GOP Fills in for the Warren Wing

Can Oregon Fail Up in the Dem primary? Related: pragmatic Senators run ahead of Biden in the New York Times polls

The symbiotic relationship between the Far Left and the GOP is appearing on TV ads in Oregon ahead of Tuesday’s primary election. This 5th congressional district contest represents a stark clash between a Far Left candidate who lost last cycle and a proven pragmatic winner.

As one would expect, an ad is airing that plays up this contrast.

“Democrats, it’s time to put our values into action. That’s why Jamie McLeod-Skinner is leading the fight, supporting Medicare For All … putting progressive values into action.”

The catch? This ad, targeting progressive voters, is being run by a Republican firm.

Parties elevating the more extreme candidate on the other side is as good an argument for primary reform as any. And, unfortunately, progressives have already shown it works in OR-5.

Cleaning Up After Progressive Overreach In Oregon

Oregon voters will select their nominee for Oregon’s 5th district on Tuesday. Democrats who like winning should choose Janelle Bynum. Despite voting for Joe Biden by nine points in 2020, the 5th congressional district is now represented by a rookie Republican, due to progressives putting forward a stunningly weak general candidate who knocked off an incumbent moderate in the midterm primary. We detailed the disaster last year in Oregon Fail:

Heading into the 2022 cycle, Oregon’s fifth congressional district had been held by Kurt Schrader, an incumbent moderate Democrat who won each of his races by 7+ points for the past decade. Not only did Schrader proudly tout his membership in the centrist Blue Dog, New Democrat, and Problem Solvers caucuses, but he became a controversial figure on the left when he voted against parts of President Biden’s agenda.

Unable to bear the prospect of two more years of insufficient progressivism from Schrader, the far-left stepped in to make him pay. Despite the fact that President Biden had endorsed him for re-election — and warnings that a more progressive candidate would jeopardize a Democratic seat —  Elizabeth Warren, Our Revolution, and the Working Families Party threw their weight behind a progressive Democratic primary challenger named Jamie McLeod-Skinner.

What had McLeod-Skinner been up to during the decade of Schrader’s incumbency? In 2012, she was a Santa Clara city councilor (yes, Santa Clara, California — 600 miles south of OR-05). By 2017, McLeod had moved to Phoenix, Oregon, where she was fired from her job as city manager after four months due to staff complaints. In 2018, McLeod-Skinner lost a bid for Oregon’s 2nd Congressional seat. In 2020, she lost in the Democratic primary for Oregon’s Secretary of State.

In 2022, after losing the prior two cycles in other races, McLeod-Skinner managed to topple Schrader in one of the cycle’s biggest primary upsets.

What happened in November? McLeod-Skinner lost the general election by 2.2 points. Next month, her opponent will become the first Republican to represent OR-05 in 20 years.

Since then, McLeod-Skinner has been exposed for her disastrous mismanagement of the campaign and her abusive treatment of staff:

But former staff who worked closely with McLeod-Skinner say her public persona and the labor-friendly policies she espouses as a candidate clash with her workplace behavior. Five former employees and a consultant who spoke to the Capital Chronicle about their experiences described her as a nightmarish boss, who yelled at and berated her staff, corralled them into frequent hours-long meetings, texted them in the middle of the night and retaliated against those who stood up to her.

The employees, all of whom worked closely with McLeod-Skinner on teams of fewer than 10 people, described a pattern of behavior that stretched across three campaigns and appears to be part of her management style: Before her first congressional run, a small Oregon city fired her as city manager following similar complaints from city employees.

Failed “Warren Democrat”

McLeod-Skinner had been buoyed by Elizabeth Warren’s endorsement in the Democrat-on-Democrat primary challenge in 2022. After the election, we took to the pages of CommonWealth Magazine to point out how the Massachusetts Senator helped deliver control of the US House to Republicans:

As we noted last week in the context of Jonathan Chait’s masterpiece argument against ‘Solidarity’, while “the Far Left paints the Moderate Democrat as the tool of the Right, it is actually the Right and the Far Left that have a symbiotic relationship.”

