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What it means to "defund the police" is being explored nationwide by some of the candidates running for district attorney and county prosecutor, the law enforcement officials who have the power to directly hold police accountable. Progressive candidates are pushing toward some of the slogan's goals, if not explicitly supporting it.

After the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Rayshard Brooks, a drumbeat ofprotestershas been demanding to "defund the police." In Minneapolis, the city council voted to disband the police force and replace it with a community-led system. But in general, the term does not mean that police should be given zero funding or that police departments should be abolished, but rather that some portion of their funding should be diverted to community programs.

CBS News spoke to several candidates, as well as former 2020 Democratic presidential candidateJulin Castro, who is supporting district attorneys backing policing reform as part of their agenda.

A number of progressive candidates told CBS News they interpret the phrase to mean reallocating some police funds for health care and education. And many would also like to see police forces demilitarized, fewer non-violent crimes prosecuted and an end to the cash bail system.

Eli Savit, who is running for Washtenaw County prosecutor in Michigan, said the core of his campaign's message is that the "punishment-first mentality" in the criminal justice system must end. As he sees it, the prosecutor "sets up the playing field" for the criminal justice system, so "it's important that we have people that don't just come from that standard tough-on-crime mentality that we've seen fuel our inequitable system of mass incarceration in this country for so long in charge of prosecutors' offices."

Several progressive candidates are insisting that police officers and departments be held more accountable. To that end, some are proposing improving law enforcement data tracking including a database that documents whether a police officer has used excessive force. Other ideas included banning chokeholds and eliminating qualified immunity.

As a circuit attorney running for re-election in St. Louis, Kimberly Gardner points to her "exclusion list" as one way to hold police accountable. The list prevents any officers who are under investigation or who aren't "credible" from being able to bring any cases to her office.

"They have the ability to take someone's liberty or life, and they must be credible when they testify," she told CBS News.

In February, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr derided progressive district attorneys as "self-styled social justice reformers" who "are refusing to enforce entire categories of law, including law against resisting police officers."

Barr takes issue with their goal of prosecuting fewer low-level crimes,saying, "We have to have accurate criminal histories if we are going to be able to protect the community. Even if we are going to treat early, and petty offenses leniently, we still need them charged and recorded, so we know who we are dealing with as time goes by."

In Chicago, state's attorney Kimberly Foxx oversees the second largest prosecutor's office in the country and has jurisdiction over the city's police department, which has a $1.8 billion budget. While she favors diverting some part to community programs, she called it a common "trick" for people to take the "defund the police" movement and say "you have to choose policing or investment."

"You have to make sure communities are safe. But that requires a deeper investment in trauma services for these communities that are impacted by violence. It's not either-or," she told CBS News.

It remains to be seen whether progressives are making an argument that will resonate at the polls in November. Last year, progressives coalesced behind Queens district attorney candidate Tiffany Cabn, who ran on a platform of criminal justice reform but eventually lost to borough president Melinda Katz.

In early June, Senator Bernie Sanders and Castro each endorsed progressive candidates focused on criminal justice and police reform. Castro's endorsements, through his "People First Future," PAC, include George Gascn, candidate for Los Angeles county district attorney, Jos Garza, candidate for Travis County (Austin), Texas, district attorney and Foxx.

Castro told CBS News he wants to see district attorneys who "don't incarcerate for minor crimes" and who have "the courage to pursue charges against police officers who use excessive force."

Some activists and organizers remain skeptical of the idea of "progressive prosecutors," and dismiss them as part of a broken system that still needs an overhaul.

"Prosecutors can decide not to charge people, but they're still the ones enforcing laws that are extremely biased, and they're still the ones that are taking cases to court that are the result of really problematic policing tactics," said Alexa Van Brunt, the Director of the MacArthur Justice Center Clinic and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

"Until you're talking about drastically re-organizing the institution and starting to make the incarceration systems obsolete, I believe even a progressive prosecutor is perpetuating harm," says Damon Williams, co-founder and co-director of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, a Chicago-based alliance calling for the abolition of police and prisons.

Gardner said police unions are often "one of the biggest impediments to the reform conversation." She has clashed with the city's largest police union and sued it over a "racist conspiracy" to block her agenda.

In Chicago, Foxx has faced her own battles with police unions. Suburban police officers gave her a vote of "no confidence" and during her handling of the high-profile Jussie Smollett case, Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) called for her resignation after she dropped 16 felony counts against Smollett.

