Another 2026 Progressive Coalition Winner

By Scott Steward

We have seen it in New Jersey and Texas, and now we will see it in North Carolina. The next bellwether primary election takes place on March 3rd; the damage of being a progressive except for Palestine (and progressive except for single-payer and except for rubber-stamping appropriations bills) may end the career of incumbent Valerie Foushee in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District. Fourshee was a latecomer to the 2022 election, using AIPAC and Cryptocurrency donations of $2 million, knocking out the local favorite by 4,000 votes. 

Nida Allam, former Vice Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party and current Durham County Commissioner, returns with more experience and a small donation campaign budget that exceeds Fourshee’s this time around.  She promises “to build a brighter future for the Research Triangle, where our democracy works for all of us, and everyone has access to a living wage, affordable healthcare, a great public education, and a livable planet.”

Unlike Allam, who rejects corporate PAC money, Foushee has historically accepted donations from pharmaceutical and health product interests and from defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. In 2024 and 2025, she has cast votes that align more with an establishment-centrist position than with that of a fighter. 

Foushee supports expanding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), she has not championed Medicare for All. Foushee voted for the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, which provided over $26 billion in aid (all of which has been distributed), using the excuse that the Act included $1 billion in aid for Gaza (of which only a fraction has been distributed*). 

The race between Allam and Fourshee brings into focus the important transition from incremental hand-wringing Democratic leadership and the energy of the next generation.  Should Allam win, it will further momentum for the coalition of 6 organizations dedicated to departing from big-money politics, a coalition willing to tax bloated excess in our society so that we can afford healthcare, education, and housing.

The 2026 Progressive Coalition: These independent organizations are collaborating under a shared strategy to challenge “establishment” moderate Democratic incumbents.

• Justice Democrats: Backing candidates like AOC and Cori Bush.
• Working Families Party (WFP): A multiracial party that focuses on building working-class power.
• Sunrise Movement: A youth-led climate organization that demands a “Green New Deal” litmus test for candidates.
• Our Revolution: A Bernie Sanders legacy campaign that focuses on grassroots organizing and local PAC coordination.
• People’s Alliance PAC: Provides the local “ground game” for these national groups.
• Leaders We Deserve: A newer PAC aimed at electing young progressives.

Allam is a leader and part of the leadership we all deserve. If we can expect anything other than capitulation and deadly compromise, we in California District 4 might also want to consider an alternative to the “centrist” in office. Mike Thompson has been given room to vote against the Big Beautiful Bill that funds ICE, but this “no” vote on an appropriations bill is not his usual position. He voted no this time, in large part, because he has a primary challenger and doing less would be political suicide, but his stance on funding the military and Israel is largely unchanged (credit to Thompson for signing HR 3565, No Funding of Offensive Weapons for Israel, back in July of 2025).

Thompson has had 27 years to be more aggressive about health care costs, education, and housing, while a few in the Democratic donor class have become astronomically wealthy.

What Thompson and his peers have been aggressive about is taking a considerable amount of money from the defense industry, pharmaceutical companies, corporate real estate, and, for California Incumbent Democrats, particularly, money from AI companies that want PG&E to charge us as much as the for-profit monopoly can, while devastating California’s homegrown renewable energy industry and sucking up our water and electricity on the cheap.