Failed 2020 Candidate Swalwell Gearing For Re-election To House Seat, But Could Face Challenge From The AOC Of The East Bay

Matt Vespa | July 10, 2019 2:05 PM

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) is out. This is no surprise. He wasn’t well known. He peddled gun confiscation and Russian collusion nonsense. He seemed totally out of his league in the first Democratic debate. It was embarrassing. The man had no shot of winning the nomination or the presidency. Even his ‘well, at least we talked about gun control’ bit is trash. You all think the Democrats really started talking about gun control…because he got into the race. Swalwell peddled the same anti-gun nonsense as the Everytown crew.

Flashback: @ericswalwell promises to give up his House seat if he runs for president (via the SF Chronicle's "Its All Political" podcast) pic.twitter.com/4AvH5Jmles
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 8, 2019

So, now that’s he gone. What will he do next? It seems to be gearing up to run for re-election to the House, something that he promised not to do if he decided to run for president. So, a politician went back on his word. No big deal, especially in the deep blue cesspool that is California. Still, Swalwell signaling that he might not run prompted more than a few Democrats to mull running in his district, including city councilor Aisha Wahab, who appears could be a new member of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) left flank. She made her congressional intentions known in April and observers have been calling her the AOC of the East Bay area (via Mercury News):

Hayward council member Aisha Wahab, a progressive elected just a few months ago, became the first candidate to jump into the race for Rep. Eric Swalwell’s East Bay congressional seat …
Wahab, 31, became one of the first Afghan-American elected officials in the country when she won her council seat last year. She said she planned to focus her congressional campaign on protecting the middle class and fighting for progressive issues like Medicare for All and living wages.
[…]
Wahab has been compared by local observers to the young progressive women elected to Congress last year, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, whom she called “inspiring.”
“I’m genuinely very proud of all the women who were elected to serve,” she said. “But we all have different elements that make us special in our own rights.”
[…]
Swalwell formally filed with the FEC this week a notice that he was ending his re-election campaign, and he’s said he won’t run simultaneously for president and for Congress. But he has seemed to leave open the possibility that he could drop out of the presidential race and run for re-election sometime before the December filing deadline if his White House bid doesn’t take off.
Wahab said she was in the race “all the way” but if Swalwell decided to run for re-election, “we will re-evaluate then and there.”

Yeah, that right there is the problem. This could become a Democratic blood sport, but Wahab could just back out and let Swalwell easily clinch his seat for another term. She could become the first Afghan-American elected to Congress. Let’s see what happens. I hope Swally gets challenged. It could be very popcorn-worthy.