649: It's My Party and I'll Try If I Want To

Ira Glass

In the midterm elections, Democrats, of course, are gunning to retake the House of Representatives. And the 19th congressional district in New York is one of the spots they think they've got a great shot at. Demographically, it's one of the rare districts in the country that is actually a true tossup. It went for Donald Trump by seven points but before that it went for Barack Obama. It's pretty much evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

And to make it even more attractive to Democrats, the Republican on the seat right now-- his name is John Faso. He's the kind of opponent the Democrats dream of getting. He's only been in office for one term. He's a former lobbyist. His clients include payday loan companies and energy companies.

Supporting Faso you've got all the right wing funders the Democrats love to hate-- the Koch brothers, the Mercers, Paul Singer. Add to that, Faso's done a decent job of spending his first term in Congress handing out ammunition to Democrats.

One of our producers, Ben Calhoun, has spent months visiting the district covering this race. Ben?

Ben Calhoun

Yeah. So, the best example of what you're talking about is this video. And I'll say, I was so surprised at how often this video has come up when I've been reporting in the district over the last three months. People just mention this thing all the time. So in this video, Faso's completely surrounded by these protesters who are all opposing the Republican repeal of the Affordable Care Act-- the repeal of Obamacare. And this woman comes up to him.

Ben Calhoun

The woman's name here is Andrea Mitchell. And she explains to Faso, she's not just like any constituent. She went to school with Faso's kids. Like, Faso's wife was her school nurse. And she tells Faso that she has a brain tumor and Obamacare saved her health insurance. And then she pleads with Faso for him not to support the Republican repeal of Obamacare.

Ben Calhoun

I can tell you this--

Ben Calhoun

It's hard to hear in there, but Faso says to Andrea Mitchell, I can tell you that. I promise, I promise, I promise. He promises her three times. And then in the video he hugs her. And he seems kind of moved.

So Faso promises he's not going to support the Republican bill that's going to kill Obamacare. And then we can just cut to Faso on the floor of the House a few months later voting for the bill to kill Obamacare.

Ira Glass

And then he voted for the bill?

Ben Calhoun

Yeah. Faso's spokesperson said later that Andrea Mitchell wouldn't have lost her coverage because of the vote but that's unclear. So that vote, the one to gut Obamacare, it's one of the votes that puts Republicans at greater risk when they're trying to get elected this year. And Democrats are totally coming after him.

Ira Glass

OK, where are we now?

Ben Calhoun

This is sound from protests that have been happening outside of Faso's district offices every Friday. They call them Faso Fridays. And this one is from Kingston, New York. And it has a house band, called the Tin Horn Uprising.

[MUSIC - "GET UP, STAND UP" BY TIN HORN UPRISING]

Ira Glass

That is not a good version of that song.

Ben Calhoun

Yeah. It was actually kind of hard to pick which song to play for you.

[MUSIC - BY TIN HORN UPRISING]

Ira Glass

I feel like the band from the Star Wars cantina is trying to overturn this Congressman.

Ben Calhoun

Yeah, no. Let me do one more. We're going to go Seasonal.

[MUSIC - "SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN' BY TIN HORN UPRISING]

Ira Glass

No comment.

Ben Calhoun

So these kinds of protests have been kind of a genre for democratic activists all around the country. You've got Tuesdays with Toomey, Fridays with Frelinghuysen.

Ira Glass

These are just in different districts around the country?

Ben Calhoun

Yeah, all over the place. So all of that means, New York 19, it's just like one of the hottest targets for Democrats across the whole country. It's one of the seats that Democrats really believe they can flip, and that they need to flip if they're going to retake the House-- like top 15 easily. That's according to somebody who I talked to at the Democratic Party.

Ira Glass

OK, so the Democrats are dying to take the House and they're full of energy, they're full of enthusiasm. But at the same time, they don't agree how to take the House. And there's this big messy fight over ideas and strategy between different groups in the party. And Ben, you've reported on this before here on our show.

Ben Calhoun

Mm-hm.

Ira Glass

And one of the reasons it's so contentious is that each faction thinks that the other faction could totally blow the Democrat's chances to win this fall. And New York 19, this congressional district we've been talking about, this is a district where that kind of fight is going on. And Ben, you've been following one of the candidates in that race.

Ben Calhoun

Yeah, his name is Jeff Beals.

