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As Donald Trump's party met, a 28-year-old Liberal activist toppled House Democrat Joe Crowley in the president's hometown Tuesday night, a staggering defeat that forced Democrats to confront their own struggles. internal divisions.
Crowley, the No. 4 Democrat in the House and until Tuesday considered a possible candidate to replace Nancy Pelosi as a leader, becomes the first Democratic holder to fall this primary season. He was defeated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a former underfunded challenger, a former organizer of Bernie Sanders who caught fire with the party's left wing.
The loss of Crowley echoed across the political spectrum, sending the unequivocal message that divisions between the pragmatic and more liberal wings of the Democratic Party could widen in the run-up to mid-term elections. November. He also exposed a generational division among Democrats still struggling with their identity during the time of Trump.
"The community is ready for an economic and social justice movement, which is what we have tried to deliver," Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with The Associated Press. Born in the Bronx of a mother of Puerto Rico and a father who died in 2008, she said that she knew that she could get in touch with the district, which includes Queens. and part of the Bronx.
"I live in this community, I organized myself in this community, I felt the absence of the holder and I knew that he did not have a strong presence," he said. she said.
Trump, on social media at least, also seemed enthusiastic about Crowley's defeat.
"Perhaps he should have been kinder and more respectful to his president!" Trump tweeted, strangely taking credit for a victory by a more liberal candidate than Crowley. He added: "Democrats are in turmoil!"
Overall, Trump was right to celebrate Tuesday night as his three endorsed candidates survived the major challenges that could have embarrassed him and the party.
Dan Donovan, who defeated the convict Michael Grimm in the only Republican stronghold in New York, and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who called Trump "fraud" but who has warmed the president over the last two years.
Yet none of the contests of the day were more important for Trump than for the one in South Carolina.
Governor Henry McMaster, one of the first and most fervent supporters of the president, survived an unusually difficult challenge from a political newcomer, Republican self-made millionaire John Warren.
The White House has gone to the governor in recent days, sending the president and vice president to the state in order to prevent a political debacle.
Trump's party did just that on Tuesday, although the president has a mixed record in weighing on the party primaries: His favorite candidates have suffered staggering losses in Alabama and western Pennsylvania. last months.
With the general election in November, just over four months later, more than half of the states had selected their candidates after the final votes of South Carolina, New York, Oklahoma, Mississippi, from Maryland and Utah.
The story suggests that Trump's Republican Party, like the parties of virtually every first president of Ronald Reagan in 1982, will suffer losses this fall.
Yet Crowley's loss suggests that Democrats must overcome intraparty divisions if they hope to take control of Congress and key governors' offices nationwide.
In New York, Ocasio-Cortez cast Crowley as an elitist disconnected from the community.
"This race is about people in relation to money, we have people, they have money," said Ocasio-Cortez in a biographical ad that followed her into social life from New York, dressing for work, walking, subway platform. "Women like me are not supposed to run for office."
Trump had other good news elsewhere in New York as Grimm failed in his bid for a political comeback from Donovan, Trump's outgoing president.
Grimm had held the Staten Island seat until 2015, when he pleaded guilty to knowingly hiring immigrants who were illegally in the country to work in his Manhattan restaurant and cook the books to conceal incomes and escape taxes.
Over 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) away in the dark red Utah, former Massachusetts governor Romney defeated Mike Kennedy, a little-known Rep state, who questioned Romney's conservative qualifications and his ability to work well with the president. Romney, too, was approved by Trump despite his aggressive criticism of the president before his election.
In a rosary published in The Salt Lake Tribune, Romney wrote that Trump's administration policies exceeded his expectations, but he promised to "keep talking when the president says or does something that divides, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions. "
Trump praised Romney's victory over social media: "I look forward to working together – there is so much to do, a wonderful and loving family will come to D.C.
Do not forget: races to determine candidates for governorship in Maryland, Colorado and Oklahoma.
In Maryland, former NAACP President Ben Jealous seized the Democratic Governor's appointment. He would become the first African-American governor of the state if he beat outgoing Republican Governor Larry Hogan this fall.
In Colorado, five-term Democrat MP Jared Polis won the Democratic nomination in the race to replace outgoing Democratic governor John Hickenlooper. And in Oklahoma, former state attorney general, Drew Edmondson, beat former state senator Connie Johnson to win the Democratic nomination in the race to the post of governor of the state.
Electors in Oklahoma also supported the medicinal use of marijuana despite opposition from law enforcement and business, religious and political circles.
But Crowley's defeat eclipsed much of the day's developments.
He becomes the first congressional leader to fall into a primary party since former Republican majority leader in the House, Eric Cantor, was stunned by unknown conservative Dave Brat in the 2014 mid-term elections. .
This loss, and perhaps this one, cemented the Republican Party's sharp turn of political center and foreshadowed the anti-establishment fervor that fueled Trump's election in 2016.
And while Trump encouraged the fall of Crowley, the liberal leaders who supported Ocasio-Cortez also did so.
"These results are also a blow to the bow of the Democratic establishment in Washington: a young, diverse and boldly progressive resistance movement is not waiting to be anointed by the powers in power. place, "said Matt Blizek of MoveOn.
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Kinnard brought back from South Carolina. AP authors Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, and Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City contributed.
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