Game in primary has long been pursued in both the Republican and Democratic parties, where leaders deploy multi-million-dollar campaign arms to protect officials and squash potential challengers. The Democratic congressional committee took it a step further this cycle – maintaining a “blacklist” of vendors working for candidates trying to oust sitting lawmakers, a movement that is progressively furious and motivated to still become more involved in primary campaigns this cycle.
“These places work at membership cost,” said Brendan Buck, a GOP strategist, referring to the parties’ campaign arms. “In order to get members to contribute, they need to convince themselves that it is a sitting protection operation.” Otherwise, he added, “that trust is wasted” and “the money keeps coming up.”
Plus, it’s dangerous to make and miss a shot. Leadership was once even away for open primaries amid fears of choosing the wrong candidate and alienating a future colleague.
“It’s not a risk, no doubt,” said Buck, who served as top assistant to former speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis). “You can be better sure that it will work if you do it. People have long memories.”
But now, rebellious lawmakers, angry at the establishment and tired of keeping the kind of decoration that once ruled Washington, are seeking to flex their muscles in the primary – and raise leadership.
“Nobody gets complaints about primary challenges again,” Ocasio-Cortez said tweeted in response to Pelosi’s approval of Kennedy. The New Year’s Alderman, who has won the wrath of some colleagues for her openness to supporting primary challenges, also called on the DCCC to get rid of its blacklist of suppliers. “It seems less a policy and more an activity for cherry picking,” she wrote.
This is hardly the first time that legislators of rank and file have dealt with primary – although many more are doing so openly this year – but it is now easier than a decade ago to actually make an impact through the use of primary and social fundraising. media,
“The old ways of Washington empower leadership through money. But we are starting to see that the message and movement can be more important than money, ‘said Gaetz, who swore PAC funding. “In today’s world of social media, digital communications and wall-to-wall cable television, management has no more fatigue in the market than the messengers.”
The 2022 cycle could provide further opportunities for insurgents, as officials could be confronted with completely new constituencies after the final round of reorganization.
Pelosi’s allies have defended their decision to support Kennedy, arguing that the speaker was undermining her policy of protecting domestic officials because she was a senator. Progressive legislators and strategists have rejected that explanation.
“What we see now is the Democratic establishment being really honest in public about what they are doing. What is not changing is that they are taking sides in primary – they have been doing it for years and years and years, they have just been more private about it, ” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America.
Ocasio-Cortez, who declined to be interviewed for this story, rose to fame after killing one of the most powerful Democrats in the House: Joe Crowley, the Democratic Caucus president often referred to as a potential future speaker. A fellow member of her liberal “squad,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Name long rep. Mike Capuano retired in 2018 and has since supported other primary challengers.
Progressive challengers have fired several longtime Democratic officials this year, including Lipinski, chairman Eliot Engel of the New York Foreign Affairs Committee, and Representative Lacy Clay in Missouri.
