January 16, 2025
This is increasingly becoming an existential question for progressives—and for the party if it wants to revive its commitment to working people.
The flow of dark money into the Democratic primaries now represents a clear and real danger to a party that is in desperate need of new leadership and direction. After the last election, the upcoming election of a new Democratic National Committee chairman — a race without a sitting president to dictate the choice — provided an opportunity to discuss the direction of the party — and how to respond to the emerging threat of dark money. Yet to date, the candidates and debates have largely avoided addressing the issue.
The Democratic Party is not a party with a membership that can hold leaders accountable. The head of the DNC does not set the party’s policy or message. The DNC is basically a fund-raising and money-dispensing operation.
Now there are ten applicants in the competition Race to the post of the chairman of the National Committee of the Democratic Party, the titular head of the party. They include a former governor (Martin O’Malley of Maryland), leaders of relatively successful Midwestern states (Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wickler of Wisconsin), a former presidential candidate (Marian Williamson), and other lesser-known organizers and elected officials.
The candidates are repeating what has quickly become a mantra for Democrats after the 2024 defeats. All require better messaging, greater organization, and a more sophisticated “media ecosystem.” All agree that the party needs a message that appeals to workers, but seem to believe that this is more a matter of messaging than radical policy change. Everyone is disdainful of the established consultants who have contributed to the defeats of recent years. However, the decision on who will lead the party will be made later February 1 448 active members of the DNC itself, including 73 “at-large” members, essentially appointed by DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison. (The names of 448 were not publicly available until American Avenue (a list was recently released, and not surprisingly, it includes a disproportionate number of lobbyists, politicians, organization representatives, and supporters.)
Virtually absent from the debate over party reform and the race for chairman is what progressives see as a fundamental question: What will the new chairman do to limit the role of outside, dark money in the Democratic primary? This is increasingly becoming an existential question for progressives—and for the party if it really wants to revive its commitment to working people.
Over the past few cycles, likable progressive rebels and sitting presidents have faced a staggering barrage of negative publicity sponsored by independent political action committees that are lavishly funded by black money. AIPAC—the powerful pro-Israel lobby—has led the way, raising money mostly from reactionary billionaire Republicans to fight progressives with the audacity to question America’s support for Israel’s increasingly unjustified course. In the 2021 special election, Ohio Sen. Nina Turner, former co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, was an early injuredwhen AIPAC fronts spent nearly two million on a concerted campaign to defeat her in a race where she was the favorite. In 2022, AIPAC fronts claimed scalps incumbent progressive Reps. Andy Levin (D-Mi) and Marie Newman (D-Ill).
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Last cycle included Rep. Jamal Bowman and Cory Bush exported by AIPAC. Archer faced nearly $10 million and Bush nearly $9 million in negative or favorable advertising for their opponents. Billionaire cryptocurrency scammers have copied the AIPAC model by quitting a staggering $40 million in a general election ad to defeat progressive Senate Banking Chairman Sherrod Brown, sending a clear signal to politicians not to stand in the way of their brazen plot to trick the Federal Reserve into accepting crypto as part of the nation’s reserves. They also put all the money into negative advertising to undermine the progressive Rep. Kathy Porter to the Senatelifting the Republican into a final runoff that she could well have won.
“When you take money from Donald Trump’s donors, Nikki Haley’s donors, Ron DeSantis’ donors, and then you use it in the Democratic primary,” Representative Mark Pocan noted“it is clearly a dishonest use of money.” However, what AIPAC and crypto have pioneered will no doubt be imitated by other vested interests – big oil, pharmaceuticals, military contractors and the like. Unions, which used to provide some resistance to corporate and special money, can no longer compete. If progressive incumbents and insurgents want to survive—and if the Democratic Party wants to be the party that stands up for working people again—foreign money—especially dark foreign money—must be limited.
Despite the existential importance of the issue, the leading candidates for DNC chair have had little to say about it. With the exception of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, few commentators have included it as a priority in the party debate. The DNC candidates rarely discuss the issue in their various speeches. When asked about outside money, they usually turn to calls to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates for corporate money.
It’s just a takeout. It’s easy to vilify Citizens United, but its repeal will only happen after progressives capture commanding majorities in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court.
To a direct question about foreign money on a call sponsored by Our Revolution and other progressive groups, Ben Wickler, the Wisconsin state chairman and one of the front-runners for the job, said the party couldn’t do anything because it couldn’t pass laws, but that was also, if not lying , is clearly wrong.
Each state party is effectively a private entity. Although the state party does not control the general election, it can set its own rules for selecting its candidates. If the party-state wanted to simply avoid primaries and nominate its own candidates, it has the power to do so. For this, it is not necessary to adopt a law, just issue a rule.
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This means that democratic parties at the state level can create obstacles to external negative “black money” campaigns. They could ban money from outside PACs and enforce that ban by disqualifying any candidate who benefits from such spending. They can require any organization that posts ads supporting or attacking a candidate in a primary to disclose the sources of its funding. They could set up matching funds to match negative publicity from outside donors.
At the DNC level, any new chair should at least promise to explore ways to contain and/or expose foreign money, and promise to provide member states with alternatives to using it. In addition, the DNC chair could release a list of pollsters, ad producers and consultants who work with outside groups to attack Democratic candidates and dissuade them from working with Democratic candidates seeking the party’s endorsement. No Democratic candidate endorsed by a local, state or national party body should hire consultants involved in dark money operations that attack progressive Democrats.
Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Party and one of the most attractive progressive candidates for DNC chairmanship, is chairman of the Democratic State Chairmen’s Association. This organization should undoubtedly sponsor a commission to study all the ways in which participating states can limit and/or expose the external spending of dark money. Jane Kleebchairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party, is now campaigning to lead the ASDPC with a promise to create just such a commission.
One thing should be clear. If the Democratic Party really wants to be an advocate for workers, it will need more than better messaging and media strategies. It would take significant changes to what the Democrats are proposing. And it will require the DNC chair and state party chairs to make it a priority to curb outside dark money — mostly from Republican billionaires — in Democratic primaries. If party leaders aren’t ready to take it on, then, for all the talk of a new populism, our primaries will increasingly be contests between outside big money circles and fancy billionaires.
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