One of the oldest adages in organizing is that the action is in the reaction.
If you look at the results of New York’s primary as an action, three very progressive challengers ran actions against three more mainstream congressional incumbents and surprised many by winning.
Since the election, a wide range of reactions have surfaced. Elation from the victors. Doom and gloom from the losers. But, more importantly, overreactions from many media outlets, pundits, and veteran observers.
Was this a “wave” election? Did the mayor emerge as a “kingmaker” — a term he would no doubt reject? Was there a fundamental shift in the electorate?
I would argue that the answer to all three questions is no. And I base that on the numbers.
Darializa Avila Chevalier won by garnering 9% of the registered Democrats in her race, 32,790 voters out of 373,052 and beat Adriano Espaillat by 2,226 votes.
Claire Valdez won by attracting 11% of the registered Democrats in her district — 37,531 out of 346,942 potential voters while Antonio Reynoso received just 23,960 votes,
Brad Lander received 55,060 votes — about 16% — to Dan Goldman’s 28,445.
Looked at another way, the three mainstream Democrats who lost were only able to garner a total of 82,869 out of 1,070,547 votes — 8%.
It’s important to give credit where it is due. The DSA and other supporters of these three winning candidates hit the streets and did the hard, person-to-person, door-to-door work that made it possible for their team to win.
It’s also clear that the mainstream Dems did little or nothing — attracting single digit support from registered Dems in all three districts.
So it’s very premature to consider this a referendum on anything but the almost total dysfunction of the Democratic Party.
I grew up in Chicago, where the Cook County Democratic machine built and maintained a stranglehold on local politics for generations. They didn’t do it by recruiting charismatic amateurs to run or raising massive amounts of outside money. They did it by grooming local acolytes, by demanding that they deliver votes and respond to constituents, and by stifling or coopting the occasional dreaded “reformer.”
The 1979 mayoral election of Jane Byrne over machine hack Michael Bilandic was a shock, although the reason was obvious: Bilandic had failed to deliver one of our most treasured services — snow that got plowed. Corruption was a venial sin in Chicago, if it was a sin at all. Not plowing the snow was electorally mortal.
The modern culture of-incumbency-divorced-from-delivery, which I wrote about a few years here, has exposed mainstream Democrats to challenges from both the right and the left.
The reliance on consultants, media types, pollsters, influencers — all detached from voters in their blocks and buildings, all dismissing the kind of relationship-building that an effective ground game both creates and maintains — has created a kind of gated community that is self-reinforcing but irrelevant to most Americans.
And the time it takes to raise all the outside money that buys slick technology and media exposure further isolates candidates from those who decide their fate on Election Day.
So the question is: will mainstream Dems (or Reps for that matter) return to the relational basics of effective representation and campaigning? To do so, they will have to engage people literally where they live. They will have to stop talking and self-promoting. They will have to listen.
Where there are no parties, factions flourish. And the rise of factions — from Ralph Reed on the right to Bernie Sanders on the left — will keep occurring. Meanwhile, most voters will do what New Yorkers did last month: stay home.
Gecan is a senior advisor at Metro Industrial Areas Foundation and the author of “Going Public.”