Progressive insurgents shaking the establishment
Remember these names
Welcome to a Wednesday night edition of Progress Report.
I’m working on the first story in what will be a series on policy and reshaping the Democratic Party agenda leading up to 2028 election. It’ll be ready later this week, so tonight I want to share a few other projects. Tomorrow, I’ll be back with a news round-up. June will be pretty prolific, so if you have $5, buying a paid subscription would mean the world and help me keep doing this work.
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When I started this newsletter back in 2017, my goal was to use journalism to spotlight and assist progressive down ballot candidates across the country. Over the past few years, that has evolved into opportunities to work more closely with candidates and lawmakers, both on policy and campaigns.
I’m pretty picky and only really work with people I admire, who in one way or another feel like insurgents fighting to displace the tired old political establishment and reorient government toward progressive populism. Over the past couple months, a few candidates have fit the bill, and I’m excited to introduce them and the videos we did together.
First up is former New York Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, who is running for state Senate. In a more just world, she’d actually be mounting another Congressional re-election campaign in NY-10, but former Rep. Mondaire Jones’ selfish decision to run there despite living several hours away from the lower Manhattan and northern Brooklyn district wound up splitting the progressive vote three ways, allowing Rep. Dan Goldman to sneak in by two points.
That messy primary took place back in 2022. After a brief interlude from government to give birth and spend time with her daughter, Niou is back running for an open seat in Albany, and once again in a heated primary. This time she faces Assemblywoman Grace Lee, who won the seat that Niou vacated to run for higher office. They’ve already dueled once, when Lee unsuccessfully challenged her in 2020, but Lee is now the de facto establishment candidate, with endorsements from most officeholders in the local Manhattan political machine.
I think this actually suits Yuh-Line just fine, as she’s never really toed the company line. She came into office as a reformer and was one of the first lawmakers to call for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation over his fatal mishandling of the nursing home patients and subsequent coverup during the COVID pandemic. Her constituent services were vital during that time, as she helped to feed the working class neighborhoods in the Lower East Side and Chinatown during the most dire months.
Unlike Lee, a wealthy technocrat, Yuh-Line is a big ideas progressive who wants to pass the single payer New York Health Act and has the endorsement of both the Working Families Party and Bernie Sanders. It took all day to shoot her video, mostly because she was stopped by someone — an old constituent, a colleague, a friend, whoever — almost every other block. She also wanted to pet as many dogs as possible, not for any political reason, but simply because she loves dogs.
There’s no polling that I’ve seen, but Yuh-Line is probably a slight underdog, just due to the establishment backing Lee. But she has a phenomenal field game and volunteer base, and as we saw during last year’s mayoral election, that goes a long way in NYC.
We also got the chance to work with Christian Urrutia, a first-time candidate running for Congress in New Hampshire. I’d never heard of him before a friend mentioned his campaign this spring, and it didn’t take much convincing for me to get psyched about it.
There are some people who just seem born to do this, and to be honest, I tend to recoil at the idea of a polished natural with a great resume. And this guy is undeniable on paper: he’s the son of South American immigrants (his mom is from Chile, dad from Argentina), the first in his family to go to college, an accomplished lawyer, Army National Guard officer, and former senior Pentagon official. But most important — and this is what convinced me — is that he seems himself as an agent of change and is running as an outsider against a political dynasty.
Running in the crowded NH-1 Democratic primary, Christian’s two biggest opponents are products of nepotism and PAC money. Stefany Shaheen is the daughter of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and has the milquetoast politics to prove it, while Maura Sullivan, a veteran, has benefitted greatly from AIPAC’s largesse and been reluctant to call Israel’s operations in Gaza a genocide.
Shaheen is probably the frontrunner, given her name recognition, but Christian has been aggressive and has the backing of New Hampshire’s progressives. His campaign has released a comprehensive platform called A Fair Shake for All and he’s been explicit about how simply making vague promises to stand up to Trump isn’t enough in this moment.
We didn’t put together your typical campaign video for Christian. Instead, we told a story that makes clear the lengths he’ll go to achieve justice and accountability. You can watch the piece above, but briefly, he led the way in finally bringing justice for the Pinochet regime’s murder of beloved revolutionary folk singer Victor Jara. That may not mean much to you — I honestly didn’t know much about the guy myself — but it’s actually quite remarkable.
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