DNC Chair Jaime Harrison pledges major investment in midterms, voter protection

Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison pledged a massive investment to elect Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections and protect the right to vote during a National Press Club Virtual Newsmaker on Wednesday.

Harrison said the DNC will spend $20 million in the next year alone on mid-term campaigns — the committee’s largest infusion of money into a mid-term election cycle.

He said it means campaigns will have more time to engage with voters on the ground, provide state parties with more resources, lay the groundwork for 2024 and beyond and take the electoral fight to Republicans.

“My friends, this ain’t your grandmomma’s DNC,” Harrison said.

The midterms are traditionally difficult political terrain for the party in the White House, and they could be further complicated for the Democratic Party with the redrawing of congressional maps after the 2020 Census.

But Harrison said the results in Georgia’s January run-off, where Democrats won both seats in the U.S. Senate, serve as a model for the rest of the country. He said the party was able to “buck history” in the state as it had a “Democratic ecosystem that decided to work together,” and is taking that playbook national in 2022.

Harrison said the elections in Virginia this year will be a crucial test of that new “collective and cohesive” strategy, as the party seeks to hold onto the governorship and state House of Delegates. He said Democrats must show they are a party that helps solve the issues ordinary Americans face, and they can only learn those issues by running effective grassroots campaigns.

“We have to be a community organization, where we address the everyday needs of people across the country,” Harrison said.

The committee will also increase its voter protection programs, Harrison said, given the spate of what he described as “voter suppression” laws being debated and passed in state legislatures. In 2020, the DNC had voter protection workers in 33 states, in addition to technology and data tools, a national hotline and other ways to keep track of issues at the polls.

In 2022, Harrison said the DNC will invest even more in voter protection, including in what he called “critical states” like Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. And he said the DNC’s activities will include advocacy and voter education as part of a more proactive strategy.

“Voting rights should not be a partisan issue,” Harrison said. “It shouldn’t be an issue at all. It should just be … With every ounce of determination, with every breath in my body, I’m committed to make sure we do not go back.”

Harrison said that push to elect Democrats up and down the ballot stems from President Biden. The aim, he added, is for the DNC to accumulate a “hub of knowledge” of best practices that future campaigns can draw from, especially with one eye on 2024 and beyond.

“With that investment, we are going to take the fight directly to the Republicans,” Harrison said.