SENATE DEMOCRATS’ CAMPAIGN ARM
IS PRESSURING CONSULTANTS NOT TO WORK WITH LEADING PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATE IN
COLORADO
August 29 2019, 11:27 a.m.
BEFORE THE Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper
in a 2020 Senate race, it pressured consultants from at least five firms not to
work with a leading progressive in the race, the candidate told The
Intercept.
Andrew Romanoff, who is one of
more than a dozen candidates vying for Republican Sen. Cory Gardner’s seat,
told The Intercept that multiple consultants turned down jobs with his campaign
citing pressure from the DSCC.
“They’ve made it clear to a
number of the firms and individuals we tried to hire that they wouldn’t get any
business in Washington or with the DSCC if they worked with me,” Romanoff said.
“It’s been a well-orchestrated operation to blackball ragtag grassroots teams.”
At least five firms and 25
prospective staff turned down working with his campaign, said Romanoff, who has
raised more than $1 million in
individual contributions so far. “I spoke to the firms, my campaign manager spoke
to the staff prospects,” he said. “Pretty much everyone who checked in with the
DSCC got the same warning: Helping us would cost them.”
A consultant who spoke to The
Intercept on the condition of anonymity said that their firm had been far along
in talks to work for Romanoff when they got word that Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer and the DSCC weren’t happy. The firm was told by a top DSCC
staffer that they “absolutely under no circumstances could work for Andrew
Romanoff, so we withdrew our offer to be his consulting firm.”
The DSCC is using an
“unquestionably far more heavy-handed approach this year than they have in
previous cycles,” the consultant said.
Earlier this year, the DSCC’s
companion organization in the House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee, made
it official policy to cut off funding and vendors to Democrats who
challenged incumbent Democrats. Putting the policy in writing ratcheted up what
had been more of an informal understanding in prior cycles. But if the DSCC’s
intervention in Colorado is any indication, the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm
is taking the blacklist one step further, by discouraging consultants from
working not only for challengers to incumbent Democrats, but also for
progressives running against the establishment’s preferred candidate in a seat
currently held by the GOP. In Romanoff’s case, the DSCC did so before
it had been clear whether Washington’s choice, Hickenlooper, even planned to
run.
It’s still early in the cycle,
and while some candidates are getting their Senate campaigns off the ground,
others are still deciding whether to jump in. Individuals connected to a
handful of campaigns across the country said they’ve heard about interventions
by national Democrats, either in the form of the DSCC pressuring consultants
not to work with progressive candidates, or Senate Minority Leader Chuck
Schumer telling people not to run for office in the first place.
“First they came for the House
candidates; now they’re gonna come for the Senate candidates,” said Heather
Brewer, who is managing the Senate campaign of New Mexico Secretary of State
Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a progressive who was snubbed by the DSCC, which made
an early endorsement of Ben Ray Luján, a
member of House Democratic leadership. “It’s not rocket science to see
where this is heading.”
“They’re threatening people’s
livelihoods, if people dare break with what the insiders in Washington want,”
Brewer added. “It’s extortion.”
Schumer’s office directed
questions to the DSCC, which is officially run by Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez
Masto, but known to be controlled by Schumer, whose piloting of the committee
in 2006 and 2008 reclaimed the Senate for Democrats and then gave them a brief
filibuster-proof majority. “We do not have a policy of preventing firms from
working with candidates,” a DSCC spokesperson told The Intercept in an email.
“In our role as a campaign committee focused on winning Senate seats, we have
ongoing conversations with strategists and advisers about battleground races.”
ON AUGUST 23, months
before the Democratic primary, the DSCC endorsed Hickenlooper,
who dropped out of the presidential race on August 15 and announced a
Senate bid a week later. Notably, Hickenlooper is one of the more conservative
candidates in the race. The former governor championed fracking during his
tenure and as a presidential candidate came out against Medicare for All and
the Green New Deal. Romanoff, meanwhile, is backing both of those policies and
has sworn off corporate political action committee money. The DSCC backed Colorado
Sen. Michael Bennet, another Democratic presidential candidate, over Romanoff
in the state’s 2010 Democratic primary.
