The New York Times has a profile of Illinois 3rd Congressional District Congressman Dan Lipinski, who’s facing significant primary opposition from the left in his quest for yet another term:
In California, party activists at the state Democratic Convention last week rejected Senator Dianne Feinstein, a moderate lawmaker, refusing to formally bless her re-election. In Texas, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee opened fire on a progressive candidate, Laura Moser, posting negative research to blunt her rise in fear that a victory by her in Tuesday’s primary race could doom the party’s bid for a suburban Houston district in November.
But the battle to define the party is playing out most vividly in overwhelmingly safe House districts around cities like Boston, Chicago and New York, where younger liberals, often women, people of color or both, are confronting men who are products of a clubhouse politics where fealty to the organization was paramount.
And no lawmakers may be more vulnerable to the rising left than Mr. Lipinski and, in Massachusetts, Representative Michael E. Capuano, a far more liberal Democrat who is nevertheless confronting a restless electorate in his Boston-based district.
Mr. Lipinski, opposed to abortion and uneasy with gay rights, is locked in a bitter campaign with Ms. Newman, a former marketing consultant who has backing from powerful liberal groups such as Naral Pro-Choice America and the Human Rights Campaign.
There are some significant omissions from the profile. Lipinski has a PhD in political science from Duke and taught at Notre Dame and University of Tennessee before ascending to take his dad’s, long-time Congressman Bill Lipinski’s, seat in Congress in a political deal that stank to high heaven. I wrote against him when he first ran for office, essentially on the grounds that I hate political dynasties. I don’t think they’re conducive to republican let alone democratic government.
How much has the 3rd District since his dad represented it 15 years ago? That’s what the primary will determine. I would caution coastal progressives that being a Democrat in Chicago does not necessarily mean the same thing that it does in Manhattan or Boston or San Francisco and that it’s possible to win the primary but lose in the general election. It’s been a safe seat for Lipinski but there’s no guarantee that it will be for Ms. Newman.
