Will Schumer Keep The Democrats From Winning Back The Senate?

There are some really excellent Democrats running for the Senate this cycle-- and some real dreck. Schumer has always had a nose for the dreck-- especially when their opponents are progressive. Schumer's biggest fear isn't about Republicans winning-- it's always about independent-minded Democrats winning and spoiling his nice little racket inside the Democratic caucus. This year his top priorities are stopping progressives like Andrew Romanoff (D-CO), Maggie Toulouse Oliver (D-NM), Erica Smith (D-NC), Teresa Tomlinson (D-GA) and Gloria Tinubu (D-SC), while pushing more conservative candidates who know how to take orders for political bosses like... Chuck Schumer.

In 2010 Schumer broke more ground on manipulating Senate primaries, when he wasted more than a million dollars in party money against Admiral Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania Senate Primary. Rep. Sestak (D-PA) was the highest ranking military officer ever to serve in Congress; Schumer couldn’t care less.  Schumer interfered in the Democratic Senate Primary to try to keep his corrupt promise to clear the Democratic Primary for “Magic Bullet” Sen. Arlen Specter (who had concocted a fantasy theory about the bullet that killed JFK in order to end an investigation into the assassination). This was after Specter demonstrated his fealty to Schumer and Reid by switching parties, thereby earning the enmity of every voter in the state.

Schumer spent party money against Sestak again in 2016, and also against Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), a three-term progressive champion who had passed more laws in 2012-2016 than any other Member of Congress, despite GOP control of the House.  (Grayson also pioneered “People Power” fundraising; he was the only Member of the House to raise most of his campaign funds from small donors.) Schumer anointed hapless Rep. Patrick Murphy instead, whose only claim to fame was that he had lied about providing post-hurricane relief in the Gulf of Mexico by taking a picture of himself dressed as a sailor, standing on a boat docked in Connecticut. Murphy spent all his time in Congress vacuuming up corrupt Wall Street money, just like Schumer. (In fact, Murphy outraised the GOP Chair of the House Finance Committee.) According to Murphy’s Super PAC chief, Murphy’s rich father promised Schumer and Reid $10 million ($5 million from him, and $5 million from his rich friends) if they delivered the nomination to Murphy, and actually placed a $10 million September/October/November TV buy to make that credible.

Reid attacked Grayson personally and demanded that he drop out of the race, while Reid and Schumer planted "hit pieces" in national media against Grayson. Schumer personally called both Grayson and Sestak donors, demanding that they pull the plug on their support. And the DSCC employed the now-familiar ploy of trying to get vendors and consultants to boycott the campaigns. For instance, Grayson’s direct-mail fundraising company not only refused to work on the Senate campaign, but wouldn’t even provide Grayson with a list of previous Grayson contributors, specifically citing pressure from the DSCC. Grayson’s media consultant was offered a $1 million buy for another campaign-- if he stopped working with Grayson. The Senate Democratic Super PAC laundered money from Murphy’s father to run ads for Murphy in the primary, touting the party’s endorsement.

In both Pennsylvania and Florida-- not to mention the Ohio catastrophe-- Schumer’s hand-picked candidates failed miserably. The candidate whom Schumer anointed in Pennsylvania had come in fourth (in single-digits) in the primary for Governor just two years earlier. Pennsylvania voters sniffed her out as a Schumer puppet, and defeated her. In Florida, Murphy had to spend $7 million just to win the primary.  In the general election, the promised money from his father never showed up, and week after week, as the payment deadline on the TV buy approached, Daddy Buy was canceled. CBS Miami tagged Murphy as a habitual liar, and he ran seven points behind Clinton in Florida. (An interesting subplot arose after Murphy had leaked secret audio from a Clinton fundraiser in Florida to make it look like Clinton favored him in the primary. Clinton got over any ill-feelings from the leak when Murphy made a $1 million contribution to Clinton’s Super PAC-- which Murphy paid for by selling his stock in his father’s company.)

Both Pennsylvania and Florida in 2016 demonstrated that Schumer had the power to foist turds on Democratic primary voters-- and then see them stink up the joint in the general election, with Republicans winning both seats. But... anything is better in Schumer's mind than an independent-minded Democrat like Grayson or Sestak.

North Carolina state Senator Erica Smith is the progressive-- not the Schumer-- candidate running for the Democratic nomination to oppose Trump enabler Thom Tillis next year. She has a great reputation from her service in the legislature and polling shows her beating Tillis by 7 points. So what's Schumer's problem? I asked Erica.

"I liken Schumer’s reported interference into primary elections across the nation to the college admissions scandal," she told me. "If the less progressive, less qualified, less competent candidates that he appears to favor were electable on merit-- he would not need to prop them up with exorbitant sums of money from his personal campaign list of wealthy Wall Street donors. A three-judge Superior Court panel just ruled in a case of paramount importance to the voters of North Carolina with national implications for partisan gerrymandering. On page 320 of the Common Cause vs. Lewis decision, the opinion states 'There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in the election of our political leaders'-- including of course, the right to 'vote.' McCutcheon v. FEC, 572 U.S. 185, 191, 134 S. Ct. 1434, 1440 (2014).  The voters of North Carolina have fought for uninhibited voting rights for the last eight years in this case, and after this historic victory will not willingly abdicate this right. The voters of North Carolina and every other state should be the only people deciding the elections in Primaries and otherwise. The will of the people to support progressive candidates should never be commandeered by incumbent leaders, or Party and Caucus officials and their predilection for 'Republican-like moderates.' This is completely antithetical to who we are as a big tent, party of inclusion. We recognize that Party infrastructure is necessary for our collective success. However, we are hopeful that these resources are fairly allocated based on voters’ decisions and not coerced ones based on forced acceptance of big money backed establishment choices. There are many party insiders who feel the DSCC's backing of Cal Cunningham in the 2010 US Senate race over the more experienced, progressive, woman candidate Elaine Marshall resulted in a fracture in the Party leading to a general election defeat to Richard Burr, who has served in the US Senate ever since. Secretary Marshall defeated the DSCC backed candidate twice, by almost 10% points in the primary and by double that percentage in a subsequent run off. To say that there remain a fair amount of festering unhealed wounds nine years later is modest. With the state of politics in our state and nation as a whole today, a repeat of 2010 will have more than destructive aftershocks that will be felt across the country, it may very well be the death knell to Democracy once and for all."