Cheri Bustos May Be Too Thick To Understand Why, But Primaries Are A Crucial Component Of American Democracy

AOC, Ayanna, Rashida-- 3 perfect voting records + more

Now that Congress has been taking some tough votes, there are just 13 freshman members left with crucial vote scores that give them “A” grades. And only 6 are left with perfect 100% crucial votes scores: Jahana Hayes (D-CT), Andy Levin (D-MI), Joe Neguse (D-CO), AOC (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

There are 28 non-freshmen who are also in the 100% category this cycle, several of them voting way better than usual because of fear of being primaries from the left— Adam Smith (New Dem-WA), Pete DeFazio (OR), Eliot Engel (New Dem-NY), Frank Pallone (NJ), Danny Davis (IL), Suzanne Bonamici (OR), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX) and Yvette Clarke (NY).

Of Massachusetts’ 9 members of Congress— all Democrats— 5 have primaries: Richard Neal, Joe Kennedy III, Katherine Clark, Seth Moulton, and Stephen Lynch. One who doesn’t is Ayanna Pressley, a freshman in the 7th district (Boston’s Back Bay, East Boston, Fenway and Roxbury and south through Dorchester and Hyde Park as far as Randolph, and north through Brighton, Cambridge, Somerville and Chelsea as far as Everett). It’s the bluest district in Massachusetts— by far, D+34. In fact, it’s the bluest district in New England.

Pressley had a very tough case to make against incumbent Democrat Mike Capuano, largely because he was one of the most progressive members of Congress. But she beat him pretty handily:

It wasn’t so much because Capuano was ideologically out of sync with the district; is was more because he was just out of touch with much of a district that grew younger while he grew older. I was less than generous about her primary win:

Mike Capuano, a sterling progressive, was at a disadvantage being a long-time incumbent as well as white and male. The fact that he's probably further left than she is-- and certainly further left in the largely unexamined area of foreign policy— where he's for peace and she's... an AIPAC supporter, doesn't matter to the folks looking for another scalp and without the discernment to fully understand the difference between a corrupt conservative like Joe Crowley, who earned disdain and defeat, and Mike Capuano, who was steamrolled by identity politics.

In their intercept piece, Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani hit all the right questions. "The challenge to Capuano raises a slew of political questions in the Trump era: Under what circumstances does a member of Congress deserve re-election? In a race between two similarly positioned politicians, how important is identity? How important is a progressive track record?"

There are some similarities between Ocasio-Cortez’s and Pressley’s bids: Pressley is black, meaning that, like Ocasio-Cortez, she is a women of color running to unseat a white man in a majority non-white district. But, unlike Ocasio-Cortez and [Kara] Eastman, both of whom ran with sparse political resources— few campaign dollars and virtually no major establishment endorsements— Pressley is backed by major donors and powerful figures within the Democratic Party’s elite. According to Politico, Pressley, a former aide to then-Sen. John Kerry, was urged by the “donor class” to make her run. Federal Election Commission reports show she has raised over $1 million, more than double the amount raised by Ocasio-Cortez and more than triple the amount raised by Eastman before election day.

While Ocasio-Cortez and Eastman won by sharply criticizing the moderate voting records of their primary opponents, Pressley has demurred repeatedly when asked to point to major policy areas in which she disagrees with her opponent.

Pressley has garnered some support from establishment forces: Her campaign contributors include Boston-area megadonor Barbara Lee; Minyon Moore, a so-called Democratic National Committee superdelegate and principal of the corporate lobbying firm Dewey Square group; and [establishment] Super PAC strategist Guy Cecil. She also appears to be gaining momentum among progressives. She has been endorsed by Ocasio-Cortez and Democracy for America. Meanwhile, progressive groups are seizing upon the Pressley campaign as an opportunity for change.

“Congressman Mike Capuano has been a fine, progressive member of Congress, but having an experienced progressive like Ayanna Pressley on the ballot is an unmissable opportunity for Massachusetts to both ensure a leading woman of color represents its only majority-minority district and add the voice of just one person of color to New England’s currently all-white congressional delegation,” said Jim Dean, chair for Democracy for America, in a statement. Jonathan Cohn, co-chair of Progressive Massachusetts, explained that his group also endorsed Pressley over Capuano because of the “need for more diverse representation in Congress and the need for more activist leadership from Democrats in Congress.”

Justice Democrats, the new advocacy PAC spearheading progressive primary challenges across the country, endorsed Pressley over Capuano. Alexandra Rojas, a spokesperson for the group, said the group “would like to see fresh leadership, especially from women and people of color, in one of the few majority-minority districts in the country represented by a white man.”

...Capuano, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, blazed an unusual path on Capitol Hill. He has championed “Medicare for All” for over a decade, helped establish the influential Office of Congressional Ethics, and, as Congress has increasingly abandoned its corporate oversight responsibilities, has made a name for himself dressing down the chief executives of big banks, airlines, and other industries for engaging in fraud and abuse.

For some activists on the left who have supported Capuano’s policy stances, the prospect of challenging the progressive stalwart is a misguided venture. Robert Naiman, policy director of the progressive think tank Just Foreign Policy, said he has cheered on the wave of progressive insurgent candidates, but was surprised to see Capuano— who is known for his progressive foreign policy stances— facing a challenge. Naiman, a watchdog on foreign intervention, rattled off a list of foreign policy stances Capuano has staked, agitating for peace even against his own party, from leading the opposition to the war in Yemen to maintaining a lonely battle against President Barack Obama’s war in Libya.

