Still, She Persisted: Texas Congressional candidate Laura Moser with her son Leo at a campaign event. Image by Courtesy of Laura Moser, Fred Guerrier

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Laura Moser, the Jewish author who launched an activist movement against the Trump presidency, was soundly defeated in her challenge to the Democratic establishment in a Texas primary.

Attorney Lizzie Fletcher bested Moser 68 to 32 percent in the race Tuesday in Texas’s 7th congressional district, comprising parts of Houston and its suburbs and considered a possible pickup for Democrats in November.

Soon after Donald Trump’s election as president, Moser founded Daily Action, a network of activists alerted each day to an advocacy action targeting Trump and his policies.

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Her frustration with what she felt was a milquetoast Democratic Party response to Trump’s election led to her to launch a campaign for the nomination in Houston, her hometown. She head previously been Washington based.

Unusually for a primary, the Democratic establishment openly pushed back against her, fearing a nominee from the left would not wrest the seat from its Republican incumbent, John Culberson. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran an ad against her ahead of the first primary vote in March.

The tactic appeared to backfire at first, with leftist outrage at the Democrats propelling Moser to the second spot in a crowded race and denying Fletcher an outright victory. The contest went to a runoff.

Moser made her Jewish background a key element of her pitch, describing her grandfather’s path as a refugee from Nazi Germany to the safety of Texas. “Our Jewish children, with their father’s Indian last name and their mother’s bright-blue eyes, were now residents of the most diverse city in America,” she wrote a year ago in Vogue.

Contact Alyssa Fisher at [email protected] or on Twitter, @alyssalfisher

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