Betcha this is a picture we see over and over again in campaign literature come November. Democratic campaign literature that is.
“Everything I know tells me we need to change course… I am going to defeat Dave Reichert because he will never stop George Bush. But together, we will.”
— Darcy Burner, Westlake Center rally, 6/16/2006
President Bush is coming to Seattle today to raise a stunning $800,000 for Rep. Dave Reichert, and I urge all of you to join a rally 11:30 AM at Westlake Center (400 Pine St., Seattle) to send a message to Bush that his failed policies and his rubber-stamp Congress are not welcome in Washington State!
Democratic challenger Darcy Burner will be there to fire up the crowd, along with a host of other local elected officials. Please show your support.
When President Bush touches down in Seattle tomorrow to headline a high-donor fundraiser for Rep. Dave Reichert, it will mark a historic first for both the President and his uber-political advisor Karl Rove: Democratic challenger Darcy Burner now has the honor of being the first “Netroots endorsed” candidate to be targeted with a presidential visit.
Don’t underestimate the significance of this event. Rove is nothing if not clever (well… maybe “evil”,) and he knows a political danger when he sees it. In the past the Netroots have focused on supporting progressive underdogs, campaigns where our financial and media resources could have the most relative impact. But Burner is different. Burner has the opportunity to give the Netroots our biggest victory to date. Burner is in a strong position to win.
But no candidate can be expected to compete in a media intensive market like the 8th CD while being dramatically outspent by their opponent, and Bush’s visit tomorrow is intended to be a financial sledgehammer that Rove can use to smash the Burner campaign and the Netroots strategy. We can’t let that happen.
Burner just posted a “diary” to Daily Kos, and I urge all my readers with active DKos accounts to go there and recommend it NOW. We need to get her struggle out in front of the national Netroots so that they can respond immediately with their support.
I also urge all of you to go and read Burner’s diary on Daily Kos, for no other news article or post or piece of campaign literature I have seen so clearly lays out the candidates, the issues and what is at stake for our region and our nation in this election.
President Bush’s visit tomorrow will pump a startling half million dollars $800,000 or more into Reichert’s coffers, and is clear confirmation that both Rove and Bush believe that the silver-haired, leaden-tongued first term congressman is a loyal Bush Republican. We cannot allow Reichert to be coddled by the White House and the GOP House leadership on the one hand, and to claim independence on the other. We cannot allow this enormous influx of presidential money to come without a political cost.
If you have any plans to give to the Burner campaign at any time this year, now is the time to do it. And if you can afford to max out your contributions, now is the time to max out. Burner has set a modest goal of raising $75,000 in response to President Bush’s visit… but I’d like to see us blow past this target. So please, give directly to Darcy Burner today. Or if you prefer, you can give to Burner via my Act Blue page, and we’ll add the Netroots contributions into her total.
We can take back Congress. But we need your help.
Did the world change last weekend when 1200 bloggers converged on Las Vegas and yours truly invaded the local airwaves? N and Ellen just returned from Yearly Kos and joined the panel to talk about an amazing weekend that will surely be looked back on as a seminal event in the development of the netroots. Or so they say.
Joining me, N and Ellen in self-congratulatory lovefest were Mollie, Will, Carl, and Nick. Topics of discussion included Yearly Kos and the incredible convergence of bloggers, politicians and the press, my new weekly gig on 710-KIRO (Sundays, 7-10PM), President Bush’s upcoming visit to Seattle to raise money for struggling sycophant Dave Reichert, Peter Goldmark and his soon to be hot race in WA-05, Carl Ballard’s "three county strategy," house warming presents for Dean Logan, and of course… Tim Eyman’s many failures.
The show is 55:55, and is available here as a 36.1 MB MP3. Please visit PodcastingLiberally.com for complete archives and RSS feeds.
[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for producing the show.]
See that banner behind the picture of DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel in this week’s issue of TIME magazine? Know what it says?
D a r c y
B u r n e r
The article says a lot about Burner too:
Darcy Burner knew that prospective Democratic candidates sometimes left in tears after meeting Representative Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, who heads the party’s efforts to recapture the House and was the one-man screening committee for recruits. Burner, an alumna of Harvard and Microsoft, didn’t cry. But she found the wiry former Clinton Administration official as ruthless as any corporate chieftain she had known, as he went down a checklist of questions, including one at the top he had written to himself: Is she worth the investment of my time and the committee’s money?