Ben Calhoun

That's Beals knocking on doors right there. And I got interested in him because he's emblematic of this whole political moment. The way he became politically active, some of the things that he believes, but also, maybe most important he was just willing to talk in this super honest way about things that were going on behind the scenes as Democrats are fighting with each other. And he just told me about conversations that you don't normally get to hear about in politics until maybe after an election is over. You know I've been covering people running for Congress for maybe 15 years and I've just never had somebody talk to me this way.

Ira Glass

OK, so that is our show today. We're going to watch this big soupy fight that's going on at the Democratic Party play out, through the experience that this one candidate, Jeff Beals, has had. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And Ben Calhoun takes a story from here.

Ben Calhoun

Jeff Beals remembers the day that he decided to run for Congress. He was a high school teacher. He teaches history and civics and he was killing time between classes.

Ben Calhoun

Beals is like, whoa, hold up. Wait a minute.

Ben Calhoun

In 2016, he watched Hillary Clinton deploy the strategy Democrats have used for years. She raised tons of money from big donors and lobbyists and pushed moderate positions designed to offend as few people as possible. Beals and other Democrats, the ones on the Bernie side of things, thought that the party had lost its credibility with Americans. It was too cozy with Wall Street, too corporate, too insider, and out of touch. They saw Clinton as the pinnacle of what had become a losing strategy.

Ben Calhoun

After Clinton's defeat, Beals was upset and worried. And like a lot of Democrats, he started signing up for all kinds of stuff-- protest, voter registration stuff. He became a member of his local Democratic Committee. And he noticed how excited Democrats were to stand up to the new President. Beals signed up with a group to host a house party.

Tons of strangers RSVP'd-- over 100 people, too many for his little apartment. He ended up having to hold it in a coffee shop. It shaped his view of what's possible this year and of what the party should be doing. So Beals is in the teacher's lounge, sipping coffee, reading about these candidates.

One is a corporate executive whose company does its manufacturing overseas. Another is a lawyer from a big lobbying firm, a lawyer whose job is defending Wall Street guys. And he thought, you've got to be joking. We cannot seriously be doing this again especially in New York 19.

Beals thought that New York 19 was the kind of place that was ripe for a different kind of campaign because Bernie Sanders had won big there-- crushed Clinton 58% to 41%. This is in her home state. Beals thought he understood why. New York 19 is an enormous district, about an hour north of New York City. It's speckled with second homes of well-heeled New Yorkers.

But it's also rural and working class with big swaths of poverty. Beals thought, this place has a populist streak which is partly why Trump took it in the general election, he thought. It's the kind of place where you can win back some of those Trump voters with a kind of surly, stick up for the little guy, drain the swamp sort of pitch, and drive up democratic turnout with loud progressive ideas to get Democrats pumped. Beals thought that's the right plan, especially right now.

Ben Calhoun

That's a speech he actually gave.

Ben Calhoun

Beals was about to spend the next 12 months betting everything he had on that idea. Like dozens of progressive candidates all over the country, Beals felt certain. Democrats could win with a progressive message, a call to overhaul their own party. He wanted to put that vision head-to-head up against the old strategy he hated so much. He was about to discover just how much the Democratic Party's current philosophy, fundraising, and strategy is stacked against a plan like his.

Ben Calhoun

Beals declared his candidacy on June 16th, 2017 on the steps of this old courthouse. In front of him, he had a podium he just bought on the internet and a crowd of what looks like 100 people spilling out into the street, cheering for all the progressive stuff-- free college tuition, break up the big banks, green New Deal, income inequality.

Ben Calhoun

Before Beals taught high school history and civics, he had the kind of biography that'd make you think, that guy could run for Congress. He graduated Harvard, where he studied Arabic and political science. Then he became an analyst at the CIA. After that he was a diplomat at the State Department. He went to Iraq where he worked on the transitional government and the Iraqi constitution.

When he was in training at the State Department, his colleagues voted him most likely to write a dissent cable, which is a kind of memo where someone essentially pulls the fire alarm to say something is terribly wrong. He's not shy about taking a contrary position. And by the time Beals left Iraq and the State Department, he was really disillusioned with how it had gone. He wanted to get away from government. Tried grad school and academia, drifted a little, and then started substitute teaching high school.

He found that he loved it. He took a job at a private school, the job he has now. One thing about running for Congress-- you don't actually have to ask anyone for permission. You just start saying you're running for Congress and people are like, oh, that person is running for Congress. And then something like this happens.

