Staff members at the Democratic National Committee are set to be represented by a union, the first time a national party organization will have a unionized work force, committee officials said on Tuesday.
Roughly 150 employees at the committee will join the Service Employees International Union Local 500, a group that represents public-sector workers in the District of Columbia and across Maryland. They agreed to unionize through what is known as a card-check system: A majority of eligible staff members at the D.N.C. signed cards opting to form a union. That kind of method for unionizing is supported in the party’s platform, which calls to recognize unions that form through such systems.
“The D.N.C. has the ability to be a really powerful agent of positive change for working Americans, and we think this is an opportunity for us to really live those values,” said Christen Sparago, who manages monthly donors for the committee and helped lead the unionization effort.
The push for unionization was supported by the D.N.C.’s executive director, Sam Cornale, and Mary Beth Cahill, a senior adviser and former chief executive of the committee.
The committee is now negotiating the details of which staff members will be considered part of the union and who will be exempt — a group that is expected to include about 100 staff members with managerial responsibilities. Positions at the committee range from low-level organizers to higher-ranking managers who oversee efforts coordinating social media, fund-raising and messaging. After voluntary recognition by D.N.C. management, which is expected in the coming weeks, they will begin contract negotiations.
“The D.N.C.’s employees are smart, diverse, resilient and inspirational, and I am honored to lead this team in our critical work to elect Democrats,” Mr. Cornale said. “As the D.N.C. told S.E.I.U., if a majority of D.N.C. employees in a mutually agreed-upon bargaining unit express their desire to form a union, we will be proud to voluntarily recognize that union.”
The Democratic National Committee has launched a new team that will focus on attracting Black and brown voters in an effort to maintain political power ahead of the 2022 midterms.
DNC officials say the Coalitions & Community Engagement department will focus on partnering with organizers in targeted communities to reach voters of color as well as identifying and developing future leaders and diverse political candidates for the Democratic ticket.
Brencia Berry, who was appointed director of Coalitions & Community Engagement, said the 2020 election turnout and President Joe Biden's victory showed that voters of color
play a key role in electing Democrats. Her team will focus on early strategies for getting those voters, as well as young people, to turn out again for the midterms.
Vice President Kamala Harris announced a new $25 million investment by the Democratic National Committee to expand its program that will help get out the vote in the upcoming midterm elections.
The announcement, which took place on Thursday, comes as Harris and her team have been under scrutiny by allies and some of her own aides. Much of the frustration has been directed at Harris’ chief of staff, Tina Flournoy. It also comes as Republicans draft and pass state laws that critics say restrict access to the ballot box.
Details of the DNC’s updated “I Will Vote’” program, shared early with CNBC, suggests that the committee is trying to boost voter engagement going into the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election. The announcement highlights Harris’ focus on voting rights as vice president, including meetings with members of Congress and advocates such as Stacey Abrams and Derrick Johnson, the CEO of the NAACP.
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison touted the new resources in a statement. Harrison had previously announced a separate $20 million investment by the DNC into the same voting program.
“I’ve said time and again that the ‘D’ in Democrat stands for deliver, and today we are delivering innovative and historic resources to protect this fundamental part of our democracy,” Harrison said.
The $25 million will partially go toward a new digital and TV ad campaign that the DNC says will focus, in part, on how to register to vote. The DNC says it will be partnering with social media creators across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to highlight what President Joe Biden and Democrats have achieved so far.
The new funding will also help finance a tech component of the DNC’s voter registration efforts.
So has President Biden:
President Joe Biden will headline a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee on Monday, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO. And, like the last one, the event won’t be in person.
“Let’s build that bank to fuel the Democratic campaigns of 2022,” Ajay Bhutoria, national finance committee at the DNC, wrote in the invitation.
Biden spoke virtually at his first DNC fundraiser as president late last month as Democrats began ramping up efforts to build their war chest for the 2022 midterm elections. Losing control of either the Senate or House in 2022 would be a blow to the president’s agenda, though historically the party in power does suffer losses during the midterms.
“The DNC is going to need you, because here’s the deal: We won in 2020 as a unified party, and we need to stay unified and keep doing the big consequential things,” Biden said at the June 28 event. “If we make the right decisions in the next four years, in 50 years, people will look back and say this was the moment that America won the future. But we can’t do it without you.”
The DNC has raised $90.9 million so far this year, more than it did in the entire year of 2017, and raised $14.4 million in June, the largest off-year June fundraising ever, according to a DNC spokesperson. The DNC and its joint fundraising committee, the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund, had $67.6 million cash on hand at the end of June. But the Republican National Committee outraised the DNC in June.
An RNC spokeswoman said the RNC has raised $85 million so far for the 2021-2022 cycle and spent money to engage in election litigation and organize Blacks, Hispanics and Asian American voters in key states across the country.
Speaking of voting rights:
Democratic lawmakers, including more than 100 state legislators, are rallying Tuesday outside the U.S. Capitol to urge the Senate to delay summer recess until passing the For the People Act, a sweeping elections and ethics bill to expand and protect voting rights.
