Tracking the Justice Democrats: Now That The Primaries Are Over, Let's See What The Justice Democrats Have Actually Accomplished

 

The next time one of your self-righteous socialist or progressive colleagues (but I repeat myself) launches into a diatribe about how AOC and the Squad are the future of America interrupt them and say you are typing the following question into your iPhone:

"How many seats have the Justice Democrats flipped that were Republican?"

My readers already know the answer but I'm going to tell verbatim what the algorithm tells me when I type it in:

Justice Democrats have not flipped any Republican-held seats in general congressional races.

To back it up there's are two quotes from the centrist Democrat site Third Way under the term Electoral Performance:

Justice Democrats have not flipped a single Republican-held seat blue over the last four cycles.

Candidates endorsed by Justice Democrats have lost 63 of the 72 non-incumbent races in which they have competed – an 88% loss rate.

(My private thanks to Third Way for making it clear that someone in the Democratic Party knows what they're doing.)

There's a joke in there about how Siri and Alexa know that socialism is still unpopular with the American electorate but the New York Times hasn't figured that out yet. Privately, however, I find it exhausting that in eight years no one who works in legacy media, whether it is CNN or Rolling Stone, seems capable of doing a one minute search on the internet to actually find out if what Bernie and the Squad are saying about their policies resonating with the masses  are true. Why hasn't anyone from Rachel Maddow to Sean Hannity confronted them with this? Why haven't George Will and Bret Stephens done their homework? It's one thing to worry about socialism taking over the Democratic party – I myself have concerns about it -  its another to keep saying it every two years as if it's doctrine.

I want to believe so badly that this election cycle will be the one where the media finally wakes up and realizes how little the average voter wants what Bernie and the Squad have been selling. Certainly the Democrats themselves should be capable of pointing out this simple reality to the left wing of their party: if nothing else Elizabeth Warren should be able to understand basic arithmetic. But seeing as that is increasingly unlikely to happen, it falls upon yon author (as well as the good people at Third Way, who I hope will be the North Star going forward for my party) to tell you  where the Justice Democrats actually  are at the end of the 2026 primaries.

This week marked the end of the last  primaries where the Justice Democrats were running new candidates. By their standards (which as you can see  are incredibly low) this has been a good cycle for them. Compared to the hyperbole that they and the media seem to greet  everything they do it’s as underwhelming as Supergirl's box office.

So here's the complete record of the new group of  Justice Democrats who ran this cycle in order of the dates of their respective primaries:

March 3rd

 

TEXAS

As I mentioned Frederick Haynes III won the nomination for Jasmine Crockett's  old district. Crockett held similar values to the Justice Democrats though she wasn't an official member.

ONE HOLD

 

NORTH CAROLINA

Nida Allam tried to run against Valerie Foushee in the fourth district  on an anti-ICE platform, was endorsed by Bernie Sandrs, gun control activists and the working families party. She lost.

ONE PRIMARY LOSS

 

 

ILLINOIS MARCH 17^TH

Two challengers, Junaid Ahmed and Kat Abughazaleh tried to win in the 8^th and 9^th district respectively.

Both received less than 26 percent of the vote.

 TWO PRIMARY  LOSSES

 

 

PENNSYLVANIA May 19^th

Chris Rabb ran in the 3rd. He's running unopposed in the general. No Republican opposition.

ONE PRIMARY WIN.

 

June 2nd

NEW JERSEY

Adam Hamawy is running to succeed Bonnie Watson Coleman in the 12^th district.

He won, albeit with just under 28 percent of the vote.

ONE PRIMARY WIN

 

CALIFORNIA

Three new candidates were running for in California along with Ro Khanna who won his primary: Mai Vang in the 7^th was challenging Doris Matsui, Saikat Chakrabarti in the 11^th (Nancy Pelosi's former district) and Angela Gonzales-Torres was challenging Jimmy Gomez in the 34^th district.

. Chakrabarti finished in a distant third, Vang finished first in her primary and Gonzales-Torres finished second. Under the rules of California politics both Vang and Gonzales-Torres advance to the general election. We'll deal with their prospects in the general below.

 ONE PRIMARY LOSS, TWO PENDING FOR GENERAL ELECTION

 

NEW YORK, June 23rd

Claire Valdez, another Democratic Socialist who was elected to the 37^th district in 2025 would attempt to run for New York 7^th to succeed Nydia Velasquez. She would be challenging Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Queens Councilwoman Julie Won. In the 13^th Darializa Avila Chevalier would be running to challenge Adriano Espaillat, who has represented the district since 2017 and is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Both candidates won, in large part thanks to the endorsement of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. (I've written about why this happened in a previous article.)

TWO PRIMARY WINS

 

COLORADO, July 1^st

Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist. defeated Diana DeGette in the primary in the Colorado 1^st. She is heavily favored to win in the general.

 

 PRIMARY WIN

 

August 4th

MISSOURI

Cori Bush was challenging Wesley Bell for the seat he defeated her in the Democratic primary in 2024 in the Missouri 1^st.

Bell beat Bush in their rematch by a landslide. For those keeping track Bush has now run as a Justice Democrat all five cycles. She lost the first time she ran in a primary, won her primary and the general in 2020, was reelected in 2022 and was primaried by Bell in 2024.  She's the ultimate Justice Democrat candidate in every way that counts.

PRIMARY LOSS

 

MICHIGAN

Donovan McKinney

McKinney was challenging Shri Thanedar in the Michigan 13th. The main difference is that Thanedar renounced his membership in the DSA in October 2023, after they failed to condemn Hamas after the terrorist attacks in Israel.

