House Democrats’ campaign arm lifts ban on consultants who work for primary challengers

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) said Tuesday that it was ending an official policy aimed at preventing vendors and consultants who work with primary challengers from doing business with it, though comments from the committee’s chair suggested that the policy could remain an unwritten rule.

Politico reported that the newly elected chair of the committee, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), moved Tuesday to strike language in an official DCCC questionnaire that specified to interested vendors that the “DCCC will not conduct business with, nor recommend to any of its targeted campaigns, any consultant that works with an opponent of a sitting Member of the House Democratic Caucus.”

“This policy change means that the only criteria for a vendor to be listed in the directory are our standards for fair business practices related to use of organized labor, critical diversity and inclusion standards, and other minimum qualifications,” DCCC spokesman Chris Taylor told The Hill in an emailed statement.

But Maloney himself reportedly said last month that the organization will not work with a group that is actively working against a sitting member — a tweak to a blanket policy that had enraged progressives who won their seats by defeating moderate members of the Democratic establishment.

“No one should be looking for work around here if they want to go after one of our members at the same time,” Maloney said, according to the news outlet. “But I don’t think the blanket ban ever made sense. And we’re gonna replace it with a new approach.”

The news was celebrated by members of the party’s left flank, who have argued for years that the blacklist put in place under the DCCC’s previous chair, Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), unfairly targeted progressive organizations.

“We have primaries to make sure we have the best and the brightest in every party,” Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.) told Politico. “So primaries should be unencumbered by outside forces.”

“It’s an enormous win,” added Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to Politico. “The escalation and aggression against the progressive wing of the party with an explicit forward-facing ‘blacklist’ created a lot of dissuasion against candidates even considering grassroots organizing firms.”

— Updated at 2:20 p.m.