We do have to credit Senator Warren for learning a partial lesson, at least. McLeod-Skinner’s current website shows no endorsement from Senator Warren in this 2024 race. And the Warren Democrats social media account shows just three posts since Thanksgiving (one is a sale on merchandise, another offers a free sticker).

Sure seems like the Far Left has peaked? 

Enter a NewDEAL Leader

If the Far Left is stepping down, who will step up?

Enter Bynum. The state legislator - and NewDEAL Leader -  takes a pragmatic approach to policymaking and has crafted a bipartisan record of policy accomplishments:

Rep. Janelle Bynum, D-Clackamas, keeps a ceramic winged pig on her desk in the Oregon House. Bynum collects pigs with wings, she explained to her colleagues on Thursday, because she believes in the possibility of the Legislature accomplishing great things. 

“I’m an optimist,” she said. “They say when pigs fly, something will happen, so that’s why I keep the pig.”

That pig took flight – with a boost from Bynum – on Thursday afternoon as the state House passed the $210 million Oregon CHIPS Act, a semiconductor funding bill Bynum and other supporters view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure the state’s future in the tech industry and guarantee high-paying jobs for thousands of Oregonians. 

“We’ve never had this kind of pro-business, pro-worker, pro-Oregon collaboration in recent history,” Bynum said. “We’ve never had this.”

Without a push from the Warren Democrats, the Republicans are stepping in to give McLeod-Skinner a hand. Let’s hope it doesn’t get McLeod-Skinner over the top again.

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The New York Times Polls Are Bad, But They Point To The Path for Victory

Back to the biggest news story of last week. The Biden campaign received a set of bad polls from The New York Times:

The surveys by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found that Mr. Trump was ahead among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup against Mr. Biden in five of six key states: Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden led among registered voters in only one battleground state, Wisconsin.

But interestingly, swing-state senators are faring quite a bit better:

Democratic candidates for the Senate in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin lead their Republican rivals and are running well ahead of President Biden in key states where he continues to struggle, according to polls by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College.

The battleground surveys of registered voters indicate that the president’s difficulties against former President Donald J. Trump may not be enough to sink other Democrats, especially Senate incumbents who are facing less-well-known Republicans.

Ticket-splitters are not abundant — about 10 percent of Trump voters back the Democratic candidate for Senate in the four states, while about 5 percent of Biden supporters back the Republican.

But those voters are enough to give Democrats a chance at holding the Senate, where they currently hold a one-seat majority. To maintain control, the Democrats would have to sweep every competitive Senate seat and win the White House.

While much of the NYT’s write-up focuses on Israel-Gaza (an issue whose electoral importance is belied by their own poll and others), the strength of swing-state Democrats points to why Biden is falling behind. These swing state Democrats have crafted centrist brands that resonate with moderate voters. Meanwhile, Biden has been pulled left because he is listening to the losers of the 2020 primary election.  And indeed, the weakness that Biden is seeing is concentrated among the most moderate voters:

These change voters are not necessarily demanding a more ideologically progressive agenda. In the last Times/Siena poll of the same states, 11 percent of registered voters thought that Mr. Biden was not progressive or liberal enough. And while many liberal or progressive voters want major changes, relatively few of those voters are defecting from Mr. Biden.

Instead, Mr. Biden’s losses are concentrated among moderate and conservative Democratic-leaning voters, who nonetheless think that the system needs major changes or to be torn down altogether. Mr. Trump wins just 2 percent of Mr. Biden’s “very liberal” 2020 voters who think the system at least needs major changes, compared with 16 percent of those who are moderate or conservative.

Swing state voters basically think their senators are doing well, but that a Massachusetts Senator runs the White House. Voters in Oregon, and around the country, will not choose that path. Biden needs to get back on the path to Win The Middle, before it’s too late.