The Protests Are Already Changing Elections

The past month of activism has increased the competitiveness of primaries far from New York too—galvanizing voters who might not otherwise have engaged in races, and stirring up funds for candidates who might not previously have enjoyed them. In a Virginia congressional race yesterday, Cameron Webb, a 37-year-old black physician, handily defeated his three primary opponents, including the race’s top fundraiser—a female combat veteran backed by EMILY’s List. The demonstrations also injected a massive jolt of energy into the Democratic Senate primary yesterday in Kentucky.

Before protests began in May, Charles Booker, a black progressive state lawmaker, was a low-funded underdog compared with Amy McGrath, the former fighter pilot who, like Engel, has the backing of the Democratic establishment. But Booker was also extremely active in local protests, demanding police accountability for the killing of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old who was fatally shot in a botched raid in Booker’s hometown of Louisville. In just the month of June, Booker’s campaign raised $3.8 million, a spokesperson told me, and by yesterday he’d nearly caught up to McGrath in the polls.

As of this afternoon, McGrath is leading Booker by about 7 percentage points, but ballots are still being counted and analysts haven’t yet called the race. Whether or not he wins, the demonstrations undoubtedly turned his fortunes around, Al Cross, a journalism professor at the University of Kentucky and a political columnist, told me. “If there was ever a candidate who caught the crest of a wave, it’s Charles Booker.”

After Sanders’s disappointing defeat in the presidential primaries, progressive victories this spring in Nebraska, Illinois, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania had given them reason to be hopeful down-ballot. But this week’s events are in some ways even more meaningful, as achievements for the Black Lives Matter movement overall and for those pushing to elect more lawmakers who know what it’s like to be black in America. “We are taking the protests to the ballot box, through our votes and through black candidates stepping up to run for office,” Quentin James, the founder and executive director of the Collective PAC, a political-action committee that recruits black progressive candidates, told me. “Our community is showing that we understand that if we want to change the laws, we must change the lawmakers.”

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“Change is here, change is possible, and change is real,” Bowman told me this week. “The more we engage in our democracy—from protests to voting to running—the more likely change will happen.”

Protests are ongoing across the country, and activists plan to keep pushing for police reform—among other lefty causes—at the Democratic National Convention this summer. November is still months away. The pandemic is still raging. Both of those factors mean that progressives’ next task will be complicated: trying to bring the same energy to bear in the coming months as they did this week—not only to keep voters’ attention on individual races, but to help their broader crusade of yanking the Democratic Party to the left.

Elaine Godfrey is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers politics.