“Apparently, it didn’t occur to him that I could read upside down,” Burner recalls. Or maybe he didn’t care. Either way, at the end of all his queries about polls and consultants and budgets, she asked him, “How are we doing on No. 1?”
“The jury is still out,” Emanuel said with studied bluntness.
Burner, who wanted to run in a district that stretches from wealthy Seattle suburbs to farmland at the base of Mount Rainier, passed muster. Now the two are bonded on a historic adventure–the Democrats’ increasingly promising quest to evict Republicans from the leadership suites they have occupied for the past dozen years. “This Microsoft mom is going to be part of us taking back the Congress,” Emanuel said hoarsely at a rally in a Mercer Island, Wash., community center last week.
Equal parts coach, babysitter and disciplinarian, Emanuel, 46, has groomed Burner and 21 other varsity challengers–seven more than the number of seats that Democrats need to take control of the House.
And if that doesn’t put to rest the righties’ wishful thinking that Burner isn’t a top tier challenger, perhaps President Bush’s upcoming trip to raise money for the struggling Reichert will. Not too many House Republicans get (or want) that type of attention, but Reichert’s getting desperate.
Will from Pike Place Politics will join me in the studio to talk about the state GOP convention, immigration policy, and Dave Reichert.
Darcy Burner will join us a little later on.
The momentum continues to build for Darcy Burner in WA’s 8th Congressional District, with the announcement today that she has become the newest national “Netroots Endorsed” candidate. This is a huge accomplishment that will lead to national attention, and tens of thousands of dollars pouring in from online activists throughout the nation.
A couple weeks ago the national blogs Swing State Project, MyDD, and Daily Kos asked their readers for nominations — kind of like a national, online primary — and Burner won. As Matt Stoller wrote over on MyDD:
The next netroots candidate is Darcy Burner in Washington’s eighth Congressional district. The district is trending blue, and Burner is incredibly smart and a natural camapigner going against vulnerable incumbent David Reichert. She is also young (35) and web-savvy, having worked at Microsoft, and these traits will serve her well in a House that is desperately in need of new blood. She has promised, for instance, to post on her Congressional web site a list of all meetings with lobbyists by her or any staff member, which is a fundamentally new approach to governance.
The Washington State blog community is one of the more mature blogging communities out there. They don’t fall lightly for a candidate, so seeing this kind of note on the exceptional Horse’s Ass is quite meaningful.
I personally have known Burner for nearly a year, yet I didn’t start actively promoting her campaign until February, after I became absolutely convinced that she was not only a candidate who could win, but who would well serve the interests of the 8th district and the citizens of WA state. During that time I’ve watched her grow from just another passionate Camp Wellstone classmate, into a compelling campaigner and a formidable fundraiser. And the more I learned about her personal story, the more I became convinced that she was the perfect candidate to represent the demographically diverse 8th district.
Burner regularly attends Drinking Liberally, and was at the Pacific NW Progressive Bloggers Conference. Her diaries at Kos are here. She’s got a good shot to win this district, and she is part of a new wave of internet candidates who know what it takes to win and know what democracy really can mean.
Aww, gee… Matt called HA “exceptional”. But as much as I’d like this to be about me, it’s not. This is about Burner, the entire local progressive blogosphere (Andrew at NPI should be thrilled,) and the respect we’ve earned from the national netroots. But most of all it’s about the incredible support we receive daily from our readers; if you didn’t read us, nobody else would, and in the end our strength comes from our numbers.
So go check out Burner sitting at the top of the “Netroots Endorsed” page on ActBlue, and show her some love.
As was correctly pointed out on NPI’s blog, I was never a knee-jerk supporter of Darcy Burner. I first met her nearly a year ago at Camp Wellstone, and while I personally liked her, and always believed she would make an excellent congressperson, I had legitimate questions about the ability of a novice like her to run an effective congressional campaign.
There would be many important races and initiatives before voters this year, and I was not about to waste either my energy or my credibility aggressively promoting a candidate who could not win. Of course, Burner eventually earned my enthusiastic support, but it was a long time coming. Indeed, as recently as January — even as Burner was proving to be a surprisingly adept campaigner and fundraiser — I contacted a local politician whom I particularly admire, and asked if he/she might consider jumping into the race.
