Progressive Candidates Emerge to Take on Blue Dog Dems

“If we embrace progressive values and the idea of diversity as our advantage, we can win through inclusion, we can form this big tent around progressive values.”

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Georgia’s 13th Congressional District, encompassing parts of Atlanta and its suburbs, is a Democratic stronghold. Its representative since 2003 has been David Scott, a member of the House’s Blue Dog Coalition, which bills itself as pragmatic and fiscally conservative, pro-defense and “appealing to the mainstream values of the American public.”

Scott, an African American, has ran unopposed numerous times. In 2018, he did have a Republican opponent, against whom he won reelection with 76 percent of the vote. 

But now Scott is facing a different kind of opposition, from within his own party. Michael Owens, the former Cobb County Democratic Party Chair, is challenging Scott in the 2020 Democratic primary. Owens, also African American, is a military veteran who works as political director for the Truman National Security Center, based in Washington, D.C. He is also the founder and president of the U.S. Global Center of Cyber Policy, a nonprofit that deals with cybersecurity issues. He pledges to run a campaign without help from corporate PACs, industry, or Wall Street.

“If we embrace progressive values and the idea of diversity as our advantage, we can win through inclusion, we can form this big tent around progressive values,” Owens tells The Progressive. 

For 2020, another wave of progressive Congressional candidates are beginning to launch campaigns in hopes of continuing to build on the successes of 2018.

In the 2018 midterm elections, dozens of progressive candidates across the United States emerged to challenge incumbent Democrats in Congress, many of whom have long represented largely Democratic districts with little to no opposition. One of those challengers, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, defeated Representative Joe Crowley, Democrat of New York, the fourth-highest ranking Democrat in the House, demonstrating that progressives can be successful in taking on the Democratic establishment and pulling the party to the left. 

Now in preparation for 2020, another wave of progressive Congressional candidates are beginning to launch campaigns in hopes of continuing to build on the successes of Ocasio-Cortez and Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who also took on an incumbent centrist Democrat and won. 

As chair of the Cobb County Democratic Party, Owens helped flip Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in 2018, when Democrat Lucy McBath defeated Republican incumbent Karen Handel. He’s trying to continue leading that grassroots, progressive approach to winning in Georgia. 

“It’s been successful. Stacy Abrams was successful doing it here in our state and within my district. All I’m trying to do is keep that work going,” Owens says. “When it boils down to it, that’s not where our current Congressman is. Our Congressman is one of the last blue dogs out there, someone who is highly absent and out of line with the district.” 

Owens’ platform includes supporting medicare for all, the Green New Deal, increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour—all progressive policies that Scott has declined to co-sponsor in the House. 

Scott is one of fifteen conservative Democrats listed in a recent report by the progressive group, Roots Action, as incumbent Congressional representatives who should face progressive primary challengers. At least nine of the Democrats listed in the report now have progressive primary opponents in 2020. 

Another conservative Democrat named in the report is Representative Derek Kilmer, who represents Washington’s 6th Congressional District and serves as chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition. He is facing a progressive primary challenge from grassroots organizer Rebecca Parson in 2020. 

“After the 2016 election, I became involved with my local Indivisible chapter in Tacoma, and I was co-leader of that for over a year,” Parson tells The Progressive. “We used Indivisible strategy, but it wasn’t really effective on our member of Congress, but not for our lack of trying,” 

Kilmer’s office, she said, would consistently respond with generic thank you notes, but never changed when it came to supporting progressive policies or stepping up on important issues facing the district.  

Though Washington is generally viewed as one of the nation’s most progressive states, several of its Congressional districts are represented by centrist Democrats. 

“It’s not enough to just have a Democrat,” Parson says. “It’s great we have somebody with a ‘D’ next to their name, but we really need somebody to fight for policies that will help people.”

She cites Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, free college tuition, and affordable housing as some of the progressive policy issues she’s fighting for in her campaign. Parson notes that the cost of rent in Tacoma is increasing at some of the nation’s highest rates, due to out of town developers buying up buildings and pushing out vulnerable tenants. And that is leading to rampant homelessness in Tacoma and rural areas throughout the district. 

Unlike the incumbent, Parson has sworn off campaign donations from corporate PACs and lobbyists. “Money has a lot of corrupting influence on our politics and what can get done, which is why we have this incrementalist, defeatist attitude,” adds Parson. “I believe the problems that face us are drastic crisis level problems that cannot be addressed by tiny reforms approved by lobbyists.” 

In Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, incumbent Representative Kurt Schrader, a Blue Dog Coalition member, has embraced centrism over progressive policies like medicare for all. 

Mark Gamba, the current mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon, a city of around 20,000 people, is looking to unseat Schrader in the 2020 Democratic Primary election. Schrader has one of the lowest environmental ratings among current Democrats in the House, has taken money from the NRA, and received the most oil and gas donations of any House Democrat last election cycle while opposing the Green New Deal. 

“I’m seeing people lose their housing, retired people who thought they were set and rents have gone up so much or their medical bills are outpacing their income,” Gamba says in an interview. “We’re seeing more homeless people on the street as a direct result of a lot of policies that predominantly comes from the federal government.”

Gamba says he’s tried to work with Schrader on several issues during the past year, but to no avail. He alleges that is because of Schrader’s fidelity to the special interests that fund his campaign.

“It’s really important for people to pay attention to whom their representatives actually represent, who it is their representatives go to bat for and really fight for as opposed to the nice words they say in a town hall or the way they’ll vote on a foregone conclusion,” Gamba says. “It really matters where they put their efforts, I think if people did that, there are a lot of conservative blue dog Democrats that would no longer be in office.