Chicago FOP President Kevin Graham also complained that "many cases" haven't been fully prosecuted, "especially assaults against police officers."

Foxx is among the prosecutors who would like to see fewer low-level crimes prosecuted. She said the FOP is out of step with rank-and-file officers who "know that we need reform."

"They are tired of being social workers and mental health advocates," she said, and they'll say they're "not adequately trained" on some deescalation approaches.

Victoria Burton-Harris, who's running for county prosecutor for Wayne County, Detroit's home county, said there are no solutions without bringing law enforcement into the conversation.

"That's the only way that you get past this moment. Having very real conversations about America's violent history, about the history of police, about the history of policing and communities of color," Burton-Harris said. "And you start to craft solutions once you have those very hard, challenging, honest conversations with everyone at the table."

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What does it mean to "defund the police"? Progressive candidates for prosecutor are tackling the issue - CBS News

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Progressive has long been viewed as the best-managed major auto insurer in the U.S., with the highest returns and superior technology. Its strengths were apparent as Tricia Griffith, a Progressive lifer, and her team responded to the Covid-19 crisis and sought to support multiple constituencies. Progressive quickly had 95% of its 43,000 employees working from home, and provided $1 billion in rebates to customers after receiving a windfall, as Americans reduced driving and had fewer auto accidents. Then there were meals for truckers who had a hard time finding open places to eat on the road, and financial aid to independent body shops with fewer cars to repair but payrolls to meet.

Were based in Ohio, and the state didnt have enough people to adjudicate unemployment claims, Griffith tells Barrons. To help, Progressive lent the state 100 employees, all kept on the company payroll.

Griffith, 55, addressed employees weekly to give them a sense of calmness during the crisis. She did so via folksy videos, each about five minutes long, shot by her son in their Ohio homes library. On one, she joked that she had to pull back from eating too many unhealthy snacks, like M&Ms.

For customers, the idea was not to make auto insurance an added worry. People have all these different things coming at them, she says. When they needed it most, Progressive came through.

Data as of 6/19/20

Sources: Bloomberg; FactSet

Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com

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How Progressives Patricia Griffith Went Beyond the Call of Duty During the Covid Crisis - Barron's

It should be the Congressional Black Caucuss biggest moment.

Multiple CBC members being vetted as a potential vice presidential pick. A national uprising over systemic racism in policing that could finally address core issues in Black communities. And a host of Black progressives winning Democratic nominations that will almost certainly sweep them into office.

But with the CBC either not endorsing some of those liberal Black candidates who won Tuesday night or outright opposing them many activists are wondering if the CBC is progressive enough to lead this movement.

If it wasnt clear before tonight, I hope it is now. The CBC is disconnected from middle and lower black America, progressive Black activist Danny D. Glover tweeted Tuesday night after the election results.

Do not listen to them, he added.

Glover, who ran the outreach program for historically black colleges and universities for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanderss 2016 presidential campaign, told HuffPost on Wednesday that the CBCs reluctance to endorse Black candidates with left-wing credentials candidates who appear to have won their Democratic nominations Tuesday speaks to a lack of connection to working-class voters.

The fact that theyre willing to stake their entire reputation and legacy on folks that exist outside of the mission of the Congressional Black Caucus says a lot about the leadership, Glover said, referring to the CBCs endorsement of 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) over Black middle school principal Jamaal Bowman.

Maurice Weeks, the co-executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, also said the Engel endorsement over Bowman spoke to a larger crisis for the CBC in this moment, where its clear theyre not actually representative of the progressive Black agenda in America.

Folks like Bowman are the face of that agenda, Weeks said.

Bowman ultimately defeated Engel, the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, and a number of liberal activists noticed that the CBC threw its weight behind Engel, who is white, over, say, helping Black challengers in open races, like Mondaire Jones in a nearby district.

The CBC has spent more to protect Eliot Engel against a Black challenger than theyve done to get a Black man across the finish line, activist Sean McElwee, the co-founder of the liberal think tank Data for Progress, noted to HuffPost last Friday.

A spokesperson for the CBC PAC did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

CBC PAC Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) defended the Engel endorsement to Politico, citing Engels role in advocating against police brutality. You judge a person based upon the merit of their service, he said. So if you earn it, thats who we support.

