https://www.washingtonsun.com/2024-election 2024 Election en-US Mon, 03 Aug 2026 20:18:05 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/2024-election/dnc-autopsy-missing-chapter Jenna Monnin The DNC contends that it never received the document in question. Mon, 03 Aug 2026 20:18:05 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/2024-election/dnc-autopsy-missing-chapter The author of the Democratic National Committee’s widely panned 2024 postelection autopsy report released what he said is an unpublished chapter on Monday, breathing new life into a scandal that threatens to distract the party as it prepares for the closing stretch of the 2026 midterms.

Paul Rivera, a longtime Democratic consultant, shared the 28-page installment with The New York Times, claiming that the missing document includes questions about President Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection and addresses frustration that high-earning Democratic elites “drive too much of the decision-making within the ecosystem.”

The consequences of Biden’s decision to run again were not discussed at length in the original 192-page document released in May. In the newly released chapter, Rivera addresses the former president’s decision.

“Is there a single point of failure for 2024? Perhaps it is a decision of the President to seek re-election instead of passing the torch, but Democrats do not have a time machine to go back and change his decision,” Rivera wrote.

Rivera told the Times he personally delivered the chapter in a binder to Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin in January. But Martin and other representatives for the DNC disputed that they had ever seen the chapter in question, and that the “missing” chapter could not be located in an extensive search of the committee’s files.

“That is false,” Martin wrote in a statement. “The only binder I was working with Paul on was for lessons learned materials. This alleged report section was not in any binder I reviewed.”

If the DNC had received the chapter in question from Rivera, it “would have released it with the rest of the report,” Martin said.

Neither NOTUS nor The New York Times could independently verify either account.

The chapter also reviewed Democrats’ declining support from Hispanic, Black, Asian American and Native American voters, and noted that digital consultants had missed the mark with voters.

“They missed important signals about why people were frustrated with Democrats, who seemed not to appreciate or understand their situation,” Rivera wrote — though he did not identify anyone by name.

Martin said “one of [his] key priorities remains, to hold the consultant-industrial complex accountable,” and added that the DNC would have “absolutely” published any “report materials that went after self-enriching consultants,” if the committee had them.

“Whether that was a conscious decision on their part to bury the section for the purposes of hiding a paragraph, I don’t know,” Rivera told The New York Times. “That’s a them question. What I can tell you is they had it, and they made a decision not to release it.”

After submitting files to the DNC in late 2025, Martin allegedly told Rivera he was disappointed with the quality of his work, and the pair met for a discussion in January. Rivera then compiled a new 173-page report that he claims included the chapter in question.

But Martin said his “work with Paul in January is being misrepresented,” because they only discussed documents that outlined “lessons learned.”

“That effort did not include reviewing new report material, only the material the DNC had already received, which is what we released in May,” Martin said.

The original report drew a rebuke by Democrats for its failure to address Biden’s impact on the race and Kamala Harris’ subsequent campaign without an official primary process. The report was also missing an executive summary, even though there was an apparent place for one in the first few pages of the report, with an annotation that the section was not provided by the author.

The entire report included an annotation in red at the top of every page, saying “this document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC.” The committee added in the disclaimer that Rivera did not provide “underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions” contained in the report.

Some Democrats thought the original report failed to draw any meaningful conclusions about where the party went wrong in 2024.

Rivera sought to address the criticism by releasing a 500-page independent autopsy report on Aug. 3, called Blue by 2032, that opens with an accounting of the events surrounding the original report.

“In late December, 2025 the DNC decided to announce it was not releasing a report, and did not release an executive summary. In the ensuing six months, the DNC never asked for a meeting to discuss content, or provided markup or questions to the after-action project team,” Rivera wrote.

The timeline appears to conflict with Rivera’s account of his discussions with Martin in January. Blue by 2032 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After the Times released Rivera’s missing chapter, some political analysts said the new document suffers from many of the same problems that plagued the publicly released version of the report.

“I think the author of the DNC autopsy is giving himself too much credit,” Nate Silver, a statistician and the founder of FiveThirtyEight.com, wrote on X. “If you actually read the omitted chapter (good of the NYT to include it), it consists largely of boilerplate and clichés and mentions Biden's decision to run only in passing.”

Neither the original report nor Rivera’s additional chapter make any mention of Israel or its war in Gaza, a crucial issue that split Democratic voters in the lead-up to the 2024 election and continues to be a controversial topic for candidates.

Critics of the original report released by the DNC also took issue with the omission of the conflict, but in a statement at the time Martin acknowledged that a number of key issues were left out of the autopsy.

“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” Martin said in May. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it.”]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/democrats/dnc-autopsy-report-ken-martin-leadership Elena Schneider, Jasmine Wright, Alex Roarty “It's going to be very hard to come back from this,” said the president of the super PAC Priorities USA. Fri, 22 May 2026 09:15:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/democrats/dnc-autopsy-report-ken-martin-leadership Hours after Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin released an incomplete 2024 election autopsy Thursday, DNC members circulated talking points to state party chairs urging them to assert their confidence in him.

“I am fully confident in his leadership,” the messaging guidance reads.

That doesn’t exactly capture the reality inside the DNC.

In private group chats and one-on-one conversations, DNC members were frustrated, confused and angry, according to four people involved in these conversations, granted anonymity to describe private interactions. There’s a brewing crisis over Martin’s leadership, they said, even if it’s not clear what paths, if any, members might opt for to pressure the chair to step down.

“While I don’t believe that there are enough votes to pass a vote of no confidence yet, I think there’s more of a permission structure now to have a more open conversation about it,” said one of those DNC members, who is also a Martin ally. “If they think this is going to make things go away, no, this is only going to ramp up now.”

