Three primaries. Three losses. Nearly $4.5 million in dues-paying members’ money torched. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is now facing an open revolt from the people it’s supposed to be serving.
The latest humiliation came Tuesday in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, where former state Rep. Amish Shah defeated DCCC-backed Marlene Galán-Woods 39.8% to 34.1%. The committee had endorsed Galán-Woods through its Red to Blue program, participated in a $514,000 joint advertising buy with her campaign, and watched outside groups pour more than $1.5 million into attacks on Shah and nearly $1 million more into supportive ads for Galán-Woods. Shah won anyway. He then had the audacity — and the wit — to joke publicly that he hopes the DCCC will endorse him over Republican nominee Jay Feely in the general.
It’s a funny line that makes a devastating point. The committee burned its members’ resources trying to destroy this man. Now it has to go back to those same furious members and ask them to fund his campaign against a Trump-endorsed former NFL kicker in a district Trump carried by three points in 2024.
The pattern was already established before Arizona. In California’s 22nd District, the DCCC backed state Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains — she lost to progressive activist Randy Villegas. In Maine’s 2nd District, DCCC-endorsed Joe Baldacci lost to Matt Dunlap. Three committee interventions. Three losses. Zero results. Hundreds of thousands of dollars per race that could have gone toward flipping seats Republicans actually hold.
Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois — who contributed $100,000 in DCCC dues — didn’t hide her frustration: “Can you imagine if we’d put that $800,000 in the general election so we can win in November? I would recommend that we just don’t engage in primaries.”
AOC, another major dues contributor, called for the committee to “ration resources to win general elections” and demanded a discussion about its primary involvement. Behind closed doors, a senior House Democrat summarized the mood in three words: “People are mad.”
One fully dues-paid member captured the essential problem with surgical precision: “The DCCC is not God. They cannot dictate outcomes. There needs to be an acknowledgment that there’s a limit to the ability of the DCCC to choose what it considers to be the perfect candidate.”
This is what the Democratic Party’s primary season has produced — a national committee that spent millions attempting to hand-pick nominees, failed every single time, inflamed its own membership, and now faces the November general election campaign broke, divided, and defending candidates it actively tried to bury.
Amish Shah faces Jay Feely in a Trump-leaning district, backed by zero DCCC enthusiasm and the memory of everything the committee spent trying to stop him.
The NRCC called it the DCCC’s “latest humiliation.” That’s not spin. That’s an accurate summary of a committee that went zero-for-three.
