Democratic voters are sharply divided over the party’s best path forward, but many seem to share at least one sentiment: boiling frustration with the party’s leadership.
The latest example came this week, when Dr. Amish Shah, a moderate Democrat, won a House primary on Wednesday in a battleground district in Arizona. He prevailed over a different moderate Democrat who was heavily backed by the House Democratic campaign arm.
“As you can clearly see, I wasn’t exactly my party’s pick,” Dr. Shah wryly told reporters on Tuesday night. “I was willing to stand up to that establishment, and that’s what the voters of this district want.”
His victory was the third primary defeat since June for the party’s House campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has intensified its interventions in high-profile contested House primaries. And it freshly illustrated the limits — and drawbacks — of Washington’s attempts to wield influence at a moment of fierce anti-establishment sentiment.
In battleground districts in Maine and California, the campaign committee backed centrist candidates whose allies saw them as stronger contenders in the general election. In Arizona, the ideological differences between the candidates seemed less clear.
But the outcomes for the committee’s preferred candidates were ultimately the same.
“Part of the anger that the grass roots has against the Democratic Party is, they think it’s too much of a clique, too much controlled by donors, consultants and insiders,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who has endorsed several left-leaning candidates in contested primaries. “If we want to reconnect and build trust with the grass roots, we need to be clear that the party is neutral.”
The job of the House Democratic campaign arm this year, its backers say, is not to be neutral. It is to regain control of the House of Representatives.
Tim Persico, a former executive director of the D.C.C.C., said that this was hardly the first time the campaign committee had intervened in high-stakes primaries, or ruffled feathers in doing so.
“It’s one of the hardest things you have to do, but they have to make these calls,” he said.
Courtney Rice, a spokeswoman for the committee, said that decisions to add candidates in competitive primaries to its battlefield program, known as Red to Blue, were made in consultation with Democratic officials and local leaders who knew the district best.
“Given Democrats’ big tent, there is not always consensus, but the decisions are never made in a vacuum,” she said. “Strong nominees allow us to spread our resources to more races, expand the battlefield, and deliver Democrats the biggest majority possible.”
Ms. Rice noted that, of the 10 contested Democratic primaries the committee had weighed in on this year, seven of its preferred candidates had won. She pointed to the party’s support for Bob Brooks, the Democratic nominee in a highly competitive Pennsylvania House district, who attracted support from a broad cross-section of Democratic leaders. And she noted its successful intervention for Johnny Garcia, a sheriff’s deputy running in Texas against a progressive activist who called to imprison “Zionists.”
A statement from the Randy Villegas campaign — which prevailed in California over the D.C.C.C.’s preferred candidate — also highlighted collaboration with the committee since the primary.
In Maine’s Second Congressional District, State Senator Joe Baldacci — who did have the support of the D.C.C.C. — was ahead in the initial count of first-place votes but ultimately lost under the state’s ranked-choice voting system.
In an interview, he said the D.C.C.C. backing had been helpful and noted that he was not the only candidate receiving endorsements from national figures. For instance, Mr. Khanna and some national progressive groups had supported Matt Dunlap, the Maine state auditor, who ultimately won the primary.
“I know there was criticism after that because I was getting help from the national party,” Mr. Baldacci said. “It was kind of odd to tar me with that when they were all doing the same thing.”
There are more tests for the party establishment to come.
Some Democrats are furious with the Senate Democratic campaign arm’s interventions in primaries. Its favored candidate in Maine, Gov. Janet Mills, 78, was rejected by voters in favor of the political newcomer Graham Platner, 41. He dropped out this month after a rape allegation, which he denies.
The next major test of establishment power comes in Michigan on Aug. 4. There, the well-funded Representative Haley Stevens has the backing of Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, in the Senate primary over Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive.
While the backlash against the party leadership has seemed especially pronounced on the left, Representative Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat and a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, sounded sanguine about his House colleagues in an interview on Thursday.
Of the D.C.C.C.’s primary interventions, he said, “Many of us would prefer they not because we think it’s better to let people in individual states make these decisions.”
But he said he thought the committee was largely, and appropriately, focused on general elections.
“I’m going to focus on the 99.9 percent of what’s going to get us a majority,” he said.
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