Political Currents by Ross Barkan

Political Currents by Ross Barkan

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Political Currents by Ross Barkan
Political Currents by Ross Barkan
The Widest Open Congressional Race in America
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The Widest Open Congressional Race in America

Unlike few primaries anywhere, NY-10 seems to be anyone's game

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Ross Barkan
Jul 19, 2022
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Political Currents by Ross Barkan
Political Currents by Ross Barkan
The Widest Open Congressional Race in America
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Photo: Getty Images

A prominent Democrat asked me the other day who I thought was going to win the open race for the new 10th Congressional District in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. I answered, frankly, that I had no idea.

Unlike most primaries, Democratic or Republican, there are no obvious frontrunners here. There is no single candidate of the 13 with all the money, all the endorsements, and all the goodwill. There aren’t even two or three candidates who could be described that way. And since the district is brand-new, freshly drawn by a special master following redistricting chaos unlike any seen in modern times—at least in New York—there is no incumbent or anyone who really resembles one. Since the national stakes here are incredibly low, I don’t feel too bad about the horse-race aspects of this primary. Any of these Democrats will vote almost the same way in Washington. There are a few differences on domestic and foreign policy which the great HuffPost reporter Dan Marans has fleshed out in his series of interviews on the candidates. And given the odds that Democrats will lose their House majority in November, the freshman or freshwoman coming out of NY-10 won’t have much of a say in 2023.

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