John Yarmuth Was Great. So Let's Find a Great Replacement For Him.

Oct 13, 2021

John Yarmuth was very opposed to the Iraq War before a lot of Democratic politicians were. He was progressive before that was cool and safe. He spoke about racial inequality back when that wasn’t something a lot of white politicians did. He was talking about Donald Trump breaking with democratic values and the need to impeach him back in 2017, when a lot of Democratic politicians were worried impeachment would backfire on them the way it did the Republicans in the 1990s. When I asked him about critical race theory at a press conference a few months ago, he described the concept in detail, explained its usefulness and then noted it isn’t being taught in public schools anyway. (As opposed to being terrified of critical race theory and hoping the issue will go away, the posture of the Biden White House, even as Republicans hammer it daily.) More recently, the congressman has been touting Modern Monetary Theory---the idea that nations like the U.S. that have their own currency don’t really need to worry about accumulating large debts.

Yarmuth has been great at the politician part of the job---being out in all parts of the community, holding town halls, being accessible. But as I was demonstrating above, he’s also been great at the leading part of the job---willing to take big bold stances ahead of the broader Democratic Party on many issues. It’s not hard to be a congressman from a Democratic-leaning district like this one. But being out front on big issues isn’t easy, and John has done that. Congrats to him on his service.

Our Next Representative

One of the big unknowns is whether this district, which basically includes all of Jefferson County and nothing else, will be changed by the state legislature over the next year. As it stands now, the 3rd Congressional District is an area where a Democratic House candidate will be heavily-favored over a Republican. So if the district’s boundaries remain in place, the real election is the Democratic primary.

Kentucky State Senate Democratic Leader Morgan McGarvey, who represents a district that includes the Highlands, announced yesterday that he is joining the race to replace Yarmuth. State Rep. Attica Scott has already been running. Other candidates might enter the race. McGarvey is fairly left--leaning, so I doubt he and Scott will differ much on actual policy issues that will come before votes in Congress. (Scott favors ideas like the Green New Deal that aren’t likely to be voted on.) I assume other Democrats who are also fairly left will enter this race and the winner will be someone whose ideology is similar to Yarmuth’s. In fact, on some level, this is a primary that doesn’t have high stakes---Louisville will be replacing a person (Yarmuth) who votes the party line with the Democrats on basically every issue with another person who does that.

But voting is not all that matters for a member of Congress. My guess is you don’t know who Joe Crowley or Michael Capuano are. They were longtime Democratic congressmen, representing districts in the New York City area and the Boston area respectively. They were defeated in Democratic primaries in 2018 by women you may have heard of: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley. Capuano and Crowley rarely cast a vote I disagreed with. But Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez have been vocal in pushing Democrats to be more left/progressive/power-balancing, in ways that I’m generally happy with but some Democrats aren’t. And Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley are women of color who replaced white men.

Scott, based on everything she has done in politics in Kentucky, is likely to be, if not a full member of “The Squad,” a representative of that ethos--a black woman pushing the party to be more focused on economic and racial inequality, pushing ideas that might be right and just but also hard to implement and unpopular at first. She is likely to use the congressional post to be a leader beyond her votes. I don’t have as great a read on McGarvey and how he might approach the job.

You don’t have to be very progressive, on Twitter a lot and a young woman of color to be a leader on Capitol Hill---I would suggest Sens. Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Raphael Warnock and Reps. Katie Porter, Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff and our own Rep. Yarmuth are real leaders on the Hill too. I’m hoping that all of the candidates to replace Yarmuth outline a vision of using that seat to do more than just vote the Democratic position on key issues. That’s what John did. He’s a wealthy older white man, but some of the strongest praise of him as he announced his retirement came from people like Ricky Jones and Charles Booker.

Tidbits:

Charles Booker is full-steam ahead on running for the Senate, although I gather he might have run to replace Yarmuth if he had not already started his Senate campaign.
Scott is a controversial figure among the Democratic politicos in town. I don’t really care about this kind of thing, because she is running to be a freshman House member---she’s not going to be writing bills and needing to be beloved by her colleagues. I don’t quite know what the beef is really and how much it is related or not to her being a vocal black woman who says exactly what she thinks. (To be sure, some of the people who don’t like her are black.) But not only is it unlikely that many of the city’s other politicians will endorse her right now, I would expect some of them to endorse McGarvey, who is well-liked in that circle.
Yarmuth implied, in an interview with the Courier-Journal, that Scott couldn’t win the general election. I tend to think that whomever the Democratic nominee is in this district will be a huge favorite to win---particularly if she or he gets a strong, full-throated endorsement from the city’s leading Democrats. Hilary Clinton won by 13 points here in 2016.
The outgoing congressman implied he would endorse his son Aaron if Aaron ran for the seat. Hmm. I think Aaron has some solid credentials to run on his own. I’m pretty unenthusiastic about a situation where a family member helps clear the way for another person in that family to take a House seat, although I know this happens from time to time. Yes, I voted for Steve Beshear’s son, who was endorsed by Steve Beshear, but that was not ideal either. In that case though, it was Steve Beshear’s son or having one of the worst governors ever stay in office.
Would Yarmuth have defeated Scott in a primary? Almost certainly. Did he want to have to run in a primary, have Scott criticize him and have to in turn criticize a politician I”m guessing he respects even if he doesn’t necessarily like? Probably not. So did Attica Scott nudge John Yarmuth into retirement? Maybe. House Democrats may lost control in 2022, this district may be changed, Yarmuth is in his 70’s, so he had plenty of other reasons to retire. But I”m guessing that Scott running against Yarmuth and him retiring has reinforced her challenges with the politicos in town. At the same time, she is now running against Morgan McGarvey rather than John Yarmuth, a much more favorable race for her.
The problem here is really structural. Democrats don’t have any real power or voice in state politics, so McGarvey and Scott likely want to move on from Frankfort. The U.S. House is set up based on seniority, so Yarmuth, like other older members, has a bigger role than ever now, so the job is more interesting. At the same time, he was nearing 20 years of service, so it’s perfectly logical that people in the community feel like they were losing any chance of serving in Congress.
JCPS basically already has a police force. I didn’t know this until I read this excellent WFPL story.

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