Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington state will lead House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, according to an announcement Tuesday by New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming House Democratic leader.
As chair of the DCCC, DelBene vowed to mount an aggressive effort to retake the House, which Republicans are due to hold by a margin of just five seats.
“We’re going out not only to defend our current seats, but also to expand our map and to take back the majority,” she said at a press conference Wednesday.
Jeffries selected DelBene himself after House Democrats voted to empower him to pick a DCCC chair on Nov. 30, the same day that they tapped him to serve as their leader.
Explaining the choice at Wednesday’s press conference, Jeffries cited DelBene’s record of wins in what was once a suburban Seattle swing seat, her service as finance co-chair for the DCCC in 2018, and her ultimately prescient belief that Democrats could flip a GOP-held seat in southwestern Washington state when few other top Democrats agreed.
DelBene, a former Microsoft executive, also continued to be a powerhouse fundraiser for the party after her official role as DCCC finance co-chair ended. She raised $2.6 million for the campaign committee in the 2022 election cycle.
“Suzan DelBene is the right leader at the right time with the right demeanor, a powerful intellect, an incredible skill set, and the right experience to lead Democrats to victory in 2024,” Jeffries said Wednesday.
But there are also other, less straightforward factors that explain DelBene’s appointment and what it means for House Democrats.
DelBene had been one of a trio of House members leading the push for the Democratic leader to pick the campaign chief, rather than have a caucus-wide vote on the role, which had been the practice for the previous three election cycles.
House Democrats’ preference for an appointed DCCC chair, and Jeffries’ decision to pick DelBene over California Reps. Ami Bera and Tony Cárdenas — who had begun running for the post when it was expected to be subject to a caucus-wide election — both speak to an appetite for a campaign chief with less drama than DelBene’s two immediate predecessors.
Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, the chair of the DCCC in the 2020 election cycle, presided over a number of high-profile controversies at the campaign body. She elicited the ire of progressives for blacklisting vendors that worked for Democratic primary challengers, and of Black and Latino House Democrats for the lack of racial diversity in the ranks of her senior staff.
The outgoing DCCC chair, New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, generated stinging criticism — and significant publicity — for his decision to run in the district of another New Yorker, Rep. Mondaire Jones, without informing him first. Maloney’s critics noted that he had chosen to run in a seat where, to be sure, his home would now be — but also where now-President Joe Biden won by 10 percentage points in 2020, thus giving Maloney a potential advantage in a difficult cycle.
“He had some unforced errors that caused some unnecessary headaches in the building,” said a former DCCC staff member, who requested anonymity for professional reasons. “It was difficult that the rank-and-file staff are focused on all these battleground races and all anyone is calling about is the chairman’s race.”
What’s more, Bustos and Maloney both ended up in heated reelection battles. In Maloney’s case, the DCCC spent money to bolster him at the last minute — and he still lost.
Picking DelBene was an attempt to select someone with neither the penchant for personal drama nor the electoral risk that burdened her predecessors.
“There seems to be a desire to have a DCCC chair that is not going to take away headlines [from candidates] or take away from the mission of the DCCC,” the former staff member said.
On the electoral front, DelBene has the rare distinction of experience running in a battleground seat and present safety from a credible political challenge. When she first won in 2012, she defeated her Republican opponent by about 7 percentage points in what was then a competitive district.
As the suburbs of Seattle have grown steadily more Democratic in the past decade, her position has become more secure. She won reelection by 27 percentage points in November in a seat that Biden carried by more than 30 percentage points in 2020.
DelBene’s demeanor and ideological role likewise occupy a kind of Goldilocks place on the Democratic Party spectrum.
As outgoing chair of the business-friendly New Democrat Coalition, DelBene decidedly hails from the more moderate half of the House Democratic Caucus as it is currently constituted. Under DelBene’s leadership, the New Democrat Coalition backed Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger over a more progressive member to fill a new role as the representative to party leadership for Democrats in battleground seats. Spanberger won that contest.
But unlike some centrists — Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Scott Peters of California come to mind — she generally gets along well with her left-wing colleagues, and she used her control of the New Democrats to help champion Biden’s agenda. For example, she was a leading proponent of passing — and making permanent — an expanded child tax credit, which expired after its inclusion in the American Rescue Plan legislation.
DelBene’s appointment won immediate praise from Leah Greenberg, a co-founder of the progressive Indivisible Project.
“In her Washington district, Rep. DelBene has a reputation for being responsive and collaborative with grassroots Indivisible activists,” Greenberg said in a statement Tuesday. “That’s a great quality and one that would be incredibly valuable if it carries to her role as DCCC chair.”
She added, “It’s also in sharp contrast with her predecessor Sean Patrick Maloney, who antagonized grassroots activists nationally and locally this cycle.”
DelBene is, however, a staunch proponent of unfettered international trade — the kind opposed by many labor unions and progressives — and an ally of the technology industry, which is a critical part of her constituency in metropolitan Seattle.
While the DCCC chair does not have a direct role in setting policy priorities for House Democrats, the campaign arm leader can influence what kinds of candidates the party recruits and what messages it disseminates.
With that in mind, a prominent anti-monopolist and Big Tech critic who spoke to HuffPost on condition of anonymity said they have “serious concerns” about the implications of DelBene’s selection for the antitrust agenda.