PHILADELPHIA — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s voice boomed over the crowd of progressive activists that had packed the pews and lined the walls of a North Philadelphia church. “The very foundations of our democracy are being shaken with the attacks on the Voting Rights Act,” the New York Democrat warned.
But Ocasio-Cortez pointed to hope for resistance in a “city of abolitionists and organizers,” where “somebody in each generation refused to accept the world as it was.” For her, that meant supporting congressional candidate Chris Rabb, who she was rallying alongside Friday.
A day earlier, in a too-hot conference room near City Hall, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison made a similar appeal to a couple dozen community leaders — about Sharif Street.
“You saw what they just did with the VRA. They’re not done,” said Ellison, a former House member, as sweat beaded on his forehead. “The time requires not just inspirational leadership. And it sure requires principled leadership. And in Sharif we have both.”
Republicans’ rush to erase majority-Black seats across the South after the Supreme Court weakened the VRA has turbocharged the primary for an open congressional seat in this northern city long at the forefront of the civil rights movement. The crowded race to replace retiring Rep. Dwight Evans in the 3rd District, which spans from South Philadelphia to Chestnut Hill and is the bluest in the country, has divided Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Democrats. And it has fueled a family fight within the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), with some members choosing sides between the three Black candidates in Pennsylvania’s sole majority-Black district.
Red-state gerrymanders threaten to force up to one third of the 63-member caucus from office, including some of its longest-tenured and most influential leaders like Reps. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). It’s a major challenge to one of the most powerful voting blocs in Congress and a pillar of the Democratic Party, just as one of its own, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), could ascend to the speakership if Democrats retake the chamber. And it comes at a time when the CBC was already facing generational and ideological divides, with younger members and candidates pushing to inject fresh vigor into an aging caucus that has long been deferential to seniority.
The upheaval has placed outsized importance on primaries that could impact Black representation in Congress. The Congressional Black Caucus PAC is playing a role in several of these races by backing Black candidates, throwing its support behind former Rep. Colin Allred against Rep. Julie Johnson in a high-profile Texas runoff, and endorsing first-time candidate Lauren Babb Tomlinson in a crowded field that includes independent Rep. Kevin Kiley in California’s redrawn 6th District. It has stayed out of another redistricting-created fight, a generational member-on-member battle in Texas between Black Reps. Christian Menefee and Al Green.
“The CBC is and will always be the conscience of Congress. Our members share the core values of protecting and preserving voting rights, creating an affordable America with opportunity for all, and defeating the extremist politics of Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans,” said Chris Taylor, a spokesperson for the Congressional Black Caucus PAC. “We will win in November and further the people’s agenda.”
And it has ratcheted up the stakes late in the game in Philadelphia, where Democrats were already warring over who best meets the moment.
“We are facing an existential crisis,” said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), a 38-year-old progressive member of the caucus from the Pittsburgh area who has endorsed Rabb. “We need people who understand the urgency of right now. There are old ways of doing things and there are bold ways of doing things. And they’re not the same.”
Evans has a different approach in mind. And the 72-year-old five-term representative and longtime state lawmaker who is retiring after missing months of House votes in 2024 following a stroke, has a different candidate — Ala Stanford, a pediatric surgeon and political novice who emerged as an early front-runner with his backing — to execute it.
“[John Lewis] always talked about doing good things together,” Evans said, referencing the civil-rights icon and longtime Georgia lawmaker who died in 2020. “And what we desperately need — especially in this day and age, when you look at people talking about [gerrymandering] affecting Benny Thompson, Jim Clyburn — she more than anybody has the ability to bring [people] together.”
SCOTUS raises the stakes
The race to represent the 3rd District was already playing out as a messy microcosm of the stylistic and ideological fights roiling Democrats nationally.
“We know that the next member of Congress is going to be Black, we know they’re going to be a Democrat. The question is, what kind of Democrat are we sending to Congress amidst great dysfunction and chaos?” Rabb, a five-term state representative, told POLITICO. “I am the troublemaker of the three, and I believe we need a real troublemaker in troubled times. We need to shake things up.”
In interviews on the campaign trail across Philadelphia last week, the leading contenders offered similarly stark assessments of the potential ramifications of the recent Supreme Court ruling on Black representation and voting rights.
But they offered different approaches.
Rabb said “centrism and establishment politics is [not] going to get us anywhere beyond where we are now.”
Street, a state senator, former state Democratic Party chair and scion of a prominent North Philadelphia political family, said he would draw on his background as a lawyer and legislator to counterattack in the courts, in Congress and on the campaign trail by boosting Democratic turnout in the midterms.
Stanford, a former regional Health and Human Services director in the Biden administration, called for “fearless leaders” in the style of Clyburn who are also willing to work across the aisle to “find common ground” to advance voter protections and expand access.
“I am a disrupter,” Stanford said. “But [you also can’t be] a bull in a china shop and no matter which way you turn, you’re crushing and breaking everything but you’re not building anything.”
The candidates have also cleaved over whether to back Jeffries as speaker. Street has committed to the minority leader, and Stanford also said she’ll back him. But Rabb said he wants to see who runs before weighing in.
Redistricting has become a late-stage flashpoint on the campaign trail. The political arm of the pro-Rabb Working Families Party launched an ad Friday across digital and streaming platforms attempting to link Street to red-state gerrymanders by referencing a draft 2021 redistricting map the senator worked on with a key Republican that would have drawn Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle and GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick into the same district and created an incumbent-free seat in Philadelphia where Street could have run. The spot accused Street of trying to “sacrifice our power for himself.”
The map was never formally introduced and Street has distanced himself from it. He says he favored another that still would have drawn Boyle and Fitzpatrick into the same district but would have given Democrats an advantage in 10 of the state’s 17 congressional seats and grown the number of majority-Black districts.
Anthony Campisi, a spokesperson for Street, said the senator was trying to “bolster Pennsylvania maps against the type of attacks we’re seeing from Republicans in Washington now.”
A House caucus divided
As Rabb runs to the left, he’s picked up support from younger progressives like Lee and Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and a constellation of left-leaning groups including the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Meanwhile, Rep. Herb Conaway (D-N.J.), a fellow Black physician, is backing Stanford, who besides Evans also has support from Pennsylvania Democratic Reps. Madeleine Dean and Chrissy Houlahan, leading health officials and an outside super PAC that works to elect STEM candidates.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) offered 11th-hour support for Street in a rally Monday, positioning him as the best choice in a “time of crisis.” Street also has the backing of Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and the city’s Democratic establishment, along with a raft of high-profile state politicians like former Gov. Ed Rendell and state House Speaker Joanna McClinton.
Most CBC members have stayed out of the race, but some have made connections with candidates behind the scenes. Stanford said she met Clyburn, the Democratic kingmaker who is likely to lose his seat in a GOP gerrymander, at a book tour stop last December. She said she considers him a mentor and sends regular updates to his chief of staff. Clyburn’s office and an outside adviser did not respond to a request for comment.
Some presidential hopefuls have also waded in beyond Booker and Ocasio-Cortez in a race that will offer a directional test for Democrats. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are backing Rabb, while Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has not endorsed in the race, is working behind the scenes to block Rabb — even though he and Street have some historic beef of their own.
“This moment matters,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And if you want to change the Democratic Party, we have to change the kind of Democrats that get elected to serve in Congress.”
Cheyanne M. Daniels contributed to this report.
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