Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Democratic primaries lately have been like a high-wire circus act that’s always on the cusp of falling but never does. Tuesday’s primaries in Illinois were another win for the center-left Democratic establishment against more progressive or outsider elements. Overall, its candidates continue to lean left, but the party is mostly avoiding a tumble into the abyss.
The hotly contested race Tuesday for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District is the latest case in point. Twenty-six-year-old Kat Abughazaleh raised over $3 million largely from small donors nationwide and ran on an unabashed progressive platform. She was endorsed in the campaign’s final days by far-left Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) and seemingly had momentum.
She did, just not enough. In the end, Abughazaleh finished second, losing to the progressive but not-Squad-wannabe mayor of Evanston, Daniel Biss. He wasn’t the most moderate serious candidate in the race — that was AIPAC-backed state Sen. Laura Fine — but he was progressive enough to hold off Abughazaleh’s furious close.
The regional breakdown is telling. Abughazaleh easily won the city of Chicago but got crushed in the affluent suburbs of Cook and Lake Counties. It seems that there are limits to the appeal of Mamdani-style democratic socialism.
The “left but not far left” narrative also played out in the 2nd District. Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller easily bested the Bernie Sanders-endorsed state Sen. Robert Peters, who finished a poor third. Miller also comfortably defeated former representative Jesse Jackson Jr., whose comeback effort was fueled by extensive spending by an AI super PAC.
Miller, who benefited from millions of dollars in AIPAC-affiliated super PAC spending, is no one’s idea of a moderate. But she’s a solid, party-line Democrat who is not going to march the party off a far-left cliff.
The return of former representative Melissa Bean in the 8th district is another sign of party temperance. In 2010, the Blue Dog and New Democrat suffered a shocking defeat to then-Tea Partyer, now-rabid never-Trumper Joe Walsh. On Tuesday, she was also backed by AIPAC and faced a strong progressive, Junaid Ahmed. In the end, she won all three counties and prevailed by a comfortable, if not massive, margin.
Taken together, these races show two things: Center-left Democrats retain a strong voter base in party primaries, even in a very blue state like Illinois, and AIPAC support has not become a kiss of death within the party. The strong progressive candidates — there were sometimes two or more running in that lane — can attract attention, money and votes. But they never topped a third of the ballots. That’s enough to matter, but not to prevail.
The marquee race was the Senate primary between Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi for the open seat created by Sen. Dick Durbin’s planned retirement. That result, too, showed the persistent strength of basic establishment politics. Krishnamoorthi built an early lead using tens of millions of dollars of ads pitching him as a working-class-friendly Democrat who asked voters to “call him Raja.” But that left room for someone to channel the base’s anger at President Donald Trump. Late in the race, Stratton made a play for that vote.
Stratton ran an ad that primarily consisted of voters saying “f— Trump.” Many of her ads were aired by a super PAC funded by her patron, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, but she used her own campaign money for this ad to avail herself of First Amendment protections that prevent television stations from censoring or refusing to air anything a candidate presents.
Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, Stratton carried the city handily and won other counties with large Black populations. She also carried counties that are home to big state universities. That coalition, funded by Pritzker’s cash, was enough to push the outsider Krishnamoorthi to the sidelines.
Democrats can also be happy with the large turnout; the party’s Senate primary vote total doubled the Republicans’. This was likely fueled in part by the lack of a highly competitive primary on the Republican side, as Illinois has no party registration and voters often cast ballots in the race that matters most. But following Texas and North Carolina, this is now the third large state in a row with large Democratic turnout. Clearly, Democrats are eager to vote, while many Republicans appear to still be deciding whether it’s really worth their time.
It’s only mid-March, and there are plenty of states to go. But so far, Democrats and their ruling center-left establishment have to be breathing sighs of relief and looking forward to November.
The post Illinois shows Democratic voters aren’t ready to march off a cliff appeared first on Washington Post.
