Before You Run: A Note to the Next Progressive Looking at a Crowded Field

Progressives won in Denver and Philadelphia because institutions picked one candidate early, greatly consolidating the field. We lost in VA-01 with seven candidates - Taylor won with 53% of the vote, I finished second with 20%.

I’m writing this because the vote-splitting problem is real, and I watched it work on my race in a way that doesn’t show up in the election night numbers. Here’s what I’d tell anyone thinking about filing in a crowded field.

Missed Part 1? Read here.

The split doesn’t cost you on Election Day. It costs you the six months before it.

Here’s what a crowded field actually does.

It means no challenger ever clears the viability bar, unless they’ve already been tapped from the jump. Viability is the key that unlocks everything else: the national endorsements, the independent expenditures, the reporters who decide your race is worth covering.

Voters read viability off the things they can see. FEC reports, yard signs, mail, postcards, canvassers, texts. These may not persuade but they signal organization and funding.

Which means a candidacy that can’t resource that work doesn’t merely fail to help - such a candidacy actively harms the race. It tells voters something inaccurate about who in the field has a path, and it makes it harder for the progressive candidate who does to prove that they do.

Our internal polling, done by MDW Communications, showed I was second in name recognition and the rest of the field was in single digits. When voters heard our experience and vision, the numbers flipped hard in our favor.

By the time voters were paying attention, the shape of the field had already decided which candidate got described as having a path. A fragmented field hands the race to whoever the institutions have already picked. As the saying goes, “Divide and conquer.” In our race, only one institution entered the field (DCCC) and progressive institutions stayed out.

Who decides viability?

Convenient, isn’t it, that the person calling for consolidation usually turns out to be the viable one?

It’s a fair hit and I’ll take it directly.

Our poll had me at 10% on name ID against Taylor’s 23%. By the standard I’ll share in this piece, someone could have looked at that and told me to go home. What I’d say is this: my intent going into the poll was to see who was the most viable progressive and I committed to my team in advance of its result that this was our moment of truth to stay in or withdraw. The poll's read held up: on Election Day we finished second, ten points clear of everyone else in the field.

But this is exactly why “trust the candidates to be selfless” is a bad system. Nobody should have to depend on a rival’s good character. The more one invests into a campaign, the more likely they are to stay in (especially if they’ve taken out loans or are in debt), just to keep up appearances with their friends and family or because the “yes-men” around them provide an aura of viability.

What 2026 actually showed us

This was a good year for progressives who ran in consolidated fields and a bad year for progressives who didn’t.

PA-03. Chris Rabb, the progressive, won with a plurality of votes against multiple moderates because they split each other. That’s our race in a mirror.

CO-01. Melat Kiros, another progressive, won with a plurality, beating the incumbent 49% to 44%, with a third candidate taking 7.2%. One more progressive in that field taking six points and the incumbent is still in Congress.

Look at how those wins actually happened. Justice Democrats endorsed Melat Kiros in December, and their own March polling still showed her at 7%. They backed her before there was any evidence she could win and that early bet is what brought the money, the organizers, and eventually high profile electeds. Chris Rabb got the Working Families Party and Justice Democrats in March. In both races, progressives committed to one candidate.

That’s the whole difference. A super PAC spent more than $1.5 million trying to save DeGette and lost. Fragmentation, not funding, is what beats us. For example:

IL-08. Melissa Bean won with 32%. Junaid Ahmed, the progressive, took 26.5%. Dan Tully took 12.5% and five more candidates split what was left. Bean won by 5.5 points while roughly a fifth of the electorate scattered across the rest of the ballot.

IL-09. There were fifteen candidates for Jan Schakowsky’s open seat. Daniel Biss won with 29%, Kat Abughazaleh 25%, Laura Fine 20%. Seventy percent of that electorate voted for someone who did not win.

And then there’s ours: 53% to the moderate, 20% to the lead progressive, and nobody else above 10%.

Did We Try Consolidating?

I was incredibly concerned about vote splitting, especially after seeing Kat Abughazaleh lose in IL-9. I approached a few other candidates about this. One was not concerned at all. I asked a couple others and they shared the concern, so I asked if they’d split a poll to see who was the most viable. Then, we could all consolidate behind that person. They liked the idea but didn’t have the $2,000 to fund the poll.

That concerned me - if you don’t have $2,000 to pay for a poll 3 quarters into a campaign, then how will you reach voters? You can’t win a Congressional race based on vibes and videos.

