The New Republic has a story up by David Dayen about three Democrats who are running to flip seats in Congress from red to blue and are aligned with Bernie Sanders. All three of these candidates are running in contested primaries, one for an open House seat in a swing district, one for a House seat held by a freshman Republican in a swing district, and one for a Senate seat against a freshman Republican in a swing seat. If the revolution is going to materialize, it will show up in races like these: progressive Democrats winning seats that Republicans have legitimate chances to win.
Zephyr Teachout is running for New York’s 19th district, which is open since the incumbent Republican is retiring. The prognosticators consider this a toss up. Teachout came out of nowhere to challenge Andrew Cuomo in the 2014 Democratic gubernatorial primary and pretty much ended the conservative Cuomo’s national aspirations when she pulled in a third of the vote against the sitting governor, winning many upstate counties including most of the ones in the 19th.
Removing big money from politics is one of Teachout’s top issues. In fact, she highlights corporate concentration of power as the primary economic and political problem. “In the conversations I’ve had, people don’t love big cable companies, they don’t love big banks,” Teachout says. “People know something is deeply wrong, and they’re open to all kinds of different solutions.”
Lucy Flores is running in Nevada’s 4th district. The incumbent, Cresent Hardy, is considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress.
Her main issues align with Sanders’s—a higher minimum wage and access to education, in particular debt-free college. “How is it that you can break a cycle of poverty to end up in a cycle of debt?” she says. Like Sanders, she sees these as winning issues, citing ballot victories on the minimum wage and marijuana legalization in red states during a midterm dominated by Republicans in 2014. To those who say big ideas have no chance in Congress, Flores counters that small ideas don’t, either. “The GOP has voted 60 or 70 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” she says. “I can’t see Republicans working with Secretary Clinton on some small improvement when they did the opposite with President Obama. We should be trying to move forward a progressive agenda. There is nothing to lose.”
John Fetterman is running for Senate in Pennsylvania. Pat Toomey won this seat in the Republican wave of 2010 and holds one of the seats Democrats are in a position to win in order to gain control of the Senate. I remember hearing about Fetterman a few years ago as the eccentric mayor of Braddock, PA on the Daily Show and he is now ready for bigger things.
Fetterman’s work in Braddock has garnered national acclaim. Crime is down, access to health care is up, and infusions of art and culture have summoned hope from the bleakness. But Fetterman says he was always brutally honest with voters. “When I was first elected, I said, I can’t bring 14 furniture stores back to Braddock,” he says. “Same with Congress, one senator won’t run the show. I’m a big believer in talking to voters like the intelligent, rational people they are. But that doesn’t mean you’re not able to make things happen.”
If elected, Fetterman says he would use the Senate as a bully pulpit, much the way Sanders and Warren amplify their issues. He wants to draw attention to the inequality of geography, how “the zip code you’re born into has an overwhelming effect on how your life turns out.” He gets emotional talking about opportunity for all, from immigrants seeking a better life (his Brazilian wife is undocumented) to unemployed factory workers looking for a chance. “At meet-and-greets, I say, who here is successfully living on nine bucks an hour? Nobody raises their hand. So why do we pretend that it’s possible?”
This is where the rubber hits the road folks. The President isn’t actually all that powerful, Congress is where the real power lies. If you live in any of these places and want to get involved or just wanna drop a few dollars to help out some proud progressives:
Fetterman’s site has the best presentation of the three, by far.
Flores offers a more cookie cutter political website.
Teachout is pretty much just asking for money at this point apparently. Hopefully the five bucks I just gave her will help build a more substantial portal.
And of course I have to mention Tim Canova who is running against Debbie Wasserman-Shultz in Florida’s 23rd district.
When Bernie says this race is about us, this is what he means. A revolution is not a one man show.