Ben Calhoun

For people outside Washington, the Democratic Party is the Democratic Party, right? But it's made up of smaller subgroups. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is the political arm of Democrats in the House of Representatives. In Washington it goes by the acronym DCCC , or just The D Trip. They help Democrats win seats in Congress by recruiting candidates, training people, helping with strategy and fundraising.

And last spring, when the DCCC reached out to Jeff Beals he thought, maybe it was to talk about how they might help him. So they planned a phone call, 4:00 PM, after Beals finishes teaching. So the day arrives, Jeff's ready. But before the clock hits 4:00 PM--

Ben Calhoun

It's a woman he knows. She's like, answer your next call. So they hang up, and then that call comes in.

Ben Calhoun

The guy tells Beals, give those answers, let's talk later.

Ben Calhoun

Jeff dials up the guy from The D Trip.

Ben Calhoun

A DCCC spokesperson told me there was more to this conversation but Beals maintains it was very, very focused on money. When he hung up, he was surprised by what wasn't in the conversation. What kind of organization have you set up? What activists and groups are connected to? Or even more just, what do you stand for? But so, Beals gets back on the phone with the democratic insider advisor guy. That guy did want to talk about what Jeff stood for.

Ben Calhoun

Single payer, government run nationalized health care-- everyone gets health insurance from the government. Back when the Republicans were trying to repeal Obamacare, Bernie Sanders launched a big push for this under the label Medicare For All. He chose that name because polls show that people love Medicare. And when he did this, Sanders sort of put a dividing line in the Democratic Party.

On one side, you had the moderate and establishment wing of the party that was all, single payer health care? Hold your horses there, Che Guevara. Do you remember the epic political beating we took over Obamacare for crying out loud?

And then on the Sanders side of the line, you had the progressive wing of the party who were all, radical. Most Americans support it. Right now it's like 60%-- plus, it's exciting. You want to make a comeback, how about we run on something people are excited about, you timid bastards. Jeff's on that side of the line.

Ben Calhoun

At some point, the guy on the phone turned to fundraising, how to hit the DCCC fundraising numbers. He said, I know it sounds like a lot but you can do it. Make a list of everyone you know and how much money you can get from each of them. I should say, this is conventional advice for new candidates. People call it rolodexing.

It's often done by political operatives to test whether candidates can raise the kind of money that politics often requires these days. Consider that in 2016, the average winning congressional campaign had to raise $1.5 million. Party operatives like to figure out if people can do that, and this is a shortcut. But it's a shortcut that ignores other things that are often tougher to measure-- grassroots involvement, activism. Even more, it's obviously a screening process that discriminates heavily in favor of rich candidates with rich friends and rich colleagues and against, well, most Americans.

Ben Calhoun

The DCCC usually is less relevant during a primary. In the general election, though, if they think you're a winner they'll tell people to give you money. They'll supply polling data, introduce you to consultants. They'll buy TV commercials for you.

So Beals got to work. With or without the DCCC, he knew he was going to need money. Hopefully, he thought, not as much money as the DCCC had told him on that call. But he was sure he was going to need some. So he set out to raise it.

And when Beals started, he was optimistic. Sure, he knew, progressive politics aren't every Democrats' bag. But he thought surely there's some deep pocketed progressive types out there-- you know, Warren Buffett types who are all, I'm crazy rich! Tax me more. It's going to be good for America. People started trying to hook Beals up.

Ben Calhoun

This was a buddy from the State Department, politically connected, and he wanted to help Beals. He was like, come to my birthday. There's going to be influential people there. You can give a speech and you can raise some money. It's going to be great.

Ben Calhoun

It's a couple of dozen people at this long wooden table. And at one point, the friend introduces Beals. And Beals does the stump speech, just lets it rip. He's feeling it.

Ben Calhoun

It's a medley of progressive politics in the backroom of a fancy New York restaurant. And you know, he's giving a political speech at a birthday party, which feels weird.

Ben Calhoun

But Jeff wraps it up. Dessert comes, and then his friend flags him down.

Ben Calhoun

But Jeff was also kind of shaken up. He respected his friend, respected his friend's political savvy. So Beals called another buddy from the State Department, somebody who knew them both.

Ben Calhoun

This was a reference to these private events Hillary Clinton got paid to do with Goldman Sachs, saying one thing to them and something different to the public-- catering to rich people, which was one of the very things Beals was running against. So he steeled himself and he continued calling up major democratic donors to find the progressive ones. He says, often these conversations started out friendly enough. People liked Beals' resume, his background qualifications.

