| MEMBER | Cash on Hand as of 06/30 | Dues | Dues Paid | Dues Owed | Raised for DCCC |
| Frank, Barney | 462089 | 300000 | 310700 | -10700 | 610900 |
| Markey, Ed | 2410215 | 250000 | 217000 | 33000 | 674050 |
| Olver, John | 295287 | 250000 | 250000 | 0 | 97200 |
| Neal, Richard | 1322967 | 150000 | 125000 | 25000 | 26500 |
| McGovern, Jim | 100438 | 150000 | 150000 | 0 | 8000 |
| Capuano, Mike | 570266 | 150000 | 125000 | 25000 | 15000 |
| Lynch, Stephen | 1042785 | 150000 | 20000 | 130000 | 0 |
| Delahunt, Bill | 1853996 | 125000 | 125000 | 0 | 46750 |
| Meehan, Marty | 4898715 | 125000 | 101250 | 23750 | 212400 |
| Tierney, John | 1134149 | 100000 | 82500 | 17500 | 0 |
| Total | 14090907 | 1750000 | 1506450 | 254250 | 1690800 |
Not, on the whole, an impressive record, unfortunately. The delegation shines in raising money through fundraisers, but has stiffed the DCCC on dues, to the tune of $250,000 – and that includes Barney Frank’s sizable overage. Particularly galling is Stephen Lynch’s refusal to chip in very much of anything. Capuano, Markey, Neal, Meehan and to a lesser degree Tierney all need to pony up as well. None of them have any realistic challengers this year.
Looking past the “pay your dues already” horizon, it’s clear that Markey and Meehan can toss the DCCC a lot of cash, very quickly. I know everyone in our delegation is waiting for a chance to run for Senate, but even that is a long ways off. Markey and Meehan could single-handedly chip in $1 million each without breaking a sweat. That could be enough to net 3 or 4 House seats.
I think it’s time for the MA Democratic Party to start calling out these delinquent Congressmen. Ask them to prove their party loyalty by giving to the DCCC when the committee needs it most.
What are the Congressmen doing personally? Are they giving to Congressional races outside of the Dtrip?
is actively working to help Eric Massa, a NY Fighting Dem. And there was a “town hall” meeting he held that I went to where people asked: what can we do to get changes to occur and get this administration held responsible?
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Mike said it was crucial to change the composition of the House. He highlighted several northeast races that were winnable.
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I was impressed.
He hosted a fundraiser last monday night at the Royal Sonesta for MASSPAC – he brought in John Murtha and was going to give the money to Paul Hodes NH-2, Carol Shea-Porter NH-1, Peter Welch VT-AL, and others in close races.
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It is crazy how much money Tierney has – i’ll email him and ask him to pony up.
Tierney is setting on $1.1 million, but Mr Term Limits/Mr. Campaign Finance Reform AKA Mary Meehan is sitting on nearly $5 million bucks. He’s hording it for the Senate seat. It also looks liek the dean of the delegation–Ed Markey could loosen a few coins from his $2.4 million treasure.
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All and all, pretty obscene that our congressional delegation is sitting on $14 million in campaign funds. Heck, combined they are in Sean Healey’ league.
Be nice to turn that state’s delegation all blue.
I live in Meehan’s district and find it disturbing that he has not done more to help the Democrats take back Congress. He should give the DCCC a million bucks for New Hampshire and Connecticut races.
sorry i missed some of the comments above – i was busy taking care of some Very Important Things on a Very Important Website (ahem, Myspace and Facebook), but anyhow..
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giving to and fundraising for independent candidates is very good, and Capuano et. al. should indeed be commended for their efforts in that department. on the other hand, those contributions are limited, whereas contributions to the DCCC are not. candidates should definitely avail themselves of that opportunity, especially if they don’t have a credible challenger.
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i also am guessing that some of the more liberal reps. are withholding money from DCCC because they disagree or don’t like Rahm Emanuel… I actually disagree with that logic, on the presumption that some day we’ll have a liberal chair of the DCCC, and at that point we’re going to want the moderates to chip in as well.
