful candidate recruitment, however, is crowded primaries. “It’s a good problem to have,” said a Democratic strategist advising candidates running in the midterms. “But there’s no question it could be a problem.”
“Candidate recruitment has been strong,” said a second Democratic operative. “Could even be a problem for us.”
Suburban areas where the “Resistance” against President Trump is powerful are particularly overstuffed with eager candidates, while Democrats would like to see more aspirants come forward in working-class districts.
For instance, at least four well-funded Democrats are vying to take on Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., in her suburban district on June 12. Trump lost the district by 10 percentage points, and recently elected Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam won by 12. Democrats would probably prefer they spend their campaign war chests going after Comstock rather than each other.
Some of these contests could end up being a replay of the 2016 presidential nomination battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as liberal and centrist infighting persists into the general election and frays party unity. In other cases, they run the risk of not having their strongest candidate make it to November.
Republicans are familiar with this dilemma. Incumbents have often faced ideologically motivated primary challengers, and with increasing frequency in the Tea Party era. The winners of these contested primaries haven’t always been the candidates who would fare best in November.
“Back in 2010 and 2012, we nominated several candidates — Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., warned last year. “They’re not in the Senate. And the reason for that was that they were not able to appeal to a broader electorate in the general election.”
GOP leaders feared a repeat this year, after former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon threatened to recruit primary challengers to sitting Republican senators. But Trump’s public break with Bannon, the defeat of Bannon-backed Senate candidate Roy Moore by a Democrat in deep-red Alabama, and Bannon’s removal from the helm of Breitbart News disrupted this project, leaving liberals to emulate the Tea Party by waging ideological warfare in the Democratic primaries.
Illinois 3rd
Lipinski sits atop their target list. In addition to opposing abortion and Obamacare, he voted against the 2010 DREAM Act (he has backed other measures designed to give legal status to people who have benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program) and some gay rights bills. He is a Blue Dog in a blue district, which might make him an endangered species.
Among the liberal groups seeking to oust him and nominate Newman: NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Human Rights Campaign, MoveOn.org, Daily Kos, Democracy for Action, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. That’s a diverse mix of progressive insurgents that often go against the party establishment and fairly conventional Democratic organizations.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has endorsed Lipinski ahead of his March 20 primary. But the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has so far stayed out. Fellow Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, and the super PAC affiliated with New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand are in Newman’s corner.
“I don’t think we can support someone who does not believe in the legal right to reproductive choice,” Khanna told the Washington Examiner late last month.
California Senate
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has committed fewer transgressions against liberal orthodoxy. The former San Francisco mayor has clashed with Democrats to her left on national security. She voted for the Iraq war and, more recently, supported NSA bulk data collection. Feinstein also does not favor government-run single-payer healthcare, which is growing in popularity with the liberal base.
That was good enough to cost Feinstein, 84 and in her fifth full term, the California Democratic Party’s endorsement. Kevin de León, the California state senate president pro tempore, nearly snatched it himself. He is running as an unreconstructed representative of the “Bernie wing” of the party.
Don’t count Feinstein out yet. The June 5 primary is open to candidates and voters of all parties. The top two vote-getters advance regardless of party affiliation, giving the incumbent an advantage. De León has just $359,000 to Feinstein’s $10 million. Both Lipinski and Feinstein cite polls in their respective races showing them 30 points ahead.
Liberals have so far not fared as well in these kinds of primary fights as Tea Party conservatives. In 2006, antiwar candidate Ned Lamont defeated Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary. But Lieberman won the general election as an independent and continued to caucus with Senate Democrats.
Texas 7th
In Texas, the Democrats’ House campaign arm has gone as far as to publish an opposition research memo hitting one liberal candidate, Laura Moser, in the crowded March 6 primary to challenge Republican Rep. John Culberson, whose district voted for Clinton in 2016.
“Unfortunately, Laura Moser’s outright disgust for life in Texas disqualifies her as a general election candidate, and would rob voters of their opportunity to flip Texas’ 7th in November,” DCCC spokeswoman Meredith Kelly said in a statement to the Texas Tribune. The barb concerns a 2014 Washingtonian article in which Moser appeared to say, “I’d sooner have my teeth pulled out without anesthesia” in reference to living in Texas.
“Democratic voters need to hear that Laura Moser is not going to change Washington,” the DCCC memo argued. “She is a Washington insider, who begrudgingly moved to Houston to run for Congress.”
This actually prompted Our Revolution, a group that grew out of Sanders’ presidential campaign, to endorse Moser. “The DCCC’s ridiculous attacks on Laura Moser are why Democrats nationally have lost over 1,100 seats,” board member Jim Hightower, a longtime Texas liberal, said in a statement. “Laura is a rising progressive advocate that the workaday people of Texas desperately need.”
Kentucky 6th
The May 22 Democratic primary race in Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District isn’t as contentious but it is no less competitive. It pits Lexington Mayor Jim Gray against state Sen. Reggie Thomas and viral video sensation Amy McGrath. Gray is openly gay; Thomas is African-American; McGrath the first female Marine to fly a combat mission in an F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet.
