Thomas McKinless/CQ Roll Call/AP Photo
Jessica Cisneros, candidate for Texas’s 28th Congressional District
On its face, there’s nothing particularly exceptional about Texas’s 28th Congressional district. It spans the heavily Hispanic region south of San Antonio, including the city of Laredo and part of the U.S.–Mexico border. It’s a safely (though not extremely) blue district, with a +9 Democratic lean, and has been repped by a Democrat since 2005. Hillary Clinton carried it by 20 points in 2016.
And yet, with less than three weeks to go until Texas’s congressional primary contest, it’s become the site of a major national battle for the direction of the Democratic Party, a rapidly accelerating arms race that previews the alignment challenges yet to come at the national level.
On one side is 26-year-old immigration and human rights lawyer Jessica Cisneros, a political newcomer who’s been gushed about in the national press as a possible Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez type of progressive stalwart. On the other is Henry Cuellar, an eight-term incumbent and one of the most notoriously conservative Democrats in the chamber.
But it’s not just Cisneros versus Cuellar. National groups have come out of the woodwork to shore up support for their candidate of choice, turning the primary into a proxy war of astonishing proportions.
As early as last fall, Cisneros bagged endorsements from a who’s who list of progressive Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, Julián Castro, and Bernie Sanders. She also got the formal backing of the Working Families Party, EMILY’s List, J Street, MoveOn, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood, adding to the early adoption of the race from Justice Democrats. Even the Texas AFL-CIO, a big labor group that rarely, if ever, contravenes the party establishment in favor of insurgent candidates, especially if they aren’t assured to win, threw its support behind Cisneros, as did SEIU. Those groups have martialed financial support as well: on Monday, a coalition of progressive groups pledged to spend at least $350,000 on Cisneros’s behalf.
Meanwhile, other groups that occupy a very different part of the Democrats’ overly capacious big tent have channeled support for Cuellar, who has voted roughly 70 percent of the time with Trump and enjoys an “A” rating from the NRA. Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a six-figure television buy on Cuellar’s behalf. The pro-business group is shelling out $200,000, more than it has spent on any Democrat since 2014. Meanwhile, the American Bankers Association, a financial industry lobbying group, has pitched in $60,000 on pro-Cuellar radio ads.
But wait, there’s more. LIBRE Initiative Action, the Hispanic-outreach arm of the Koch network, formally endorsed Cuellar on Friday, marking the first time a Koch-funded political outfit has endorsed a Democrat in a federal election. And, on Saturday, in a last-mile push, Cuellar will get a boost from none other than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as the two team up to host a Laredo fundraiser with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
So the stage has been set for a showdown that previews the contest for the direction of the Democratic Party in miniature: On one side is an army of progressive groups, numerous unions large and small, and some of the most popular and well-known Democratic politicians. On the other is the Chamber of Commerce, the Koch political network, and Nancy Pelosi.
Cuellar has refused to debate Cisneros on the grounds that she is not a serious candidate, an explanation that strains credulity now that he’s running attack ads on TV claiming Cisneros will “shut down the oil and gas industry.” And despite those national endorsements, Cisneros has been lapped by Cuellar’s financial support as well. If she is able to knock off Cuellar, she’ll do so despite a massive fundraising deficit. Doing the bidding of big money pays handsomely, and Cuellar had almost $3 million in cash-on-hand at the end of 2019, even before conservative forces came charging en masse to his defense. Still, Cisneros was able to outclass Cuellar in the fourth quarter of last year, raising more than $513,000 compared to Cuellar’s $431,000.
There’s been some talk about the possibility of the collapse of the GOP in Texas, as its representatives have spent the last year hastily exiting Congress, via retirement or otherwise. But the primary showdown proves that conservative forces are more than willing and more than able to fight for power under the auspices of the Democratic ticket. In TX-28, they’ve dug in their heels in a simple primary that is not likely to meaningfully alter the composition of the Democrats’ House majority.
Still, the question remains why Nancy Pelosi and the DCCC would continue to support a Koch-backed candidate who has been openly antagonistic towards the Democratic agenda, regularly opposing even signature legislation from the House Dems, including the PRO Act, a bill that would extend some basic worker protections and streamline the process for union elections. The DCCC is pursuing a blacklist of vendors who work for primary challengers to incumbents, and that is now being leveraged into the service of the handpicked candidate of the Chamber of Commerce and the Koch network.
That Democratic party leadership is so eager to prop up a candidate who has thwarted their own legislative ambitions paints a troubling portrait of the party’s priorities under Pelosi’s leadership. At times, she has seemed less interested in expanding the Democrats House majority than ensuring that anti-progressive forces are safely entrenched in the chamber. Especially as the progressive agenda polls very favorably amongst the Democratic base, and Bernie Sanders surges into the lead for the presidential nomination, that sets the stage for a further confrontation about where the party is headed, and what a winning ticket, up and down the ballot, will look like come November. In the meantime, a fractured party leadership continues to pull hard in opposite directions.
