Democrats have been consumed for the better part of two years by the same question: what went wrong in 2024? Next week, voters in the country’s bluest district will render a verdict when they choose a candidate for the 2026 midterm elections.
Nearly every faultline currently running through Democratic politics – from Gaza and healthcare to immigration enforcement and the role of corporate money in politics – is at the heart of the party’s race for Pennsylvania’s third district. Encompassing most of Philadelphia’s urban core, this is a district where a majority of residents are Black, several colleges are still processing the aftermath of pro-Palestine campus protests, and all four candidates have called for abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
With Dwight Evans, the congressperson retiring after a decade, the winner of Tuesday’s primary will almost certainly have an easy ride in November’s general election. The district is a +40 Democratic stronghold, according to the Cook Political Report: Kamala Harris won 88% of its votes in the 2024 presidential election, as the rest of the country re-elected Donald Trump.
Sharif Street, a state senator and the former chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic party and son of John Street, a famously tumultuous former Philadelphia mayor, is the institutional choice, backed by Cherelle Parker, the city’s current mayor, and several trade unions. Ala Stanford, a pediatric surgeon who gained national recognition running vaccination sites through her Black Doctors Consortium during the Covid-19 pandemic, is backed by Evans. And Chris Rabb, a state representative – endorsed by the congressional progressive caucus, Justice Democrats and the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board – is running an unapologetically leftwing, grassroots campaign.
Some party operatives look at Rabb, and this race, the way New York progressives looked at Zohran Mamdani before he won the city’s mayoralty in November 2025: a chance to prove that a genuine leftwing populist can actually reach the top and stay there. “Philly progressives don’t want to waste the momentum they’re seeing in Maine, Texas and Michigan on another establishment candidate,” said Ryan Birchmeier, a Democratic strategist and former communications director for Eric Adams.
