The First Progressive Primary Challenge of 2022

[TexasTowelie]

The first major progressive primary challenge of the 2022 electoral cycle will take place in Nashville, Tennessee, where public servant and community organizer Odessa Kelly will be taking on ten-term incumbent representative Jim Cooper. A co-founder of the SEIU-backed activist organization Stand Up Nashville and former community center manager at the Nashville-area Napier Recreation Center, Kelly enters the race with endorsements from Nashville city councilmembers Delishia Porterfield and Sean Parker. Kelly is a Justice Democrats recruit, the organization’s first of this election cycle.

Jim Cooper hails from a longtime Tennessee political family. His brother, John Cooper, is the current mayor of Nashville; his father, Prentice Cooper, served as the state’s governor from 1939 to 1945; his paternal grandfather, William Prentice Cooper, was once the Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.

This representative of the Cooper political dynasty has served over 30 years in the House of Representatives. He initially won in the state’s Fourth District, a wide, horizontal swath that includes the Tri-Cities, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and the Nashville suburbs, in 1983, and held that seat through 1995, only losing it once he set out on a failed 1994 campaign to fill Vice President Al Gore’s vacated Senate seat. The Republican revolution year of 1994 was dreadful for Democrats in Tennessee, with the GOP winning a majority of the state’s House delegation for just the second time since Reconstruction.

Cooper returned to the House in 2002, after winning 47 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary in Tennessee’s Fifth District, made up of Nashville and its western suburbs. He’s effectively coasted to re-election ever since, never meeting a real Republican challenge in heavily Democratic Nashville.

Read more: https://prospect.org/politics/first-progressive-primary-challenge-of-2022/
(American Prospect)

[efhmc]

1. Impossible to go against that type of entrenched dynasty but I wish her the best.

[George II]

2. Does Justice Democrats ever take on republicans?

[Hortensis]

4. I've never heard of any targets but Democrats.

Makes sense. Dissidents must dissent or lose their reason for political being. And with that those drawn to it.

[crickets]

5. 👆👆👆

[Demsrule86]

6. No just Democrats...cost us money for nothing because they are likely to lose if they win a

primary and even if they lose the incumbent has to spend money to defeat them...I can't stand Justice Democrats...and would never vote for one in a primary...ever.

[NurseJackie]

3. Why don't they go after REPUBLICANS instead? This is a very myopic and foolish game.

Wouldn't it be better to KEEP existing Democrats in place and REPLACE Republicans? I do not understand groups like "Justice Democrats" and "Our Revolution" ... they seem to be more ego-driven rather than making rational strategic decisions that help improve the strength of the Democratic party.

[Demsrule86]

8. Their mailings are nothing but attacks on Democrats and if you didn't have a label on it...

of who they were...you would think it would be the GOP who sent it.

[NurseJackie]

9. I know! I've seen their emails... I do NOT trust them, or anyone associated with them.

It's an organization that is NOT a friend to Democrats. I think they're trying to sabotage our party.