Delaware Sen. Tom Carper has agreed to debate his Democratic challenger, Kerri Evelyn Harris, as the primary contest has heated up. With most primaries across the country now over, attention is shifting to the remaining few challenges playing out, with a marquee race in Delaware that pits Carper, who has been in statewide elected office since the 1970s, against Harris, who was born three years after Carper first took office. It will be Carper’s first primary debate in a generation, and comes as reinforcements are arriving from Michigan and elsewhere around the country. Claire Sandberg, who was deputy campaign manager for Abdul El-Sayed’s gubernatorial campaign and was a key digital player on Bernie Sanders’s campaign, is teaming up with Harris, as is Winnie Wong, founder of People for Bernie. Sandberg and Wong will join Alexandra Rojas and a team of organizers who last worked to elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. El-Sayed rose from single digits in the polls but still finished 22 points behind Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday. Harris recently challenged Carper to a debate during a radio interview. “If you believe you’re the best candidate, then you’re not going to be afraid to step in front of people and prove to them why,” she said. Harris, herself an Air Force veteran, has also criticized fellow veteran Carper for his vote in support of the Iraq War and his aggressive foreign policy views. Harris has been highlighting not just Carper’s longtime record of militarism but also her own anti-war agenda, one she believes she can vest with added credibility due to her status as a veteran. Earlier this week, Harris denounced policies designed to “line the pockets of military contractors.”

The US is on track to spend $1.5 trillion on the F-35 jet. That money should be spent uplifting people, not on lining the pockets of military contractors. — Kerri Evelyn Harris (@KerriHarrisDE) August 9, 2018

The August 27 debate will be hosted by the News Journal, which has been in talks with Carper over the last month about the logistics and timing of the debate, an editor there told The Intercept, adding that Carper never indicated he would not debate. A Delaware civic group, the Greater Hockessin Area Development Association, is hosting a debate on August 20, which will include Harris and the GOP candidates for Senate, but not, as of now, Carper.

Photo: Al Drago/Getty Images

Carper is broadly popular in Delaware and the most well-known politician in the state after Joe Biden, but in a year when disaffected voters are looking for a new approach, he’s facing his first real primary of the contemporary era. Sandberg will be working on the independent side of the campaign, and said she chose to come to Delaware after Michigan because of the sharp contrast between the two candidates. “Democrats like Tom Carper — who have deregulated Wall Street, led us into perpetual war, carried water for the fossil fuel industry, and time and time again voted for right-wing judges and appointees — should no longer have a place in the Democratic Party,” she said. “It’s time for new leadership from people like Kerri.”

Welcome to the family, @KerriHarrisDE!



Delaware, stand up: you’ve got a revolution on your hands! ??? https://t.co/xa0NaN6Che — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) May 17, 2018