But often things would take a turn. One major democratic donor, a former Goldman Sachs guy actually, he told Beals Medicare for All is a handout. And it's a political loser. Lots of big donors saw it as this lefty thing that could sandbag the party in general elections. They remember the backlash to Obamacare. Another guy, an investment banker type, he says, sure. I'll contribute.

Ben Calhoun

He couldn't change that because that would mean giving up the main argument he thinks Democrats should be making right now.

Ben Calhoun

Abortion rights, he says, same thing.

Ben Calhoun

The more major democratic donors Beals called, the more amazed he became and how explicit the conversations got, how direct they were in telling him to change what he was saying and campaigning on. Of course, like anybody, Beals figured politics was like this. But it was different to see it in real life, to be in the conversations, to be the person getting his arm twisted. He came to the conclusion that most of the Democratic Party's major donors are against progressive ideas. Research published by the Washington Post backs this up-- major donors do skew moderate.

Beals felt confident that there were people out there who agreed with him. He just had to connect with them. His plan was to run out and shout this progressive battle cry and hope than an army filled in behind him. And for Beals, the battle cry was Medicare for All.

This was June of last year, exactly when Bernie Sanders was stumping for Medicare for All, pressuring Democrats into picking a side. Everyone had to declare which team they were on or they had to dodge. It became the national border between progressives and establishment Democrats. It was exactly the thing Beals would talk about to try to find voters.

Ben Calhoun

One of the races first candidate forums was on August 23rd, 2017 at an old church. Around 6:00 PM, Beals walked in the front with about half a dozen other candidates past pews of people fanning themselves. He walked in with a plan that night.

Ben Calhoun

Beals plan, as he sat down on his stool up front, was to declare his support for what Sanders was doing as forcefully as he possibly could. Like, he didn't want to just say Medicare for All. He was like, I don't want to leave any room for doubt. I want to pledge support for the Medicare for All bill that's sitting in the house right now, House Bill 676. So health care comes up.

Ben Calhoun

You can actually hear this on the recording of the forum.

Ben Calhoun

This is Anique D'Angelo. She's a community organizer. She'd gone to the forum that day with her best friend. Both were Sanders supporters and they were both looking at candidates in New York 19. And they weren't liking what they saw.

Ben Calhoun

This is why Anique yelled, because when Beals said what he said she felt like she had found her candidate. She felt like she wanted a firm commitment on single payer, Medicare for All. And she was hearing Democrats talk about fixing the Affordable Care Act and working towards universal coverage. And if Medicare for All and universal coverage sound like the same thing, here's the difference.

Medicare for All is national health care. The government takes over the system, gives everyone insurance. Universal coverage is more general. I'd like to get everyone covered somehow. Maybe some people will keep their current insurance. Maybe some people will pay to get Medicare.

Maybe we leave the system mostly how it is. Maybe we change all of this gradually. Anique isn't looking for this kind of incrementalism. She thinks that's what Democrats always say and then they wuss out. She's fed up.

Ben Calhoun

From that day forward, August 23rd, 2017, Anique D'Angelo was a Beals supporter. She phone banked in the evening, drove to events all across the district. Soon supporters like Anique were fanning out for Beals. The campaign was crystallizing around a plan. Sanders had gotten 35,000 votes in the primary, which Beals saw as 35,000 Aniques scattered all across the district.

So Beals' campaign looked at the map of where those votes had come from, the precincts where Sanders support was the densest. They targeted their efforts there. If they could just get a third of those people, 12,000 votes, they figured they'd have a serious shot because, not to overwhelm you with numbers here, only 19,000 people voted in the last democratic primary. So 12,000-- that could win this one.

Before long came the first real test for Beale's theory that he could run a campaign that didn't rely on big donors and money, that would be fueled by a flood of volunteers and enthusiasm for brash progressive stuff. The test was something that seems kind of basic, getting his name on the ballot. Like I said, it's easy to say you're running for Congress. It's actually hard to get your name on the ballot.

Ben Calhoun

Here's why it costs so much money. Beale's was told, you're going to need a lawyer on retainer. And you're going to need an army of paid canvassers. And you're going to need those things because getting signatures is harder than it sounds. To get on the ballot in New York 19 requires 1,250 signatures but there are rules. Only registered Democrats can sign. The signature has to be witnessed by another registered Democrat. And people can only sign for one candidate. So if another campaign got there first, you're out of luck. You mess up any of that, the signature can get tossed out. So 1,250-- you can't just get 1,250.

