CNN Projection: John Fetterman will win Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate primary

When President Joe Biden made Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader his first endorsement of the midterms, some fellow Democrats were surprised.  

Others were just plain angry.

Schrader has voted against a number of Biden’s top agenda items, including the President’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief package. Despite it all – or, perhaps, because of it – Biden backed Schrader in late April, saying in statement: “We don’t always agree, but when it has mattered most, Kurt has been there for me.”

The endorsement came amid a testy primary in the newly drawn 5th Congressional District, where more than half of voters have never seen Schrader’s name on the ballot. County Democrats shook up the race when four chapters endorsed Schrader’s challenger, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, with three of them writing a letter to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s House elections arm, demanding the organization quit helping Schrader.

“I respect the President,” McLeod-Skinner told CNN, “but what we were hearing on doors and (on) calls is even folks who, like myself, respect the President, were really heavily, heavily disappointed that he was trying to put his thumb on the scale in the primary.”

Whether those notes of discontent signal something bigger remains to be seen, but one Biden adviser told CNN that anyone who was surprised by the move – well, they shouldn’t be.

“He chose this one endorsement for a few reasons. One is Congressman Schrader was a very early endorser of President Biden. Everyone knows this: Joe Biden takes care of people that have taken care of him. He’s also an incumbent in this district,” the adviser said.

McLeod-Skinner has frequently criticized Schrader over his votes against the Covid relief package and, later on, a provision in Biden’s Build Back Better legislation that allows the government to negotiate (and thus, reduce) prescription drug prices. 

If issues like that, the Biden adviser said, are what drives the primary, then the White House can’t lose.

“(McLeod-Skinner’s) biggest criticisms of Schrader have been that he has not been with the president enough,” the adviser said. “For us, that’s a good thing.”