The state lawmakers at Tuesday’s rally are traveling from across the country, some from Republican-led legislatures that have passed or are considering new voting measures, and are joining Texas Democrats who fled to D.C. last month to block Republicans from passing voting restrictions. Some lawmakers rallying Tuesday are coming from states where GOP leaders have supported former president Donald Trump’s false claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.
The rally was organized by the Declaration for American Democracy, a coalition of activist and advocacy groups supporting the For the People Act, and is taking place near the Robert Taft Memorial.
Speakers at the event included Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chairwoman on of the Senate committee overseeing election issues, and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), the bill’s lead authors in the Senate and House.
Jana Morgan, the coalition’s director, said in a statement that the time to pass this legislation is “quickly diminishing.”
“It is critical that this legislation is enacted before the 2022 midterm elections and before partisan maps that would disenfranchise voters for the next decade, especially voters of color, are drawn,” Morgan said. “We call on Sen. [Charles] Schumer to delay Senate recess until the bill is sent to the president’s desk.”
The For the People Act has stalled in the 50-50 Senate because of the filibuster, which has prevented Democrats from pushing this legislation through without Republican support. Activists have been turning up pressure on Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), two Democratic lawmakers opposed to ending the filibuster.
Harrison has been preparing for the 2022 midterms:
Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, did not mince words in describing how the party is working to avoid a repeat of the Obama midterm drubbings.
“After the 2008 race we abandoned the 50-state strategy,” Harrison said. “We stopped sending resources to state parties to build their operations, to make sure that we have the organizers on the ground. We didn't do voter registration. So states were fending for themselves almost. That's not the case anymore.”
Since the start of the year, the DNC has announced commitments of $25 million for a voter protection campaign aimed at counteracting recent GOP-backed election law changes, $23 million to invest in state parties, and $20 million directly targeting the midterm elections.
“All of that would not have happened without the blessing of Joe Biden,” he said. “This guy believes in the party. He believes in the DNC. He believes in the grassroots. And so I would expect him going all over this country on behalf of Democrats in the midterms, to having the vice president go all over this country on behalf of Democrats in the midterms.”
And House Democrats are also gearing up for the 2022 midterms:
During a closed-door lunch last week with some of his most vulnerable incumbents, House Democrats’ campaign chief delivered a blunt warning: If the midterms were held now, they would lose the majority.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) followed that bleak forecast, which was confirmed by multiple people familiar with the conversation, with new polling that showed Democrats falling behind Republicans by a half-dozen points on a generic ballot in battleground districts. Maloney advised the party to course-correct ahead of 2022 by doing more to promote President Joe Biden’s agenda, which remains popular with swing voters.
“We are not afraid of this data ... We’re not trying to hide this,” Tim Persico, executive director of the Maloney-chaired Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview.
“If [Democrats] use it, we’re going to hold the House. That’s what this data tells us, but we gotta get in action,” he added.
Maloney's foreboding words come as Democratic leaders map out an aggressive strategy to hold the House next November, defending a tenuous majority with the help of a president who has more ambitious plans to juice the economy. But Maloney's omen of defeat was hardly a surprise to the battleground-district Democrats he was addressing, some of whom have been sounding the alarm for weeks that the party's messaging — particularly on the economy — needed a reboot.
And it's not just those so-called frontliners who have begun to alert their colleagues. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who co-leads caucus messaging, gave a wake-up call to another group of fellow Democrats last week, telling colleagues that the party needed to better explain what Democrats have been doing to help the Covid-ravaged economy.
“We’re not breaking through,” Dingell said at that Thursday meeting of about 50 Democrats, according to people in the room. Dingell was echoing a message she’d sent earlier last week in a leadership meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her deputies, where the Michigander said people didn’t think Democrats were doing enough to boost the economy back in her home state, particularly its auto industry.
Party leaders are already stepping up their offense in response to the growing agita. A Democratic messaging blitz this month on Biden's priorities is set to get help from a White House communications war room that will activate while members are back in their districts. Around the country, Biden’s Cabinet is being dispatched to talk up jobs and infrastructure in swing districts in states such as Iowa, New York and New Jersey.
For now, it’s too early to say that Democrats have no path to keeping their majority. But they would need a lot of factors to break in their favor in order to hang on next November. For now, both parties remain neck-and-neck on fundraising, and the new congressional maps — which could largely determine Democrats’ fate — are still months out.
Meanwhile, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are hustling to pass a massive Biden-led spending package that Democrats hope will further boost their chances of averting the historic pattern of a party in full control of Washington losing ground in its first midterm.
“The point is, to make sure that we’re all on the same page, that we understand the stakes,” Persico said. “Here’s the good news: Everything we are doing and everything we’ve talked about doing is incredibly popular.”
He said that the same polling showed that Biden’s infrastructure plan was “wildly popular," adding: "Nothing in this poll suggests anything about altering our agenda. It’s about emphasis."
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