Blue on blue.
Via Politico:
Liberal insurgents have toppled two 20-year House members in Democratic primaries this year. Now, they are setting their sights on the Senate, where pro-business Delaware Sen. Tom Carper faces his first serious primary challenge in decades.
Carper has been in statewide elected office for four decades — longer than his challenger, Kerri Evelyn Harris, has been alive. And though Delaware has transformed from a political battleground to a reliably blue state in that time, Carper’s long moderate record has made him vulnerable to criticism from the left ahead of Thursday’s primary. Harris, a 38-year-old Air Force veteran, has slammed Carper for a voting record that she says is too friendly toward banks and pharmaceutical companies, and too hostile toward the environment.
But, most of all, Harris — a biracial lesbian who is trying to be the first successful primary challenger of a Democratic senator since 2010 — says Carper and other political leaders are out of touch with everyday Delawareans.
“They tell us time and time again how to fix our community. But they’re never there,” Harris said at an event at a community center here last week with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the would-be leader of the anti-incumbent movement who ousted Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) in a primary back in June. “They show up, take a picture and go home.”
Carper — like his one-time Senate colleague, former Vice President Joe Biden — commutes daily on Amtrak trains between here and Washington. He was on Capitol Hill on both Tuesday and Wednesday this week, according to roll call votes taken each day.
But Carper says he isn’t going to be caught flat-footed by Harris’ challenge.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve campaigned as if I were 20 points behind — every race — and as if my opponents were 10 feet tall. And I’m certainly doing that here,” Carper said last week. “We’re ready.”
Carper is in many ways a throwback to another era. His move from the House to the governor’s office was smoothed by “the swap,” when he and then-GOP Gov. Mike Castle each ran for the other’s job in the 1992 election. Yard signs for Carper’s candidacy are tagged with the slogan “Today More Than Ever,” which evokes then-President Richard Nixon’s reelection catchphrase in 1972.
But Carper is now trying to beat back a progressive rebellion bent on replacing Democrats like himself with younger firebrands. The movement has already claimed two 10-term House Democratic incumbents. The latest, Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Mass.), was soundly defeated this week by Ayanna Pressley, a City Council member in Boston.