I didn’t hold much hope that Politician X would say yes, but I didn’t quite get the rejection I had expected.
“The truth is that I’m too old to run for Congress,” Politician X wrote me. “It would be a waste of the state’s time.”
Politician X went on to explain that the state needs to embrace a “seniority strategy” like that which has enabled Southern states to dominate our national legislative agenda. We needed somebody in their early to mid 30’s, forty-ish at most, who could eventually grow to be “Norm Dicks’ replacement.”
This very pragmatic strategy certainly made sense at the time — and in fact served to make my support for the 35-year-old Burner even stronger — but its full significance was brought home this week when Knowlegis, a firm serving lobbyists, published its list of congressional “Power Rankings” after months of sifting through legislative records, committee assignments, news articles and other documents.
As might be expected, many of the most powerful congressman and senators are Republican, as that is the party that controls both committee assignments and the legislative agenda, and thus that is party most courted by lobbyists. But not in the WA state house delegation, where, you guessed it… the long serving Rep. Norm Dicks is by far the most powerful congressman in the state.
Republicans Reichert, Hastings and McMorris are middling at best, their ranking pumped up by plumb committee assignments, but with little legislation or influence to show for their efforts. But Dicks, in the minority since 1994, is nonetheless ranked as one of the most powerful men in the other Washington, largely on the basis of his seniority.
There is no doubt that the demographic changes in Washington’s 8th Congressional District favor Democrats over the long run; in fact, it already has become nominally blue. Thus it’s hard to imagine the 50-somethingish Reichert as anything more than a temporary placeholder.
Now is the time to pursue our own “seniority strategy,” and Darcy Burner is the perfect place to start.
Am I a great dad, or what? I mean, really… how many dads manage to get a picture of their daughter’s beloved teddy bear into the local paper? Sure, I’m somewhere in the picture too, but well… been there, done that.
Of course, the accompanying story isn’t about my daughter’s teddy bear at all… it’s about how us local bloggers are beginning to impact local politics.
Democratic congressional candidate Darcy Burner can’t match the public-service record of her Republican opponent, Rep. Dave Reichert, but she can make one claim in their contest that’s hers alone: She used to be a blogger.
That experience, and the Internet savvy that goes along with it, has led Burner to reach out actively to the regional left-leaning blogger network — a connection that may have played a key role in helping her meet a crucial fund-raising target. The Burner-blogger relationship could point the way to the political future, in which Web-based activism exercises a growing influence over regional, statewide and even national elections.
The Seattle P-I‘s Gregory Roberts describes how WA state’s emerging local blogosphere is beginning to inch from advocacy to full blown activism, and I remain convinced that if the “netroots” are going to have a major impact on local politics, it’s going to happen here first.
The Burner fund-raising drive could signal a change in the blogs’ role, Goldstein said.
“We’ve been doing advocacy; now we’re finally going to see some sort of impact in terms of activism,” he said.
“The blogosphere is just maturing to the point where we can get people out there moving, and digging into their pockets.”
Man, that David Goldstein guy really knows what he’s talking about.
No doubt Burner deserves most of the credit for her strong fundraising and growing buzz, but it’s clear we’ve contributed something to her early success. And while I don’t want to over-hype the impact of bloggers in the current election cycle, I do think that some critics are missing the larger picture:
To Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, the larger question is whether blogs can change voting patterns.
Their rabid partisanship attracts mostly true believers, and they end up screeching to the choir.
“Blogs are good for motivating the base,” Shirky said. “They’re not good for convincing swing voters.”
Yeah, well… maybe so. But motivating the base is exactly what Burner needed in the early going. Her task was to convince Democrats that she could excite people… that she could raise money… that she could win. And with our help, Burner did exactly that.
Convincing the swing voters, well, that’s Burner’s job. But at least now she’ll have a chance to do it on a more equal footing.
UPDATE:
I just saw a PDF of the P-I‘s front page, and all I can say to Stefan is: mine’s bigger than yours. (Also, both Apple Computer and the fisherman glove industry owe me a promotional fee.)
Our good friend Stefan over at (un)Sound Politics is gloating over a report in The Hill that 8th CD challenger Darcy Burner did not make the Democrats “Red to Blue” program after all. But The Hill got it wrong, and not surprisingly, so did Mr. Lazypants Sharkansky:
The Nutroots might not understand this, but grown-up campaign operatives apparently do: The most promising place to invest scarce resources is not with a candidate who has no relevant accomplishments and whose only selling point is that she’s not a Republican.