The still fomenting fallout over the report’s release is the latest twist in Martin’s fraught tenure leading the DNC, marred by poor fundraising and public clashes with other DNC leaders. Even Democrats’ double-digit romps in 2025’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia failed to paper over the DNC’s challenges to recover from sweeping losses in 2024. The ongoing post-mortem saga — Martin pledged to release it, then buried it, then reversed again by ultimately releasing the unfinished report this week — is emblematic of the committee’s chaos, more than a dozen DNC members, donors and strategists said in interviews with NOTUS.

Martin hasn’t indicated that he’s considering leaving his post, and both those who are critical and those who are supportive say his departure is unlikely. But DNC members and Democrats outside the committee already see the botched autopsy as a new low for Martin, one that has some people considering for the first time what it would take to replace him.

There was at least one attempt to head off this embarrassment. Last December, a small group of top DNC officials tried to rewrite the autopsy to deliver an acceptable version for public consumption, two people directly familiar with the effort said. But the effort failed, they said, due to time constraints and lack of full access to the primary source material. Paul Rivera, the Democratic consultant who authored the report, refused to share interview transcripts or notes, despite requests to do so, according to a person familiar with the DNC’s process.

Instead, the DNC buried its report. A DNC official said late last year the committee decided not to publish it because Democrats had expressed concern about releasing the findings. But after reading it on Thursday, some DNC members said the unfinished report cast doubt on the official explanation.

“People feel gaslit,” said a second DNC member, who said other members now have even more questions than before its release. “You kept telling people it was coming, then when you didn’t release it, you didn’t even tell everyone the real reason why.”

In his statement on Thursday, Martin defended his decision to shelve the autopsy in December: “I meant what I said at the time — that I didn’t think dwelling on 2024 or looking backwards so late in the game helped us to win elections.”

The published autopsy contained a myriad of issues, not least the fact that a year and a half after the 2024 election, the report remained incomplete.

The report didn’t address some of the most fraught issues within the Democratic Party, including former President Joe Biden’s decision to run, despite his age; former Vice President Kamala Harris being nominated without a primary, which led detractors to liken the process to a coronation; and the impact of the war on Gaza with young voters. Perhaps most critically, it did not appear to land on a digestible explanation of what went wrong, omitting an executive summary.

A Democratic donor adviser said the DNC fundraising team was “very active” after the report was released, “not in a self-aware way.” They asked for follow-up meetings and whether donors “will give now.”

“For donors, it’s not dissimilar to Biden, when people started saying, ‘This isn’t going well, but what are we supposed to do?’” the donor adviser said, referring to the three-week period after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, before he ultimately dropped his reelection bid. “If this was meant to instill confidence, this did not do it. Donors are saying, ‘How do we get rid of him?’”

Martin still has backers inside the DNC. His defenders said those agitating for his removal are part of a small group of officials who didn’t support his election to lead the committee in the first place. Any effort to remove Martin is far short of majority support within the committee, they said.

“He has the confidence of state parties, which continue to control the vast majority of votes on the DNC,” Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, told NOTUS. Kleeb, a longtime Martin ally, added that she thought no chair since Howard Dean had been more effective than Martin at building party infrastructure and winning elections.

A third DNC member, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said they were disappointed with how Martin handled the autopsy report. But they said any effort to remove Martin before November’s election would be “horseshit,” given how disruptive they thought it would be.

Among DNC members frustrated with Martin’s leadership, there’s also a sense that without a clear replacement — and without serious outside pressure — he is likely to stay atop the committee. “Calls for Martin’s resignation won’t gain serious momentum until elected officials begin to weigh in and take this crisis in leadership seriously,” said a Democratic state party chair.

“When the RNC and MAGA INC. begin to rain cash in make-or-break seats later this year, they’ll have the most to lose and the most regret for not acting sooner,” the chair said.

A former DNC staffer said if Martin survived this latest controversy, “It’s a massive indictment of state chairs and DNC members that elected him, who would then rather have a club of ineptitude over a functioning party as we fight to save democracy.”

The calls to remove Martin aren't as muted among Democrats outside the committee.

Rep. Mark Veasey of Texas told Semafor that he no longer backed Martin’s tenure on Thursday. David Hogg, a former DNC vice chair who clashed with Martin, who ultimately pushed him out, told NOTUS that “even the most basic levels of competence are being failed to be met here.” “Pod Save America” co-host Dan Pfeiffer wrote an entire blog post on why Martin “has to go.”

“He committed to putting out a report, and then he didn't, and we lose trust based on that, and we need trust when they're about to manage the debates and the primary calendar,” said Danielle Butterfield, president of the super PAC Priorities USA. “It's going to be very hard to come back from this.”

Another Democratic super PAC leader said they had “gotten texts from congressional chiefs-of-staff asking, ‘Is there a downside to calling for him to resign?’ And I say, ‘no,’ but the problem is, no one wants the job.”

“But releasing the autopsy feels like the ultimate proof that this is a shit show, so it’s day one of what will probably grow in calling for him to resign,” the person continued. “I think more people will call for it.”

Other DNC members said they were waiting for potential 2028 presidential candidates to weigh in. Some pointed to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who relayed to Martin he wasn’t happy that the DNC hadn’t released the report, according to a person directly familiar with the conversation. NBC News first reported Shapiro’s frustration.

The 2028 candidates are Martin’s “real problem,” a fourth DNC member said. “No one is going to say today was a good day.”

Beyond the autopsy, Martin’s leadership is likely to face additional scrutiny in the coming weeks.

The Supreme Court is widely expected to soon deliver a ruling that would do away with coordinated expenditure limits between party committees and candidates, a decision that would, in effect, let committees like the DNC spend the money they raise directly on TV ads at the discounted rate once reserved for candidates.

The new dynamic is certain to intensify dissatisfaction with the committee’s fundraising, especially compared to the Republican National Committee. The RNC had more than $100 million more on hand than the DNC at the end of March, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, money Democratic strategists worry could blunt the party’s advantage during this year’s midterm election in an otherwise favorable political environment.

