Nationwide, Progressive Candidates Are Leading and Winning

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1239 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser, what we’ve accomplished in the last year and our current goal, burnout prevention.

Lambert here: An Occupy Atlanta activist in 2011 becomes Mayor of Atlanta in 2017. Those on the left may, I think, be forgiven for being encouraged by the results in this post, despite the general hysteria, the gaslighting, and the incredibly noisy news flow. And do note the interesting result from ranked choice voting.

By Valerie Vande Panne, an AlterNet writing fellow who contributes to Columbia Journalism Review and Reuters news service, among other outlets. She is the former editor-in-chief of Detroit’s alt-weekly, the Metro Times, and the former news editor of High Times magazine. She is the founder of Blackbird Literacy, an organization providing books to residents and literacy programs in Detroit. Originally published at Alternet.

This year might not be a big election year, but since all politics is local, progressives are shaking up the establishment in elections nationwide.

Down south in Alabama, Randall Woodfin was elected mayor of Birmingham last week, unseating incumbent William Bell. Woodfin had backed Hillary in the 2016 primary, but received the Bernie Sanders-backed Our Revolution’s endorsement. Birmingham’s incumbent mayor was projected to win easily, with polls showing him in the lead as recently as August.

Up in Minneapolis, where the mayoral election will happen November 7, Our Revolution-backed candidate Ray Dehn won the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party convention (DFL, the state’s Democrats), while incumbent mayor Betsy Hodges received less than a quarter of the votes. Rather than vote to give Dehn the endorsement, Hodges and other Dems voted to adjourn the meeting. It was backroom finagling that according to witnesses at MinnPost “played into Dehn’s message — that he’s the outsider taking on a party establishment frightened by the incursion of new activists.”

Out West in New Mexico, Brian Colón, state Democratic Party chair, lost spectacularly in a run-off election for mayor of Albuquerque, despite out-raising his Our Revolution-backed opponent Tim Keller, with over $800,000 in his campaign coffer. The final run-off election will be on November 14.

And in Atlanta, Georgia, Vincent Fort is making a strong bid for mayor, on a platform of civil rights and reducing inequality—in the most unequal major city in the country. That election will be on November 7.

So what is going on? Why are these progressive candidates winning?

It could be a perfect mix of a population tired of out-of-touch politicians and ready—even desperate—to try something new.

In Minneapolis, incumbent Hodges, despite having a plethora of standard party endorsements, including the SEIU, Senator Al Franken and David Wheeler, president of the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation, isn’t doing too well, and her campaign seems to be a prime example of what the voters are fed up with: Wheeler’s endorsement reads like typical Democrat Party backslapping: “I supported her first campaign… Four years later she supported my election to the Board of Estimate and Taxation…”

In the wake of Justine Damond’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, Hodges went to Los Angeles to fundraise. (The hoity-toity event included a kombucha tasting with Garrison Keillor.) Despite the effort, she’s falling short with over $75,000 in debt and nearly $25,000 in unpaid vendor bills. In April, her campaign manager and organizing director both resigned. In September, six of her campaign staffers also jumped ship, including her director of communications.

Unlike Hodges, challenger Dehn is not the kind of politician you meet every day: In the wake of Damond’s—and Philando Castile and Jamar Clark’s—deaths by police shooting, the Minneapolis mayoral candidate is calling for a disarming and de-militarization of the Minneapolis police force. He also supports the elimination of systematic inequities and the generation of community wealth.

“I don’t believe all cops should carry guns all the time,” he told us over coffee near the Mall of America. “One, it’s not necessary… In no way should an unarmed person be shot. We have people in our community who won’t call the cops because they are afraid, afraid for themselves, and afraid for the person committing the crime.”

In Atlanta, Fort, also backed by Our Revolution, has a long history of fighting the establishment. As a member of Occupy Atlanta, he was arrested in 2011 when term limited-out mayor Kasim Reed shut the camp down. As a state senator, he passed a law that may have protected Georgia from the fallout of the mortgage crisis, were it not gutted by Republicans. When it was, his activism won settlements for local homeowners. Affordable housing and the decriminalization of marijuana are two of his top issues, along with a living wage, expanded public transit, investing in the arts, and police accountability.

In Albuquerque, Keller champions investing in local economy, especially small businesses. He also says he has a “long history of fighting subsidized sprawl” and insists on engaging the community. Like Woodfin, he doesn’t seem all that radical, just different, with an ear for his constituents, and with the backing of Our Revolution.

That backing is proving to be key. In Woodfin’s Birmingham race, Our Revolution mobilized with the Working Families Party to coordinate massive get-out-the-vote efforts. Together, their volunteers contacted tens of thousands of voters by voice and text message.

Yet of these candidates, Dehn and Fort seem to hit the ball closer to the working-class home, resonating across racial lines: “I believe that when people in the community do well, and the small businesses do well, it lifts the whole community, and those people stay in the community as it does better,” Dehn says. Their personal wealth, he explains, rises with the community. “It keeps them in their homes,” and prevents displacement and gentrification.

