After Weeks of Internal Drama, the DNC is Broke

As we’ve been chronicling here at Hot Air for weeks, things have not been running very smoothly behind the scenes at the DNC. First there was the blowup over David Hogg’s plan to primary some moderate Democrats. That eventually led to Hogg being unelected in a do-over vote (they claimed the initial vote violated the rules) but not before someone leaked an embarrassing tape of DNC Chair Ken Martin saying he was considering giving up on his job because of the conflict with Hogg.

Not long after all of that drama made news, we learned that two union bigwigs, Randi Weingarten and Lee Saunders, were leaving their positions over disagreements with the direction the DNC was headed. Those complaints may have been sincere or they may have been sour grapes over Martin’s decision to cut them from “plum assignments” that gave them a say in how the party nominated its candidates for president.

Mr. Martin had offered to keep the two top union leaders — Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — as members of the D.N.C. But he would not renew their plum assignments on the powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee, which controls how the party nominates its presidential candidates.

In any case, all of the negative news has donors clutching their wallets according to half a dozen unnamed sources who spoke to the NY Times.

The biggest challenge facing Mr. Martin may now be financial.

Six people briefed on the party’s fund-raising, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its finances frankly, said big donors — who are an essential part of the party’s funding — had been very slow to give to the party this year as Mr. Martin solicits contributions. His commitment to state parties, which amounts to $1 million in monthly spending, has further strained the finances.

Senior D.N.C. officials have discussed the possibility of borrowing money in the coming months to keep the operations fully funded, according to two people with direct knowledge of the private discussions who insisted on anonymity…

…the party’s total cash reserves shrank by $4 million from January through April, according to the most recent federal records, while the Republican National Committee’s coffers swelled by roughly $29 million. A new report is due this week.

The party out of power often falls behind the one holding the White House. Still, the current financial gap is large: $18 million on hand for the D.N.C. entering May, compared with $67.4 million for the R.N.C.

Martin’s defense, and honestly he does have a point, is that donors aren’t happy after raising a metric ton of cash for the 2024 election and losing badly.

“People invested more money than they ever had before, they dug deeper than they ever had, and they are quite frustrated by the result,” Mr. Martin said of big donors. “They want answers. I don’t take it personally. I wasn’t in charge.”

The donors can’t be happy being asked for more money barely over half a year after a major loss. But of course their problem in 2024 wasn’t a lack of funds, it was a lacking candidate (really two of them). On that point, the Times reports that a recent fundraiser in New York featuring Kamala Harris brought in a lot less than expected, only about $300,000. Big surprise that donors aren’t eager to double down on a losing horse. It also doesn’t help that in the midst of this cash crunch, Martin took a pay bump from $300,000 up to $350,000 soon after he was elected. He also apparently thumbed his nose at big donors.

One challenge for Mr. Martin in wooing big contributors is that during the race for D.N.C. chair, his campaign criticized his chief rival, Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, for his ties to some of the party’s largest donors, such as the billionaires Reid Hoffman and Alex Soros. Shortly after Mr. Martin won, he told The New York Times that the onus would be on donors to mend any fences.

Is the DNC chair race really the place to whine about big money in politics? Seems to me that’s sort of the point. I’m not a Democrat, obviously, but I really don’t get how this guy got himself elected in the first place. Maybe the other candidates are just as off-putting in different ways? In any case, I wonder how much longer he has to turn this around before bigger voices in the party start calling for his resignation.