So we funded the entire poll ourselves and it showed Taylor and I had the most name recognition with the rest of the progressives having no path to victory. When I told one of the candidates this, asking them to withdraw and support our candidacy to keep Medicare for All alive, they became upset (understandably so) and doubled down on continuing their run, claiming they were finally building momentum.

That was a day before early voting began.

Election results showed no momentum.

The Voters Wanted Consolidation

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, our team members began hearing the same question everywhere: “When are the other candidates dropping out?” or “I’m split between X and Y due to similar visions.”

Voters knew that the field was too big and that we needed to consolidate. They’d seen what happened in other primaries. They just had no way to do the consolidation themselves. Elected officials - who didn’t publicly endorse but were disgruntled with the institution - asked our team the same question, concerned about vote splitting.

In the final weeks of the primary I heard from people who had spent hours comparing websites, watching forums, and trying to figure out which progressive actually had a shot. Every hour a voter spent figuring out which of us was viable was an hour we could have saved them by consolidating earlier and an hour that could have went towards their helping build a progressive movement. That is an enormous amount of work to ask of a voter when they’re struggling to make ends meet or their children are home from school and draining their energy. Most people don’t have those hours. We were calling voters up through Election Day, with people saying - even on Election Day - that while they intended to vote, they didn’t know who to vote for.

Would the Math math?

People will do basic math and say that with Taylor’s 53%, everyone could have dropped out and it still wouldn’t have added up to a victory for us. But that’s the thing - that’s basic. Early consolidation leads to concentration of resources and increased reach. We had major groups who didn’t endorse because the field was too crowded and visions too similar. Major donors stayed out citing the same. Their resources early on would have made a marked difference.

Certainly, seven candidates running various methods of campaigns resulted in double the turnout compared to the 2024 primary. People registered to vote, many voted for the first time in a primary. This shows a crowded field is not only a cost. But I'd rather we paid for that turnout with organizing and consolidation instead of with losing a possible nomination.

The real fix isn’t character

It’s ranked choice voting (RCV).

In districts where the primary is the election, like in Philadelphia, Denver, Chicago’s North Side, a plurality winner means most voters got someone they didn’t choose. If that doesn’t sound like the most democratic method to elect someone, you’re right, it isn’t.

Under RCV, nobody has to sacrifice their candidacy for the cause. You run, you make your case, and your supporters’ second choice does the consolidating that we’re currently asking human beings to do against their own ambition.

Until we have RCV, we’re stuck asking each other to be better than the system requires.

Here’s the ask

To progressive institutions: I know your staffing is limited. So consider your time. If multiple candidates from the same race are requesting your endorsement, bring them all to the table and figure out consolidation. Endorsing more than one candidate to preserve your relationships is how you end up with relationships and no members of Congress.

To the candidate thinking about filing, here are three things to consider.

1. Meet the progressive who’s already in. Actually meet them and have the hard talks. I had a conversation with someone exploring this race who decided not to run after our meeting. They saw our policies were aligned and liked our experience & vision. That conversation cost an hour and saved us from an eight-way primary.

2. Define your viability test before you have a stake in the answer. Write down the financials, polling numbers, a deadline by when to get it all. It’s a lot easier to be honest about a threshold you set when you launch than one you’re negotiating with yourself while in the foxhole. Make this your exit strategy and stay true to it. If you exit, stay involved in the race by endorsing one of the candidates and help them win.

3. Be honest about what you’re actually running for. If your candidacy has to die so that Medicare for All and children in Gaza can survive, that’s a trade worth taking. That doesn’t mean you won’t have a role in the struggle - simply join the viable candidate’s team. If you’re running to build for something else, then go do that thing instead because people’s lives are on the line here.

Where we go from here

I can’t tell you what’s next for me because I’m currently taking a break and catching up on life (I’ve watched Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey). But I can tell you this - our campaign wasn’t the start of our advocacy and losing is certainly not the end. What we’ve done is build something real throughout the district which we will continue to nurture and grow, even if we were ten years too early.

I’ll tell you this here: if I run again and RCV isn’t in place, I will actively consolidate those with similar visions and withdraw if a more viable candidate joins the field. I’m not here to befriend candidates; I’m here for Medicare for All and to end a genocide. If ego stands in the way of that, then remember, “Pride comes before the fall.”

Humbly,

Salaam

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