John Minchillo/AP Photo
Jamaal Bowman, who is running against veteran Rep. Eliot Engel in NY-16, at a polling place this morning
Today, voters head to the polls in six states to vote in primary elections, both scheduled and rescheduled due to the coronavirus. There have been other primaries since anti-racism protests surged at the end of May, but figuratively speaking, you can call these elections the first of the George Floyd era. They should provide an early opportunity to see just how much energy the Black Lives Matter movement has converted into electoral power. All eyes will be on two races in particular, in New York and Kentucky, where progressive black challengers Charles Booker and Jamaal Bowman are surging in their races’ final days, taking on well-funded establishment opponents in races for the House and the Senate.
In Kentucky, Booker’s campaign is looking to pull off a stunning upset against former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath. Last cycle, McGrath ran a well-funded failed campaign for a House seat, and she was crowned as the Democratic choice to challenge Mitch McConnell by Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as far back as early 2019. McGrath has been a heavy favorite since that point, running a middle-of-the-road, make-no-commitments campaign opposed to just about every progressive agenda item on the list. Yet despite what was a 50-to-1 fundraising disadvantage, Booker, a state representative riding a wave of national endorsements, has managed to make this contest competitive.
Booker has been a highly visible presence at protests of police violence in the state where Breonna Taylor was killed by Louisville police. McGrath, by contrast, has refused to attend Black Lives Matter rallies, threatening to be exposed as badly out of step with the current political moment. Booker has nabbed endorsements from national electeds like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; local politicians like Alison Lundergan Grimes (who challenged McConnell in 2014); and media figureheads like influential sports radio host Matt Jones and the Louisville Courier-Journal, the state’s largest newspaper, giving him huge momentum right at the finish line. The most recent polling released on the race had Booker ahead 44-36.
McGrath has closed out the campaign with a wall-to-wall television ad blitz, blanketing Kentucky and even neighboring states with platitudinous high-dollar spots, the last line of defense of a campaign with a stunning $41 million and little else to lean on. All those millions haven’t made McGrath popular locally; the aforementioned poll puts her favorable rating at an astounding -35 and has her down to McConnell by 20 points. Looming over the operation is the state cutting polling locations from 3,700 to just 200 ahead of today’s events, a scandalous development. In Jefferson County, where half of the state’s black voters reside, there will be just one solitary polling place to service the 616,000 registered voters in the region that encompasses Louisville and its surrounding areas. Kentucky officials claim this was done entirely out of caution against more coronavirus infections, and that the decisions were made before it looked like the McGrath-Booker race, the only substantive primary on the ballot, would be close. Expansive early voting and mail-in balloting has actually put the state on a path to record primary turnout, though the late Booker surge could still mean long in-person lines today, and play a role in the outcome.
It would be nothing short of astonishing if Booker succeeds. Candidates with DSCC backing haven’t lost a primary in a decade, and Booker’s fundraising deficit is profound. With the coronavirus lockdowns, McGrath’s reach on television is likely to be even more powerful. And despite that single favorable poll, McGrath’s internal polling has consistently shown her up 10 percent (internals tend to skew favorable to the campaign that commissioned them, but it’s a big lead regardless). McGrath has every structural advantage but momentum. On that count, Booker certainly has her beat.
In New York, meanwhile, a number of highly competitive primaries for House seats in safe blue districts could see some upsets as well. The highest-profile opportunity comes in NY-16, where middle school principal Jamaal Bowman is taking on House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel. An opponent of the Iran deal and favorite of the defense industry, Engel has looked to endorsements from Democratic establishment pols to save his sinking campaign: Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Jim Clyburn, and the Congressional Black Caucus have stamped their seal of approval.
But Bowman has animated progressives nationwide, and particularly in the Bronx and Westchester, where Engel is notorious for his absenteeism. Bowman, like Booker, is riding a surge of momentum, with endorsements and grassroots donations pouring in. Recent polling, covered first by the Prospect, has him up ten points with 27 percent undecided.
