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The group made a break from its slate of incumbents by selecting Democratic challenger Ruben Wills, who recently declared himself as a candidate in the Democratic primary for New York’s Sixth Congressional District.
Wills is running in the primary against incumbent Gregory Meeks.
The primary race, which will come to a head in September, is an interesting local microcosm of what has happened in the Democratic Party nationwide.
Meeks, who was a strong endorser and supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton during her campaign for president, went out of his way during the campaign to talk about the importance of selecting Clinton as the Democratic Party’s nominee. He even appeared on nationally televised news magazines as a Clinton surrogate.
He has since thrown his allegiance, as have his Democratic associates in government, behind Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. There are some insiders, however, who think the political capital has already been spent, and the damage done within the community.
Wills, sensing the winds of change within his own community, aligned himself — as did City Councilman James Sanders Jr. — with Obama, an agent of change in difficult times.
Sanders even went so far as to suggest on the morning of New York’s primary that Obama would win New York’s 6th Congressional District, which Meeks was confident he could deliver for Clinton.
Surprisingly for some, Sanders prognostication was dead on, with Obama taking the district by more than 8,000 votes.
So while Meeks is the incumbent, there’s reason to believe that he’s not as invincible as some of his counterparts in other areas of the borough.
Wills apparently had no trouble collecting the requisite 1,200 signatures to get on the primary ballot in the Sixth District, but he’s going to need a lot more than that in the way of votes to take down a 10-year incumbent.
It will also be harder to convince residents of southeast Queens to come out on a day in September with his name at the top of the ticket than it was back in February with every national news station blaring the news about the national primary, and Obama, the new political wunderkind.
