Jessica Cisneros, the trailblazing progressive lawyer primarying Rep. Henry Cuellar in TX-28, just scored what is likely the biggest endorsement of the campaign. She’d already scored big boosts from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but they were also looking to win points with progressive voters. Today, Cisneros announced that she’d earned the endorsement of the Texas AFL-CIO, one of the largest state federations of labor in the country.
This is a huge deal because the union has a lot of skin in the game. Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO tends to be pretty conservative, sticking with incumbent Democrats no matter how centrist because they want to stay in the good graces of pro-business politicians when possible. But Cuellar, who we know as a troll who frequently sides with Trump and against immigrants in a heavily Latino community right on the Mexican border, really gave them no choice.
This, via The Intercept this past fall, explains the situation:
Unions have good reason to be interested in this race. While Cuellar is more commonly known for voting to support a 20-week abortion ban and funding a Mexican border wall in his own southern Texas district, his record on labor issues has driven worker advocates crazy for years.
In May, Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott introduced the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill that would eliminate right-to-work laws, impose new penalties on employers who retaliate against union organizing, crack down on worker misclassification, and establish new rules so employers cannot delay negotiating collective bargaining contracts.
The bill has 214 Democratic co-sponsors, and Cuellar is not among them.
Cisneros is a rising star amongst Democrats and part of the next wave of progressive activists taking on corporate Democrats in safe blue seats. Texas’s 28th district will never, ever elect a Republican — Cuellar rarely faces real opposition and Hillary Clinton won this seat by 20 points in 2016 — so it makes no sense to have such an awful “Democrat” in office. Save that for swing districts, if you must have them in the party at all.
There are several other great progressive Democrats running in primaries against entrenched incumbents this year, including Marie Newman in Illinois, running against anti-abortion troglodyte Dan Lipinski. She should finish the job she started in 2018 now that she has more national and community support.
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I also want to point out some big primaries happening under the radar in New York City right now.
Funny story: I’ve lived in a number of different neighborhoods up and down Manhattan over the last decade, so for years I never really bothered to learn who represented me, figuring it frequently changed. Turns out that Rep. Carolyn Maloney has always been my representative; I just never knew it because she’s never around (or, never talking to constituents that can’t donate big money to her campaigns). For someone who has been in office since 1992, representing not only eastern Manhattan but also parts of Brooklyn and Queens, that’s pretty troubling.
It’s not actually in her district, but Maloney does most of her fighting for Wall Street. Her biggest donors are not just major corporations, but the worst of the financial services industry — her top contributor just so happens to be BlackRock, the massive hedge fund that funds the literal destruction of earth (via ownership of all kinds of oil and environment-ravaging companies) from its black Death Star-like skyscraper in New York. She voted for financial deregulation, is linked to anti-vaxxers, and this fall appeared with India’s racist, wannabe fascist president Modi at a big event in Texas… where Donald Trump was also a guest of honor.
Maloney got primaried in 2018, and despite being a hotel heir who messed around with people on Tinder, Suraj Patel earned 40% of the vote. He’s running again, alongside several other young primary challengers, including Erica Vladimer, the candidate I’m supporting.
I was introduced to Erica’s candidacy through a mutual acquaintance, but I held off on reaching out until I could read up on her story. I was instantly blown away by what I read and heard — she’s a young lawyer who was working as a staffer in the State Senate when she was sexually assaulted by then-Sen. Jeff Klein, who was at the time the powerful leader of the IDC and is still a noted scumbag. Klein was her boss’s boss at the time — she got the job through a post-law school program — and the event was devastating.
But Erica didn’t let him get away with it — instead, it became the springboard to some incredible activism. A few years later, after leaving Albany, she returned to co-found the Sexual Harrassment Working Group, which pushed for hearings on harassment of government employees (the first in nearly three decades). The Group later ultimately helped pass protections into law, a major accomplishment in an Albany that protects its own, no matter how corrupt.
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Now, she’s running for Congress, and I have to admit to some initial skepticism. I didn’t care much for Maloney, but she’d been there forever and didn’t seem nearly as bad as obviously awful Dems like Cuellar and Lipinski. But after meeting up with Erica a few times, including once last week at a local diner, I came to understand why she needs to be elected: She’s willing to fight for her principles, and her principles are informed by understanding what it’s like to struggle, to just scrape by, to have skin in the game.
Erica quit her job working for the city to run this race full-time, despite the cost of living in the city, and finds herself working more than ever.
“When I decide to commit to something, I am fully committed, and I knew like two weeks after announcing that like this was going to be a full-time commitment,” she told me. “I'm a full-time candidate and I still feel like I don't have enough hours in the day. A big part of it too is that I wanted to prove that I'm committed to being the next leader for the district and that doesn't start on the day that I'm elected, it starts the day that I ask for people’s support.”
She serves as her own communications director and hates spending her time making calls for donations — she’d rather be out at NYCHA hearings or fighting for justice at protests, a combination that speaks to her movement beliefs and inside knowledge of the law.
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This past Thursday, she was out in the streets with a grassroots survivors organization, calling for the resignation of Cy Vance, the awful Manhattan District Attorney who has never seen a case of sexual assault or financial crime committed by a rich person that he didn’t let slide (Harvey Weinstein and Ivanka Trump owe him big time).
Vladimer is also focused heavily on Medicare for All, a cause she’s only become more passionate about since forgoing employer-based insurance to run for office. That she suffers from painful bouts of endometriosis and requires specialist care has her attuned more than ever to the inequity of the US healthcare system.
“This is like the first meal that I've had in two days because I've been so sick,” she told me over a plate of disco fries while detailing her insane commutes to doctors that won’t take her insurance. “I went on the New York State health exchange, but you find me a really good endo specialist surgeon who takes Medicaid or any health exchange plan because I sure as f*ck can't find one.”
Maloney can’t tout many accomplishments — she got some money for the Second Avenue subway, but given the imperative behind that, it doesn’t count as all that impressive. Housing prices are skyrocketing, her district is now incredibly young and diverse and far more progressive than her record.
“There's never been a Republican who's ever come close to being able to beat her, and now we have the opportunity because it's a safe district to actually elect bold people who are going to realize that it's not enough just to have the 'D' next to your name,” she says.” You should be standing up to leadership and not trying to pander to them. Can you imagine if we had a real fighter as our representative? Imagine what they could get done.”
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