From our earliest days, Daily Kos has always believed that the best way to effect progressive change in this country is to elect more and better Democrats. That’s why, starting with a special election for the House back in 2004, we’ve regularly endorsed, written about, and raised money for worthy Democrats running in races across the nation. It’s simple: Unless and until we obtain legislative and executive power in Washington, D.C., and the states, we can’t enact the policies we all want—and that the U.S. badly needs.
Over the years, though, our endorsement program has undergone some changes, so as we head into the second half of our second decade as a site, we felt it was a good time to take stock of our approach and share our current thinking both with the Daily Kos community and the candidates who might seek our support. We welcome your questions and feedback in the comments below.
Offices we endorse for
Our primary focus is the U.S. House and Senate, governorships, and state legislatures. These are the places where policy is crafted and legislation is passed. We have also supported Democratic nominees for president for the same reason. This cycle, we’ve expanded to include not just candidates but also escrow funds for House and Senate races. These escrow funds allow us to invest in key opportunities to flip Republican seats months before Democratic nominees for these races are selected in primaries. (The money raised and held in escrow is given directly to the Democratic nominees right after they win their primaries.)
In addition, we have backed candidates in state-level races for secretary of state, since these officials are charged with protecting the voting process—a process that Republicans like to restrict as much as possible. We are also expanding to include candidates for attorney general, since many Democrats who hold this post are now the vanguard in the fight against Donald Trump’s policies.
We also endorse organizations promoting progressive ballot measures, ranging from matters such as protecting marriage equality to expanding Medicaid. From time to time, we’ve gotten involved in other sorts of races, such as those involving law enforcement officials like (thankfully former) Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, but the above listed categories by and large cover it. For one, there’s a limit to how deep into the weeds we can go—though we’ve grown tremendously, we are still a small, lean operation. Daily Kos’ audience is also primarily national in its focus, so our endorsements aim to be as well. (Even state races heavily impact issues like voting rights and redistricting.)
We only endorse Democrats
Daily Kos has always been, and will always be, a Democratic site.
We want to beat Republicans!
In order to win back power, we need to pick up Republican seats, so our strong preference is to endorse in races either with Republican incumbents or Republican-held open seats. Sometimes, when a vulnerable and critical Democratic open seat is on the line, we’ll get involved as well. We’ll occasionally help at-risk Democratic incumbents we are especially fond of, but for the most part we steer clear of Democrats seeking re-election simply because they have far more access to resources than challengers do. And we don’t endorse Democratic incumbents in safe blue seats: Our scarce resources need to go toward defeating Republicans.
We want to respect local voters
Generally speaking, we don’t get involved in contested Democratic primaries, because we don’t want to be perceived as a huge national organization bigfooting into a local race and telling folks what to do—it’s not good for democracy or Daily Kos. But there are some important exceptions where it does make sense for Daily Kos to jump into primaries, which we’ll discuss below.
We want to stop awful Democrats
Fortunately, there aren't too many truly crummy Democrats left in our party these days. But if there’s a particularly lousy Democratic incumbent who’s out-of-step with his or her constituents, and a good progressive comes along to challenge them, then we’ll consider getting involved. (One example would be stridently anti-choice Rep. Dan Lipinski, who represents a blue district in Illinois.) The same goes for awful Democrats running in primaries for open seats. These sort of races will only ever be a small part of our portfolio, though, because our main focus is always going to be defeating Republicans.
We want to build our bench and elect office-holders who look like the Democratic Party
While we’ve always wanted to elect more candidates from underrepresented communities, our biggest change in 2017 is that we are now making this a much higher priority. The backbone of the Democratic Party is made up of women, people of color, religious minorities, LGBT people, and everyone who isn’t a member of this country’s dominant class. We as a party can only hope to fully understand the concerns and meet the needs of these communities if we elect people from these communities. And when the demographics of our elected officials start to better reflect the demographics of our voters, that will motivate our voters that much more—and make them feel good about staying with the party.
This means that we expect to get more involved in Democratic primaries, particularly since it’s often harder for candidates from underrepresented communities to obtain the resources they need to compete early enough. And it’s not about choosing ideological favorites or saying we have an objection to the other candidates in these primaries. Rather, it’s about building our bench—and a more inclusive Democratic Party. The folks who win races for state legislature eventually go on to run for the House, then the Senate, then the presidency. We want to help build up that pipeline of good candidates.
As noted above, though, we aren’t going to tromp into local races uninvited. If and when we detect real grassroots enthusiasm behind a particular candidate, then will we get involved.
We want to get good bang for our buck
If we can send, say, $10,000 to a particular candidate, that money will go a lot further in a race where the total budget is $1 million rather than $10 million. This means that we can have a bigger impact the further down the ballot we go. (In a tough special election for the New Hampshire state Senate in 2017, for instance, we provided fully 13 percent of the Democrat’s total fundraising. That’s a lot!)
By the same token, we’re generally disinclined to support self-funding candidates. Candidates who can draw on their own personal resources simply need less help than those who cannot.