Ben Calhoun

Generally, the thing you do is collect way more than the requirement to send a message to other campaigns not to mess with you. And you hire that lawyer to defend your signatures. All of this for a traditional campaign needs a boatload of money. Beals' staff knew this was a moment to prove themselves.

Ben Calhoun

For Beals, this was vindication, proof that the thing he thought was possible actually might be possible. Proof that the conventional wisdom might be wrong. A campaign like his, it could work.

Ira Glass

Ben Calhoun. Coming up, Democrats who are not Jeff Beals. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, It's My Party and I'll Try If I Want To, about a candidate who's running for Congress for the very first time and what his race tells us about what is happening inside the Democratic Party this year. The candidate we're following, Jeff Beals, is a Bernie Sanders style progressive. And around the country this past year, the climate between the party apparatus and progressives has been pretty toxic at times because of a handful of incidents that progressives have taken as signs of the party's hostility.

The most notorious one was in Texas. The DCCC released opposition research on a progressive candidate named Laura Moser for her primary. Progressives kind of freaked out. There've been a few other blow ups in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, New York, Minnesota, Colorado. Party officials say that they have nothing against progressive congressional candidates or their ideas. In Jeff Beals' race, in New York's 19th congressional district, election day is this coming Tuesday and there's a whole array of candidates. Ben Calhoun picks up our story from here.

Ben Calhoun

By early 2018, seven Democrats had officially declared in the race for New York 19. Seven, I know-- so many. I've gone out with about half of them knocking doors. The most common thing that voters do is they make a joke, some form of holy crap there's a lot of you people!

So let's just spin through the cast. There's an economist and triathlete who jumped in late. As the only woman in the race, got the backing of Emily's List. She's making a fairly bald play for women voters.

Ben Calhoun

There's a community activist who's also a personal injury lawyer. There's a young staffer for New York governor Andrew Cuomo who's got the money and connections that come with that. He's driving a 1999 Ford Winnebago to every town in the district.

Ben Calhoun

Somebody must have pointed out how much pollution those old RVs pump out, because now he tells audiences he's buying carbon offsets. And then there are three candidates who have raised the most money. Each has raised over a million dollars. There's Antonio Delgado, the lawyer from the lobbying firm, Brian Flynn, the medical devices executive, and an Iraq veteran named Pat Ryan.

Beals has targeted these three. For him they represent the big money politics he's waging war against. Inconveniently for Beals, all three of these candidates sell themselves as progressives, identify themselves that way in opening remarks in ads. And I got to imagine, all seven candidates would be pretty dependable votes against the president.

They talk in samey ways about immigration. They all believe in climate change. They all support public education. But on the big dividing line issue for Democrats, the one that's supposed to separate the progressive team from the establishment team, Medicare for All, there's division.

Of the three big money candidates, Flynn the medical devices CEO, he's for it. The other two, Ryan and Delgado, they are not for Medicare for All, which we know because there was a candidate forum in a town called Oneonta. They got to asked flat out, Medicare for All, are you for that? Yes or no. Here's their answers.

Ben Calhoun

But Ryan and Delgado, they do this interesting thing you see in a lot of races around the country this year. While progressives are trying to draw this line in the sand, Ryan and Delgado are trying to blur the line out of existence. They're like, line? I don't see a line. Oh, look, Donald Trump! Get him!

If you go to their websites or you watch their commercials, you might really think Ryan and Delgado agree with Beals on health care. Delgado's website, for instance, says, I will fight for universal affordable quality health care for everyone. He's running TV ads with that kind of language.

Ben Calhoun

I went to a fundraiser for Delgado at somebody's house. After he left, some people said they thought Delgado was for Medicare for All from the way that he talked but they weren't totally sure. They asked me, do you know? I said, well, I was just at this forum and he said no. Several felt misled. I told Delgado about it later.

Ben Calhoun

Delgado's attitude is, let's just get everyone covered somehow. Saying, let's have government pay for everybody, Medicare for All, that narrows your options, alienates some voters, and it ignores specific realities.

Ben Calhoun

This can either seem like a totally reasonable and realistic way to think about the politics of health care in this country, or it can sound the way that it sounds to Beals and his supporters-- like a sellout, like Delgado doesn't stand with them at all. Here's Beals.

