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The governor for eight years before entering the Senate in 2001 and the only representative of the American home for a decade, Carper began his career in the state office, as treasurer in 1977. After Former Vice President Joe Biden A few weeks ago, Carper is probably Delaware's best-known political personality. A loss for Harris would be the first of his long career.
But in 2018, Carper's senatorial seniority and his decades of experience constitute as much a burden as a sales pitch. Harris, a 38-year veteran of the Air Force and community organizer, is launching new blood and a different worldview. By almost every measure, Carper 's win would be the most amazing victory of the left – wing Democrat, who helped the cash – strapped campaign to get a late boost from the progressive Working Families party.
Respectful, according to Delaware's exacting requirement for politeness in the political arena, but firm in its criticism, Harris, who is biracial and gay, sought to launch Carper, 71, as an offline centrist. of all his good intentions, is disconnected from "the urgency of now".
"We can not wait a little longer to get a raise," Harris said during an interview on the occasion of a big Labor Day in Wilmington. "We can not wait a little longer for health care that we can actually use, we can not wait a little longer for our children to be properly educated or our climate to be clean.These things are necessary and they have to happen now. . "
The Ocasio-Cortez connection
When Ocasio-Cortez won his primary, a handful of his team's organizers traveled south to join Harris's small operation. Last Friday, Ocasio-Cortez hosted two city halls with Harris in Delaware.
"She had my back and I'm here to get hers," Ocasio-Cortez told Newark, "because that's how the progressive movement really works."
But the similarities between their competitions were verified by Carper's hard political work. Unlike New York representative Joe Crowley, whom Ocasio-Cortez defeated, the three-year-old has literally made great efforts over the years to maintain his relationship with the country's electorate. He travels almost every day from Wilmington to Washington, DC and frequently praises the 482,000 miles that he has put on his Chrysler minivan "traveling throughout the state".
Carper and his supporters are quick to point out the differences between him and Crowley, a Queens Democrat with a house in Virginia that Ocasio-Cortez alluded to in his viral advertising campaign as someone who "does not". do not send your children to our schools, drink our water or breathe our air. "They also kindly, but consistently over the last two days, sought to portray the Harris campaign as a front for progressives abroad.
"My instinct tells me that they believe that Kerri is the next Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and they believe that I'm somehow the next Joe Crowley," said Carper in an interview at a picnic. Labor Day in Wilmington. "They think Delaware is New York City, and I think they're wrong on all three points."
The sweat that infiltrates into a combination of the navy's green flight, worn to honor the late Sen. John McCain, said Delaware voters want two things: a person with weight shaping the compromise on Capitol Hill while taking advantage of this power to "prevent Trump from ruining this country".
"Delaware is almost schizophrenic, and I think the country is too.They want us to stop Trump from doing stupider and, in some cases, cruel things, at the same time they want us to try to find a deal on a number of other issues, "he said, ultimately on an upbeat note:" And I think you can do both. "I think you can do both. "
Tell Harris a different view of the current landscape, misunderstanding or, at the very least, underestimate the fundamental clash at the heart of this contest – and so many in this remarkable period of upheaval in democratic politics . Harris criticized Carper's record, including two votes in particular that favored the banking sector and pharmaceutical companies, but the roots of his challenge are deeper.
Another kind of policy
Their exchanges during a debate last week, the only one of the campaign, brought to light the ideological and stylistic gap. When Harris, in response to a question about college costs, said she would be pushing for the elimination of all student debt, Carper rejected the suggestion, saying it was simply unrealistic.
"I do not have a magic wand that would allow us to do that," he said. "It would cost a nice dime."
"What bothered me," said Harris a few days later, "is that there is this idea that these are extreme ideas. But they only seem extreme for multimillionaires living in Congress. the people you talk to on the streets … We see that "magic wands" are always available and present when companies win. "
She also criticized Carper's vote in 2006 to elevate current Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh to the Columbia District Court of Appeal. Carper was the only Democrat yet in the Senate to cross party lines.
Asked during the debate about why he had supported Kavanaugh at the time, Carper said his decision was based on the advice of the distinguished Delaware judge, Walter Stapleton, for whom Kavanaugh had been committed, and others. respected jurists of the state.
"I voted my hopes on my fears," he concluded. "I will not do it anymore."
During the debate, Harris returned to Carper's explanation when he was questioned about his inexperience in an elected position, suggesting that his vote on Kavanaugh and, more recently, the former leader of the Alex Azar pharmaceutical company as a new Secretary of Health and Human Services a "diversity of experience".
"It's scary when you hear it, I voted for Kavanaugh because everyone in her group was guaranteed," she said on Monday. "It is also the excuse for which he voted for Azar.He said that he knew someone who had gone to Yale with him and that he was a good one. If that's the reason you're voting on things that can affect all our lives, that's a problem. "
Carper said in a statement after the confirmation vote that he believed that Azar was qualified for the position and shared his desire to transform the health system "into a system that rewards health care providers according to the quality of care received ".
The shadows of 2010?
Delaware is no stranger to major unexpected challenges – or mesmerizing results.
In recent decades, the state has mostly chosen a combination of the same leading politicians from both parties. But he also saw one of them, the former GOP governor, the lieutenant governor and the representative of the United States, Mike Castle, losing face to a stranger who, at his turn, wasted what had been considered a seat of the Senate. It was in 2010, during the rise of the tea party.
Eight years later, Democratic Senator Chris Coons, who defeated Republican candidate Christine O Donnell in November, warned that a win for Harris on Thursday could also jeopardize what is now considered a seat Democrat sure.
"I think it would be much harder for (Harris) to win in November than Tom Carper," Coons said in a phone interview. "I think a number of Delaware Republicans voted in favor of Christine O Donnell in 2010 to send a message to Mike Castle, that they wanted him to be a little cleaner, a little more conservative. , a little more ideologically pure. " Imagine that they were putting the siege back. "
The Harris campaign rejected any claim that his appointment would open the door to a Republican final candidate, either Gene Truono or Sussex County Councilor Rob Arlett, who was president of President Donald Trump in 2016.
Joe Dinkin, Working Families Party Campaign Director, promised to support Harris with $ 100,000 for field work, direct mail, texting and digital advertising. "
Even with late support, the Harris campaign enters the first day after being overtaken by something like 20 to 1, according to the Federal Election Commission's filings. Carper also benefits from almost all the big tickets that the state has to offer, from Biden to the Delaware AFL-CIO, to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and to the Union of State Teachers. The Active Families Party spending alone will be close to Harris' total fundraising, which amounted to about $ 120,000.
"We are investing a lot in the race because Carper is using a version of the Democratic Party that could have been accepted in the 1990s," said Dinkin. "But that's not the direction the progressives want to see now."
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