The DNC had a higher amount of debt ($18.3 million) than cash on hand ($13.4 million) at the end of March.

DNC members speculated that the earliest Martin could be forced from the chair position would be during the DNC’s full meeting in August. Elaine Kamarck, a DNC member and longtime expert on the committee’s rules, said she thought members could replace him with a vote if it came to that.

But she said she doubts a majority of the committee wants to move on to a new leader.

“I’m a supporter of the chair,” Kamarck said. “I think he has a lot of supporters. I think he has done a good job strengthening state parties and that’s his primary responsibility.”

“This autopsy thing is a distraction," she said.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/democrats/dnc-releases-disowns-2024-election-autopsy Elena Schneider Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin apologized for the “distraction” created by the report. Thu, 21 May 2026 15:43:42 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/democrats/dnc-releases-disowns-2024-election-autopsy The Democratic National Committee released an incomplete autopsy report on the 2024 election on Thursday, after months of pressure from Democrats to do so.

In publishing it, DNC Chair Ken Martin disowned the report, calling it not “ready for primetime.” In a lengthy statement, Martin said when he received the report last year, “no source material was provided, fixing it would have meant starting over, from the beginning.”

“I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on the report that was produced,” Martin said. “After last November’s massive Democratic wins, I didn’t want to create a distraction, but by not putting the report out, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. For that, I sincerely apologize.”

The incomplete report the DNC released does not tackle some of the biggest fault lines still debated within the party: Joe Biden’s initial decision to run for reelection, Kamala Harris’ nomination without a serious primary process and the impact of the war in Gaza on younger voters. The report does not appear to land on an explanation for what went wrong, failing to include an executive summary, even though one was mentioned in the report.

In the “sources” section, a single paragraph, the report said it included data from 5,000 DNC members, voters and supporters. But no list of interviewees were provided to the DNC, nor any transcripts or notes of interviews were provided to the committee, despite multiple requests, according to a person familiar with the DNC and granted anonymity to describe a private process.

Martin faced enormous pressure within his party to publish the 2024 autopsy, after publicly pledging to do so after he was elected chair last year. The DNC indicated that it expected to release it after the 2025 elections, even briefing donors on some of its presumed contents. By late December, the DNC reversed course, saying it would not release the report after Democrats raised concerns about publicizing the findings, a DNC official said at the time. 

But Martin’s decision to bury it only enraged Democrats both inside and outside the committee. DNC members called on Martin to release it, and they grumbled about his poor leadership throughout the process. The criticism comes as the DNC continues to struggle in its fundraising, falling far behind their Republican counterparts and taking out a line of credit to invest in the 2025 elections.

Paul Rivera, a Democratic consultant, led the post-mortem effort, along with the DNC’s Office of Strategy and Innovation. In his statement, Martin said he chose Rivera because he didn’t want the report “led by anybody directly tied to the 2024 cycle, either the campaign or the consultants involved.” While he didn’t attack Rivera directly, he eviscerated the results. On each page of the autopsy, the DNC added a disclaimer: “This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC.”

In a call to DNC staff on Thursday, Martin said Rivera is no longer working with the DNC, according to the person familiar with the committee.

CNN first reported the release of the partial autopsy.

The document is incomplete. For example, it does not mention Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, a single time, nor does it analyze her choice of running mate. It incorrectly cites data — at times failing to provide any sourcing at all.

For example, in one section reviewing the party’s “state of technology and data,” the report appeared to lift passages from other sources without any citation.

The report said: “Knowledge about voters was stored separately from data about campaign interactions, because those databases were developed by different teams who had little interest in making their systems compatible."

And in a 2012 MIT Technology Review article, authored by Sasha Issenberg: “As was typical in political information infrastructure, knowledge about people was stored separately from data about the campaign’s interactions with them, mostly because the databases built for those purposes had been developed by different consultants who had no interest in making their systems work together.”

While incomplete, the report delivers a bleak assessment of the Democratic Party's standing among voters after the 2024 election. "The Party and our candidates have lost the confidence and trust of voters. In the face of misinformation and disinformation, our candidates have proven incapable of projecting strength, unity, and leadership, and voters have drifted away," the report reads.

The author refused to finish the report when asked, the person familiar added.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/2024-election/tim-walz-isnt-running-for-reelection-minnesota-republicans Christa Dutton Republicans liked their odds against Walz. Now, they may have a tougher race. Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:27:30 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/2024-election/tim-walz-isnt-running-for-reelection-minnesota-republicans Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s end to his reelection campaign will make it more challenging for Republicans to take back the governor’s mansion and win down-ballot races, strategists in the state say.

Especially if Sen. Amy Klobuchar enters the race, which she is considering doing.

“We saw our chances against Walz as being the best shot we've had in the last 20 years of flipping the governor's seat and putting a Republican in office,” said Preya Samsundar, a Republican strategist who has worked on campaigns in Minnesota and the Midwest.

Walz abandoned his bid for a third term this week amid an intensifying alleged fraud scandal within the state’s welfare programs. Walz has not been charged with any crimes, but has been a target of national Republicans’ political campaigns.

The Trump administration, too, has focused on Minnesota and Walz’s leadership. It froze federal funding for child care in the state and began an ICE operation focused on Minnesota’s Somali population in December and the president made racist comments toward Somali immigrants. Amid the surge in ICE presence, an immigration agent shot and killed a woman during a protest in Minneapolis on Wednesday,.

Republicans face a tough opponent in Klobuchar if she runs. The four-term senator has won by more than 15 points in each bid she’s made for Senate since 2006, though her margins against Republicans have been shrinking since 2012.

“If you had to pick a candidate that we don't want to see on the ballot, it would be Senator Klobuchar,” said Amy Koch, a former Republican state senator who works in lobbying and advocacy in Minnesota.

Republicans shouldn’t abandon their messaging about fraud, though, strategists said.

