I see that the organization Brand New Congress has made its first endorsement. It's a guy named Chardo Richardson, who seems like a really good guy and the kind of candidate Democrats should be recruiting. He is also being endorsed by the Justice Democrats, about whom a couple of diaries were written yesterday.
brandnewcongress.org
justicedemocrats.com/...
What I don’t understand is why Richardson is running in Florida’s 9th District, which is held by Democrat Darren Soto. I am all for running primaries against bad Democrats, but Soto’s congressional career spans all of 24 days and the most notable thing he has done is boycott Trump’s inauguration. Early in his legislative career had had some bad votes on guns and abortion rights, but his voting record improved significantly as time went on and he seems to be pretty progressive. I also see that this is Alan Grayson’s old seat and that Soto defeated Grayson’s wife (his current wife, not the ex-wife he allegedly abused for years) in the primary.
If Soto is a bad guy and I just missed that, fine — my bad. But if groups like Brand New Democrats and Justice Democrats are just about running primaries in safe Democratic seats (like this one) that is a tremendous waste of resources. I note in going through the Brand New Congress website that they are looking for a candidate to run against John Lewis in Atlanta. In fact, the only Democrats whose seats where they say candidates may not be needed are those Democrats who endorsed Bernie Sanders. Again, what a tremendous waste of resources.
Is it too much to ask that we focus on running against Republicans and the Democrats who actually deserve to be primaried?