If Dehn seems like an unusual candidate, that’s because he is. A former felon who received a full pardon and became a state representative, one of the first things he did in office was get a bill passed that removed the question on criminal record from employment applications. “Every morning when I shave, I see a white man who has privilege, who can do many things because I’m white,” he tells us. “The people I left behind in prison… That’s why I run for office.”

When it comes to politics, Dehn is candid about his style, saying he’s “not a fan of negotiating to the middle. I think it’s a lazy way of negotiating.” When you understand what the other side is doing, he says, “It empowers you to get more in the end.”

While New Mexico is swimming in complaints and negative campaign ads, and Reed is outspoken against Fort, Dehn isn’t talking about Hodges, or the other contenders for the position. “I’m not an attack kind of guy,” he says. “You win with dignity by talking about your campaign.”

Minnesota’s ranked choice ballots seems to make this strategy more palatable, as candidates don’t want to leave any voter with a bad taste in their mouth.

What all these candidates have in common—along with many more nationwide, besides Our Revolution approval—appears be a strong belief in representing their constituencies.

That might mean different things in different places, but for the establishment, it means the two dominant parties may need to make some sincere changes, and fast. But given the apparent success of the underdogs this season—and the dramatic loss politics as usual cost in 2016—would that really be a bad thing?

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
This entry was posted in Guest Post, Politics on by .

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

17 comments

  1. flora

    ” while incumbent mayor Betsy Hodges received less than a quarter of the votes. Rather than vote to give Dehn the endorsement, Hodges and other Dems voted to adjourn the meeting.”

    Thanks for this post. Something similar wrt a KS state Dem conference vote not going the way the state Dem estab wanted, and so the vote was shut down. It’s helpful to see these aren’t just one-off instances, but may be part of – I won’t call it a pattern – a mindset at the top of the Dem party.

    1. Left in Wisconsin

      I’d be curious to see someone knowledgeable about Mpls politics weigh in. According to the linked article, in the first round of balloting, Dehn got 32%, Frey 28%, Hodges 24%, whereas it takes 60% to get an endorsement. It took a long time to have the first ballot and there were no further rounds (perhaps due to behind-the scenes machinations?) but not even Dehn suggested he could get to 60%. So the “rather than vote to give Dehn the endorsement” seems deliberately misleading.

      I knew Betsy Hodges way back in grad school, though I haven’t seen or spoken to her in probably 20 years. Back then, she was no Clinton-ite, which seems to be what the article is suggesting. But times, and people, change so who knows.

      1. UserFriendly

        Yes, Hodges is a Clintonite. We had a judge rule in favor of putting $15 on the ballot last november and she pushed the city attorney to appeal and won. Once she realized that she might not have the cake walk to reelection she was counting on she went and passed it legislatively. She has also totally botched 2 BLM blow ups.

        The endorsement caucus process here is dumb. It involves going to a bunch of long stupid events for several different saturdays. You would think the incumbent Mayor would have a lot of friends in the party to construct a win, or at least a strong showing but she is not all that well liked. Frey is just awful and totally bought by big business. Dehn’s campaign is being driven largely by Our Revolution and the candidates that got eliminated in the first round were likely to back Dehn in the second round so Frey and Hodges got their delegates to vote to adjourn.
        We also have a socialist running for Frey’s vacated seat on the city council.

  2. JTMcPhee

    On the other hand,

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein said today she would seek reelection.

    In a tweet, the 84-year-old centrist lawmaker said: “I am running for reelection to the Senate. Lots more to do: ending gun violence, combating climate change, access to healthcare. I’m all in!”

    Watch YOUR Post Office disappear! http://projectcensored.org/u-s-senator-dianne-feinsteins-husband-selling-post-offices-friends/ Never met a neocon-neoliberal salient she didn’t love….

    Anyone brave enough to take HER on? Hmmm? http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/17/feinstein-uncommitted-to-2018-run-as-progressives-mount-primary-challenge/

    1. Synoia

      In a tweet, the 84-year-old centrist lawmaker said: “I am running for reelection to the Senate. Lots more to do: ending gun violence, combating climate change, access to healthcare. I’m all in!

      She certainly is. All into what?

  3. readerOfTeaLeaves

    In Albuquerque, Keller champions investing in local economy, especially small businesses. He also says he has a “long history of fighting subsidized sprawl” and insists on engaging the community. Like Woodfin, he doesn’t seem all that radical, just different, with an ear for his constituents, and with the backing of Our Revolution.

    I’m glad that I’ve finally lived long enough to see the words ‘subsidized’ and ‘sprawl’ in the same sentence.

    1. Anon

      Actually, the Bank of America (of all institutions) did a study (1980?) on “sprawl” and found it to be subsidized: It cost $1.20 for every dollar it brought to municipal coffers. (Of course, City Fathers ignored it because developer$ control land-use (through graft/cunning).

      1. JTMcPhee

        Pave paradise, Putin a parking lot.

        See how easy that is?

        Are there Putin jokes, like the jejune Chuck Norris
        jokes?