Bowman has animated progressives nationwide, and particularly in the Bronx and Westchester, where Engel is notorious for his absenteeism.
In neighboring NY-17, Mondaire Jones, another black New York progressive, is in prime position to take over the seat of the outgoing Nita Lowey. According to recent figures, Jones holds a slight edge on the rest of the field, which counts among it David Carlucci, the turncoat Democrat who helped Republicans maintain control of the New York State Senate for almost a decade, as I wrote last October.
Meanwhile, in NY-15, what’s considered by many to be the bluest district in the entire country, a relatively muddled race could break any number of ways. According to the only poll we’ve seen this month, Ruben Diaz Sr., a virulent and vocal homophobe and one of the most conservative Democrats in America, held a narrow lead. Close on his heels was Ritchie Torres, endorsed by The New York Times editorial board and esteemed California Rep. Katie Porter. Torres was once thought of as a promising young progressive, but then helped crush a police accountability bill during his time on the New York City Council, which looks particularly troubling in this political moment.
Meanwhile, Samelys López, who was lagging behind the field, is riding a last second surge of her own according to recent filings, pulling in huge donation numbers after late endorsements from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others. As a Working Families Party endorsee, she could run as a third-party candidate in November, if the conservative Diaz wins the Democratic nomination, as I wrote here. With little polling and a cluttered field that also features former city council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and assemblymember Michael Blake, this race could go any number of directions.
Other races in New York could surprise for progressives as well. In NY-9, Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke squeaked out a 53-47 victory over community organizer Adem Bunkeddeko in 2018, and Bunkeddeko is running it back, again sporting the endorsement of The New York Times editorial board. But Clarke has moved to the left since that primary, and is now a co-chair of the Medicare for All caucus, which has somewhat appeased her progressive critics.
In NY-12, attorney Suraj Patel is back for a rematch against Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who beat him 60-40 in an expensive 2018 primary. Like in Bunkeddeko’s case, a second challenge tends to afford the benefit of increased name recognition, crucial to toppling an incumbent. And a recent examination of Maloney’s track record on law and order in The Intercept showed that Maloney is more out of step with the community than one would have expected just a month ago. However, Patel is this time on the wrong end of a huge fundraising disadvantage, as Maloney has outspent him better than 3-to-1. There’s also a third candidate in the race, Lauren Ashcraft, making it harder to outvote the incumbent.
And, of course, there’s NY-14, where AOC is running for re-election. One might think that AOC is a slam dunk, but her opponent, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a conservative CNBC commentator who registered as a Democrat to try to take her out, is amply funded by right-wing forces and Wall Street and shouldn’t be taken lightly. AOC is a prodigious fundraiser, but doesn’t take PAC money; MCC is PAC money incarnate.
Any one of these races would be considered an upset, a major triumph for progressive forces across the country.
Money matters. And progressives all over the state are running at a deficit to their corporate-sponsored, largely incumbent counterparts. Any one of these races would be considered an upset, a major triumph for progressive forces across the country. And while progressives, seeing recent polls and protests, are optimistic for today’s returns, a note of caution: House races are notoriously fickle and difficult to handicap, and most of these races are being informed by a solitary, untested poll, or no poll at all, for the entire month of June.
Unprecedented uncertainty brought by New York’s new voting procedures and the coronavirus compounds that unpredictability even further. Though New York is no Kentucky, challenges remain for accessing the vote, inordinately felt by poorer, less white voters, many of whom make up the core constituency of these progressive candidates. Already, New York City has claimed it is overwhelmed by the very vote-by-mail requests it has encouraged voters to pursue.
According to The New York Times, existing New York state law dictates that elections officials can’t begin to count mail-in ballots until eight days after the election, a major issue for an election that will likely be decided by mail-in votes. So it may be a while before we know the results. It’s a cliché in politics to say that no one really knows what will happen; today, more than ever, that is true.
