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.”
Waxman didn’t mince words. “’In Marcy Winograd’s foreign policy, Israel would cease to exist,’ wrote Waxman. ‘In Marcy Winograd’s vision, Jews would be at the mercy of those who do not respect democracy or human rights. These are not trivial issues; they cannot be ignored or overlooked.’” He makes the excellent point that these are not issues of concern just to Jewish voters, but to Americans generally.
Waxman’s letter is all the more noteworthy because he has not always agreed with Harman on national security policy; he voted against the Iraq war resolution, for example. Nor has he been in the habit, as he was up through the 1992 election cycle, of endorsing or intervening in many Democratic primary contests in southern California. His letter has the sound of a cri de coeur, written out of genuine conviction.
Harman has not been known for intensive personal campaigning in her district, which runs along the Pacific Coast from Venice south through Redondo Beach to the Palos Verde Peninsula. But as the wife of stereo magnate and philanthropist Sidney Harman she can self-finance her campaign at just about any conceivable level; in the 2006 cycle she spent $1,173,000. California holds its primary on June 8, and since nine other states also have primaries that day and the California results do not come in late, so this race may be overlooked. But it will be a key measure of the strength of Left sentiment in the Democratic party. In 2006 the Left was up in arms against the Iraq war; my guess is that Left voters this year are somewhat dismayed by Barack Obama’s decisions to prosecute the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore I expect Harman will win by a wider margin than she did four years ago. I certainly hope so; she has been one of the Democratic party’s most well-informed and serious members on national security issues.