  4. polecat

    So are these new-n-improved candidates going to vote to impose serious term limits across the board, or will they eventually do a 180°, thus becoming the new-n-improved version of Franken, DiFi, Pelosi, and the current malifactors ??

    This whole rotten husk of a grift engine needs to collapse, and I no longer believe it can be changed from within !!

  5. Arizona Slim

    From the post:

    “I don’t believe all cops should carry guns all the time,” he told us over coffee near the Mall of America. “One, it’s not necessary… In no way should an unarmed person be shot. We have people in our community who won’t call the cops because they are afraid, afraid for themselves, and afraid for the person committing the crime.”

    To which I say:

    I live in a historically black neighborhood near Downtown Tucson. Some of my elderly black neighbors are afraid to call the cops for the very same reason that’s stated above. Instead, they call me or another white neighbor, who makes the call to 911.

    It shouldn’t have to be this way.

    1. Katy

      Instead, they call me or another white neighbor, who makes the call to 911.

      Not even white people are immune from police brutality in Minneapolis. Justine Damond was a white woman, and she was murdered by a cop in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. Thus, this public commentary:
      TWIN CITIES POLICE EASILY STARTLED

  6. ChiGal in Carolina

    Dunno, CounterPunch today has a piece saying the Draconian budget and its impact on health care is making corporate Dems complacent: they think the Rs are going to pay such a high price that they can continue to disregard the Left wing of their own party. Ugh

  7. allan

    New Group Promises Real Money For Local Candidates Who Commit To Sweeping National Progressive Goals [BuzzFeed]

    Too good to be true? Why, now that you ask …

    Economist Jeffrey Sachs, former New York state senator Daniel Squadron, and Adam Pritzker of the wealthy Pritzker family will fund candidates — currently all Democrats running for state office — who commit to a range of policy targets for 2030. …

    The organization, a nonprofit set to launch Monday under the name Future Now, is described by one of its cofounders as an antidote to a moment where fraught partisan battles shape political debate, where lawmakers often resist the center, and special interests steer policy outcomes. …

    Pritzker, Pritzker, that name rings a bell … or rather, lights a heat lamp

    Less than 24-hours after turning heat lamps on strikers outside its entrance, Penny Pritzker’s Park Hyatt Chicago, the hotel has apologized …

    And failure to move to the center is clearly the heart of our national decline. #ResistResistingTheCenter

    1. John Zelnicker

      @allan – That same Penny Pritzker was the main supporter of an obscure Chicago community organizer and Illinois State Senator by the name of Barack Obama; for which she was rewarded by being appointed his Secretary of Commerce.

  8. Robert Dannin

    Our Revolution is settling into the swamp, just looking for wins. Here’s my letter to Nina Turner after they endorsed an incumbent New York City Councilor who has mortgaged his district to predatory real-estate developers.

    Dear Ms. Turner,

    I am the volunteer fundraiser for Carmen V. Hulbert, the Green Party candidate for New York City Council representing District 38 in Brooklyn. Carmen was elected in 2016 as a Sanders delegate from NY Congressional District 7 to the Democratic National Convention. She was the co-founder of Latinos for Bernie and a 25-year member of the Communications Workers of America. As the unopposed Green Party candidate Carmen is already on the November ballot. Her agenda is one of steadfast opposition to the municipal corruption machine including the police who regularly terrorize the most vulnerable members of the community, the working poor who are also without sufficient means to support her campaign. We hoped to receive a boost from an endorsement by Our Revolution.

    To that end, John Shultz of Berning Green (Brooklyn) filed our application on August 10, 2017. When we first inquired about the status of this request on Wednesday, August 23rd, Erika Andiola replied that Our Revolution had not received the application. We responded immediately with proof of a timely submission. Late Thursday evening August 24th we learned of Our Revolution’s decision to endorse the incumbent Democratic primary candidate. On Friday Carmen received this message from your Political Department stating,

    “At this time, Our Revolution cannot make an endorsement in your race. … We will continue to track the progress of this race, and may reassess our decision at any time if there are further developments.”

    If this suggests dissonance between the primary and general election campaigns, then I invite you to explain your choice, or lack thereof. If a candidate like Carmen is already on the November ballot, and you endorse someone else in the September Democratic primary, then how is that a political revolution? How does it contribute to advancing the popular cause? What clarity does this bring to the polls?

    It suggests instead a totally inappropriate form of hedging and prompts me to caution Our Revolution against being pimped by the political gangs of New York, specifically NYPAN, BPAN, DSA, City Hall, Red Horse and other entities attempting to manipulate the electoral chessboard. They have every reason to oppose a grassroots candidate like Carmen, an organic member of the community listening and speaking on its behalf. The competitive lobbying for OR’s endorsement ought to signal the very high stakes in a district currently besieged by the world’s most predatory real estate developers. The gangs want you to play their game. The people will surely lose if you do.

    But genuine revolutionaries resist top-down control and take chances, don’t they? They act in full awareness of the reactionary forces seeking destroy their movement. They realize their time is limited and use it wisely.

    Carpe Diem!

    Robert Dannin

Comments are closed.