Progressive Democrats are facing their biggest test in New York

Four years ago, progressive Democrats in New York caused a political earthquake when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley. The congresswoman’s victory played a central role in the birth of the Squad, the plucky progressive bloc that came together within the Democratic House caucus after the party took back the chamber in 2018.

Ocasio-Cortez and her Squad colleagues — Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — added two to their number in 2020, when Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush turfed out longtime Democratic incumbents in New York and Missouri.

It seemed for a while that the Squad and progressives generally might form a powerful bloc to prod House Democratic leadership in their direction. In the same way, the right-wing grassroots Tea Party movement gave birth to the House Freedom Caucus, home of Donald Trump’s most devoted footsoldiers. For a while, it seemed really possible.

Since then, though, progressives have seen their influence diminish.

Many Democrats blamed the Squad’s “defund the police’’ mantra and its “socialist” rhetoric  for some moderate members’ losses in the 2020 congressional election. The faction failed to stop House Speaker Nancy Pelosi passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill without a hard commitment from Senator Joe Manchin to support Build Back Better (remember that?), the enormous spending bill he single-handedly killed after months of negotiations. And their disappointments aren’t limited to the Capitol: New York’s mayoral election last year saw their preferred candidate Maya Wiley place third – and the city is now led by the decidedly non-left-wing Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain.

Since then, progressives have had a decidedly mixed primary season. Bush and Tlaib won their primaries handily, and prospective congresswoman Summer Lee broke through in Pennsylvania despite an onslaught from outside money groups. But Omar had a near-miss two weeks ago when primary challenger Don Samuels got within striking distance of her.

Michigan Congressman Andy Levin, a Progressive Caucus member who succeeded his father Sandy and whose uncle Carl was a Senator, lost to the decidedly more moderate Representative Haley Stevens after redistricting forced them into a member-on-member primary. Perhaps most gallingly of all, anti-abortion incumbent Representative Henry Cuellar beat back progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros in Texas’s 28th district – thanks partially to the support of Pelosi.

And so to today, when some of progressives’ final showdowns are taking place in New York, where a chaotic round of redistricting has thrown the primary map into turmoil.

Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, a moderate who is also the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, successfully muscled progressive Representative Mondaire Jones out of his redrawn 17th district. He now faces Alessandra Biaggi, a state Senator who beat back a moderate Democrat in the 2018 primary.

Biaggi has successfully won Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement – but Biaggi rankled some elder Democratic leaders when she tweeted: “At the risk of sounding ageist, it’s still important to ask: when a majority of Congress is past child-bearing age, how fierce can we expect their fight [for parental leave and child care] to be?” Her caveat was not enough, and many Democratic leaders in the district did read the tweet as disrespectful.

Jones, meanwhile, was left without a political home, and decided to run in the state’s 10th district instead. But the progressive vote there is split between Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, former Representative Elizabeth Holtzman and Jones, among others. That potentially creates an opening for the decidedly more moderate (and self-funded) Daniel Goldman, heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, who served as a Democratic attorney in Trump’s first impeachment.

Meanwhile, Bowman is fighting to hold on in the new 16th district, where faces two primary challengers from Westchester County. Both have dinged him on being a performative member of Congress rather than getting things done – and Eliot Engel, the congressman whom Bowman beat in 2020, has endorsed Vedat Gashi, one of Bowman’s challengers.

Incidentally, Ocasio-Cortez is one of the few progressives who has been spared a serious challenge this cycle. As City and State NY reported, she has raised a gobsmacking $10.2 million, putting her out of range for even the wealthiest would-be rivals. But it is entirely possible that come January, she and her cohort might have fewer allies in the House.