Well, Stefan and his readers may not understand this, but the best way to determine who is or is not in the DCCC’s program is to, um… call them up and ask them. That’s what I did (it’s called “reporting,” Stefan) and regional press secretary Kate Bedingfield told me that The Hill’s (and uSP’s) report was based on a “lack of understanding of how the program works.”
The DCCC always intended to roll out the program in staggered waves, so as to concentrate the focus of donors on small groups of candidates, thus maximizing contributions. And the chronology of the rollout has absolutely nothing to do with the priority of the individual races.
Bedingfield confirms that Burner most definitely is in Red to Blue — a program she describes as “very exclusive” — and that Burner is scheduled to roll out on June 1st… perfectly positioned to extract the maximum benefit from the program during the crucial, end-of-quarter, fundraising push. Burner has been personally assured by DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel that WA-08 remains a top priority, and that she will receive all of the support she has been promised.
And if that’s not clear enough, DCCC communications director Bill Burton just emailed me the following:
Darcy Burner is running one of the strongest Democratic campaigns in the country. The DCCC has included her in our Red to Blue program as a sign of our confidence that she is the candidate for change who will unseat Dave Reichert in the fall. The Red to Blue program is staggered in order to direct as much donor attention as possible to each qualifying campaign. Darcy Burner’s extraordinary campaign qualified easily for the program and will receive the full force of DCCC financial and strategic aid.
So as much as the head-in-the-ground wing of the local GOP might want to deny it, Burner really is a strong candidate, and the DCCC knows it. Even some Republican operatives have privately told me that if Reichert’s not worried, he sure as hell should be.
As for Stefan, well… I know from personal experience that sometimes, us bloggers just get stuff wrong. But let’s see if he’ll follow my lead and be man enough to admit it.
AP political writer David Ammons, the dean of our state Capitol press corps, focuses most of this week’s column on the tight race in WA’s 8th congressional district.
Washington already has a heavily Democratic congressional delegation, but hungry national Democrats are hoping to pick up at least one more House seat here.
They’re taking on The Sheriff, freshman Rep. Dave Reichert, in the increasingly independent 8th District east of Seattle. As President Bush’s poll ratings fall, Democrats say Reichert could be the most visible victim in Washington this year.
From the opening paragraphs a clear theme emerges… that changing demographics and crumbling national support for President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have conspired to put Reichert’s hold on office at risk.
And no doubt, these two factors are huge.
But I think many analysts and pundits have largely overlooked two additional, important factors: challenger Darcy Burner’s surprising strength as both a fundraiser and a campaigner… and incumbent Reichert’s surprising weakness in those very same areas.
The most obvious evidence that Burner is running an exceptional campaign is the very fact that she’s now garnering so much attention. That wasn’t the case a few months back, when only a handful of local bloggers were touting the race as a nail-biter. And yet, the two contributing factors that everybody cites most — WA-08’s changing demographics and the anti-Republican political climate — have both been in play since well before Burner announced her candidacy.
What’s changed in the district to suddenly throw the race into the “toss-up” category? The Burner campaign, that’s what.
When people like me started talking up Burner on the blogs, it wasn’t just wishful thinking. We repeatedly met with the candidate, we argued policy and strategy… and we grilled her mercilessly when she showed up at a NW progressive bloggers’ forum in Olympia this past January.
I personally have known Burner for nearly a year, yet I didn’t start actively promoting her campaign until February, after I became absolutely convinced that she was not only a candidate who could win, but who would well serve the interests of the 8th district and the citizens of WA state. During that time I’ve watched her grow from just another passionate Camp Wellstone classmate, into a compelling campaigner and a formidable fundraiser. And the more I learned about her personal story, the more I became convinced that she was the perfect candidate to represent the demographically diverse 8th district.
“I’m very confident. Not nervous at all,” [Reichert] says. After a pause, he laughs and adds a postscript, “Maybe I should be.”
Well, he should be nervous, because he and his handlers have underestimated his opponent from day one, and that’s the worst mistake a politician can make in a swing district like WA-08, regardless of the political climate.
On the flip side, I’ve become convinced that most observers have overestimated Reichert, the “Hollywood-handsome sheriff” who claims to have tracked down the Green River Killer. His infamous temper, his inability to think on his feet, his stunningly poor public speaking skills when forced to talk off the cuff… all of this detracts from the notable advantages of incumbency.