Ben Calhoun

Beals finds it galling that anyone could think he and Delgado want the same thing on health care. He's really frustrated by it. And he sees his role in this race to call this out, and to call it the role of money in the race, and to go after the mainstream big money candidates. In Beals' eyes, they embody everything that's wrong with the party. And there's plenty in their bios to set him off.

Last week he sent me this ad. Brian Flynn, the medical devices guy who financed his campaign with $700,000 of his own money, whose company manufactures overseas, he put out an ad where he says quote, "billionaires and corporations have rigged the system against us." In the ad there's a picture of Flynn. He's wearing a $9,000 watch, a Rolex. Like he didn't even know enough to take it off.

At every candidate forum I've seen, Beals has gone after those guys, accusing them of being bought and sold, tied to all the big donations they've taken.

Ben Calhoun

Here he is in November, in a packed middle school auditorium.

Ben Calhoun

Beals says he was surprised by how strong the reaction was, onstage but then also afterwards.

Ben Calhoun

His opponents respond with an argument you hear from lots of Democrats right now. This is Gareth Rhodes, the former gubernatorial staffer.

Ben Calhoun

Here's Pat Ryan, veteran.

Ben Calhoun

That is, Beals attacks will make it easier for Faso to beat whoever wins the primary.

Ben Calhoun

It's typical for the party, the DCCC, to check in with candidates and for campaigns to let them know how things are going. And every three months, the DCCC sends Beals fundraising goals-- $450,000, $500,000, what he's supposed to raise that quarter. The kind of money they believe is necessary to compete against a Republican in a district like this. Beals missed all those fundraising goals. He's raised about $316,000, which might have been respectable a decade ago, but these days is near the bottom rung of viability.

He thinks they don't get what he's doing or the kind of campaign he's trying to run. He says the fundraising goals aren't just this neutral practical bar to get over. They come with ideology.

Ben Calhoun

Party officials insist that the fundraising goals, they're not ideological. They're practical. It's reality. Ian Russell used to be the political director for the DCCC. He says a campaign like Beals is imagining can win, but it's a lot harder and would require a huge grassroots organization.

And he says in a district like New York 19, because it's so spread out, a lot of the fight happens on TV. If you're not running ads in the general election you let your Republican opponent control the conversation. In Russell's experience, if a campaign like Beals' does make it through the primary, the party can end up in a tough spot. They've got a limited amount of money. They don't want to pull money away from other races so that they can prop up an underfunded campaign like Beals.

Ben Calhoun

I put to him Beals case, that the donors the party steers him toward have a moderate agenda. And so what he says is, de facto, the fundraising goals you're giving for me are an ideological agenda.

Ben Calhoun

Zephyr Teachout's a person. She's a progressive who ran against Faso in 2016. Russell points out that Teachout raised about $5 million with politics a lot like Beals. She did that by making herself a little famous with progressives. She did things like get on MSNBC so then she could get small donations from progressives all over the country. Russell says that's what candidates like Beals have to do.

Ben Calhoun

Beals relationship with the party went steadily downhill. And by February he says, it was nothing but arguments about him missing fundraising goals. And then came this phone call. Beals and two people from the campaign, with the DCCC's northeast political director.

Ben Calhoun

Then, according to Beals, someone on his end confronts the DCCC about this polling data that they'd given to two of the big money candidates, Brian and Delgado. They ask, could we get that too? The DCCC says, we can share that with you. But it doesn't get resolved before the conversation turns back to money.

Ben Calhoun

A DCCC spokesperson wouldn't discuss the specifics of what happened on that call but told me the party would work with Beals if he became the nominee. At the same time, the former DCCC political director, Ian Russell, he told me if a candidate gets through the primary that the party doesn't think is strong, they will sometimes write off districts they think are a lost cause. Since that phone call, Beals says, his campaign has not spoken with the DCCC.

Democrats are so desperate to win this year. I heard it over and over. And though Beals has this theory on why a campaign like his can beat a Republican in the fall, even some progressives are nervous to go along with him.

One progressive group got into a particularly bitter fight over all this. The group's Citizen Action. It's a branch of a national group. There's lots of chapters. Very active chapter in New York. Their volunteers run Faso Fridays.

Oriana Mayorga was in charge of Citizen Action's endorsement committee in New York 19. She moved to the district to work for Citizen Action as an organizer. She's a Beals supporter. In January, Mayorga gathered in an endorsement committee of 12 who interviewed the candidates. They discussed, then they voted.