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anyway, thanks all for putting the heat on Markey and Meehan. Those guys have got to help out their comrades across the country if they want a realistic shot at accomplishing their goals.
I hate the DCCC, truly. I think they’re a corrupt, anti-democratic organization that is not only anti-grassroots, but also pursuing bad policies that hurt the Democratic party. Please don’t support them. Give to your favorite Congressional candidates, and to the DNC, which is doing the right things to reform the Democratic party to make it more effective and better able to win elections in the long run.
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Especially since the DCCC uses the fact that it has more cash on hand than the DNC, as ammunition in the internal conflict. Don’t feed the wrong side – for the good of the party, donate to the DNC and avoid the DCCC.
I won’t disagree with you about the DCCC…like at there support of Jim Craig in NH, who lost by nearly 20 points to activist Carol Shea-Porter.
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But can Congressinoal campaigns transfer unlimited dollars to the DNC and will those dollars be funneled to congressional races? If not, then they ahve to give their money to the DCCC.
the DCCC likes to support its own specific candidate in primaries (as it did in California’s 11th and Illinois’ 6th), trying to shut off opposition. It worked in the 6th, though Tammy Duckworth has turned out to be a very good candidate, and the DCCC got schooled in CA’s 11th by McNerney.
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On this sort of thing, you’ve got to check and see who’s giving love to candidates elsewhere, and who is simply waiting around for ’08 and hoping that Kerry runs for President only. kos actually had some interesting thoughts recently on the ability to get people in one’s own state elected and the effect that could have on their prospects for President in ’08, as well as who’s giving $ to the DNC from the potential candidates (in terms of the state one, the guy with the most to gain from getting people in his own state elected is Bayh with the three seats in play there). It can’t extend too much to MA, but you have to think that giving some love to other candidates (like those in VT, NH, western New York, CT) would help guys like Neal, Meehan, Lynch, Tierney, and Markey, considering all five have sizable warchests and in the case of one like Neal, haven’t seen any real opposition in about a decade.
but i don’t completely agree. it’s true that the DNC’s efforts under howard dean, notably Democracy Bonds and the Party Builder, are definitely great signs of respecting the grassroots. and Rahm Emanuel is really really irritating sometimes. on the whole, money spent on organizers is almost always better than money spent on broadcast ads, so from that point of view, donating to the DNC is better than donating to the DCCC (if you consider the DNC as a proxy for organizers and the DCCC as a proxy for ads).
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that being said, I don’t think it matters much what the DCCC does in terms of messaging. all the indications I’ve seen are that DCCC is primarily a fundraising mechanism, not a messaging or policy mechanism. in terms of influencing legislation in 2006, the Progressive Caucus is going to be much more powerful than the DCCC – assuming, of course, that the DCCC is in fact successful in winning a majority.
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also, i don’t particularly care about the spat between Dean and Emanuel. it strikes me as an utterly trivial narrative, and will most likely be completely forgotten within 6 months. i’m definitely not going to let that story affect my, or in this cae my representative’s, behavior. although i love what dean is doing at the DNC, I think that a symbolic stand for dean is ten times less useful than a substantive effort to elect Democrats to the House.
“The spat between Dean and Emanuel…will most likely be completely forgotten within 6 months.”
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I imagine it will be forgotten on November 8th, once we find out who’s right.
We already know who’s right. And whether we do or not, November 8th won’t tell us. We have a party that’s been pursuing the wrong path for a long long time, and is therefore significantly weaker than it could or should be. That makes our chances in this election lower. There’s a reform movement within the party that is taking it in the right direction, but that has much further to go.
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How do you interpret the outcome of November 8th?
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We do well: – Ahah, the reform movement is bearing fruit! That’s the right path. – Ahah, the party isn’t that broken! We don’t need more Deanist reform.