Democrats are especially hopeful after their victories in 2025. But Republicans are attempting to elevate the alleged fraud scandal playing out to change their odds in Minnesota.

“A lot of folks are trying to view this election, prior to Walz dropping out, as being a referendum between Trump and Tim Walz,” Samsundar said. “I think that what this election is is actually a referendum between 20 years of DFL-led policies and DFL-led government more than anything else,” she said, referring to the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

Any blame would be harder to assign to a candidate like Klobuchar, who is not a part of the current state government.

The Minnesota GOP is trying, though. “Klobuchar didn’t just stand by during the Walz years — she cheered them on. Instead of using her seniority in Washington to demand accountability, stop fraud, or protect taxpayers, she issued press release after press release praising ‘progress’ while Minnesotans dealt with the consequences,” the party posted on X this week.

“This kind of stunt underscores how desperate Minnesota Republicans have become over the last few days,” a DFL spokesperson said in a statement. “Senator Klobuchar has built trust with Minnesotans during her service as a prosecutor and a Senator who has delivered bipartisan wins for our state time and again. No matter what her future holds, Minnesotans won't fall for such dubious attacks."

Messaging becomes tricky for Democrats, too, Koch said. “A Democrat that comes in to run for this office needs to be able to say to the people of Minnesota, ‘This is a disaster, here’s how it happened, and I'm going to clean it up,’ but that's tough to say when it's your own party.”

Voters want integrity in welfare programs, and Democrats should take responsibility for the fraud, said Matt Barron, a Democratic and rural strategist who advised Klobuchar’s 2020 presidential campaign.

“Whoever winds up being the Democratic nominee, they'd be wise to embrace that and lean into that, rather than being on the defensive and incurring voter wrath by saying, ‘Oh no, nothing to see here.’”

Walz’s departure will also impact other statewide races, said Michael Brodkorb, a Republican strategist who supported the Harris-Walz ticket. The alleged fraud scandal and Walz’s sparring with Trump energized state and national Republicans against the governor.

“When you take away that electoral opportunity, you have to go back to the drawing board. You have to reconfigure this entire election process,” he said.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/democrats/dnc-2024-autopsy Manuela Silva The move comes months after DNC Chairman Ken Martin had pledged its release. Thu, 18 Dec 2025 17:19:54 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/democrats/dnc-2024-autopsy The Democratic National Committee on Thursday announced that it will not release its long-awaited review of why Democrats lost in the 2024 elections as planned, arguing that it would be counterproductive for the party.

The DNC’s report, which several outlets reported had already been completed, was expected to review why Democrats lost in the 2024 election cycle and was composed of hundreds of interviews with staffers in all 50 states.

“Here’s our North Star: Does this help us win?” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement announcing the decision. “If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.”

In the statement, Martin said that the party is “already putting our learnings into motion.”

The decision not to release the report came from “conversations with stakeholders from across the Democratic ecosystem,” Martin said in the statement.

Martin promised in February the report would be released publicly, arguing that it would help understand previous mistakes and help find a way forward for the party, especially as it prepares for the 2026 midterms.

Martin’s decision to squash the report follows several Democratic wins in the November off-year elections, including high-profile gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.

“This is the right call,” said Xochitl Hinojosa, former director of communications for the DNC, in a statement. “The DNC knows how to implement lessons learned without creating a poorly-timed distraction. Democrats don’t need to engage in a handwringing exercise about last year’s elections when we’re winning this year’s elections, and are on the path to crushing Republicans in the midterms.”
]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/2024-election/sherrod-brown-ohio-test-trump-voters-buyers-remorse Alex Roarty The Ohio Democrat lost last year. He’s hoping the GOP’s tax-and-spending bill and Trump’s tariffs have shifted the electorate’s mood since. Mon, 18 Aug 2025 20:27:34 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/2024-election/sherrod-brown-ohio-test-trump-voters-buyers-remorse Democrats are betting that a sharp shift in voter attitudes since the 2024 election will power them to major national gains in next year’s midterm elections.

Nowhere is that more true than in the Ohio Senate race.

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown formally entered the state’s Senate race on Monday, less than a year after voters rejected the blue-collar Democrat’s bid for a fourth term and after months of speculation that he might run for governor or retire from public life altogether instead. He’ll take on Republican Sen. Jon Husted in what both parties expect will be a competitive race that Democrats likely need to win to have any chance at claiming a majority in the Senate.

In backing Brown, Democrats are hoping that some portion of voters who opposed him in 2024 are feeling buyer’s remorse now. That makes the race perhaps the best barometer for how politics has changed since the last election, including whether voters frustrated about the economy blame Republicans and whether issues like immigration and trans student athletes remain as politically potent as they were last year.

“In some ways, Sherrod can say, ‘This is what I was worried about when I was running last year,’” said David Pepper, former chair of the Ohio Democratic Party. “And even voters who didn’t vote for him then might say, ‘You know what, he was right.’”

Brown’s announcement video focuses heavily on events since Trump was inaugurated, citing “reckless tariffs” and a GOP-backed law that restricts access to health insurance programs through Medicaid. Democrats have said that they expected the GOP’s support for the massive tax-and-spending-cut bill, often referred to as the “big, beautiful bill,” to be central to their electoral efforts next year.

“For the past eight months, all they’ve done is make things worse for Ohioans,” Brown said in the video. “Handing over your hard-earned money to corporations and to billionaires.”

The former senator lost his reelection last year to Republican challenger Bernie Moreno by less than 4 points. Democrats have taken heart that even if Brown lost, he still overperformed the top of his party’s ticket, Kamala Harris, by better than 7 points. (The former vice president lost her race to Trump by 11 points in Ohio.)

Ohio has trended right in recent years, with Republicans winning at the presidential level every election since Barack Obama in 2012.

Republicans say that Husted, as an incumbent and longtime statewide official, will have advantages against Brown that Moreno did not.