Still, we can’t just ignore more expensive races like those for Senate or governor, so we get involved there, too—and given the impressive size and generosity of the Daily Kos community, we can have a real effect even on big-ticket races. It’s all about striking the right balance.
We want to help candidates who aren’t getting a ton of attention
Again, some of the races we endorse in will be high-profile contests. But we also want to help expand the playing field as much as possible, and that means giving some love to candidates who aren’t in the top tier. We’re able to do this because this community understands the need to embrace longer shots and readily accepts that in order to win, you have to take risks. And if there’s the possibility of a wave election, as there may be in 2018, we want to make sure it crests as high as it can.
We want to help candidates who have a meaningful chance
As we say just above, we are open to more challenging contests, but since we’re asking the members of this community to donate money to candidates, we feel it’s incumbent upon us to make sure we vet races properly and only ask you to give to those who merit it. That means we take into account both candidate quality and the demographics of the district or state in question.
How we assess both of these things is the subject of another post. In short, though, we want to see that a candidate is running a serious race, and they need to be running someplace that isn’t implacably red. It does us no good to endorse a candidate who refuses to raise money, for instance, or is running in a district no Democrat could ever hope to carry.
That’s not to say we don’t believe Democrats should field candidates everywhere—we should! But we can’t help everyone, so we have to be selective. Again, though, we’re willing to give many folks a shot whom lots of others would overlook.
We want to elect progressives, but we don’t demand perfection
We’ve always taken a heterodox approach to supporting candidates, and we’re cognizant that a message that might work in one part of the country might not in another, and vice versa. We also appreciate that candidates need to be the right fit for their states or districts. And besides, no two people will agree on what makes a “perfect” candidate.
At varying times over the years, we have posed questionnaires to potential endorsees, but we no longer do. Instead, we now ask if there’s anything in a candidate’s record, or that they’re campaigning on, that might raise a red flag with a progressive community like Daily Kos. This allows us to cast the broadest possible net for potential concerns, something we couldn’t do even with the longest, most detailed questionnaire.
Campaigns understand exactly what we mean by our question, and they’ve been very candid with us, because they know an endorsement only makes sense if both sides are a good fit. And fortunately, very few red flags have emerged—a testament to the cohesiveness and unity of the Democratic Party (despite what stale media narratives want us to believe).
That said, there will inevitably be some dealbreakers. One we encountered this year (and as we’ve said, this was our fault, not the campaign’s): We won’t back candidates who don’t support women’s reproductive rights. If and when we encounter others, we’ll update this post as needed.
How we find candidates
In 2011, we launched a new section of the site called Daily Kos Elections where we cover down-ballot races as thoroughly as humanly possible. We have a team of dedicated election nerds, including full-time staff, freelancers, and volunteers, who are simply the best in the business and devote their lives to assessing candidates and races. We discuss candidates constantly, and when we find good matches for the criteria we’ve laid out above, we propose an endorsement to Markos Moulitsas, the founder and publisher of Daily Kos whose vision we aim to implement. If Markos signs off, we endorse—and it’s been so long since he hasn’t agreed with one of our choices, I can’t remember the last time.
But where do we get endorsement ideas? From all over the place! Not only do we scour the news daily, talk to knowledgeable operatives and activists, and consult with other members of the Daily Kos staff, but we are also very eager for input from the Daily Kos community. Even in our “limited” universe of offices we focus on, there are still thousands of races and even more candidates, and no matter how hard we try, we can’t possibly know everything. But Daily Kos members live in every state and district in this great nation, and you’re going to know stuff we simply won’t.
So if you have an idea, please email us at endorsements@dailykos.com. We really want to hear from you. Please let us know the candidate you're interested in, what office they're seeking, and why you think they’d be a good choice for Daily Kos. Help make us smarter and make our endorsement program even better!
What we do for endorsees
We write about and raise money for every candidate we endorse, and where we can, we also help direct volunteers (whether virtual or in-person) our endorsees’ way. (This is more easily done for statewide races.) And we harness the power of our blog, our email list, and our social media presence to do all these things. In other words, we ask you, the amazing members of this amazing community, to part with your hard-earned time and money to help make a difference. We’re constantly humbled by the trust you place in us.
And thanks to you, we’ve raised some extraordinary sums: This year alone, you’ve already given over $4.2 million, with an average donation of just $4. Yes, that means Daily Kos readers have donated over 1 million times!
Note: Potential endorsees must be listed on ActBlue as this is the only fundraising platform that works with our systems.
We also always encourage candidates to come blog themselves at Daily Kos—and to stick around in comments and answer questions. If they’d spend an hour at a fundraiser pressing the flesh, it certainly makes sense to spend an hour at Daily Kos talking to highly motivated activists (which is precisely what we tell them). Daily Kos can also be a great way for candidates to get their message out while bypassing traditional channels.
Next year, we may have a shot at taking back the House and stopping Trump’s legislative agenda dead in its tracks. With any luck, we’ll also be able to win some key governorships and state legislatures and start sending America in a more progressive direction. Change never happens overnight, though, and we are in this for the long haul. We have a great deal of very hard work ahead of us, but we’re looking forward to supporting a whole lot of amazing candidates, together.