But even more damning is his stance on the issues and his first-term voting record, both of which are out of touch with the majority of 8th district voters despite Reichert’s relentless efforts to recast himself as a moderate. Reichert is an extremist on reproductive rights, stem cell research and other social issues, while his legislative record on votes that count marks him as a near-rubberstamp for the disgraced Tom DeLay.
As voters learn more about Reichert, they will learn that he is part of the problem in Washington D.C., not part of solving it.
So yes, the race for WA-08 could never be so tight if not for the current political climate and the changing demographics. But the fact that it is so tight six months out from the November election is directly due to Burner’s strengths, and Reichert’s weaknesses.
Just wanted to give credit where credit is due.
According to Roll Call, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has chosen the first batch of 22 House challengers for inclusion in their coveted Red-to-Blue program… and looky whose name is at the top of the list:
Darcy Burner (Wash. 8th)
Phyllis Busansky (Fla. 9th)
Francine Busby (Calif. 50th)
Joe Courtney (Conn. 2nd)
John Cranley (Ohio 1st)
Jill Derby (Nev. 2nd)
Tammy Duckworth (Ill. 6th)
Brad Ellsworth (Ind. 8th)
Diane Farrell (Conn. 4th)
Steve Filson (Calif. 11th)
Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y. 20th)
Tessa Hafen (Nev. 3rd)
Baron Hill (Ind. 9th)
Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio 15th)
Ron Klein (Fla. 22nd)
Ken Lucas (Ky. 4th)
Patricia Madrid (N.M. 1st)
Harry Mitchell (Ariz. 5th)
Chris Murphy (Conn. 5th)
Lois Murphy (Pa. 6th)
Heath Shuler (N.C. 11th)
Peter Welch (Vt. At-large)
Of course, Darcy Burner is at the top, because the list is in alphabetical order, but the fact that she made it at all is both an indicator of how seriously the DCCC is now taking WA-08, and a tribute to Burner’s hard work and natural talents. Burner has proven to DC insiders what she believed all along… that she’s the perfect candidate to represent her district.
This is a big deal. A few short months ago both parties were writing off this race. Now, thanks in part to the netroots-fueled fundraising surge that helped Burner blow past her first quarter targets, the Reichert campaign is running scared and the DCCC is committing significant resources into the district.
“This is an exclusive program that rewards the candidates who and campaigns that are most skilled, not only at raising money on their own, but at getting their message across to the voters they hope to represent,” [DCCC chairman Rep. Rahm] Emanuel explained in the memo.
In the 2004 cycle, two dozen Red-to-Blue candidates each took in about $250,000 in additional donations thanks to the program, but the DCCC promises that this year’s effort will be even bigger, with the program launching earlier in the cycle and many more candidates expected to participate.
The Roll Call piece goes on to specifically mention nationally hyped Red-to-Blue races like Francine Busby’s bid to replace the disgraced Duke Cunningham in CA-50 and Tammy Duckworth’s race to succeed the retiring Henry Hyde in IL-6. But as I noted the other day, the highly respected Rothenberg Political Report now ranks the Reichert-Burner race as more competitive than either of those two high profile contests.
In addition to direct financial aid and support, the Red-to-Blue candidates names will be circulated to donors across the nation. Burner will also be paired with a Democratic Member of Congress for “mentoring.”
Mentors, [Rep. Adam] Schiff stressed, are chosen carefully. They essentially enter into contractual agreements, pledging to visit their prot
As reported yesterday on Slog, the Rothenberg Political Report, a highly respected and non-partisan political newsletter, upgraded Washington’s 8th Congressional District race between incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert and up-and-coming challenger Darcy Burner from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up/Tilt Republican”… ranking it as one of the 14 most competitive races in the nation.
That’s right, WA-08 is more competitive than high profile CA-50, in which the much ballyhooed Francine Busby is fighting to succeed the recently convicted Duke Cunningham.
Burner had been maligned by Republicans (and ignored by some Democrats) as a “third tier” candidate with little chance of defeating Reichert, but the “Burner Buzz” (not to mention her impressive fundraising performance) has opened eyes in the other Washington. Locally, the GOP echo machine has graduated from snidely dismissing Burner’s candidacy, to ineptly attempting to smear her.
