A number of prominent younger Democrats with records of winning tough races are forming a new group with big ambitions to remake their party’s image, recruit a new wave of candidates and challenge political orthodoxies they say are holding the party back.
Members of the initiative, Majority Democrats, have different theories about how the national party has blundered. Some believe a heavy reliance on abortion-rights messaging or anti-Trump sentiment has come at the expense of a stronger economic focus. Others say party leaders underestimate how much pandemic-era school closures or reflexive defenses of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s re-election bid have eroded voters’ trust in Democrats.
But the roughly 30 elected officials at the federal, state and local levels who have so far signed on to the group broadly agree that the Democratic Party must better address the issues that feel most urgent in voters’ lives — the affordability crisis, for example — and that it must shed its image as the party of the status quo. Many of the group’s members have, at times, challenged the party’s establishment, something the organization embraces.
“If we don’t build this big-tent party that can win majorities,” warned Representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, a leader of the initiative, “we’re on the path of being the party of the permanent minority from a national-election perspective.”
Being the anti-Trump party “might win a midterm election,” Ms. Craig, who is also running in a competitive primary for the Senate, added, “but it’s not going to build lasting majorities. We’ve got to lay out the case for what we’re for as a party.”
Majority Democrats is partly a network and convening forum for elected officials to trade best practices, debate and develop ideas. Discussions are underway about how the officials could mobilize politically on one another’s behalf, and plans are in the works for public voter-engagement events starting later this summer.
But the group is also a political operation, employing around a dozen people — both full-time staff members and consultants — and aiming to support and expand a pipeline of talent, organizers said.
Majority Democrats will be organized as a hybrid federal political action committee, meaning that there will be a traditional PAC and a super PAC arm, said Eric Koch, an adviser to the project. It is required to disclose its donors.
Organizers declined to share its budget but said the group would not accept corporate PAC money.
The group builds on some earlier initiatives, including the Democratic Future Fund, a modest effort to support some House members in 2024. It also incorporates ideas laid out after the 2024 elections in a memo by Seth London, an adviser to major Democratic donors, especially his recommendation to establish a “leadership committee.” Mr. London is involved in the Majority Democrats initiative.
The group’s executive director is Rohan Patel, a former Tesla executive who worked in the Obama White House. Others working on the communications side include the Democratic strategists Lis Smith, Mr. Koch, Andrew Mamo and Jackie Rosa.
This is hardly the first Democratic organization trying to chart a future for an unpopular party.
Already, there are groups and projects focused on goals as wide-ranging as winning back working-class voters, communicating better with men and developing an agenda for the party’s next presidential nominee, along with other gatherings and initiatives in which some Majority Democrats members are involved.
But the new group hopes to set itself apart in several ways. It is led by elected officials, it will offer comprehensive political services for members who want additional help or who face notably tough races, and it hopes to benefit from its broad network, which includes local officials who may have a better understanding of what voters are saying than the politicians who spend much of their time in Washington.
According to Ms. Smith, members include: former Representative Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia; Representative Mikie Sherrill, the party’s candidate for governor of New Jersey; Senators Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan; members of Congress from highly competitive districts including Representatives Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico and Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan; and the mayors of Cincinnati, Denver, Scranton, Pa., Newport News, Va., and Kansas City, Mo.
Leaders at the federal level are Ms. Craig, Representatives Pat Ryan of New York, Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and Joe Neguse of Colorado. Mayor Aftab Pureval of Cincinnati is the group’s local-level leader, and its state leaders are Assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui of Nevada and Lt. Gov. Austin Davis of Pennsylvania.
The group also plans to work with five candidates running in Republican-held House districts, including Cait Conley, who is running in a competitive primary to challenge Representative Mike Lawler of New York, and Sarah Trone Garriott, a state senator in Iowa, who is seeking to challenge Representative Zach Nunn.
“We’re going to measure success by the candidates that we recruit and support and that win, but also by the amount of people who want to engage with our network,” Mr. Davis said. Other members think the tenor and substance of the 2028 presidential primary will test the group’s impact.
In some ways, the group’s structure resembles that of the Democratic Leadership Council, the once-influential group that successfully pushed the party to the middle in the Clinton era.
But while many of the officials involved in Majority Democrats similarly come from the center-left, organizers insist there is no ideological litmus test to join (nor, despite the new-generation focus, is there an age limit; Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, 60, is on board).
“The thing that unites all of us is that we’re trying to build a big tent,” said James Talarico, a state representative in Texas, who is considering a run for the U.S. Senate and sat this week for an interview on Joe Rogan’s influential, right-leaning podcast.
Expanding the Democratic coalition, Mr. Talarico said, takes “some patience and some tolerance.” He added: “Those are values that Democrats usually espouse, but we need to keep them ourselves. We’ve got to be open-minded. We’ve got to be willing to join with people in a coalition that we may not share 100 percent of our policy views.”
Majority Democrats has yet to issue policy prescriptions, though in interviews, several leaders emphasized issues around affordability, safety and challenging the power of Big Tech.
The group plans to hold in-person events with voters, tentatively starting this summer in Pennsylvania, with longer-term hopes of drawing on that feedback to offer a playbook of messages and ideas for other Democrats to build on.
Ms. Jauregui of Nevada said that the national party’s emphasis last year on issues such as abortion rights did not resonate with many of the Hispanic and Asian American households in her district, where cost-of-living concerns felt far more urgent.
“The voters have been telling us what they wanted,” said Ms. Jauregui, the majority floor leader in the State Assembly. “We just have not done a good job of listening.”
The group’s launch comes as long-simmering generational tensions within the party increasingly break into open view, after Mr. Biden’s abortive campaign and ignominious exit. Last month, in New York City, the party’s establishment failed to stop a charismatic 33-year-old democratic socialist from winning the mayoral primary, though some still hope to block him in the general election.
“We are either a big tent or we’re not,” Mr. Pureval, the Cincinnati mayor, said. “You know how you lose elections? Turn on talented young candidates who are actually winning.”
Mr. Ryan of New York said he still heard from voters about the party establishment’s insistence that Mr. Biden was well equipped to serve as the Democratic nominee, until a disastrous debate made clear to the country that he was not.
“He was not up to this essential task of beating” President Trump, Mr. Ryan said. “The fact that no one, or very few people, would call that out is at the heart of the break in trust between the people and the Democratic Party. Until we reckon with that, I think it just makes it that much harder to rebuild the trust.”
“A lot of people that did speak out,” he continued, “are now in this group.”
Katie Glueck is a Times national political reporter.
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