It's a Pillar of the Democratic Party. But Should Donors Prioritize the DCCC?

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Even if you don’t know what the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee does exactly, if you’re at all involved in politics you’ve seen the DCCC’s emails. Notorious for their pleading, histrionic tone, these fundraising requests seem designed to induce panic. “We need to move NOW,” implored a July 2021 subject line. Two days later, that was followed up with the even more dire “our majority GONE.” 

This hair-on-fire tone has helped the DCCC raise a stupendous amount of money—$264 million in contributions in the 2020 cycle, according to FEC data, with $100 million of that coming from donations under $200 (small donations being the ones generally brought in by email campaigns). But the committee’s public-facing communications don’t always make it clear what the DCCC is and what it is doing with the money it so desperately solicits.   

In broad strokes, the DCCC exists to defend Democrats in the House of Representatives and capture more seats from Republicans. But it has also become a powerful player in the intra-party disputes that have divided Democrats in recent years, serving as a bulwark against the progressives attempting to push the congressional delegation further left. This role, which the DCCC does not highlight, makes supporting it a tricky proposition for many donors. 

In our newly published research brief on the DCCC, we explore the strengths and weaknesses of the committee. We conclude that the DCCC is an important party institution that needs funding; at the same time, donors have other options that may be a higher priority. 

The DCCC gets millions every year from Democratic members of Congress, who pay “dues” to the committee based on their role within the complex party hierarchy. The DCCC works in tandem with the House leadership team and has been pressured by incumbent Democrats (especially those who raise large sums for the committee) worried about primaries to do what it can to block challengers. In 2018 and 2020 the DCCC and House leaders publicly backed moderate (and conservative) Democratic incumbents, released an opposition research memo on a progressive candidate in an open primary in Texas, and, most notably, “blacklisted” consultants and firms that worked with Democrats who primaried other Democrats. Though this blacklist officially ended after 2020, the policy showed how willing the DCCC was to defend incumbents. 

To donors seeking to halt the party’s leftward tilt, the DCCC’s actions make sense. But there are many donors who want to protect and expand the Democratic majority in Congress while supporting the project, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among others, to purge the caucus of politicians they feel are insufficiently responsive to the progressive base. These donors should be wary of the DCCC.

But while the DCCC has largely opposed the left-wing of the party, it has also tacitly acknowledged some of the left’s critiques of its operation. When DCCC Chair Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (NY-18) recently told the Washington Post, “We are still overweighted on old media, and we need to invest more in organizing and in digital,” there were clear parallels to Ocasio-Cortez’s more pointed comments about how the party relied to much on TV advertisements. (“Our party isn’t even online, not in a real way that exhibits competence,” she told the New York Times in November.)

It’s hard to tell whether the DCCC will really shift its tactics; like other party committees, it’s fairly tight-lipped in public (it did not respond to requests for comment from Blue Tent). Prominent Democrats were calling for the party to wean itself off of TV prior to the 2018 elections, and the DCCC didn’t change course. Possibly that’s because the party took back the House in a decisive fashion that year, giving the DCCC a boost of confidence. 

So should donors give to the DCCC? Sure, as long as they support its mission of protecting incumbents and keeping the party on a relatively centrist track—but there are lots of factors to consider, including the difference between giving to a committee and giving to individual campaigns, which Blue Tent goes into in more detail in our full background briefing, available here for subscribers.