Jones, who was the clear front-runner in a race to succeed retiring Appropriations Committee chair Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), didnt get the CBCs endorsement until Saturday, three days before the primary and only after HuffPost began asking CBC leaders why the group hadnt endorsed Jones.They endorsed Mondaire when it didnt matter, a senior aide to a progressive House member said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

Meeks told HuffPost last week that generally the CBC stays out of it if there are multiple Black candidates in an open-seat race. In the Jones race, among a field of seven candidates, there was another Black challenger, Asha Castleberry-Hernandez. But while Jones was polling at 25%, Castleberry-Hernandez was polling at 3% and she had raised a fraction of the money that Jones had. Meanwhile, there were two other white candidates polling in the mid-teens.

And if the CBC PAC generally stays out of it when there is more than one viable Black candidate, that wasnt the standard they held in a different New York City race.

In the South Bronx, Afro-Latino progressive Ritchie Torres beat out another crowded primary field to represent one of the most Democratic districts in the country. Yet he wasnt the one who got the CBCs endorsement. That went to New York Assemblyman Michael Blake, despite Torress apparently greater electoral viability.

Many activists think the CBC preferred Blake, the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, because of his ties to the New York Democratic political machine, whereas Torres who, like Jones, is gay touted himself as the most electable progressive option. (Blake also prided himself on being a liberal candidate, running on an affordable-housing platform and amplifying criticism of Torres for watering down a police reform bill while on the City Council.)

Tom Williams/Getty ImagesRep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, has defended the decision to endorse Rep. Eliot Engel's reelection.

Regardless, in a number of Democratic primaries Tuesday the first major elections since Black Lives Matter protests swept the country in late May Black insurgents cleaned up.

Although the abundance of votes cast via absentee ballots has postponed the official results, the score was clearly in progressives favor. Bowman holds a lead over Engel widely viewed as insurmountable. Jones won his nomination. Torres, too. And Charles Booker is currently ahead of well-funded and longtime favorite U.S. Senate candidate Amy McGrath in Kentucky.

In all of those cases, electing a new generation of liberal leaders went hand in hand with a new generation of Black candidates. And with other new, stalwart progressives in the CBC like Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) combined with more experienced liberal lawmakers like Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and CBC Chairwoman Karen Bass (D-Calif.), the caucus could be a progressive force in the House in years to come.

In fact, the CBC is already flexing its muscle. On Thursday, the House passed a sweeping police reform bill that was largely composed by members of the CBC.

But activists and progressive aides worry that some of the old trappings of the caucus taking corporate money, being friendly with Wall Street and lobbyists, and defending institutionalist norms, like seniority and incumbency could threaten its ability to be a progressive force. And the decision to endorse Engel over Bowman typifies that concern.

Endorsing Engel over Bowman is absurd, the senior progressive House aide told HuffPost. They should have been aware of the dynamics of that race. More sophisticated actors would have stayed out.

Part of the issue is that, despite a desire for change from a number of members in the CBC, many are party loyalists. The CBC has had success in supporting a tenure system in Congress, which rewards the members who can stick around the longest with powerful committee chair positions. Many CBC members sit in safe Democratic districts, and dont like the idea of primary challenges. In fact, the CBC has a policy of supporting incumbents.

In 2018, the CBC endorsed then-Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), who went on to be unseated by Pressley, the first Black woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress. And barring a massive upset, Bowman will enter Congress and the CBC next year after the organization opposed his candidacy.

But its not just the CBC supporting incumbents over Black candidates. The CBC has endorsed or chosen not to endorse anyone in a number of curious races.

For instance, the CBC hasnt endorsed Will Cunningham, a former aide to CBC lion Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who died last year.

Cunningham is running to unseat Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat turned Republican in South New Jersey. And while Cunningham who, like Jones and Torres, is also gay has not generated nearly the money or enthusiasm of other Black insurgents, a campaign adviser argued that a CBC endorsement could change that.

This is the kind of race that the CBC should be pushing, Cunningham adviser Kaushal Thakkar told HuffPost.

Will Cunningham for Congress/FacebookWill Cunningham, an attorney and former House aide, is competing for a South New Jersey congressional seat. He doesn't yet have the Congressional Black Caucus PAC's endorsement.