And in what is surely bad news for Republican hopes to retain control of the House, Burner isn’t the only unheralded Democrat displaying unexpected strength:
While Democrats have failed to recruit the top tier candidates that they would like in places such as Arizona 1, Pennsylvania 15, Missouri 6 and Iowa 2, they have broadened the playing field elsewhere and recruited enough credible lower first-tier/upper second-tier hopefuls to win the House if the Democratic wave is big enough in November.
[…]
We believe that the House definitely is “in play,” and the key to whether Republicans can maintain control is whether they can discredit individual Democratic challengers who otherwise would be positioned to win. We are increasing our estimate of likely Democratic gains from 5-8 seats to 7-10 seats (they need to net 15 seats for control), with a bias toward even greater Democratic gains.
Of course, all this horse race analysis means zilch if we don’t all do the hard work necessary to help the Dems take control… and locally, that means helping Burner win in November.
The political pundits now all agree — Burner can win this race — but only with your help. If you haven’t already volunteered or contributed, do it now, for if the Republicans retain absolute control in DC, we’ll have nobody to blame but ourselves.
“Darcy Burner is exactly the kind of candidate in the past that the DCCC would have let die,” said Rep. Ellen Tausher, D-Calif., a leader of the moderate New Democrat Coalition.
That is the most important message to take away from Joel Connelly’s column in today’s Seattle P-I about the close contest for WA’s 8th Congressional District. The Democrats failed to recruit a high profile candidate, thus this was a seat that only a few short months ago the bigwigs in both parties assumed was safe for Reichert.
Not anymore.
Worry-free last winter, Republicans are far from sanguine in the spring.
“This is where they think they can flip a seat,” KVI radio host John Carlson warned 1,200 people at Reichert’s re-election kickoff breakfast in Bellevue.
On that, there is bipartisan agreement.
Through sheer will, hard work, smarts and force of personality, Darcy Burner, an unknown “third tier candidate,” has turned WA-08 into one of the hottest races in the nation. This is a remarkable feat, and is in itself a huge blow to the GOP’s efforts to retain control of Congress, as Burner has forced them into sinking money into a seat they hadn’t budgeted on defending.
Reichert still has many of the advantages of incumbency, not the least of which being name ID and access to lobbyist and PAC money. (Thus far, Reichert has raised over 42 percent of his contributions from PACs, whereas PACs comprise only 7 percent of Burner’s funds.) But both these gaps are closing… and here is where the grassroots comes in.
Burner shocked the political establishment by out-raising Reichert $334,000 to $268,000 in the first quarter… but that still leaves Reichert with a $725,000 to $357,000 cash on hand advantage.
I expect Burner to spend her money more wisely than Reichert, but she needs to at least keep pace with his fundraising from here on out to keep this race close. And to do this, she’s going to need a lot more help from us.
If every one of my readers donated only $200 to Burner’s campaign, we’d wipe out the money gap overnight. Of course, I don’t expect it to be that easy (though you’re all welcome to prove me wrong,) but if only a hundred of you signed up to host a house party or fundraiser, it could easily put Burner over the top. We really can make a difference.
A lot of local Republicans were awfully damn smug about this race heading into 2006… wouldn’t you like to play a role in wiping that smile off their face?
Here’s a little tidbit that bodes well for Democratic candidates like Darcy Burner:
In an equally significant development, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reported having $23 million in the bank, almost equaling — for the first time in memory — the cash balance of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which was $24.4 million.
“The days of the ‘strategic cash advantage’ are over,” declared Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the DCCC, which raised $9.2 million in March, the same amount as the NRCC.
One of the things that made Burner’s first-quarter fundraising feat so important is that it qualified her for financial support from the DCCC. And with the DCCC’s own fundraising success, Burner can rest assured that if she makes her race close, the DCCC will be able to match their Republican counterparts dollar for dollar.
Meanwhile, the Senate Dems are actually out-raising Republicans, and have almost twice the cash on hand.
As Emanuel said, the GOP no longer has a “strategic cash advantage,” at least not in this campaign cycle, and while Reichert may outspend his challenger — as incumbents usually do — if Burner does her part to even the financial playing field, the DCCC will have the wherewithal to keep it even.
What this all means is that if we do our part to help Burner raise the money she needs to stay competitive, she’ll have every opportunity to win.
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