Gray is the frontrunner and preferred by many national Democrats, despite losing to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in 2016 as Trump was winning the state with more than 60 percent of the vote. The winner of the primary will face Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., considered the only at-risk GOP lawmaker in the commonwealth’s House delegation.
Arizona Senate
Democrats have the most competitive primaries due to the current political climate, but they aren’t having all the fun. There is a three-way Republican primary for the seat being vacated by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. The frontrunner is Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., a relative centrist who represents a congressional district that went for Clinton. But she has two colorful opponents in the Aug. 28 contest.
State Sen. Kelli Ward was going to run for the Republican nomination even if Flake had sought reelection (she ran unsuccessfully against John McCain, Arizona’s other senator, in 2016). McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund has attacked her as “Chemtrail Kelly” in a $10,000 digital ad campaign. “Embarrassing behavior. Dangerous ideas. No wonder Republicans rejected her just one year ago,” the ad narrator said. Ward did have the backing of Bannon before his fall from grace with Trump.
“At the time, it was where I needed to be to be able to keep other people out of the race and to continue to propel me to victory,” Ward told the Washington Examiner. But she wasn’t able to keep one big name out of the race: former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the recipient of Trump’s first presidential pardon.
“I have a lot to offer. I’m a big supporter of President Trump,” Arpaio, 85, told the Washington Examiner when he first got into the race. “I’m going to have to work hard; you don’t take anything for granted. But I would not be doing this if I thought that I could not win. I’m not here to get my name in the paper; I get that every day, anyway.”
Although Trump carried Arizona, the state’s changing demographics make the Flake seat one of the Democrats’ better pickup opportunities in a year where the Senate map favors Republicans even if the national political environment doesn’t. They hope McSally either loses the primary or is forced to take positions that would damage her in a race against likely Democratic nominee Rep. Kyrsten Sinema.
Nevada Senate
The other Senate seat Democrats like their chances of flipping is the one held by Sen. Dean Heller in Nevada. He is the only GOP senator running for reelection in a state won, however narrowly, by Clinton. Heller is also facing a Republican primary challenge from businessman Danny Tarkanian on June 12.
“The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican or an independent; you can’t trust Dean Heller,” Tarkanian wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner. “He needs to be repealed and replaced, and that’s why I’m running against him in the 2018 primary.”
Tarkanian is hammering Heller as insufficiently supportive of Trump or various Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare. Nevertheless, in April, Vice President Mike Pence will headline a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser for the incumbent in a crucial sign of White House support.
Missouri Senate
Trump himself is going to hold a fundraiser for Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who is heavily favored to win the Republican nomination to run against Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., on Aug. 7. The VIP reception is $5,000 per person. A photo goes for $25,000 a couple, a seat at the host committee roundtable for $50,000.
McCaskill won reelection last time in no small part because the gaffe-prone former Rep. Todd Akin won the GOP primary. Republicans in Washington are trying to prevent a similar outcome this time. Hawley’s main opponents are Courtland Sykes, a Roy Moore-endorsed populist who models himself after Trump, and libertarian activist Austin Petersen. Sykes gained notoriety with an online rant against “nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she devils” this year.
Mississippi Senate
Chris McDaniel, a Mississippi state senator who narrowly lost a Republican primary to Sen. Thad Cochran in 2014, seems likely to try his hand at primarying Republican Sen. Roger Wicker on June 5. “We’re looking for a fight,” McDaniel said in an online event promoting a possible candidacy. The Club for Growth, a group whose support has been indispensable to conservative primary challengers, told the Washington Examiner that it was open to endorsing McDaniel for Senate again.
Trump, however, undercut McDaniel with a tweet praising Wicker as a “great supporter” who was a “big help” in cutting taxes and a “great help” on deregulation. “I am with him in his re-election all the way!” the president exclaimed. Trump supported McDaniel in 2014.
Illinois governor
Yet, it is ultimately the Democrats who have the most to gain from their spirited primary campaigns this year — well as the most to lose. A final example is the Democratic primary for governor in Illinois on March 20. Billionaire Hyatt Hotel heir J.B. Pritzker is the frontrunner to take on Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner, having spent $56 million of his own money to Rauner’s $50 million.
This has not exactly endeared him to the more liberal candidates running in the Democratic primary. State Sen. Daniel Bliss, one of those opponents, has created an online calculator with a picture of a tuxedo-clad Pritzker on it. “JB Pritzker is spending more than $56.2 million to try to buy this election,” the site states. “See for yourself what else this amount of money could buy.”
One example: “JB Pritzker’s campaign spends the average cost per wedding guest in the Chicago suburbs in 1 minute and 36 seconds.” Chris Kennedy, son of Robert Kennedy, is another liberal alternative to Pritzker who has been trying to appeal to black voters disillusioned with the party’s governing class.
If Pritzker wins, will liberals be demoralized? Or will the chance to defeat Rauner — and send a message to Trump — be a good enough reason to turn out?
That’s the question at the heart of a lot of Democratic primaries this year.
