This week, The Downballot cohosts David Nir and David Beard looked at goings-on in New York and Michigan, as well as updates from the Maryland primaries. Going across the pond, they also chatted about what effects Boris Johnson's resignation as prime minister could have on the United Kingdom, and what we can expect looking forward.
They also spoke with Jason Bresler, partner at The Strategy Group and former political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2018 wave that saw the party retake the House of Representatives. Bresler explains how exactly the DCCC helps candidates, from start to finish; the key moments of 2018 that convinced him the House would flip; and the advice he'd give to Democrats heading into a difficult election cycle. (Fascinating fact: The DCCC will often work with multiple candidates in the same district to aid their campaign launches.)
You can listen below or subscribe to The Downballot wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also find a transcript for this week right here. New episodes come out every Thursday!
In New York, some big news has emerged out of the judicial court circuit: Chief Judge Janet DiFiore of New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, abruptly announced that she would resign at the end of August even though she had three-and-a-half years left on her term. Initially, she offered no sensible explanation for her departure. But shortly afterward, Law360 reported that DiFiore was under investigation for interfering with a disciplinary proceeding against the president of the New York State Court Officer’s Association.
Nir thinks that this is ultimately great news for progressives, as DiFiore is a former Republican who switched to the Democratic Party in 2007. More importantly, he added, she was an appointee of Andrew Cuomo’s—and Cuomo, during his long tenure and before his resignation in disgrace, wound up appointing every single member of the seven-member New York Court of Appeals.
Many of his picks, including DiFiore, were more conservative. In fact, DiFiore herself formed a majority that regularly ruled against tenants’ rights, against environmental protections, against victims of police brutality. She even joined an opinion that required defendants to pay for their own electronic monitoring devices.
Worst of all was an opinion she was part of earlier this year, though, according to Nir. It was a four-judge majority that ruled that New York's legislature didn't have the power to draw new maps for Congress and for the state Legislature, even though the state's redistricting commission failed in its job. Instead, DiFiore and her conservative colleagues on the court allowed a Republican judge in a small, upstate community to draw all of the state's districts for Congress and for the state Senate.
So, as Nir said, there was really no excuse for Democrats, especially self-styled progressives, to go along with these disastrous picks that Cuomo kept putting forth, and we can demand better:
Progressives now are calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to pick someone much, much better than DiFiore. If the person Hochul puts forward isn't an acceptable choice for progressives, then Democrats in the state Senate need to reject that person. They need to show spine that they didn't show toward Cuomo.
It's really important to remember just how important elections for governor are, because just because you elect a Democrat like Cuomo doesn't mean you're going to get good justices on your court.
Next, our hosts turned their attention to the Maryland governor's race, where Republican incumbent Larry Hogan has termed out.
On the Republican side, the competition is between Trumpist state Delegate Dan Cox versus Kelly Schultz, who Hogan has endorsed. Schultz also served as both secretary of commerce and secretary of labor at different times under Hogan. “So, it's very much sort of a Maryland establishment type pick who could potentially be competitive, versus a Trumpist … and Cox, who will, if he wins, almost certainly get destroyed by whoever the Democratic nominee is,” Beard noted.
On the Democratic side, there are a plethora of candidates who have jumped in, as the seat is seen as a prime pickup opportunity for Democrats in the state, as Beard explained:
“We've got former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez. We've got Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot. We've got former Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler. We've got former CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation and author Wes Moore. And then, finally, we've got former U.S. Secretary of Education John King, Jr. So, that's a lot, but we're going to focus on three of them. Franchot has been leading most of the polls. He's the one who's a current statewide elected official, but he's only in the 20s in most of the polling, and both Moore and Perez are both within striking distance. So, it's seen as a good chance that one of those can come up and overtake him, with Franchot already having such good name recognition.”
Another primary on the Democratic side for another statewide office, the open attorney general seat, is a showdown between Congressman Anthony Brown and former District Court Judge Katie O'Malley, the wife of former Gov. Martin O'Malley. Brown was actually O'Malley's lieutenant governor during his eight years in office, so their relationship goes a while back. O'Malley has gone after Brown's lack of trial court experience while Brown has basically criticized, in return, the idea that the attorney general’s race is about trial court experience, and not the many other issues that the attorney general would face while in office.
Lastly, the Democratic primary in Maryland's 4th District, which is a district in the D.C. suburbs that's safely blue, is heating up. It is a seat Brown is vacating to run for attorney general. There, we have former Congresswoman Donna Edwards going up against the former Maryland State Attorney Glenn Ivey in a race that's attracted a lot of outside attention. We will see how that turns out next Tuesday.
As a follow-up to issues discussed in last week’s episode, Nir mentioned updates from Michigan, where organizers were working to put an amendment on the ballot that would affirmatively enshrine the right to an abortion in the state Constitution. They submitted signatures this week, turning in more than 753,000 signatures and setting a new record in the state for the most signatures ever submitted to get a measure on the ballot. This represents more than 300,000 signatures than required by law—a little bit more than 10% of all registered voters.
“Obviously, there is a ton of work that needs to be done to make sure this actually passes and becomes law. Conservative forces are going to fight, tooth and nail, to stop this, but the fact that organizers were able to collect and turn in a record smashing number of signatures is a rare bit of positive news in the fight for abortion rights,” Nir observed.
Beard also added to discussion last week about chaos in the United Kingdom’s political scene, where Boris Johnson was facing what seemed to be his final curtain. “It was indeed,” Beard said, as he resigned last week, triggering a leadership contest for the Conservative Party.