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We do poorly: – See, the party’s really broken, we totally should’ve won this one. We desperately need Deanist reform to go much further! – See, these reforms drained resources from what the party should’ve done. It was wrong, time to curb it and go back to the tried and true(?).
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So which interpretation did you mean when you said “once we find out who’s right”? The plain fact is, November’s result won’t tell us so simply. Do you think Emmanuel of all people will acknowledge he was wrong, whatever the outcome? No, he’ll pick option #2 in either case. That doesn’t change the fact that he is wrong, and that the DCCC is harmful to the party as it now stands.
This isn’t about influencing legislation – neither the DNC nor the DCCC does that. And it’s not just about picking candidates. As you rightly point out, part of it is about money spent on organizers vs. money spent on TV ads – and bad TV ads, BTW, because the DCCC keeps hiring the same agencies they’re buddies with, and ostracizes the people who actually make effective ads. It’s also about candidate independence, and their ability to pick their staff and the right message for their district – things the DCCC tends to get in the way of. It’s about a number of other things too.
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And you’re right that the DCCC is a fundraising mechanism more than it is anything else. Its influence is directly proportional to how much money it has. Whether candidates run better or worse campaigns sometimes depends on how much money they have vs. how much they need from the DCCC. Which direction the party takes, definitely depends on the proportion of money raised by the DCCC vs. other party groups & campaigns.
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I honestly think we’d have a better chance in this election if the DCCC’s bank account had suddenly vanished this summer, and their fundraising operations shut down. But that’s a much bolder statement than the one I really want to argue for, which is this: The Democratic party will be much stronger, and we’ll have a better shot at winning the midterm elections, if everyone who is active in the party and contemplating donating to the DCCC decides to donate that same money to candidate campaigns and the DNC instead.
I had been wondering where I could find this exact information ever since I saw the diary on DailyKos.
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I’m not surprised at Lynch’s stats. In any other state, he’d be a Republican.
I’ve just called Tierney’s office to ask him directly what’s up.
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I’ve heard him say he would be giving money to candidates in tight races throughout the country, and have donated to his campaign during this election cycle, assuming that fact. I’m hoping to hear he is doing that through means other than the DCCC.
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I’ll post here later when I’ve heard back.
n/t
isn’t an issue at this point, because all of the primaries are over. I can understand steering clear in primary season, but now we know who’s on the ballot.
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The Democrat, however moderate or liberal, will caucus with the Dems. If we want a majority, we want that Democrat elected. The DCCC helps do that. For the MA Congresscritters, it’s as simple as writing that check. Frankly, I’d like to see some Dem leadership put pressure on guys with warchests and little opposition to do more to “help the team.”
I don’t really think the DCCC “helps do that” as effectively. They spend a lot of money meddling in bad ways both before and after the primaries. We get some worse candidates because of them, and yes, that’s over for this cycle. But when their candidates do win, their money comes with big strings, and at the other ends of those strings are the same awful consultants and strategies they’ve been pushing on candidates for over a decade – losing strategies and consultants. The more money the DCCC has, as compared to the candidate’s own campaign, the more influence they have to fuck up those campaigns by forcing them to comply. Further, the DCCC then hoards its money to spend in huge ad buys shortly before election, running awful useless ads that feed loads of money into their favored consultants’ agencies. Yuck.
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Candidate campaigns spend their money better – unless they’re unduly DCCC-infiltrated. So max out donations to candidate campaigns first.
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After that, go with the DNC. The DNC spends its money on organizers for the state parties, and on putting together canvassing efforts for them (which, yes, the DCCC also does some of). It doesn’t muscle in on campaigns and fuck them up, it doesn’t bring in poorly performing buddy consultants, and it doesn’t steer media money to overpriced agencies that produce dreck.
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Further, the long term future of the party is hurt the more money the DCCC can boast of relative to the DNC, because you’re right, it is a fundraising engine. Its influence is proportional to its fundraising performance.
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PLEASE DON’T GIVE TO THE DCCC.