Amish Shah, an emergency room doctor, beat back the choice of Democratic leadership in Arizona on Wednesday in the latest sign that the party’s voters are increasingly willing to override the national machine.
Shah won his primary in Arizona’s 1st congressional district over the candidate favored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in Washington, a significant result in a race the DCCC has identified as central to retaking the House.
Shah will face Republican Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker who was endorsed by Donald Trump in his primary, in the fall. Before becoming political opponents, Feely and Shah were part of the same team – the New York Jets. Shah was a doctor on the sidelines, while Feely was the kicker.
DCCC Backing Falls Short
The DCCC had thrown its weight behind the former Republican Marlene Galán-Woods, a former television journalist in Phoenix who switched parties in Trump’s first term.
The competition for the 1st congressional district, an affluent area that includes north-east Phoenix, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Paradise Valley, is rated by both parties as one of the more winnable Republican-held districts in the country, and is expected to help determine control of the US House of Representatives. Although Republicans hold a voter registration advantage, the district has shifted toward the center over the last decade.
The seat is open because the Republican representative David Schweikert ran for governor, losing to Representative Andy Biggs in the GOP primary on Tuesday.
Broader Anti-Establishment Trend
The trend runs deeper than establishment-picked candidates losing to committee-backed alternatives: it also shows up as a broader revolt against long-serving incumbents and traditional pro-Israel financial networks.
In June, Adriano Espaillat, a five-term New York congressman and the chair of the Congressional Hispanic caucus, lost his primary to Darializa Avila Chevalier, the 32-year-old democratic socialist who was backed by the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and cast Espaillat as out of step with voters on Israel policy and immigration enforcement. The result came despite about $2.9m spent defending Espaillat by a group funded in part by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), making him the sixth House incumbent to lose renomination this cycle.
A similar dynamic played out in Pennsylvania, where state representative Chris Rabb, an anti-Aipac democratic socialist, won the Democratic nomination for an open Philadelphia-area seat over establishment-aligned rivals, and in New Jersey, where the former combat surgeon Adam Hamawy won a crowded primary with the backing of a new anti-Aipac Super Pac and endorsements from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, despite a wave of attack ads against him.
But anti-establishment fervor has spooked congressional leaders, who fear that swing voters will see some insurgent candidates as too extreme and squander Democrats’ opportunity to take advantage of Trump’s unpopularity.
Last month the progressive Randy Villegas beat a DCCC-backed candidate for a top battleground district in California’s Central valley. And similarly in Maine, Matt Dunlap defeated a more moderate rival backed by the party. Ocasio-Cortez, herself a DCCC dues-payer, has argued the committee should be “rationing our resources to win general elections” rather than intervening in primaries, while the Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez has objected to her own dues underwriting campaigns she says the committee “shouldn’t be spending this money” on.
Moderate vs. Moderate
Unlike some of the intra-party battles roiling Democrats across the country this year, this was not a fight between the party’s left and center. Shah and Galán-Woods are both moderates, and local Democrats have struggled to explain why the DCCC intervened to endorse Galán-Woods at all, given how little separated the two on policy.
“Our victory in this primary was a grassroots victory where Arizona voters made their voices heard,” Shah said on Wednesday night in a statement that did not address the DCCC snub. “Now, it’s my job to earn the support of every voter in this district.”
Suzan DelBene, a US representative and the DCCC chair, issued a statement calling Feely an “extremist” and saying Shah “will always put his community first”, but did not address the controversy surrounding the support for Galán-Woods.
The National Republican Congressional Committee quickly released a digital ad on Wednesday attacking Shah, labeling him a socialist and tying him to progressives in Congress. “I’m a political outsider committed to delivering results,” Feely said in a statement.
Replay of 2024
The race was in some ways a replay of 2024, when Shah narrowly won in a crowded primary field that included Galán-Woods and lost in the general election. The DCCC did not endorse in the primary that year but backed Shah in the general.
“I wasn’t exactly my party’s pick,” Shah told supporters on Tuesday night. “And I was willing to stand up to that establishment. And that’s what the voters of this district want.”
Still, he has said he would work with the DCCC if nominated. He will need support from the party and its donors to win what will probably be a tough race in a district Trump carried narrowly in 2024. Joe Biden won the district during his presidential campaign in 2020 even as Schweikert was re-elected.
DCCC support generally brings an influx of money and staffing, both from the party itself and from the donors and interest groups that take its cues. But establishment support has been a turnoff for some voters.
“The Democratic party needs to grow up and wake up,” said Maria Liong, a 24-year-old medical student who volunteered for Shah’s campaign. “They need to realize that they want candidates who listen to their people.”
In the GOP primary, Feely defeated Joseph Chaplik, a former state lawmaker popular with grassroots activists, for the party’s nomination.
