LEAKED: DCCC Chairman’s Letter to New Recruitment Chairs
January 8, 2015
Dear DCCC Recruitment Chairs,
I would like to personally thank you for taking on the extremely difficult task of recruiting Democrats that can win Congressional races in 2016. I really think we have assembled a great team that has the necessary experience in tough races that we’ll need to win back the majority. Whether it’s Denny Heck from a district in Washington that President Obama won twice by double-digits or Joe Kennedy, who was able to fend off a tough 2014 challenge from “Uncontested,” this recruitment team is ready to erase the embarrassment that was 2014.
I recently sat down with Leader Pelosi and Director of Communications/Novelist Steve Israel for several days over the past month and we were able to identify some of the recruiting problems from last cycle and have distilled from those problems certain guidelines which I list below:
Money isn’t everything: In February of 2013, people here at the DCCC were so excited that $ean Eldridge would be running for Congress. With a $700 million fortune at his disposal, we could sit back and send him bagels while he easily bought a D+1 seat. As it turned out, Eldridge was an embarrassment and lost by 30 points. So yeah, that didn’t quite work out.
Local roots apparently matter: Remember Kevin Strouse? He was highlighted in a 2013 Washington Post article as the DCCC’s star recruit to run in the 8th District of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, we didn’t anticipate that folks in Bucks County would not warm to a guy who moved just there from Washington D.C. to run for Congress. He ended up losing by 24 points. Oops!
Candidates that embrace Obamacare do . . . poorly: Let’s not sugarcoat it – Washington Democrats LOVE Obamacare, but it’s not so popular anywhere else. Just ask Alex Sink down in Florida’s 13th District. She fully embraced Obamacare and lost a special election that made this organization look really bad. And do you know what’s worse than embracing Obamacare? Supporting a Canadian-style health care system. Just ask Martha Roberston, the super liberal we recruited to run in an R+3 district that lost by 25 points. Ouch!
“Republican-light” candidates also fail: You may think that the key to successful recruiting is to try and get candidates that will pose as Republicans and talk about things that people care about – the economic growth, smaller government, etc. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work either because people apparently can see through that. Just ask Andrew Romanoff, a Democrat who tried to run as a Republican – and lost by almost 10 points.
Do your homework on candidates: Just like we didn’t read Obamacare before we passed it, we didn’t watch this Domenic Recchia video before we recruited him. Numerous editorials and national spoofs later, we now admit that may have been a mistake. Live and learn.
Don’t ever mention our performance in NJ-03: Let’s just say we made the “Losers” lists in the post-election write ups and our performance there should never be mentioned to any potential recruit. EVER!
I hope this was helpful and wish you the best of luck out there; you’re going to need it!
Sincerely,
Chairman Luján