The winner of this race will become prime minister, despite not facing the voters for up to two-and--half years, which is the maximum length until the next election could be called. Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who was one of the cabinet ministers whose resignations led to Johnson eventually stepping down, is leading among members of Parliament and is expected to make the final two.
After a brief break, Nir and Beard were joined by Bresler, who served as the former political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the official party arm responsible for protecting and winning majorities in the House.
Beard has noticed that the DCCC has become much more prominent in recent years. “Definitely, some of my less in-the-industry political friends would have had no idea what the DCCC was five or 10 years ago, and now, the name is everywhere, it's a lot more commonly heard. But it's not necessarily understood well,” he said. “I think there's people who think that the DCCC control everything from every portion across the country or people who think, ‘What does it even do? It seems sort of pointless.’”
So, he asked: How does the DCCC actually interact with congressional candidates? How do they help them? How do they move through the cycle with them?
As Bresler put it, the DCCC has one goal and one goal only: either to win the majority or expand the majority, point blank.
For most of the DCCC, he noted, there are more or less three acts when it comes to involvements with campaigns: act one is recruitment, recruiting candidates and launching their campaigns; act two is building their infrastructure and preparing them for engagement for the campaigns; and act three is engagement for the campaigns.
Elaborating on his work with the organization in the past, Bresler noted that there is a significant focus on finding candidates:
“Meeting, going out and learning about districts, finding candidates, meeting with local leaders, elected [officials], business leaders, or, in certain cases, labor leaders is a lot of fun, and figuring out the district and trying to find the right candidate. And then after you have the candidate you have your eyes on, we bring them to Washington for what we call a recruitment trip, and that's meeting with other members, talking about what life is like as a member of Congress, depending on who they are, depending on how important of a recruit it is, potentially meeting with leadership, whether that's [Jim] Clyburn, Steny Hoyer, or Speaker Pelosi, and then included in that act is launching their campaign.”
“‘Launch’ is sort of what the DCCC is. It's really important for campaigns, right? If you have a failure to launch a campaign, it's really hard to find success after that,” he added. “And launch is not just getting your website ready and turning on your Act Blue page and sending a press release, right? There's a lot of groundwork that goes into this long before candidates have staff on the ground.”
In reality, this looks like DCCC support for the first leg of a campaign and supporting the campaign until they can find the staff to replace them to take over full time. After that, act two involves refining the campaign and building out the rest of the staff, finding them a call time manager, potentially finding them a pollster, connecting them with a television firm, finding them a campaign manager, all of that. Lastly, engagement is when the DCCC is working with you on everything from helping you build your field plan and then helping fund your field plan through the state party.
“One thing I'm curious about is what does the ‘D-trip’ do in situations where you have multiple strong candidates, especially if different groups of leaders in a given district are divided on whom to recommend?” Nir wondered.
Ultimately, Bresler explained, this is a big part of why the DCCC will often support multiple candidates in the same race:
Look, there's a lot of times where we've done multi-launches in the same district. Especially in 2018, we did it a ton. I mean, look, the reality is, I would love to take credit and say that I recruited everybody that is a star in our caucus right now. But the reality is, we had candidates literally who showed up at our door, and wanted to run for office.
At the end of the day, we don't know, until we have any kind of data suggesting at that point, which is not going to happen until much later in the cycle, it's in our interest to make sure everybody at least has the tools to be successful. [After] that point, it's up to them. Especially in 2018, there were tons of times where we launched two if not three, and sometimes even four candidates inside of a race. That's a little bit abnormal.
But if there are two quality candidates in a race, it does us no good to pretend without any real evidence that somebody is not going to win a primary and just go away if we think there's potential for them to be a nominee. Because they're going to need our [help]. Trying to build a ship as it's already flying it up in the air is a hell a lot harder than being at the ground level to start putting it together.
Bresler also elaborated on the restrictions and tricky parts of working with independent expenditure arms of campaigns and outside groups.
In closing out, the trio looked toward the midterms later this year. Given House Democrats' very narrow majority, many think Republicans are probably favored to take the House at this point.
“But obviously, the DCCC isn't there to sort of throw up their hands. They're there to keep the majority, if they can, at all costs. So what would you be doing right now, if you were the political director still? What would you be telling these candidates to focus on as they're facing this very tough year, potentially?” Beard asked.
The reality is that there are plenty of open and challenger seats that are frankly just better opportunities for us to win than some of the incumbent seats, Bresler noted, keeping in mind that there is only one goal of the committee: either to win or expand the majority:
My advice would be you have to take that mantra to this as you look at the battlefield.
I really hope they're ready for cut and dry ruthlessness. Yes, it's hard to cut anyone, let alone an incumbent member of Congress. That's not fun. And it's very hard and there are always ramifications that come that way. But at the end of the day, your goal is the goal and your mission is the mission, and that's to win the majority or keep the majority. And in order to do that, you sort of have to take a blind eye to this, and where your best opportunities are, you go. That's the advice I would give them.
As far as candidates and members, don't overthink this. It's a challenge, but … you aren't here to out-think or out-strategize Republicans. You're here to win votes. And how does what you're doing show your backbone? How does what you're doing show care for your voters?
We're at an all-time high right now, an all-time high, of lack of faith and trust in elected officials. And for candidates and incumbent members, in order to reach out and grab someone's hand, you've got to show some backbone here, and you got to show some empathy, and you have to show that you know things are hard, but you're going to make things a little bit easier. And unless they're thinking about that and doing that every day, they're just not going about this in the right way.
The Downballot comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts! As a reminder, you can reach our hosts by email at thedownballot@dailykos.com. Please send in any questions you may have for next week's mailbag. You can also reach out via Twitter at @DKElections.