Marcy Winograd Finds an Issue

"I challenge my opponent to stop voting for this war machine," Winograd said.

Annoyed, Harman defended projecting America's values abroad and challenged Winograd "to understand that we also confront some evil in this world." After noting that she had not signed up for a debate, she got up and left the stage.

From the start of this campaign, Winograd has waded into controversial waters by challenging Harman's unflinching support of Israel. Winograd got into the race because Harman was embroiled in a bizarre wiretapping scandal, in which she was accused of doing the bidding of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group.

In a speech at the left-leaning All Saints Church in Pasadena, Winograd accused Israel of institutionalized racism and extermination, and called for a one-state solution with universal suffrage in the occupied territories.

In an interview with the Tehran Times, she criticized Obama's nuclear policy and called herself a non-Zionist Jew, which sent up all sorts of red flags for Israel's defenders.

In January, Harman got Rep. Henry Waxman to write a fund-raising letter saying, "In Marcy Winograd's foreign policy, Israel would cease to exist. In Marcy Winograd's vision, Jews would be at the mercy of those who do not respect democracy or human rights."

Harman also took aim at Winograd's characterization of the raid on the flotilla, releasing a statement saying it is "premature to assess blame or call anyone a murderer."

The campaign has tried to make up the gap by tapping netroots. Across the country, netroots activists are seeking to use primary election challenges to pull centrist Democrats to the left. Winograd was endorsed last week by Democracy for America, founded by former presidential candidate Howard Dean, which also backed Joe Sestak and Bill Halter in their anti-establishment campaigns in Pennsylvania and Arkansas.

Winograd has raised much of her money online, and she has put it into TV spots and phone banking. But her campaign has had to contort her message to address the one issue everyone knows is at the top of the agenda.

"The salient theme is jobs," Winograd says. "Where are the jobs? We could double jobs if you invested in mass transit instead of war-making."

Her campaign has also attacked Harman for the Wall Street bailouts, the Bush-era bankruptcy bill, the exclusivity period for generic drugs in the health-reform bill, home foreclosures, and jet noise at the Santa Monica Airport (which is in Waxman's district).

"The truth is there's no reason for Winograd to be running," Huebscher says. "She's just running because she's delusional."