Phil Long/AP Photo
Nina Turner speaks with supporters at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, July 7, 2021, after casting her vote in the special Democratic primary election for Ohio’s 11th Congressional District.
The 2020 election cycle was both influential and embarrassing for the Congressional Black Caucus. Former CBC chair Jim Clyburn is widely credited with having turned the Democratic presidential primary in Joe Biden’s favor with his endorsement ahead of South Carolina’s voting day, after Biden had suffered blowout losses in the first three states (though the Democratic South Carolina electorate that chose Biden was majority-white for the first time in well over a decade). In return, the eventual president was broadly perceived to have chosen from a small handful of CBC members for vice president, which yielded Kamala Harris as the second-in-command.
But the CBC’s other forays into elections didn’t go quite so well. The caucus endorsed Lacy Clay, a ten-term incumbent CBC member, in his primary race against Black activist Cori Bush, and Bush defeated him in Missouri’s First District. While that endorsement may have been defensible, given that Clay was a CBC member and Bush was not, the CBC’s endorsement in New York’s 16th District was harder to explain. There, the CBC endorsed white moderate Eliot Engel (not a member) in a race against a Black challenger in Jamaal Bowman, which resulted in an even higher-profile defeat than Clay’s. It wasn’t the only time: Two years prior, the CBC endorsed white, non-member incumbent Michael Capuano over Black challenger Ayanna Pressley, who also won.
Now, the CBC is getting into another hotly contested congressional race: Ohio’s 11th, a solid-blue district in Cleveland with a special election to replace Marcia Fudge, Biden’s Housing and Urban Development secretary. The August 3rd primary between progressive Bernie Sanders surrogate Nina Turner and centrist Shontel Brown has quickly turned into an all-out Democratic Party proxy war, where the party’s factions are looking to settle scores more than five years in the making.
Hillary Clinton, who has famously little interest in Rust Belt campaigning and no stake in the politics of Cleveland and its southern surrounds, has endorsed, throwing her weight behind Brown in opposition to Turner’s alliance with Sanders. And last week, the CBC’s campaign arm, CBC PAC, officially endorsed Shontel Brown, on the heels of Clyburn’s personal endorsement of Brown in late June. On Wednesday, Clyburn and several CBC members announced that they would be campaigning on Brown’s behalf ahead of primary day.
The clear ideological bent of what’s supposed to be a non-ideological institution creates a legitimacy and credibility problem.
This announcement is surprising for a number of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, both candidates in the race are Black, which, for a Black identity-based organization, should ensure a perfectly satisfying outcome without intervention. Turner, meanwhile, as a champion of Medicare for All, is much closer to her predecessor Marcia Fudge politically, and her policies on expanding social programs would benefit the Black community more than Brown’s corporate-allied centrism. To boot, Brown has lagged Turner substantially in the polls; an infusion of over $600,000 in super PAC money and a boatload of recent establishment Democratic endorsements have only gotten her within seven points of Turner, according to her own internal polling, in the mid-30s percentage-wise.
If wading into a race that would be certain to yield a CBC member either way on behalf of the currently trailing candidate is surprising, the fact that Turner actually sports the same number of individual endorsements from CBC members as Brown makes the move inexplicable. Turner is endorsed by Mondaire Jones, Jamaal Bowman, Ayanna Presley, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush. Brown is endorsed by Clyburn, Joyce Beatty, Marc Veasey, newest member of Congress Troy Carter, and Stacey Plaskett, a nonvoting member representing the Virgin Islands. Counting just voting members of Congress would give Turner an outright advantage.
The CBC declined to explain how its endorsement decision was made and whether the entirety of the caucus was polled before that endorsement and subsequent campaign commitment was made, though indications are that they were not.
The role of the CBC is broadly understood to be the expansion of Black political, economic, and social power. But in practice, and in its political action committee in particular, it does something very different. In recent cycles, it has shown willingness to oppose Black challengers if one of its members is up for re-election, as well as a willingness to oppose Black challengers in favor of white incumbents. Now, it’s willing to intervene in an open primary between two Black non-members, on behalf of a candidate who doesn’t even have formal majority support within the caucus.
The through line, of course, is ideological. As with many other Democrats who have endorsed in this race, much of it comes down to score-settling, and a chance to knock down the Sanders wing. Clyburn knows that if he is able to push Brown across the finish line, he will secure another loyalist in the House, shoring up his position further (why an octogenarian is worried about this rather than, say, passing legislation, is a question worth asking). Joyce Beatty, the current CBC chair, faced a progressive primary challenge in her own Ohio district last year, which she was none too pleased about, from Nina Turner endorser Morgan Harper. Most importantly, Brown, as a corporate cash–fueled centrist who opposes Medicare for All, is most closely allied politically with Clyburn himself and CBC PAC chairman Gregory Meeks, who are using the organization to advance their own agenda.
In fact, the actions of the CBC PAC in the last year-plus closely mirror those of the conservative super PAC Democratic Majority for Israel. The two functionally teamed up last year when DMFI spent more than $1.5 million attacking Jamaal Bowman and supporting then-incumbent CBC endorsee Eliot Engel. DMFI has put up nearly $700,000 for Brown at last count.
The clear ideological bent of what’s supposed to be a non-ideological institution creates a legitimacy and credibility problem. If Brown loses, the CBC’s endorsement will be tarnished even further, adding on to a rough 2020 congressional cycle. And given the energy Clyburn and Meeks have thrown into keeping Turner from winning, it’s worth wondering whether Turner would decline to join the CBC in the case of a victory, a move that would weaken the CBC as well. Rep. Bush vocally considered not joining after the CBC opposed her election, but did eventually join.
Meanwhile, the CBC’s signature legislative contribution, the police reform bill, is now months past the one-year deadline for completion and remains wholly unresolved. Clyburn could spend his time, money, and energy drumming up public support for that, although he’s actually spent more energy undercutting the bill on the cable news circuit than demanding its passage. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ various attempts at voting rights bills, one of which is named for former CBC member John Lewis and which aims to preempt Jim Crow–style Black disenfranchisement, is all but dead, and the CBC has flexed little muscle to save it.
For now, the caucus’s leadership seems content to stoke the divisions of the party’s 2016 presidential primary, to the disservice of its own membership, in a race of troublingly low stakes compared to the electoral threats that loom.
