A Corrupt Detroit Establishment Is Desperate To Stop Rashida Tlaib

I thought Rashida Tlaib was out choosing furniture for her new office in DC. After all, she won the 6-person August 7th primary and there is no Republican running next week. And why should one? The PVI is D+32 and Hillary eviscerated Trump 78.8% to 18.1%. Progressives-- in Detroit and across the country-- are very excited that an experienced and skilled state legislator and community activist with a powerful cutting edge working class agenda would soon be in Congress, serving with freshmen like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and Ilhan Omar (MN), and, hopefully, Randy Bryce (WI), Jared Golden (ME), Kara Eastman (NE), Katie Porter (CA), Lisa Brown (WA), etc. On Monday, writing for Jezebel Esther Wang reported that "Tlaib’s victory was hailed as part of a new wave of unabashedly leftist women of color who are challenging the establishment wing of the Democratic Party--from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City to Ilhan Omar in Minnesota-- and winning."

Tlaib isn’t a newcomer to the political scene, nor is she new to the brand of progressive politics that is increasingly gaining traction, much to the dismay of centrist Democrats. As Medicare for All and a $15 minimum wage become banner policies for more Democrats, the prevailing political winds are finally catching up with her.

Tlaib is an activist-legislator whose defining, reputation-making moment was taking on the Koch brothers by trespassing onto private property to get a sample of petrocoke dust-- a byproduct of extracting oil from the tar sands-- to test for toxicity. Months before the 2016 presidential election, she and other women had disrupted Donald Trump while he was giving a speech in Detroit. She called out Immigration and Customs Enforcement years before #AbolishICE was part of the mainstream political debate; far from being inspired by Bernie Sanders’ presidential run in 2016, she has long clashed with local business elites while railing against the city- and state-level tax incentives being handed out to developers like so much candy; and years before the hashtag #MeToo drew widespread attention to workplace sexual harassment, she publicly alleged a prominent Arab American civil rights advocate had sexually harassed her on the job, leading him to resign.

In her race, Tlaib had received the endorsements of a slew of Bernie Sanders-affiliated groups, from Justice Democrats to Our Revolution, as well as the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which she is a dues-paying member. Glowing media coverage has praised her civil rights bonafides and her ambitious plan for a green economy. No profile of Tlaib fails to note that she will become the first Muslim American woman in Congress (along with Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar if she wins, as she is likely to do), and the first Palestinian American woman. There is an excitement surrounding her candidacy that is wholly warranted-- “Rashida Tlaib is the left’s way forward,” proclaimed Politico, days after her primary victory. (Some of this is not new: In 2016, she was included on a list of Democrats who, looking ahead to the 2024 presidential campaign, “just might be poised to break out eight years from now.”) It is clear that America’s progressives are ready to anoint Rashida Tlaib as one of the new national faces of the left flank of the Democratic Party.

...[W]hen she says that she wants to, in her words, “kick ass” and fight against corporate greed, you really believe her—a rarity for politicians. And while much has been made of her ethnicity and her religion, Tlaib credits her victory in large part to her message, pointing out that less than five percent of her district is Arab American. “It was people that were tired of the same old politics and tired of the same kind of people getting elected over and over again,” Tlaib said.

...The traditional black leadership... includes people like Bishop Edgar Vann II, the pastor of Detroit’s Second Ebenezer Church, a former member of the Detroit police department’s civilian oversight body and a member of the executive committee of the Downtown Detroit Partnership, a public-private partnership that has worked hand-in-hand with business leaders and local elected officials to reconfigure the downtown landscape.

When I asked Vann if he believed Tlaib’s win showed that residents in Detroit were on board with her brand of politics, Vann pointed to the crowded field. The four black candidates, he said, split the black vote, opening the door for Tlaib to eke out a victory. (Vann also expressed alarm over her unabashedly left politics, telling me, “My concern, personally, I would say, is that I am not a socialist. I have concerns about certain factions of the Democratic Party that are becoming ultra-left.”)

“Had one of those people not been in the race, then she wouldn’t have won the race,” Vann said. He noted that Jones had beat out Tlaib in the special election, held on the same day and with fewer candidates running, to fill Conyers’ vacated seat. “As historic as it was, when we look at the numbers, we recognize how it really happened,” he said.

It is impossible to discuss Tlaib’s historic victory without acknowledging the complicated role that race played during the primary. The district has had a black representative and a civil rights champion as its congressperson for more than half a century. Despite a growing perception that Conyers had stayed for too long, in Detroit, whose residents are more than 80 percent black, having a black representative still carries weight. Tlaib herself had grappled with the optics of running to replace Conyers. “I felt like, ‘Am I taking it away from my families?’” she recalled. Her decision to run was based on her sense that the district needed a candidate closer to the movements fighting for the city at the ground level.