“We have the same message as it relates to Sherrod Brown,” said Alex Triantafilou, chair of the Ohio Republican Party. ”But we also have a really good story to tell about Jon Husted.”

After Brown’s announcement, groups allied with the Republican Party tied him to unauthorized immigration and transgender athletes, which they emphasized heavily during last year’s race. Some indicated they planned on deploying those same messages again during next year’s contest.

“Sherrod Brown built his disgraceful career on the backs of hardworking Ohio families while he supported the woke Left’s agenda, including amnesty for criminal illegal immigrants, men in girls’ locker rooms, and sticking seniors with higher taxes,” Alex Latchman, executive director for the Senate Leadership Fund, said in a statement. The super PAC backs GOP Senate candidates.

“Ohioans gladly sent him packing last year, and they’ll not hesitate to toss him aside again,” he continued.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/democrats/jaime-harrison-final-memo-dnc-chair-goes-after-project-2025 Katherine Swartz The party leader focuses on the impacts of Trump’s agenda on rural America, where Democrats struggled to gain traction. Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:00:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/democrats/jaime-harrison-final-memo-dnc-chair-goes-after-project-2025 Jaime Harrison issued his final memo after four years at the helm of the Democratic Party. He focused on Democrats’ most successful messaging in an otherwise crushing election cycle: Project 2025.

Specifically, the memo, shared exclusively with NOTUS, argued how the conservative agenda-defining document would adversely affect the many rural voters that helped elect Donald Trump to a second term.

“After historic investments in rural America under the Biden-Harris administration, Trump’s first week in office leaves no room for doubt: Trump will enact his Project 2025 agenda and devastate rural communities across America,” the memo read.

The memo covered seven issues — health care, reproductive health, opioid treatment, rural farmers, costs and taxes, school funding and the United States Postal Service — making the case that “the stakes are even higher for individuals living in rural communities.”

Harrison told NOTUS he chose to focus on rural voters in his final note to the party because of his own background.

“I grew up in rural South Carolina off of a dirt road. I’ve been in cornfields, picked honeydew, cantaloupe, seen chickens and plucked and everything else,” Harrison said in an interview with NOTUS. “Some of the people that I love the most in this world still live in rural America.”

But despite the personal nature of the memo, its subject matter underscores one of Democrats’ biggest campaign failures from the last cycle. Despite Harrison’s efforts — including a record $264 million this cycle across all states in direct transfers, funds to state parties and to coordinated campaigns — Democrats fared worse across rural America than in 2020 and 2016.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris underperformed in rural counties compared to Joe Biden in 2020, including in Black rural counties in Georgia and North Carolina.

“Well, listen, we can’t define everything just through presidential races,” Harrison said, pointing to down-ballot wins in North Carolina and Democratic governors in the red states of Kansas and Kentucky.

“In terms of the future of the U.S. Senate, and also in terms of apportionment in the House of Representatives, we’ve got to be able to compete in these areas,” he said.

The memo points to the unique challenges Democrats see rural Americans facing under provisions laid out in Project 2025, a central strategy for the party in the 2024 election.

It also comes as Russell Vought, a co-author of Project 2025, is in the middle of the Senate confirmation process to lead the Office of Management and Budget — the agency that sent the federal government into a frenzy this week with a memo ordering a freeze on federal grants and loans. The memo was ultimately rescinded, though the future of the policy remains uncertain.

On health care, the memo points out that rural Americans are less likely to have private or employer-sponsored health insurance, and that at least half of all rural children relied on Medicaid coverage.

In response to the opioid epidemic, the memo points to Trump’s proposed budgets in his first term that cut funding for substance abuse programs — including cutting the Office of National Drug Control Policy by 95% — while at the same time, rates of drug overdose deaths in rural areas have surpassed those of urban areas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The memo points to a provision in Project 2025 that would end the Small Business Administration’s direct lending program and access to federal recovery grants. And expansion of tariffs — already being investigated under a new executive order — cost U.S. farmers $27 billion in agricultural exports, according to a 2022 study from the Department of Agriculture.

Harrison said it’s “incumbent upon the Democratic Party” to connect policies over the next four years to their effects on rural Americans. Post-chairmanship, he said his focus is to continue pushing the party “to think outside the traditional box of only relegating rural communities to the Republican Party.”

“I hope that there’s a new floor now and that the next chair can build on what we started, to really continue to make some inroads in those communities,” Harrison said.

“We’ve laid the foundation. Now it’s about building on that foundation,” he said.

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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/policy/trump-abortion-pro-life Oriana González “We’re eagerly waiting for him to be that ‘most pro-life president’ that he says that he is for the movement.” Tue, 28 Jan 2025 10:00:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/policy/trump-abortion-pro-life After spending much of the 2024 campaign moving away from the anti-abortion movement, President Donald Trump and his administration spent their first week in office trying to win it back.

The start of Trump’s second term coincided with the annual National March for Life. His vice president, JD Vance, made his first official appearance as VP at the event and told marchgoers that Trump’s White House homecoming represented “the return of the most pro-family, most pro-life American president of our lifetimes.” Trump also took several executive actions to prove that his administration, as he said in a video addressing the march on Friday, would “stand proudly for families and for life.”

“It’s been quite a ride through the election, without question. This is the first presidential election since Dobbs. So what happens now is really important,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told NOTUS. “All those are good indications that we believe we’re headed to ‘Trump One’ policies, pro-life policies. And if that’s the case, then I think we’re in great shape.”

While Trump’s actions have boosted the morale of people like Dannenfelser, other leaders are remaining cautious. Trump’s progressive movement away from the issue during the campaign — eventually declaring abortion should be left to the states and changing the Republican Party’s decades-old goal to enact federal restrictions — led to anti-abortion activists publicly speaking out against him. Lila Rose, the president of the anti-abortion group Live Action, made headlines last year when she said anti-abortion supporters should not vote for the Republican nominee in November.

