Primary 2024 Analysis from Political Director Sergio Cea
We want to thank Cass Green and Keir Bradford-Grey for running grassroots campaigns rooted in our values of peace, liberation, and restorative justice. In a year when so many are apathetic about electoral politics nationally, it was refreshing to have Philly candidates that inspired us to dream of a better world for our city and state.
Keir got in this race to not only be the Pennsylvania Attorney General, but as she put it, to be the “people’s lawyer.” She has made history for being the first Black woman to run for this office in Pennsylvania and she also made history in Reclaim, becoming the first candidate endorsed by our membership without a recommendation from our Board. We are proud that our members' endorsement reflected how Philadelphians felt about Keir throughout the city. In a five way race, Keir was the #1 vote getter in our city scoring almost 14% points higher than the next candidate with the most votes.
We want to congratulate Eugene DePasquale for winning the Democratic nomination for Attorney General. During member endorsements our Board struggled with recommending in this race due to a good problem. All three candidates that had applied for our endorsement, including Keir and Eugene, were great candidates that Reclaim would be proud to support. Eugene shared thoughtful and powerful responses to our candidate questionnaire, candidate interview, and member submitted questions at our in-person Citywide event in February. If elected in November, we know he will bring an empathetic lens to this office thanks to the stories he’s shared about his family's struggles with healthcare, substance abuse disorder, and incarceration.
In the competitive local races, no one better exemplified our movement’s hope for change than Cass Green. A long-time West Philadelphia grassroots organizer, Cass got in this race to bring Harrisburg a candidate supported by the people, not greedy developers or right wing billionaires. She built a powerful campaign, outraising her opponent 3 to 1, and garnering the endorsements of movement electeds, progressive organizations, and labor unions. We knew this would be a hard fight against an establishment and that every vote would count. Unfortunately, we collectively came up short by just 42 votes. One thing is clear from the conversations we had with voters and the results of this close race. People are still hungry for a champion who will fight for public education, affordable housing, and both safety and justice. Though Cass didn’t win, we know she will continue her work for peace, power, and progress for all in the 10th District.
The results of this campaign further demonstrates our commitment not just to opening up and democratizing wards, but making sure open wards are aligned with the movement , not the establishment. Open wards are wards where committee people are empowered to vote on candidate endorsements and other decisions made by the ward. In Cass’s race, we had a tale of two open wards. The 24th Ward in West Philadelphia has a majority of Black committee people who overwhelmingly endorsed Cass Green for election. The more establishment 8th Ward in Center City, has a majority of white committee people and only 6 divisions in the district. They had previously endorsed Cass Green in 2022, but backed the incumbent Amen Brown this time around. Although Cass increased her margins with Black and Brown voters across West Philadelphia, losing the 8th Ward meant losing the votes of 400+ mostly white voters which made a big difference in a race that came down to 42 votes.
We want to congratulate Andre Carroll and Malcolm Kenyatta, two bold Black queer progressives who made history this primary. Andre built a massive coalition following his 2022 loss that essentially won the pre-primary in his race for the 201st. The incumbent chose not to run against Andre again, and the other challengers were either bounced off the ballot or withdrew because they knew Andre would win. He ran a multiracial campaign focused on criminal justice reform and quality education for all. He will now be the first Black gay man elected State Representative in 201st, and the second Black gay man elected to the general assembly from Philadelphia. Malcolm Kenyatta easily won re-election to his state representative seat in 181st against a homophobic ward leader, who was kicked out of the Democratic party. But what we are most proud of is his statewide win for Auditor General, where he has now become the first Black gay man to win the democratic nomination for statewide office in Pennsylvania. If elected in November, Malcolm has committed to use his office to conduct audits that could be used to defend our democracy, expand funding for Nikil Saval’s Whole Home Repairs program, and get public schools equitable funding in Philadelphia and across the commonwealth.
We celebrate that all of our endorsed movement squad for being all but re-elected to serve in Harrisburg with no democratic challengers in this past primary or republican challengers in the general. Congrats to State Representatives Elizabeth Fiedler, Tarik Khan, and Chris Rabb as well as State Senator Nikil Saval. Special shout out to Chris Rabb and Nikil Saval for getting the most votes of any Philly Democrat for State Representative and State Senator respectively! We also want to congratulate State Representatives Rick Krajewski and Roni Green for winning re-election against their challengers in their West Philly races. We’re excited they’ll all return and now be joined by Andre Carroll in the progressive caucus.
Finally, we want to celebrate the victory of the Uncommitted PA campaign in the presidential primary. Our board recommended that our members write-in “Uncommitted” for President and signed on to the Uncommitted PA coalition. In Philadelphia, over 16,000 Democratic voters chose to vote by write-in rather than vote for either Democrats Joe Biden or Dean Phillips. The huge uptick in write-in votes compared to 2020, sends a clear warning from voters to Joe Biden. As we noted in our recommendation, we are committed to defeating Trump in the general election – but we can’t do it alone. There is still time for Biden to win back voters’ trust by standing with the majority of American voters and the entire international community to use his power and influence to stop this genocide. We hope that these write-in votes and youth-led direct actions and encampments for Palestine across the country can move Biden to be a president who chooses peace. As Pittsburg Congresswoman Summer Lee said upon winning her race against an AIPAC backed challenger in the primary, “opposing genocide is good politics and good policy.”
With all eyes on November there is still a lot of work to do to make sure we elect Malcolm Kenyatta and other Democrats to statewide office, as well as defeat Donald Trump. Sign up now to get involved with our Movement Politics Taskforce to support our work in the general election as well as holding current electeds accountable in the interim.
In Solidarity,
Sergio Cea