The Scene
Three months ago, Everton Blair drove to a town hall meeting in Georgia’s Gwinnett County with a question for his congressman, 79-year-old Rep. David Scott. While Scott promised his “great staff” were ready to help with anything, Blair had a question for the lawmaker.
“I would love to just hear a little bit more of the congressional and legislative strategy, congressman, that you have for this administration, particularly as it pertains to safeguarding federal funds,” Blair asked.
“Hold on!” replied Scott, according to a recording of the Jan. 30 event made by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I don’t know who sent y’all, but we got these folks here, who are providing answers. And I’m doing this. That’s what I’m doing.”
Blair, 34, was surprised. He explained that his question was “not adversarial,” then listened as a staffer dodged his “great question.” That night, the Democrat and former school board chairman began researching a campaign for Congress; last week, he launched one.
“Why are we allowing this to continue to be our representation?” Blair asked Semafor this week, adding that Scott “is just not the man for the moment.”
Elderly Democratic incumbents are facing more acute pressure to step aside from challengers who are newly emboldened to be blunt about sitting members’ advanced age. After last year’s disastrous Joe Biden re-election bid and this year’s deaths of two older Democrats who won in November while battling cancer, the party’s newer voices are ascendant and its incumbents more cautious.
The effects are visible even in seats without active primaries. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin announced his retirement on Wednesday rather than seek another term that he would have ended in his late 80s. Hours later, Politico reported that Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who had been outraised last quarter by 26-year old challenger Kat Abughazaleh, would be retiring in 2026; the 14-term Democrat will turn 81 next month. (Schakowsky wrote on X that she would make her final decision and announcement on May 5.)
“You watch aging, and I try to gauge it to the point where I can walk out the front door, I don’t have to be carried out,” Durbin told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I feel that way now. I’m physically and mentally strong. But I don’t want to wait too long and test fate.”
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Democrats have long questioned Scott’s acuity, quietly and not so quietly, as the 11-term congressman has aged. In December, he lost a bid to remain the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee; days later, he snapped at a Politico photographer who snapped him being pushed outside the Capitol in a wheelchair.
“We don’t see him, and he doesn’t have any new ideas,” said Blair, who’s one of two Scott challengers; state Sen. Emanuel Jones, 66, entered the race in January. “In a district this big, you’ve got to have somebody who can get out there and hit the pavement and really reach people. And we don’t have enough fighters in Congress.”
The demand for new candidates is more visible in more safely Democratic districts. Last year, Kamala Harris carried Scott’s suburban and exurban Atlanta seat with 80% of the vote; she won about two-thirds of the vote in Schakowsky’s suburban seat outside of Chicago.
“This is leadership!” wrote Amanda Litman, the founder of the candidate recruitment group Run for Something, after the Schakowsky news broke.
Litman told Semafor that the drumbeat of criticism from younger Democrats was affecting their older colleagues’ decision-making, and that the elderly incumbents who were leaving deserved thanks.
“There are great leaders in all their states who could be fierce fighters in Congress,” she said. “Making space for them is a real egoless act and should be celebrated!”
The potential field of Durbin successors, meanwhile, is shaping up with 59-year-old Illinois Lt. Gov. Julianna Stratton as the eldest contender.
David’s view
There’s not much of an ideological bent to this latest crop of primary challenges. They are about who can fight, which candidates can define themselves differently — and who’s too old to campaign with aggression.
In Illinois, Abughazaleh praised Schakowsky’s progressive record and support for a ceasefire in Gaza. Her campaign’s goal, she said in a statement, was “a Democratic Party that actually embraces democracy instead of kowtowing to authoritarians or pushing young people out of elections because they haven’t ‘waited their turn.’”
Scott’s challengers in Georgia bluntly say that they’re running because the congressman is too old to serve. Incumbents have lost over that issue before. Texas Rep. Ralph Hall’s decision to seek a new term at age 91, for example, was the only real issue in his final, unsuccessful campaign.
Democrats were more careful about these sorts of campaigns before. The Biden debacle ended that, and continues to reverberate in primaries. Elderly incumbents have, if they choose it, a lot of power to anoint successors.
That’s what Mitch McConnell is expected to do in Kentucky, where his protege Daniel Cameron is running to replace him. As Semafor’s Kadia Goba reported, the late Rep. Raul Grijalva, one of the two House Democrats who died of cancer this year, passed on his donor list to his daughter, now running in the special election to replace him.
But there is no voice in the party loud enough to stop the challenges, and not much fear of incumbency from the challengers.
Room for Disagreement
As the party’s Medicare-eligible incumbents begin giving way to new energy, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer isn’t quite ready to discuss his exit strategy — even after a government funding fight last month that focused the left’s energy on a possible primary by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Schumer told Semafor at Wednesday’s World Economy Summit that “I’m focused on making sure the people of New York and the people of America know how bad Trump is,” declining to address a potential Ocasio-Cortez challenge or his decision on running again in 2028 (when he’ll be 77).
“I have found, throughout my career, you do your job and everything works out just fine,” Schumer said.
Notable
- For NPR, three younger Democratic challengers talked with Elena Moore about how they wanted to change the party.
- Previously in Semafor, I talked to Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, about his challenge to Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco.
- In Rhode Island, Senate President Dominick Ruggerio died this week at age 76 and after a battle with cancer. “I have no hobbies,” he told the Providence Journal last year, explaining why he wouldn’t quit after the cancer diagnosis. “I enjoy what I’m doing.”