Rose told NOTUS last Friday that “there’s a lot to do and a lot of this can be done with the stroke of a pen by the president, so we’re eagerly waiting for him to be that ‘most pro-life president’ that he says that he is for the movement.”

“President Trump has signaled that he doesn’t want to abolish abortion. So, he may have a change of heart,” Rose added. “I would say God spared his life, you know, from an assassination, multiple assassination attempts, and so I would urge him, ‘Hey, spare the life of the unborn.’”

Trump has also followed through with actions the anti-abortion movement had been advocating for: He reinstated the Mexico City policy, which blocks funding from foreign nongovernmental organizations that aid abortion overseas; he also pardoned nearly a dozen anti-abortion advocates who were convicted for blocking access to abortion clinics, and revoked Biden-era executive orders aimed at expanding and protecting abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Anti-abortion leaders also have strident allies in both chambers of Congress, who voted on anti-abortion legislation last week — one that some House Republicans say could be the first step before federal restrictions.

Speaker Mike Johnson, who has long supported the anti-abortion movement, celebrated Trump’s executive order at the March for Life that declared the U.S. recognizes “only two sexes” because, he argued, it has specific portions that “[define] life as beginning at conception rather than birth.” (It’s unclear whether Trump intended to do that when he signed the order. The White House did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.)

“That was kind of the very bare minimum. And so now it’s kind of like, ‘OK, what else? What else do you have?’” said Abby Johnson, another prominent activist for a group that lobbies abortion-clinic workers to leave the industry. “We’re so used to losing that we will celebrate mediocrity, and that’s really not the position that we need to be in.”

Johnson — who told NOTUS she did not vote for Trump in November — made her feelings known at this weekend’s National Pro-Life Summit, a widely attended conference that takes place in Washington the day after the March for Life.

“While we absolutely appreciate what President Trump has done so far, it is not enough,” Johnson said to roaring applause. “We are going to continue to demand more. We are going to continue to demand more of our pro-life administration.”

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, said last week’s actions were “a terrific start.”

“At the March for Life yesterday, people were marching, there was a lot of conversation of like, ‘Well, what is he going to do more? What is going to be next?’” Hawkins added.

In addition to saying he would not ban abortion federally, he also said he didn’t want to restrict access to abortion pills, the most common method of abortion in the U.S. While that doesn’t leave a lot of room for anti-abortion leaders, several who spoke to NOTUS said that the next step for Trump is to stop federal funding from going to Planned Parenthood — something that Republicans have admitted is on the agenda in the next two years.

Hawkins said that doing so would “cement” Trump’s “legacy” as “the most pro-life president we’ve ever had in the history of America,” but she was quick to add that he’d be “the most pro-life president” so far.

“We’re giving it away too easy,” she joked. “I mean, who knows what’s in the future. I haven’t run for office yet.”

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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/2024-election/dave-mccormick-blueprint-republican-campaigns Alex Roarty The Pennsylvania Republican went all in for irregular voters. His team thinks it’s the answer for the GOP. “There’s a religion change that needs to be in effect here,” said the campaign’s pollster. Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:00:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/2024-election/dave-mccormick-blueprint-republican-campaigns A scant two weeks before the election, Dave McCormick boarded a predawn flight headed across state lines. The Pennsylvania Republican was making a last-minute trip that would eventually see him standing outside the gates of West Point before scrambling back to the state later that afternoon for a major campaign appearance with Elon Musk.

Top campaign aides would later say the impromptu travel was necessary to put the exclamation mark on a political strategy that helped him become the only Republican candidate to win a swing state Senate race this year.

For much of the campaign, McCormick’s top advisers — including Mark Harris, Brad Todd and campaign manager Matt Gruda — had been fixated on a politically disengaged group of hard-to-reach voters who supported Donald Trump but not McCormick. Even in October, many of these Trump supporters still didn’t know who McCormick was, much less planned to vote for him.

So with the window to reach unconvinced voters closing quickly, McCormick and his senior advisers made a dramatic decision: The candidate, despite a hectic schedule, would take a 5 a.m. flight from Pittsburgh to his alma mater on Oct. 20 to film a campaign ad highlighting his military service, hopeful his apolitical background would reach voters distrustful of all politicians. The visit was so hastily arranged that in the hours before the shoot, McCormick and a team of top advisers held a morning meeting in a West Point Mexican restaurant to go over the logistics and details of the process.

“It’s very unusual that close to the election to leave the state for any reason, with the potential logistical dominoes that could fall,” Harris said in an interview. “But we felt like we needed to do this to land that final message to tell voters why they needed to vote Dave.”

The ad, and the strategy behind it, worked: McCormick would win the election two weeks later, defeating Democratic Sen. Bob Casey by just 16,000 votes, succeeding where Republicans in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona failed.

While McCormick advisers credit their victory to an array of factors, the most significant of them might be their effort to target, engage and turn out a tranche of the electorate inclined to back Trump but otherwise dismissive of all other candidates, including Republicans. It’s an approach veteran Republican strategists say will become an essential element of future GOP campaigns, as the party tries to replicate the president-elect’s popularity even when he’s off the ballot.

“This wasn’t like an aha moment where we realized, ‘Oh, we have a problem to fix,’” Gruda said. “We knew these were voters we needed from the outset.”

Traditionally, Democrats have been the party that benefits from politically disengaged voters, while Republicans counted on the support of voters who turn out for every primary and every general election. That the dynamic has flipped should persuade Republican strategists to retool their campaigns if they want to keep winning elections, McCormick officials say.

“There’s a religion change that needs to be in effect here,” said Gene Ulm, the campaign’s pollster. “As Republicans, we grew up with this notion that our voters turn out, that they’re the most likely to turn out. That’s not true anymore.”