Ben Calhoun

Not a huge shocker. Citizen Action is progressive. They hold events and rallies for single payer health care.

Ben Calhoun

Mayorga sent word to the state leadership of Citizen Action, here was our vote. But what happened next surprised her. State leaders said the vote had been too close, closer than they wanted. Essentially, look at this some more and try again. Mayorga says following that first vote, state leaders called members of the committee. They told people they thought Delgado was the stronger candidate.

Ben Calhoun

They brought Delgado in and they told them that. But he refused to back Medicare for All. What followed was a series of tough meetings, circular arguments, turning over the coin of idealism and pragmatism. The same tortured question from the Sanders versus Clinton race.

This time around though it was, should we back Beals? He's more progressive. He's like us. Others were like, Delgado has more money. We worry Beals can't compete.

Mayorga says the whole thing was kind of awful. At one point, someone ran out of the room with a nosebleed. But eventually another vote was taken-- seven for Delgado, five for Beals. People in charge were like, OK, if that's our endorsement can you Beals folks live with that?

Ben Calhoun

They were like, we voted with the same split for Beals and were told it was too close.

Ben Calhoun

A few things happened after that meeting. There was another meeting. A bunch of Beals supporters couldn't be there, and one last Beals supporter caved. Then Mayorga told her bosses she was upset about how this whole thing went. The following week she was fired.

Ben Calhoun

In May, Citizen Action officially endorsed Antonio Delgado.

Ben Calhoun

Delgado tweeted out the endorsement calling it quote, "the progressive stamp of approval."

Ben Calhoun

When I talk to the DCCC and progressives, one of the things they all said was that they were worried about how Democrats were going to handle the whole influx of enthusiasm this year. Essentially, if Democrats didn't handle the situation right people could get alienated. The opportunity could get squandered. I couldn't help but think of that when I was talking to Mayorga.

Ben Calhoun

Recently I follow Beals as he canvassed in Oneonta, a beautiful town up in the mountains of New York.

Ben Calhoun

He moved quickly from one port to another with a keen eye out for Bernie Sanders stickers on bumpers and in windows.

Ben Calhoun

Though Beals says his relationship with the national party went cold, progressive groups have jumped in to help him. A group of former Sanders staffers, the Justice Democrats, and a group of former Sanders activists, the People for Bernie Sanders, they both endorse Beals. And those endorsements, they serve as this kind of shorthand for progressive voters. At one house this sweet guy named Dana came to the door. He had a Sanders sticker outside.

Ben Calhoun

Beals gave his pitch. He's a teacher, thinks the economy is working against most people, Medicare for All-- then he mentioned the Justice Democrats, the endorsement by the former Sanders staffers.

Ben Calhoun

This happened a number of times that day. As for the army of volunteers Beals knew he would need to win this kind of campaign, did he enlist them? Beals wouldn't say how many he has. But he did say they've knocked on over 40,000 doors. That's the same number Pat Ryan, the veteran, says his campaign has done. Antonio Delgado's campaign says they've knocked on 50,000. So at least by one measure he's keeping up, though Ryan and Delgado are both running TV ads and Beals is not. So far nobody has released an objective poll on the race. With seven candidates, the vote could split in some really weird ways. Everybody agrees someone could win without getting all that much of the vote.

Ben Calhoun

One of the things that probably will happen, even if Beals doesn't win, some candidates like him probably will. Meaning if Democrats get a majority in the House, all these disagreements about who they are and what they should be are not going to go away. Their majority will be riddled with people who feel like the party is doing things wrong and who have spent the past year like Beals has, finding each other. That's what Beals is left to do these days. Now that school's out he starts canvassing around 8:00 AM. He keeps going until 9:00 at night. And every day, he tells me, he finds more people who feel the way that he does.

Ira Glass

Ben Calhoun is one of the producers on our show.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Zoe Chace. The people who put together our show today includes Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Chana Joffe-Walt, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Alvin Melathe, Catherine Maymondo, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed. Our managing editor is Susan Burton.

Special thanks today to Jeremy McCarter, Lucy Flores, Dustin Reidy, Tim Mynett, and Jonathan Smucker. Our website, Thisamericanlife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free. We also have a slide show this week of Jeff Beals out talking to voters. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, I was driving him home this week and he pointed out this opening in the woods near his house I had never seen before, looked pretty creepy. He explained--

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.