The campaign arm for House Democrats announced significant investments Monday in 12 candidates seeking to oust Republican lawmakers, including three in districts that President Donald Trump won handily in 2024.
The first batch of “Red-to-Blue” funding from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee not only highlights the party’s bullishness about regaining the House majority in November — the 12 districts are among dozens Democrats are eyeing to flip — but offers insight into the kind of candidates they think will be competitive this year.
The latest crop of recruits, in contrast to past cycles, come from an array of working-class backgrounds, some having worked as farmers and ministers and served in the U.S. military.
“Our theory is that it’s important to have candidates whose life stories are extremely relatable to the people in their congressional districts,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said in an interview Sunday. “That means making sure they are individuals who perhaps don’t have the same type of political experience which a traditional congressional candidate may have had in the past, but whose life experience clearly demonstrates a commitment to service.”
Republicans counter that voters will be swayed more by candidate ideologies than their résumés.
Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, suggested someone “buy the DCCC a gift card to help pay for all the lipstick they’re putting on the pig that is their recruitment class,” deriding Democratic candidates as “deeply radical.”
The DCCC investments announced Monday also include candidates in some districts House Democrats have not targeted before. Jeffries and party strategists believe they have a chance to oust several Republican incumbents who have either not put much effort into their reelection campaigns or have been dogged by controversies.
One example is Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tennessee), a far-right member of the House Freedom Caucus. Trump won the district by 17 points in 2024, but Ogles had been under FBI investigation for potential campaign fraud. He has dismissed any discrepancies as “honest mistakes.” The DCCC is seeking to boost the candidacy of Chaz Molder, a former mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, who has raised more money to this point than Ogles.
The DCCC is also putting money behind several Democrats who ran last cycle and narrowly lost. Those include Christina Bohannan in Iowa, Janelle Stelson in Pennsylvania, and Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin. All three outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race, and Democratic strategists suggest they could be helped this year by Harris not being atop the Democratic ticket.
Candidates on the DCCC list will receive strategy guidance, staff, training and fundraising support.
The group’s recruitment strategy mirrors that of the House Majority PAC, the largest super PAC working to elect Democrats. It has sought to recruit candidates with profiles similar to a small group of largely pragmatic Democratic lawmakers who have demonstrated an ability to win in recent years in districts in which Trump has performed well.
Collectively, the strategy signals that House Democrats and their strategists have learned lessons from 2024, when House Democrats were able to shrink the GOP’s majority, but not overcome Trump’s prowess to turn out voters in some key districts.
“Some of our candidates defeated Republican incumbents in a tough environment, and a handful of our candidates fell just short. Now, we’re in a position to build upon that over performance in 2024 and finish the job decisively,” Jeffries said, describing the “Red-to-Blue” candidates as “common sense Democrats.”
JoAnna Mendoza, a Marine Corps veteran whose parents were farmworkers, was recruited to run against Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Arizona), who won his district by less than three points in 2024.
Rep. Zach Nunn (R) won his seat by a similar margin, and will face off Iowa state senator Sarah Trone Garriott (D), who spent most of her life as a Lutheran minister. And Jamie Ager, who is running against Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-North Carolina), is one of several farmers who have been recruited across the country this cycle.
In some cases, Democrats say they’ve recruited candidates more uniquely fit for their district than past candidates who could not unseat moderate Republican lawmakers. One example: former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez who is challenging far-right Rep. Eli Crane (R-Arizona).
This year, Democrats see some parallels with the 2018 midterms, two years into Trump’s term, when anti-Trump sentiment helped them wrestle control of the House from Republicans. The dozens of seats Democrats flipped across the country included some Trump won by more than 20 percentage points two years earlier.
But instead of recruiting more like-minded candidates to replicate those victories in 2020, the party skewed to the left, setting the stage for House Democrats to return to the minority during President Joe Biden’s first midterm in 2022.
Historically, the president’s party tends to lose seats in midterms, sometimes enough to tip control of the chamber. House Democrats have several reasons for optimism this year, including polls that showTrump’s favorability cratering on a range of issues that helped him in 2024 and a string of state legislative special elections in which Democrats have flipped GOP-held seats since Trump returned to the White House.
But November is not a sure bet for Democrats.
Republican strategists point to the NRCC raising more money than the DCCC during the first year of an election cycle for the first time since 2015 — and are eager to tout their own success in candidate recruitment.
Democratic candidates are also defending more districts than Republicans in which their party’s congressional candidate prevailed despite their presidential candidate trailing there. Democrats are trying to hold on to 16 districts that Trump won, while Republicans are defending seven districts that Harris won. (Those numbers could change depending on the outcome of ongoing redistricting battles in states including Virginia.)
On the flip side, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-North Carolina), who chairs the NRCC, acknowledged in an interview with The Washington Post this month that voter turnout is a challenge for Republicans since Trump is not on the ballot. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and his leadership team have publicly credited Trump for dragging some candidates across the finish line in 2024 to keep their majority this term.
All told, the DCCC has announced 44 districts it hopes to flip this year while the NRCC has publicly identified 29 Democratic-held seats it is eyeing.
The DCCC’s announced targets include another 15 districts that Trump won by 10 points or more in 2024. The group has yet to invest in those candidates in part because some face primary challengers. The DCCC said it expect to expand its “Red-to-Blue” program as the primary season winnows contenders.
“House Democrats are on offense and poised to take back the majority, thanks in large part to the strength of our candidates,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Washington), who chairs the DCCC. “They are laser-focused … as opposed to their Republican opponents who have abandoned everyday Americans so they can give handouts to the privileged and the elite.”
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