Delaware candidate Kerri Evelyn Harris (left) and New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represent a progressive rebellion that has already claimed two 10-term House Democratic incumbents. | Patrick Semansky/AP Photo Elections Liberal insurgency targets Delaware senator next Democratic Sen. Tom Carper faces a challenge from Kerri Harris, part of a movement of progressive primary challengers.

WILMINGTON, Del. — Liberal insurgents have toppled two 20-year House members in Democratic primaries this year. Now, they are setting their sights on the Senate, where pro-business Delaware Sen. Tom Carper faces his first serious primary challenge in decades.

Carper has been in statewide elected office for four decades — longer than his challenger, Kerri Evelyn Harris, has been alive. And though Delaware has transformed from a political battleground to a reliably blue state in that time, Carper’s long moderate record has made him vulnerable to criticism from the left ahead of Thursday's primary. Harris, a 38-year-old Air Force veteran, has slammed Carper for a voting record that she says is too friendly toward banks and pharmaceutical companies, and too hostile toward the environment.


But, most of all, Harris — a biracial lesbian who is trying to be the first successful primary challenger of a Democratic senator since 2010 — says Carper and other political leaders are out of touch with everyday Delawareans.

“They tell us time and time again how to fix our community. But they’re never there,” Harris said at an event at a community center here last week with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the would-be leader of the anti-incumbent movement who ousted Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) in a primary back in June. “They show up, take a picture and go home.”

Carper — like his one-time Senate colleague, former Vice President Joe Biden — commutes daily on Amtrak trains between here and Washington. He was on Capitol Hill on both Tuesday and Wednesday this week, according to roll call votes taken each day.

But Carper says he isn’t going to be caught flat-footed by Harris’ challenge.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve campaigned as if I were 20 points behind — every race — and as if my opponents were 10 feet tall. And I’m certainly doing that here,” Carper said last week. “We’re ready.”

Carper is in many ways a throwback to another era. His move from the House to the governor’s office was smoothed by “the swap,” when he and then-GOP Gov. Mike Castle each ran for the other’s job in the 1992 election. Yard signs for Carper’s candidacy are tagged with the slogan “Today More Than Ever,” which evokes then-President Richard Nixon’s reelection catchphrase in 1972.

But Carper is now trying to beat back a progressive rebellion bent on replacing Democrats like himself with younger firebrands. The movement has already claimed two 10-term House Democratic incumbents. The latest, Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Mass.), was soundly defeated this week by Ayanna Pressley, a City Council member in Boston.

Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez are women of color, like Harris — while Capuano and Crowley, like Carper, are older, white men.

Harris has the backing of the same constellation of left-wing groups that have backed other liberal revolutionaries: Democracy for America, Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party and Our Revolution, the nonprofit spinoff of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.

These groups understand the significance of ousting a Senate incumbent. “If Kerri wins, this is bigger than Ocasio-Cortez. It’s going to be huge,” said Nasim Thompson of Justice Democrats. “It would be unseating a long-term senator. It’s going to reverberate just like, if not more than, Ocasio-Cortez.”

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In addition to unseating Capuano and Crowley, progressives have notched some high-profile wins in open races this year, like Andrew Gillum’s victory in last month’s Florida gubernatorial primary. But they’ve also come up short in a number of other contests, like Abdul el-Sayed’s unsuccessful campaign for governor in Michigan, or the failure to unseat Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, an anti-abortion incumbent who represents a Democratic, Chicagoland seat.

Harris’ policy breaks with Carper mostly come from the left. She criticized him for voting for the Keystone Pipeline and backing offshore drilling (though he opposes it off the Delaware coast). She says his ties to pharmaceutical companies haven’t helped Delaware cope with the opioid crisis.

On criminal justice issues, Harris faults Carper for mass incarceration dating back to his gubernatorial tenure in the 1990s. “My opponent prides himself in having been tough on crime while he was governor,” Harris said at the event. “The biggest prison expansion happened his watch. More blacks and low-income white people are in prison today than ever because of that expansion. You can’t show up and pretend that you care when you’re destroying our families.”

Harris also checks off a litany of other liberal goals: Medicare-for-all, raising the federal minimum wage to $15, universal pre-kindergarten and using government funds to eliminate student debt.

Democratic insiders are skeptical of Harris’ chances. “She started late,” said Rhett Ruggerio, a former Democratic National Committee member and top aide to former Wilmington Mayor James Baker. “If this race was a month from now, we might be having a different conversation.”

But both Ruggerio and Harris’ allies say that Delaware’s small size — fewer than 64,000 votes were cast in the 2016 Democratic primary for an open congressional seat — give the challenger a chance.

“Delaware is small, so the universe [of voters] is small,” said Ruggerio. “And when the universe is small, you’re vulnerable.”

Democracy for America’s Yvette Simpson agreed.

“Delaware is small enough that you can build relationships through engagement, through being on the ground, working hard, talking voters and getting them to get out,” she said. “You can win a Senate race in Delaware, versus another state that’s larger.”

In a Q-and-A with reporters after the event here last week, Harris and Ocasio-Cortez both worked to cast the Delaware race in national terms. Ocasio-Cortez said the Delaware race is “part of a broader message and a broader movement of social change” that has seen her crisscross the country in support of other Democratic candidates, even though she was little-known until June, and she still faces a general election in New York in November.

“Win or lose, none of these races have been failures,” agreed Harris. “You think 2018 is seeing insurgent candidates? You wait for 2020, 2024. We’re going to keep going — bigger, bigger, bigger.”

James Arkin reported from Washington. Anthony Adragna contributed from Washington.