In July, The Intercept noted that the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which in the past hasn’t been a big player in the electoral arena, was “trying something new: winning primaries.” The CPC’s PAC spent more than $325,000 on House elections in 2018, backing a slate of progressive Democrats, both those in swing areas and those considered long shots (it gave $10,000 to Randy Bryce, for instance). But the group didn’t try to use its resources to influence primaries and thereby grow its membership in Congress until the 2020 cycle.
The CPC’s PAC made independent expenditures in just two races, both of them open House seats vacated by Democrats. These were solidly blue districts—in other words, exactly the kind of places where progressives could plausibly win, and where there is no pressure to nominate a moderate to appeal to swing voters. First, it spent around $180,000 to back Mondaire Jones, a progressive in New York’s 17th District; then it spent $365,000 on Beth Doglio, the left-leaning candidate in Washington State’s 10th District. Here’s how those races shaped up, and the CPC’s impact on them:
New York’s 17th District
This was a heated four-way race in New York’s suburbs, but Mondaire Jones had the progressive lane to himself. The other prominent candidates were Adam Schleifer, the son of a billionaire who spent nearly $5 million on his run; New York State Sen. David Carlucci, who had been part of the controversial Independent Democratic Caucus, a group that had given New York Republicans effective control of Albany; and Evelyn Farkas, a former member of the Obama administration.
Jones was the one who emerged with the big-name endorsements, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. He also had an impressive biography, having been raised by a single mom on public assistance in Section 8 housing before attending Harvard. But there was clearly an impression that he wasn’t going to beat out Schleifer’s money all by himself—over $600,000 of outside money came in to support him or oppose Schleifer from the CPC, Equality PAC, Women Vote! and Fight for the American Dream PAC (Jones’s own PAC).
In the end, it’s hard to say that CPC’s money was determinative here since Jones won the primary fairly comfortably. But given the difference between him and the other, much more moderate candidates in the race, it was obviously a high-leverage spot for progressives, and they treated it as such.
Washington’s 10th District
Washington State has a “jungle primary” system, where the candidates with the most votes in the primary go on to the general, regardless of party. In the deep-blue 10th District, in the South Puget Sound region, this meant that Democrats were running against each other in the primary, albeit quite different Democrats. In one corner, there was the business-friendly former Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland; in the other, there was Washington State Rep. Beth Doglio, who helped found the Washington Conservation Voters and earned endorsements from progressives like Sanders, Warren and local lefty leader Rep. Pramilla Jayapal. Locally, the difference between the two can be explained this way: The staid regional daily the Seattle Times endorsed Strickland, while the irreverent Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger picked Doglio.
The two candidates were relatively close in fundraising, with Strickland raising about $1.5 million and Doglio getting about $1.3 million, but the outside money went Doglio’s way by a substantial margin, about $1.25 million to $150,000. The lion’s share of that came from CPC’s PAC, but it wasn’t enough to get Doglio to Congress, as Strickland pulled out the win.
Nebraska’s Second District
This marked another setback for the CPC. The Democratic general election candidate, Kara Eastman, was a progressive darling notable for her support of Medicare for All—a position her GOP opponent, Don Bacon, used to paint her as a radical. The district was seen as leaning Democratic, but though Joe Biden won it handily, Eastman lost, just as she did in 2018. That was despite the CPC putting nearly $200,000 of its money in the race, part of a pile of progressive money that went to Eastman’s campaign.
This race didn’t represent an example of the CPC stepping in to fight off moderate Democrats. But had Eastman pulled out a win, the left would have had an example of an unapologetic progressive winning in a swing district—grist for the argument that left-wing ideas are not just correct, but popular. If groups like the CPC and Justice Democrats (which also backed Eastman) want to go on making that case, they won’t be able to point to this race as a case study. But there’s no reason to suspect that they won’t keep backing progressive candidates all over the country.
Photo credit: Alex E Acaro / Shutterstock.com