The CBCs non-endorsements are especially glaring alongside the list of candidates they have chosen to back. In addition to standing by Engel, the caucus endorsed the reelection of Josh Gottheimer, a white, centrist Democrat facing a progressive challenge July 7 in a suburban New Jersey swing seat. Gottheimer leads a bloc of moderate Democrats and Republicans that prevented the Democratic-controlled House from placing tougher humanitarian conditions on a border funding bill in July. Gottheimers challenger, Arati Kreibich, is a neuroscientist who immigrated to the U.S. from India as a child.

Questions remain about how the CBC PAC actually decides its endorsements. The PAC told The Intercept in February 2016 that it endorsed Hillary Clinton for president based on a vote conducted by its board of directors. At the time, the 20-person board included 11 lobbyists and seven members of Congress.

The CBC PACs board now includes 11 members of Congress. But it still contains many corporate lobbyists, including Cherie Wilson, a General Motors lobbyist; Daron Watts, who recently represented two pharmaceutical companies and the tobacco vape manufacturer Juul; William Kirk, who last year lobbied for a Michigan-based electric utility, an Atlanta-based real estate development firm and Starbucks; and former Rep. Al Wynnof Maryland, whose clients in 2019 included British American Tobacco and coal company Peabody Energy. (Wynn entered the lobbying world after losing to progressive primary challenger Donna Edwards in 2008.)

But that is not to say the CBC simply bows to the whims of corporate lobbyists, nor does it mean the caucus is monolithic. The group includes members of the business-friendly New Democrat Coalition, including Reps. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) and Val Demings (D-Fla.), as well as storied progressives such as Lee, Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.). And Pressley and Omar also offer a left-wing perspective as part of a young vanguard that has sometimes clashed with Democratic leadership.

But, as a group, the CBC has been especially hostile toward the activist lefts strategy of targeting incumbents.

Justice Democrats, the group that recruited Bowman and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has only ever run two candidates against CBC members. The organization supported nurse Cori Bushs unsuccessful run against Rep. Lacy Clay in Missouri in 2018, and attorney Morgan Harpers losing bid to unseat Rep. Joyce Beatty in Ohio this cycle. (Bush is running a second time against Clay in Missouris Aug. 4 primary.)

The races were enough to prompt CBC to lambaste Justice Democrats in the press. Last July, Meeks, the CBC PAC chairman, implied that the progressive political action committee might be motivated by a bias against Black members of Congress. Clay compared the outfit to the Russian trolls of 2016.

For some Black progressives, Bowmans victory, in particular, provides an opportunity to take some of the air out of the idea that the CBC is under attack from a predominantly white group of progressive activists.

In the words of Weeks, who organizes low-income communities of color behind progressive economic policies, Bowman exudes a working-class work ethic and is supported by this very, very diverse community.

It really does push back on this notion that progressive challengers are just white hipsters, Weeks said.

Progressives might soon get their wish. Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.) told Politico that it was time for the CBC to take a closer look at its policy of supporting incumbent Democratic allies, particularly when the primary challenger is Black. Black candidates are running and fighting and qualified to run for office, she said.

Glover called Bowmans win a reckoning for the CBC. He predicted that if CBC members didnt embrace the more ambitious calls for reform issued by the younger Black protesters taking the streets over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, individual CBC members would be run out of office with primary challenges.

This inflection point we have does not deal with only white people. This inflection point also speaks directly to the establishment of both Blacks and whites, he said. Gone are the days of them just giving us lip service.

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Is The Black Caucus Ready To Ride The Progressive Wave? - HuffPost

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat posits an interesting theory. As the Democratic Party prosecutes an internecine conflict over the way in which Americas dark blue urban enclaves police minority neighborhoods, one side of this debate is clearly winning. It is the side that argues for radical societal transformation, an embrace of paradigmatic intersectionality, and retributive rather than reparative racial justice. On the losing side of this debate are the status quo ante progressives who argue that Democrats should focus primarily, if not exclusively, on the prosecution of inter-class conflicts and pursue policies that would promote economic leveling. As Douthat observes, that was ostensibly what Bernie Sanders advocated unsuccessfully over the course of his failed presidential bid. This moment of cultural reckoning has dealt Sanders a second humiliation.

