Why This Democrat Won’t Go Home

Last Saturday afternoon, I drove out to a well-kept Washington suburb, where the coronavirus had closed the local farm stand but flower planters were on display outside the hardware store. Down the road is a modest brick house with a silver Chrysler in the driveway, New York plates, with a novelty THE BRONX license plate propped up in the back window.

Inside was Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He represents the Bronx and Westchester, including the town of New Rochelle, which was the epicenter of the original outbreak in New York.

A member of Congress since 1989, Engel is facing his first in years, in a district next door to the one where Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a primary two years ago. Yet Engel hasn’t been been in New York, after I covered my nose and mouth and rang his doorbell in Potomac, Maryland.