David McCormick AP-24094751684980 (4609x3073, AR: 1.50)
Trump was the first Republican candidate to truly tap into this low-propensity coalition, Ulm added, and McCormick’s campaign was committed to following in his wake.

“It was clear for Dave McCormick that that was our path,” he said.

McCormick was the first Republican gubernatorial or Senate candidate to win in Pennsylvania since 2016 when former Sen. Pat Toomey won reelection. In that race, Toomey won partly because of his ability to distinguish himself from Trump, then running in his first presidential general election, especially in the suburbs where the GOP nominee was least popular.

But this year, Trump won Pennsylvania by 1.7 percentage points, more than double his 2016 margin in the state. Unlike Toomey, McCormick’s campaign was intent on bolstering its association with Trump.

McCormick officials are quick to say that engaging low-propensity voters wasn’t the campaign’s only reason for success. The campaign aggressively rebutted Democratic attacks on McCormick’s position on abortion rights, they say, and sought to position him as a doting father of six daughters, efforts that might have helped him outperform Trump in the suburbs of Philadelphia. They credit his doggedness on the campaign trail, including a statewide bus tour launched over the objections of some advisers and an early and aggressive TV ad campaign that let McCormick counter Democratic attacks before they sank in with voters.

Democratic critics and even some Republicans point out that Trump won Pennsylvania by a larger margin than he did other swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan, making McCormick’s task easier, and that McCormick performed worse than other Republican candidates this year in Pennsylvania, including those running for attorney general and state treasurer. Unlike other Republican hopefuls, McCormick benefited from a super PAC that spent nearly $55 million boosting his campaign and attacking Casey.

“McCormick’s money — and McCormick’s friends’ money — is why he won the race,” one Democratic strategist said.

But Casey, the scion of Pennsylvania’s most famous and well-respected political family, was supposed to be nearly unbeatable, having cruised to victory in all three of his prior Senate races. In 2012, when he managed the campaign of Casey’s Republican opponent, Harris said he was happy to have kept the margin to under double digits. (Casey won his last reelection, in 2018, by more than 13 points.)

McCormick officials knew defeating Casey wouldn’t be easy, though they believed the Democrat had yet to truly face a stern test since first winning election in 2006. And they knew, based on comprehensive studies of the electorate, that they weren’t nearly as well-known as Trump with voters who hardly paid attention to politics.

Many of those voters don’t have a college education, a demographic already favorable to Trump. In Pennsylvania, many of them were in the state’s western and central areas, away from large metropolitan centers and uninterested in the news.

“All of our research showed one of the problems was that there was this group of 20% of Trump voters who were very low politically engaged people,” Harris said. “They don’t read the news, and particularly over the summer, they don’t watch TV, they just consume very little media. They’re taking their kids to soccer, and politics isn’t important in that same way to them.”

The campaign’s challenge then was trying to reach them at all. So the campaign made it a priority for their door-to-door field program to identify and find those voters, according to Gruda. They texted them, they sent mailers to their homes and advertised on even the smallest rural radio stations.

Anytime Trump appeared in the state, the campaign made a concerted effort to make sure McCormick appeared at the kind of event that this voter bloc might actually pay attention to.

“We missed maybe one Trump rally, and there were like 20 Trump rallies in the state,” Gruda said.

But above all, the campaign identified one essential way to reach these voters: football. America’s most popular sport also drew many of these voters to their screens, so the campaign religiously bought commercial slots during college and professional games — even if it was a game featuring relatively obscure teams like an October matchup between the University of Hawaii and Boise State University.

“Even if only 10,000 people in Pennsylvania watched those random college football games, they made ripe targets for us because they were right in our demo,” Todd said.

Commercial time during Pittsburgh Steelers games was especially in demand, Todd added, saying he was willing to do without ads on local news coverage (the traditional time slot for most campaign ads) for a single spot during the NFL team’s game.
Dave McCormick AP- 24310157105515 (4237x2825, AR: 1.50)McCormick officials say their focus on those voters helped the campaign in many rural counties, especially compared to the GOP nominee’s performance against Casey in 2018. In Greene County, for instance, McCormick did 34 points better against Casey than the Democrat’s last opponent.

“Literally, that became our only priority in pretty much all of August and the start of September, how much we were closing the gap,” Harris said.

Still, even as McCormick’s advisers felt good in the final weeks of the race, their polling data and research showed that the gap between Trump’s support, or at least people considering backing the presidential candidate, remained persistent. According to Todd, one survey found that 21% of people still undecided about the presidential race hadn’t even heard of McCormick, despite months of campaigning and tens of millions of dollars spent on ads.

The aides knew they needed to make one last push, so they hatched the West Point plan. The window to film and air the ad was so tight — many campaigns want to have an ad ready to go two weeks before an election — that the campaign decided to fly McCormick out of state even before it had permits to film in the city.

“We felt like we had them on the one-yard line,” Harris said. “We just needed to push them across the finish line.”

The ad reprised a theme from one of McCormick’s first television spots, emphasizing his military service and résumé rather than policies. That simple, biographical approach would resonate with these infrequent voters, campaign officials hoped.

“It defined him as a patriot and as someone willing to do hard things,” Todd said. “We thought it validated him as an outsider whose accomplishments were not in the political sphere.”

Too often in the past, he added, Republican campaigns chased Trump-supporting voters by emphasizing his endorsement of their candidates or featuring him in an ad or two of their campaigns. But Todd said that’s a “false read” — GOP campaigns should instead communicate to these voters that they should like their candidate for the same reasons that they like Trump, whether because he’s a political outsider or an independent voice for their values.

“We just couldn’t take the chance that people could vote,” Todd said, “and not know that West Point was the seminal experience in [McCormick’s] life.”