McKinney managed a narrow victory beating Thanedar by just under 4 percent.

PRIMARY WIN

 

TENNESSEE August 6^th

Justin Pearson

Pearson was running to contend in the newly redrawn Tennessee 9^th. He managed to win in a landslide over his nearest competitor with 65 percent of the vote.

PRIMARY WIN

 

 

So to recap of the fourteen candidates the Justice Democrats recruited this cycle seven won their primaries (I'll get to one of them below) five lost and two are advancing to the general while holding one  old seat.

Only by the incredibly low bar that the Justice Democrats have set in four consecutive election cycles could their track record in 2026 be seen as a 'movement'. Particularly when you consider that in 2025 they announced that they were planning to have candidates to run in all fifty states and that they could only come up with fifteen to run in eleven. Add in that Allam and Bush had already tried before (in Bush's cases, multiple times) and it's hard to argue that people are lining up to run under their banner.

For the second consecutive election cycle the only districts they chose to run in were some of the most blue in the country. The exception was Pearson who had planned to run before a recent Supreme Court decision led to Tennessee redrawing its maps make the one deep blue district in the state now majority red. By that point Pearson had already announced his candidacy but it's clear that this wasn't the race he'd signed up for. To his credit he decided to keep going but this district is overwhelmingly favored to go to his Republican opponent.

And its not clear for the two other candidates who managed to advance to the general election whether they'll have a chance to win. Vang managed to finish ahead with 31.2 percent of the vote to Matsui's 29 percent. However its not clear where the 37 percent of the vote that when to her Republican challengers will go.

Gonzales-Torres is in a worse situation in the 34^th district, finishing second to Gomez. Gomez won far more decisively getting 46 percent of the vote to Gonzales-Torres 30.7 percent. In order for her to overcome that deficit she's going to have to make up a lot of ground and there are fewer voters to win.

And historically California has never been as friendly to the Justice Democrats as one might think. In the first two election cycles 8 Justice Democrats tried to run under that platform (other than  Ro Khanna who was an incumbent when he joined). Only three were able to advance to the general and all lost. The same happened this year for Saikat Chakrabarti, one of the original founders of the Justice Democrats, who could only come up with 17.6 percent in the primary and finished a distant third.

I have no doubt that the Justice Democrats will use their successful primary challenges of incumbents in New York, Colorado and Michigan as signs that they have 'put the establishment on notice' and the media will parrot it.

Several things. First the left is always putting the establishment on notice when they protest or go on social media. Equating a college campus march with a primary victory shows their lack of context. Second, they will as always ignore the numerous primary defeats – including in Missouri and North Carolina, where they couldn't successful primary an incumbent.

And lastly the Tea Party in its first cycle in 2020 managed to win 39 seats in the House and multiple primaries in the Senate. Two of them, Rand Paul and Mike Lee are still standing after sixteen years while Marco Rubio was a fixture until he became Secretary of State. That was a movement that America's still reckoning with. (I found out all of this with another Google search.)

Four election cycles after their founding by the end of the 2026 election cycle the Justice Democrats in the best case scenario will have fifteen members in the House of Representatives. That means they have three percent of one house of one branch of Congress. The Freedom Caucus alone has between 30 and 40 members and they are far closer to where their party is then the Justice Democrats have ever been – and no one can argue which group has power to set the agenda in the House no matter which party is in charge. That won't change this cycle even if the Democrats do regain control of Congress this cycle – and at least until the Democrats win the Presidency we're not going to know if they have the same kind of influence the Freedom Caucus has.

Far more than the far right, the far left wing of the Democratic Party has a more visceral contempt of the political establishment. That most likely explains why they feel a primary victory against a Democrat is the equivalent, if not better, then prevailing over a Republican in the general.  This argument has always been prevalent among the Sanders-Warren wing of the Democratic Party and its even more true for the Squad. Perhaps to them a defeat in the primary is less meaningful then losing in the general election; it would certainly explain their overall strategy over the past few election cycles even before this one.

But there is a difference and anyone who works in politics knows it.  Mainstream Democrats are aware of it and the Republicans definitely are. And it is infuriating to see every single media establishment essentially argue that a primary victory by Claire Valdez is ranked by them the same way Cait Conley's was in the same state. If Valdez wins in November it doesn't change the math for House Democrats at all; it just changes the name of a member. Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries know that Claire Valdez can take a cruise for four months and still win this fall. They're going to spend far more time and money helping Conley defeat Mike Lawler because that actually matters.

And it's not just New York; there are swing districts in nearly every state that the Justice Democrats chose to run candidates in. If the Justice Democrats had wanted to help the party they would have run in them. Instead they put their own brand ahead of the party they share their name with and half the time it still  resulted in failure for them. Worse they forced many state parties to spend time and money helping either beat back challenges to incumbents or lost to new members who have made it clear they show no loyalty to the Party many of them will be representing next fall. Yet the media still acts as if their accomplishment count for more then the many Democrats in those swing districts who the Party is counting on to do what the Justice Democrats keep demonstrating over and over they can't.

So for the next several months whenever you read an article or see a story on TV or social media arguing about how the left, radical or otherwise, is taking control of the Democratic Party/America simply do exactly what I have done but that the rest of the media, liberal, conservative or otherwise, has apparently not. A five minute internet search. It may surprise you; it may reassure you; it might even bother you. But remember that even if you think the algorithm is misleading you, figures don't lie. And I'll take statistics and voter counts over the vibe any day of the week.