lpetrich
Contributor
One will get a lot more meaningful choice in primaries than in general elections in such places, and these activists are taking advantage of that.The surge of grass-roots activism has come as a jolt in Massachusetts, which, because it is so firmly in the grip of one party, does not have a history of competitive primaries.
The old guard, the consulting class, hasn’t figured out a way of combating it,” said Jordan Meehan, 29, who turned to Ms. Walsh to organize digital outreach for a campaign last year, when he challenged a 34-year incumbent for a State House seat. He lost but credits Ms. Walsh with devising a creative approach, reaching out individually to his social media followers and recruiting them for events and volunteer shifts.
“It really does threaten the whole consultant-industrial complex,” he said.
I don't know when "primary" as a verb got started, but it seems to be very recent, and I think that it was during heyday of the Tea Party movement. Some Tea Partiers made it a strategy to challenge Republican incumbents in primaries, and the movement had a major success: Dave Brat primaried Eric Cantor in 2014. DB was an economics professor and EC was a long-time incumbent and party leader.
But DB was a nobody while in office, and he was defeated after two terms.
In 2016, some Bernie Sanders campaigners formed Brand New Congress, with a willingness to primary excessively centrist or conservative Democrats. Though neither it or its spinoff group Justice Democrats was ever very successful, but in 2018, a BNC/JD candidate scored a success at least as spectacular as DB vs. EC: AOC vs. Joe Crowley, also a long-time incumbent and party leader.
AOC was joined by Ayanna Pressley in 2018, and Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Marie Newman in 2020. Who might join her in 2022?