It's great that the DCCC is rid of Sean Patrick Maloney. But, as hard as it is to imagine, the next chair of the committee is likely to be even worse. Sara Jacobs and Mikie Sherrill have withdrawn from contention, leaving two really unsuitable and really corrupt New Dems, Tony Cárdenas and Ami Bera. Either would be a real boon to the NRCC.
On Tuesday, Pelosi’s House Majority PAC released a memo/press release, After Defying The Odds, House Democrats Will Retake The Majority In 2024. Strange messaging from a bunch you just lost control of the House. "In 2022, voters made the historic decision to reject GOP extremism and Republicans’ toxic agenda which would control Americans’ rights and bodies, put corporations over working families, and privatize Social Security– leading to House Democrats smashing pundit expectations and historical trends. House Majority PAC will be prepared to take back the House in 2024, and Republicans should start planning to hand back the gavel."
Outspent, But Not Out-Strategized
TOPLINE: House Majority PAC has proven time and time again to be the most efficient steward of our donors' contributions– and while Congressional Leadership Fund can raise money, they do not know how to effectively spend it. As of now, Congressional Leadership Fund has spent nearly $150 million on losing races.
CLF outraised HMP, but over 50% of CLF’s contributions came directly from 8 families and dark money donors.
Before any general election races started, CLF was forced to spend millions in an effort to save their preferred candidates from the MAGA wing of the party.
While HMP made the strategic decision to reserve $121 million in television reservations in April, successfully securing the best television rates for the cycle to contest close races– in many places, CLF failed to place media reservations months in advance and became locked into hyper- expensive rates.
HMP’s strategy paid off. Democratic candidates performed 5% better in contested races relative to the Biden 2020 vote than in uncontested races that were decided by the national environment.
A Case Study In Spending:
* HMP reserved Chicago broadcast TV in early September for the last week of the election in case Democratic incumbents needed it— we locked in lower rates. Meanwhile, CLF waited until the day before the buy started, and had to pay the highest rates possible.
* The result? In the last week for IL-06, HMP spent $836,825 to buy more ad time than CLF, which spent $1.6 Million. HMP paid half as much to run more ads because we made the strategic decision to reserve in advance and pay the lowest possible rates.
Messaging Matters
In the battle of messaging, Democrats won– performing 5% better than the national environment in competitive races where Democrats and Republicans both ran paid advertising and made their arguments directly to voters.
HMP approaches every single House race like a mini-Senate race, which warrants a very sophisticated strategy on TV, digital, and mail. This is trench warfare, district by district, and needs to be approached that way.
Before launching any ad this cycle, House Majority put in the work to determine the most effective messaging tailored to individual districts– not copy and paste. Unlike CLF, HMP does not run cookie cutter ads.
HMP conducted an Economic Contrast research project throughout the summer that showed Democrats dramatically improved their position when they went on offense to talk about the economy.
HMP conducted an Abortion Ad Test project in August and the best performing ad was a contrast that frames the races as "A Democrat cares about the economy while the Republican wants to ban abortion".
And this was exactly what HMP ads looked like– running 211 television ads in 2022:
* 103 mentioned economic issues: 48%
* 89 mentioned abortion: 42%
* 47 mentioned police/crime: 22%
* 40 mentioned ties to January 6th extremists or extremism: 19%
Persuading And Mobilizing Latino Voters
TOPLINE: House Majority PAC knows that the path to the House Majority is by earning support in the Latino community– through both persuasion and mobilization.
HMP spent $50 million in districts with Latino candidates or in Latino-influence districts, making up about ⅓ of our total IE budget.
* This includes over $7 million in Spanish-language communications.
* Additionally, HMP spent an average of $3,105,777 million in a district with a Latino candidate.
In 2022, we communicated in Spanish earlier and in more states than ever before– doubling our Spanish-language communications and ensuring a seamless and coordinated strategy.
HMP worked with Pescador Public Strategies, a firm based in South Texas, to develop messaging that was focused not only on mobilization, but persuasion as well across television, digital, radio, and direct mail in English and Spanish– tailored to communities in competitive districts.
Democrats Will Retake The House In 2024
TOPLINE: The path to retaking the Majority is clear as day. HMP will be prepared to take back the House in 2024, and Republicans should start planning to hand back the gavel.
Below is an initial, but not comprehensive, list of congressional districts that either voted for President Biden and are currently occupied by Republicans, or Trump districts that are in play. HMP plans to flip these back to blue in 2024:
AZ-01 (R+2)
AZ-06 (R+3)
CA-27 (D+4)
CA-40 (R+2)
CA-41 (R+3)
CA-45 (D+2)
IA-03 (R+3)
MI-10 (R+3)
NE-02 (even PVI)
NJ-07 (R+1)
NY-01 (R+3)
NY-03 (D+2)
NY-04 (D+5)
NY-17 (D+3)
NY-19 (even PVI)
NY-22 (D+1)
OR-05 (D+2)
PA-01 (even PVI)
VA-02 (R+2)
I added the PVIs next to each district. Still, it’s not a very sophisticated list of targets. It looks kind of like someone expects to fight the last war, not the next war, but it’s not a terrible starting point. It would have made me feel better if they would have said things like "we’ll recruit Mondaire Jones to run in his old district again" and "we swear we’ll never recruit Christy Smith to run again in CA-27"… common sense stuff like that.) It’s insane that they left out other districts:
CA-13 (D+4)
CA-22 (D+5)
FL-27 (even PVI)
PA-10 (R+5)
TX-15 (R+1)
WI-01 (R+3)