The DSCC’s early endorsement
in a race with no Democratic incumbent didn’t go over well with Colorado party
officials, who, in internal emails published by
the Denver Post on Tuesday, described the DSCC’s immediate decision to back
Hickenlooper over 11 other candidates as a “slap in the face.”
Six of the seven women
candidates running in the Colorado primary sent a letter to
DSCC leadership on Monday, Women’s Equality Day, urging it to reconsider
its endorsement of Hickenlooper. “All of us, like many women in Colorado and
across the country, have seen well-qualified women passed over for male
candidates in the workplace time and again,” they wrote.
In a Hill TV interview with
Krystal Ball, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders echoed progressives’
frustration. “I think you let it play out,” he said of the DSCC’s endorsement
of Hickenlooper. “This is obviously a major debate within the Democratic Party.
Those who think that so-called centrist candidates backed by folks who have a
lot of money may be able to win over some moderate Republicans — that is the
future. I disagree. The future of the Democratic Party is to greatly expand the
base, increase voter turnout, especially with young people, speak to the needs
of working people. I believe there are some people who voted for Trump who, in
fact, if given the option of a progressive agenda, will vote with us.”
CANDIDATES’ EXPERIENCES WITH the
DSCC have been mixed. One consultant who spoke to The Intercept on the
condition of anonymity said they’d recently worked with a contractor who had
consulted with the committee about working with a particular candidate. The
DSCC told the contractor that it didn’t care who they were working for, because
it had already settled on a different candidate, whom Schumer was encouraging
to enter the race.
Still, there have been other
instances of Senate Democratic leadership trying to tip the scales. In Iowa,
where the DSCC is backing Theresa Greenfield, Time Magazine reported earlier
in June that Schumer had advised J.D. Scholten, who challenged Rep. Steve King
in a House race last year, not to run for Senate.
“We don’t need a primary,”
Schumer told Scholten in a phone call, Time reported. Scholten, who lost to
King by less than 3 percentage points, confirmed Schumer’s comments to The
Intercept, but clarified that it wasn’t “forceful at all” because Scholten was
already more inclined to run for King’s seat in Congress. “It was when Schumer
called me to mention that they were gonna be backing Theresa [Greenfield]. I
said, well, that doesn’t necessarily deter me, and then he made the comment,”
Scholten said.
North Carolina state Sen.
Erica Smith, who’s leading the latest polls in her bid against Republican Sen.
Thom Tillis, said she has reason to believe that the DSCC is doing similar
things in her race. The committee told her that it isn’t yet endorsing in that
race, and that it’s not helping any candidates fundraise — but there are
whispers that the DSCC might support her potential primary opponent Cal
Cunningham, whom it has backed in the past.
“It seems clear to me that
there is a question of integrity or lack thereof,” Smith said. “This brings to
question who’s telling the truth. And there’s an appearance to me that Senator
Schumer is trying to purchase — trying to buy a U.S. Senate seat in North
Carolina. That is not going to go well for the constituents that I serve. And I
am very much opposed to that. New York and North Carolina are extremely
different.”
Smith’s campaign manager
Jonathan Lucas said he had been directly pressured by people he described as
veteran, well-connected establishment Democratic operatives in North Carolina
not to work with Smith, and that he’s faced similar pressure in years past
while working on other races in the state. Given the makeup of Cunningham’s
donor base, Lucas believes that pressure originated from the DSCC and Schumer,
because a significant
portion of Cunningham’s donors have links to the Senate minority
leader.
“I had a number of influential
‘establishment’ Democrats tell me it was a mistake to work for her, she will
never be the nominee, etc.,” Lucas said in a statement, referring to Smith.
“Well, I have never been an establishment consultant. I met her and I am not
only convinced she will win, but that she is exactly the type of candidate that
we need right now. One that Schumer and the establishment fear because her vote
is not for sale.”
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