Amid the passions of this present moment, Democrats have traded in the tedious pursuit of marginal reforms to the tax code and accelerating the growth of Americas unfunded liabilities for the fervent zeal of cultural combat. Its most active partisans are dedicated less to redistribution than retribution. Those who resist are, at best, unenlightened; deviationists, at worst. And there is no room for compromise with such a distasteful lot.

Douthats column is compelling, but it includes a cliffhanger. [T]he longer arc of the current revolutionary moment may actually end up vindicating the socialist critique of post-1970s liberalism, he wrote, that its obsessed with cultural power at the expense of economic transformation, and that it puts the language of radicalism in the service of elitism. This deserves to be teased out.

If Democrats are indeed abandoning the pursuit of incrementalism and legislative remedies to American socio-political dilemmas and opting for all-consuming culture war, the trajectory of the partys political evolution is not unknowable. Weve seen how movements that dedicate themselves to the expurgation of intangible facts of lifeparticularly things as elusive as sub rosa (even subconscious) racial biasesend up running aground. The Republican Party in the age of Trump provides some clues as to how this all ends.

At the dawn of Trumps ascendancy to lead the GOP and, eventually, the executive branch, conservatives had adopted a fatalistic narrative about the direction in which the country was headed. But the problems that beset the nation were immune to political remedies. In 2016, the right bemoaned an increased antipathy toward law enforcement, the perception that immigrant groups were failing to assimilate, hedonistic themes in popular media products, totalitarianism on college campuses, and whatever cultural Marxism is. The conduct of conventional politics had failed to rectify or even address these concerns. Thus arose a permission structure that led the right to sacrifice the idea that good governance was competent governance. What the status quo needed was a good smashing.

This was a terribly self-defeating conceit. In the process of adopting the idea that cultural matters should preoccupy lawmakers, conservatives invented a set of metrics that would constitute success in government no lawmaker could hope to meet. This paradigm rendered governance itselfan unsatisfying project in which success is measured by the incremental advances that result from often painful compromisesuspect. Whats more, it blinded conservatives to the inroads they had made in transforming the culture through the powers of persuasion, example, and deductive reasoningnone of which are the fruits of legislation.

Democrats and progressives have been inclined toward this form of fatalism for some time. As the party adheres more closely with the vision espoused by practitioners of identity politics, it has come to fixate on grand social inequities. Income disparities across sociodemographic divides, sexual and racial discrimination in the private sphere, and the privileges and disadvantages acquired at birththese are the conditions that preoccupy the left. But most of these are beyond the capacity of our constitutionally constrained government to address.

Indeed, you can be forgiven for thinking the left regards the legislative efforts to mitigate these social maladies, even legislation as expansive as the Great Society, as failures. If there has been little perceptible progress toward racial reconciliation in the last 50 years, as some claim, it is because government cannot reach into the human soul and make men perfect. Even those who advance unpopular and improbable legislative efforts to address the legacy of slavery and Jim Crowmeasures like monetary reparations to the descendants of slaveswould be disappointed if they were to ever achieve their goals. They would awake the morning after to a nation that retained all the same prevailing systemic inequities they despise and with the same intractable evils in mens hearts.

Republicans learned that the culture war cannot be won in Washington, and progressives seem determined to repeat their mistakes. If the left is dedicating itself not to a realizable political program but to an abstract crusade to remake American culture, it will fail.

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The Culture War and the Progressive Delusion - Noah Rothman - Commentary Magazine

New York's coronavirus-delayed primary is Tuesday and it has the potential to throw a wrench into the power structure in the Democratic-controlled House while in Kentucky there's a Democratic battle for the right to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November.

In New York, among those fighting primary challenges from their left are Democratic Reps. Eliot Engel, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Carolyn Maloney, chair of the Oversight Committee; and Jerry Nadler, chair of the Judiciary Committee all longtime incumbents.

Of the powerful trio, Engel, who's in his 16th term in Congress, is by far the most vulnerable. His race has become a flashpoint in the battle between establishment Democrats and the progressive wing of the party.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents the district next to Engel's, has endorsed his more progressive challenger, Jamaal Bowman, a 44-year-old father of three and former middle school principal who has campaigned on racial injustice and human rights.

Other progressives have followed Ocasio-Cortez's lead, with her fellow "Squad" member, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, both of them former presidential candidates, endorsing Bowman, as well.

Engel has countered with his own big-name backers, including former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the civil rights leader.

