[Ads-l] "primary", verb: to challenge in a primary election

[Mark Mandel]

>From today's *Daily Kos*, a Philadelphia progressive news web daily:

>>>>>
*NY Democrats just made history with one of the most progressive policy
victories in generations*
*Apr 12, 2021 1:01am Eastern Daylight Time *
<https://tinyurl.com/4tjmsr2t>

...
But the tide has been quietly turning since in 2018, when a band of
progressives primaried members of the IDC, a group of turncoat former
Democrats that caucused with and gave a majority to the GOP. The
progressives won six of eight of those primaries, enabling actual Democrats
to win back control of the State Senate that fall.
<<<<<

Incidentally, "six of eight of those primaries" seems excessively analytic,
in place of the more usual construction "six of those eight primaries".
True, neither number had been previously mentioned, but this construction
is open to interpretation as "We [the authors] chose [cherry-picked?] eight
of the primaries involved, and *six of those eight* were won by the
progressive challengers."

Mark A. Mandel
Isn't language change fun?

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