“Taking down Capuano? That would be terrible,” Naiman said. “He’s a progressive champion.”

In the few areas in which Pressley says she presents an alternative to Capuano, the contrast is nonetheless muddled. Pressley said she pledged to decline corporate PAC money, while Capuano has not. That may be true in the 2018 Democratic congressional primary, but Pressley fundraised from corporate, police, and lobbyist-run PACs while a member of the city council, ethics disclosures show, before taking the pledge this cycle. (Pressley’s campaign did not offer comment for this article.)

Records show that the Pressley Committee, the registered entity for Pressley’s municipal campaigns, received donations from several corporate lobbying PACs, including the Nelson Mullins Riley Scarborough and Nixon Peabody. Individuals from the powerful Massachusetts corporate lobbying firm Dewey Square Group have donated 18 times to Pressley’s campaigns.

...Another area where Capuano’s long national record stands in contrast to Pressley’s local profile is on foreign policy-- particularly American wars abroad. Questionnaires sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action, a grassroots pressure group focused on curbing the power of the Pentagon and ending military adventures overseas, provide one of the few windows into the candidates’ views in this area. But, in her responses, Pressley declined to take a position on whether she would “vote to terminate the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan” or whether she would support legislation to prohibit “stationing military forces [in Syria], and providing assistance and training to insurgents.”

Explaining her non-answers, Pressley wrote that she would seek to exhaust other diplomatic and nonmilitary options, but wanted to avoid closing the door on the possibility of supporting future military solutions to ending the conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan. Capuano, in contrast, answered “yes” to both questions in the survey. He also noted that he introduced legislation to require congressional authorization for the use of force in Syria; was one of only 11 lawmakers to file a lawsuit against Obama for using military force in Libya without congressional approval; and has voted on several occasions to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

While local Massachusetts media has largely ignored foreign policy in its coverage of the primary race, the issue looms large among those who have served with Capuano.

“I have long looked to my Progressive Caucus colleague Mike for his leadership and principled advocacy on U.S. foreign policy,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Given the Trump administration’s constant warmongering, progressives in Congress need Mike Capuano’s unwavering moral courage, now more than ever.”

This week, after careful consideration of the two candidates, Massachusetts Peace Action decided to endorse Capuano.

Celebrate Pressley's win for what it is-- not for what it isn't. I have no doubt that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is going to be a huge upgrade from Joe Crowley. We'll see if we can say the same thing about Ayanna Pressley and Mike Capuano next year.

I would have much rather seen Brianna Wu beat right-of-center, anti-Choice Democrat Stephen Lynch, also in Boston (MA-08)— but progressive activists largely ignored that race. And Lynch rolled right over her.

That said, I'm sure Ayanna Pressley will be a much better member of Congress than most-- even than most from Massachusetts. Or, at least, I have reason to hope so. On the other hand, is Barbara Lee safe in her seat? Mark Pocan? Jim McGovern? Raul Grijalva? Jerry Nadler? Alan Lowenthal? Do their records as fighting progressives count for anything?

Blue America is backing progressive challengers this cycle against conservative Democratic incumbents— Marie Newman against Blue Dog Dan Lipinski (Chicago), Shaniyat Chowdhury against New Dem Gregory Meeks (Queens), Michael Owens against Blue Dog David Scott (suburban Atlanta) and Eva Putzova against Blue Dog Tom O’Halleran (Arizona). We’ll be endorsing one of the candidates running against Steny Hoyer and we’re vetting several others around the country as well. All of the incumbents have earned primary defeats and all of the candidates we have endorsed will make much better representatives in Congress. (Please consider contributing to their campaigns by clicking on the Primary a Blue Dog 2020 thermometer on the right.)

But primarying a progressive against a challenger— even a good one— is still a path we haven’t been willing to go down. This week our candidate in Queens, Shaniyat Chowdhury, introduced me to a progressive activist not far from where I live— young woman who is eager to beat a strongly progressive member of Congress I had once helped win. His voting record is fine but he hardly turned out to be an AOC or a Rashida Tlaib. She made her case like this:

I'm challenging Representative X because while he calls himself a progressive-- he falls short in many ways.

While I've been organizing against war profiteers, he's been taking money from them, as well as private prisons, Monsanto, pharma, insurance companies, etc.

While he's constantly out in the media bashing Donald Trump personally, he is silent on many of the policy reasons we should be countering Trump: His provocations of war with Iran, coup attempt in Venezuela, and the slew of corporate execs he's been appointing to top government positions.

I fault Democrats in general for not providing an alternative to the Neo-conservatives' foreign policy agenda, and believe it's important that Members of Congress play a leading role creating a vision of what real diplomacy looks like.

To date, for instance, many Dems have simply discounted diplomatic attempts with North Korea as impossible with Trump in charge. As unfortunate as it is that he's our President, I believe our pursuit of peace must be non-partisan and maximize any and all openings for diplomatic engagement.

Mr. X has also repeatedly supported efforts to suppress dialogue and peaceful protest of Israel's occupation of Palestine, which I find offensive and unconstitutional.

In one of the most progressive districts in the country, I believe we deserve a real progressive, who will put the people's priorities above all else. I know I can be that leader.

I would love to discuss the matters in greater depth, if you are interested.

I’ll meet up with her next week and blog about how that goes, OK? I'm probably more eager than you are to see how this turns out-- and this isn't the only instance of this nature looming.