"If veteran congressman Eliot Engel falls, the Democratic Party will be apoplectic," longtime New York political strategist Hank Sheinkopf told NBC News. "They'll have to deal much more with the AOC wing of the party. The left wing of the party will be better positioned, and Joe Biden will have a bigger headache the next morning."

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Maloney and Nadler appear to be on much safer ground, Sheinkopf said.

Maloney is running against three challengers, including Suraj Patel, whom she defeated in a one-on-one contest in 2018. Nadler is running against two challengers who ripped him as "all talk" on progressive issues during a NY1 debate last week, arguments that he countered by pointing to the endorsements he's gotten from Ocasio-Cortez and Warren.

Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, is defending her own seat from a challenger who has been using some of her own tactics against her.

Ocasio-Cortez won the seat in 2018 in a major upset over Joe Crowley, one of the top-ranking Democrats in the House. She'd argued that he spent too much away from the district focused on issues that didn't involve his constituents the same complaints her main challenger, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, has made against her by saying "AOC is MIA."

Because of the pandemic, Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC anchor, hasn't been able to knock on as many doors as Ocasio-Cortez did in 2018, and Ocasio-Cortez has a significant money advantage, having raised over $10 million. That's five times more than Caruso-Cabrera has raised.

Primary day will also include a special election delayed from April to fill the upstate New York seat left vacant by the resignation of Republican Rep. Chris Collins, who pleaded guilty to insider trading last year.

The pandemic is looming over the primary in other ways.

Cuomo issued an executive order in April calling for absentee ballot applications to be sent out to all voters in the state in a bid to make voting during the pandemic safer. In New York City, the city Board of Elections has sent 679,000 ballots to voters who've requested them.

Statewide, over 1.6 million absentee ballots have been sent out, according to the state Board of Elections. In 2016, 115,000 people voted absentee in the presidential primary.

What the surge in absentee voting means for the primary is unclear, Sheinkopf said.

"Nobody knows what the outcomes will be, because there's no previous barometer for this in New York," he said. "The answers are all in the mailboxes."

Under state law, absentee ballots can't be counted until one week after the election. And as for how long it will take to count all those ballots, city Board of Elections spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez-Diaz said, "We don't know."

Tuesday is also primary day in Kentucky, where Democrats will select a candidate to take on McConnell in the fall.

Former fighter pilot Amy McGrath had been the favorite, with strong fundraising numbers and support from establishment Democrats. But over the last few weeks, rival Charles Booker, a progressive state representative, has picked up steam and the endorsements of Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.

Booker has campaigned on racial injustice and inequity, and he has taken to the streets with Black Lives Matter demonstrators to protest the killing of Breonna Taylor, a Louisville woman who was shot dead in her apartment on March 13 by police executing a "no-knock" warrant.

He has also made an issue of McGrath's failure to protest leading her to air an ad decrying the death of George Floyd. Booker noted that she didn't mention Taylor in the ad.

As in New York, there's been a surge in absentee voting in Kentucky, with Gov. Andy Beshear regularly pleading for voters to vote by mail.

It may be hard for them to do otherwise only 200 polling places are expected to be up and running on primary day, instead of the usual 3,500, which could lead to substantial voting problems and long waits Tuesday. The state has cited a shortage of available poll workers amid coronavirus safety concerns for the drastic reduction.

Voting rights experts say that while mail-in voting is key to reducing density at polling places, election administrations should expect that a significant number of people will still want to vote in person. Georgia's primary, for instance, had a surge of absentee ballot applications, but droves of voters still showed up to vote in person either out of choice or because absentee voting applications or ballots never arrived.

According to a court filing after advocates unsuccessfully sought to add polling sites last week, Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, is one of several counties with just one in-person polling location.

As of last week, 202,652 absentee ballots had been requested in Jefferson County, suggesting a strong appetite for absentee voting, but those who want to vote in person on Election Day will have just one place to do it: the Kentucky Exposition Center. The Kentucky Exposition Center is quite large, with 1.3 million square feet of indoor space and more than 19,000 parking spaces. It will be set up to have 420 voting booths, according to the filing.

But if turnout is high, the center could easily have long lines: To serve just a quarter of the county's registered, eligible voters in person, roughly 213 voters would need to vote every single minute continuously for 12 hours straight.

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Incumbent Dems face a reckoning on primary day: Will progressives unseat them? - Yahoo News