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Alex Roarty is a reporter at NOTUS.
]]> https://www.washingtonsun.com/republicans/trump-asian-american-voter-gains Shifra Dayak, Torrence Banks Trump “set the standard” for how to engage with AAPI voters. His party is figuring out how to match it, as Democrats fight back. Mon, 25 Nov 2024 10:00:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/republicans/trump-asian-american-voter-gains Republicans across the country are pressing to find ways to keep — or better, grow — their party’s new support among Asian American voters, after a sudden boost for Donald Trump.

Exit polling showed anywhere from a 5-point to 9-point shift rightward among Asian American voters in this year’s presidential election relative to 2020. The gain wasn’t surprising to some Republicans, said a source familiar with the Republican National Committee’s outreach to Asian American and Pacific Islander voters. The source told NOTUS that the outcome makes sense given Trump’s efforts to connect with AAPI communities.

Trump “set the standard” for how to engage with Asian American communities, the source said, and future candidates will follow suit. Trump pitched himself directly to the communities with events in Nevada (where there’s a growing community of Filipino American and other AAPI individuals) targeting AAPI voters and a visit to the Eden Center (a Vietnamese American commercial center in Virginia).

The president-elect is “a workhorse, and because of that alone, he was able to touch more people,” the source said. “These people, even if they might have aligned with the party’s value system, they didn’t feel like people were engaging with them … and now that has shifted, I think that they have a real sense of engagement with the Asian American populace.”

The nation’s Asian American electorate has traditionally held a wide range of political allegiances. For groups like Vietnamese and Filipino Americans with larger populations of Republicans, voters are often motivated by strong opinions about politics in their home countries, religious views and a focus on the economy spurred by the concept of the “American dream.” And for South Asian Americans, factors like post-9/11 racism and religious discrimination have led voters to lean more liberal.

But postelection surveys suggest that all these groups, including ones that still voted overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris, drifted right.

Republicans have long tried to court Asian American voters, including those they see as disillusioned Democrats. Party members have suggested in the past that AAPI communities’ feelings toward the GOP could be a bellwether for the party’s overall success.

The 2024 trend could be temporary, said Christine Chen, the executive director of APIAVote, a nonpartisan civic engagement organization. The rightward shift may just be a consequence of who did the best job connecting with AAPI voters this time around, and future outcomes could be tied to how each party delivers on their promises.

“It’s still really about who is reaching out to them, what investments are being made and also thinking about are they doing this for long-term relationship building as well,” Chen told NOTUS. “How [Trump’s] policies get implemented and the rhetoric that actually is utilized will also determine whether or not his base of voters from the Asian American community will continue to support him, or if they’ll be turned off by that.”

Whether Asian Americans turn back to Democrats or continue their rightward turn could be a deciding factor in races as early as next year. Asian American voters could decide who next holds the governor’s offices in New Jersey and Virginia — where Democrats are trying to stem the changing tides and Republicans want to make them even stronger.

And given that Asian Americans are the country’s fastest-growing racial group, each party’s success or failure in winning them over could have even more implications in the midterms and beyond.

In places like New York, Republican leaders have come to this realization — and they think the success they’ve seen with Asian American communities outside of just the presidential race could signal further wins, as long as they target policy areas that some Asian American voters have traditionally cared about, like reducing crime and eliminating affirmative action.

New York Republican State Committee executive director Jason Weingartner said his party has gradually gotten more competitive with Asian Americans. “We will continue making inroads, especially if the Democrats don’t change their views on merit-based education or public safety,” he said.

Democrats see the same numbers and are pushing to counter Republican efforts.

Rep. Ro Khanna told NOTUS that the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus has already started discussing strategy changes needed to win back Asian American swing voters.

“We’ve talked about how we need to do more outreach early into these communities, that we have to have multilingual approaches,” Khanna said. “We have to be talking about the American dream and the access to capital and the access to good, high-paying jobs.”

Caucus members’ thoughts on strategy largely echoed what their counterparts in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus have said: Voters of almost every demographic group shifted to the right this year because of the economy, and Democratic politicians have to respond accordingly.

CAPAC Chair Judy Chu, though, said Democrats did do enough talking about the economy — the messaging just didn’t get through the right way, and that’s where the focus should be. Asked if there are specific messaging plans in the works for future cycles, she told NOTUS, “Not yet.”

“We’re just trying to absorb it all right now,” she said.

Chu also underscored that Democrats saw some success with Asian American voters. In California’s 45th Congressional District, for instance, Democrat Derek Tran is ahead of incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel by 0.2 percentage points and may be poised to take her seat. Tran and Steel are both Asian American, and the district’s population is more than 36% Asian. And in the neighboring 47th District, which also covers Orange County — an Asian American stronghold — Democrat Dave Min defeated Republican Scott Baugh by fewer than 3 percentage points.

But to the source familiar with Asian American voter outreach efforts by the RNC, those successes are just an illustration of identity occasionally trumping ideology, which is a factor that they say can actually help Republicans in other cases.

“It’s a different dynamic when you have someone who’s also from an Asian Pacific background,” the source said. “The fact that you’re even seeing two Asian Pacific American candidates become their major party nominees in battleground congressional districts, and that both parties are seeing the importance of putting candidates forward like that … that’s actually telling about where America’s shifting as a whole.”

Some Republicans pointed out that to maintain their success with Asian Americans, there’s a line the party has to walk with their messaging — especially on issues like immigration.

“A lot of people that have voted for Trump are immigrants,” said Yiatin Chu, a Republican who lost her race this month for a New York State Senate seat representing part of Queens. In Queens, about three-quarters of the Asian American population are immigrants.

But a sense of dissatisfaction predominated this year — something that benefited Republicans if they can figure out how to capture it and not be swallowed by it when they take control of Washington.

“I would say when I speak to Asian voters in my district, specifically, but even around the city, in the past year, it’s more about being anti-Democrat than it’s necessarily about pro-Republican,” Chu said. “Like there is such a rebuke on what we’ve been living under, that something else must be better.”

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Shifra Dayak and Torrence Banks are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.]]>