The notion that the crowded field-- which included Jones as well as Ian Conyers, John Conyers’s grandnephew, and Coleman Young II, the son of Detroit’s first black mayor—would split the black electorate had alarmed Vann and other members of Detroit’s black political establishment. In March, he and other clergy, as well as union leaders and Democratic Party activists, met and decided to collectively endorse Jones. Jones, who was the president of the local chapter of the Communication Workers of America before being elected to city council in 2005, was widely viewed as a capable and reliably progressive candidate who preached about reaching across the aisle (in her campaign, she staked out support for some of the same policy positions as Tlaib). As Jonathan Kinloch, the chair of the 13th District Democratic Party put it to the Detroit Free Press, the prospect of a non-black candidate replacing Conyers was “a very, very, very big concern.” One long-time political commentator and consultant, Steve Hood, expressed it more bluntly: “I’m not a racist, but I’d rather see an African American.”

...During a time when identity politics has largely been emptied of its original, liberatory meaning, and women running for office are often celebrated for simply being women, without an interrogation of whether their policies support the real needs of other women, poor people, immigrants, and people of color, Tlaib’s expansive vision of an intersectional politics rooted in organized movements points to a way forward for the Democratic Party. “I know that if we don’t support the movement work, we’re never going to pass Medicare for All. We’re never going to pass the environmental justice protections that we need,” she said. “Going and pressing a button, great. But man, we need more than that.”

And, sure enough, on Monday, the centrist establishment candidate, runner-up (and City Council President), Brenda Jones, launched her last-minute write-in candidacy-- mostly race-based-- against Rashida. As an independent. Jones won the separate election to finish John Conyers term (which expires January 3rd) but "Jones' final decision to complete the rest of the Detroit Democrat's term would come down to a pending ruling from the House Committee on Ethics on whether she can legally serve in both roles (City Council president) at the same time."

"Many voters felt that the process-- there was some concern with the process. I received several-- many, many calls from voters who said to me, 'I'm writing your name in,' and that was before I even decided I was running a write-in campaign," Jones said.

In a confusing twist during the August primary, Jones won the race to finish Conyers' term, but Tlaib won the race to fill his seat for the following two-year term. Jones said that voters were worried about the primary's integrity after seeing fluctuations in online voting counts.

But voting equipment executives at the time said the display problem had nothing to do with accuracy.

It's not clear whether Jones will even serve the term she won, as she is waiting on a decision from the House Committee on Ethics as to whether she can remain council president at the same time.

Michigan Democratic Party chairman Brandon Dillon said that Jones’ write-in campaign is a both a distraction for Democrats and a bad idea.

“Rashida Tlaib is the Democratic nominee and won her race outright,” he said. “The chances of it being successful are zero and Rashida’s going to be a great congresswoman.”

Tlaib has also received a swell of attention as potentially the first Muslim woman to be elected to Congress, which would be upended if Jones' campaign proves successful.

On Tuesday, Jones pushed back against potential criticism.

"I'm not here to distract anyone, and I've never tried to distract anyone," she said. "I'm here to help everyone, and that's what I'm doing launching this write-in campaign."

Not only is a write-in campaign a herculean task, it becomes even harder when 34,410 absentee ballots have already been turned in to the Detroit City Clerk’s office, said city elections director Daniel Baxter.

And Tlaib, who appeared on stage with Jones before former President Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of several thousand people in Detroit last week, pivoted to fundraising off of Jones’ announcement.

“We learned late Friday that a challenger is mounting a write-in campaign in next week’s general election. The voters in Michigan-13 don’t deserve any distractions,” she told supporters in an e-mail on Tuesday. “At a time when voters around the country need to be coming together to elect Democrats up and down the ballot to check Donald Trump’s hateful, racist agenda, the last thing we need is someone coming in and sowing division."

“But this write-in opponent-- who we defeated in the August primary-- is a reminder that we need to work every day between now and Election Day to turn out our voters and win,” she added.

She that picture up top? That's a drawing of Rashida-- a very limited edition signed print by Nancy Ohanian. Nancy gave me 10 to help us elect Rashida. If you'd like one, please contribute to her campaign by tapping on the Act Blue thermometer on the right. Usually we ask people to contribute any amount and then pick the winners randomly. This time it's different. We need to raise her some serious money to take on the full weight of the corporate establishment that is terrified of having to deal with a tried and tested working class champion like Rashida. So... we're asking for contributions that are at least $50 for a chance to win a print. If there are more than 10 people who contribute over $50 to Rashida's campaign, then we'll pick randomly between them. This is a quick one. The 10 winners will be chosen Thursday at 3 pm (ET). obviously, smaller contributions are welcome too-- but just from people who want to help Rashida win, not for the Ohanian prints. Wait, wait... i don't like the way this sounds. I have a personal copy of the print as well, so I'll toss that in and that one will go to a random donor regardless of the amount they contribute. I hope that's OK.