House Democrats always assign corporate-friendly New Dems to run the DCCC and never learn what a mistake it is. Before the current disaster, Suzan DelBene, there were equally awful Sean Patrick Maloney, Cheri Bustos, Ben Ray Lujan and Steve Israel, all from the conservative wing of the Democratic Party establishment, all looking to recruit other conservative Democrats, all having done a lousy job, winning only when circumstances dictated it and overrode their sheer incompetence.
DelBene, from a struggling Alabama family, was all through life motivated by accumulation of money and became personally wealthy working in Microsoft’s marketing operations. Her net worth is somewhere in the vicinity of $200 millions and she is absolutely clueless about how the voters she has failed to appeal to live their lives. She ran for Congress — a self-funder— in 2010, lost and ran again two years later and won, first using her massive fortune to beat a progressive in the primary.
She has no imagination and no guts, just a nose to the grindstone attitude that has served her well personally but has done nothing for the Democratic Party or the DCCC. This is going to be a good cycle for Democrats, despite her, and she is eager to take all the credit. She could have gotten off to an heroic start by giving a hand to Josh Weil’s uphill battle to win in FL-06, now a margin-of-error race. Instead she lied about what the DCCC would do to help, did nothing at all and is counting on him losing, an obvious likelihood in an R+14 district. Republicans, meanwhile, have freaked out, seen the possibility of Weil beating their crackpot candidate Randy Fine, and, panicking, have started shoveling money into the race, while DelBene... lunches with lobbyists. Last night, we learned even Musk has rushed to start spending.
Yesterday, Max Cohen and Jake Sherman, not even mentioning the imaginationless DelBene or her pathetic, plodding DCCC, reported on the Republican panic in Florida. “House Republicans,” they wrote, “shouldn’t have to worry about Florida’s 6th District special election on April 1. It’s a deep-red seat that former Rep. Michael Waltz won by 33 points five months ago before decamping for the Trump administration. But many GOP officials are concerned that Republican candidate Randy Fine’s lackluster fundraising and sky-high Democratic enthusiasm could put the race in uncomfortably close territory. Fine, a GOP state legislator, has raised just under $1 million since entering the race and has just $93,000 on hand. Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Josh Weil has brought in a stunning $9 million and has $1.2 million on hand.
The money situation has gotten so dire for Fine that we’re told he’s been calling GOP House members, pleading for funds.”
No help from the DCCC, Weil is considerably closer to $11 million today than he is to $9 million. The one hint of a DelBene/DCCC mention— so typical of her and the DCCC: “Democrats tell us they aren’t expecting to come close to flipping the seat blue.” Cohen and Sherman didn’t mention the first thing I found out about Weil when I called him— he’s a Berniecrat in a district where people hate Democrats but love Bernie. It isn’t something DelBene is capable of grasping, let alone acting on. In her world, only people like Chuck Schumer win election— and people who can buy their seats, the way she did.
But if Weil— who has effectively seized on liberal engagement to raise astonishing amounts of money— keeps Fine’s expected victory to the low double digits, then the party can credibly claim a groundswell of support in an ultra-conservative seat. That doesn’t augur well for House Republicans heading into 2026, and it could make some upcoming votes even tougher for swing seat House GOP lawmakers.
“These are races that should not, under ordinary circumstances, be on anyone’s political radar. They are safe Republican seats that Donald Trump won by more than 30 points,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said. “The American people are not buying what the Republicans are selling.”
Fine didn’t start spending on TV ads until last week, while Weil has been on the air since the opening days of March.
The NRCC doesn’t plan to dump any money into the race. Hudson said he was confident that Fine would win.
“I would have preferred it if our candidate had raised money at a faster rate and got on TV quicker, but he’s doing what he needs to do,” Hudson said. “He’s on TV now. We’re going to win the seat. I’m not concerned at all.”
The real fear for Republicans is that a large Democratic overperformance in the 6th District will fuel liberal narratives that 2026 is gearing up to be a big, 2018-style wave election. Democrats used anti-Trump fervor that year to win more than 40 seats and seize control of the House.
It’s important to note that special elections have favored Democrats in recent times. The party can count on its base of educated, fired-up activists to get involved and dump money in. And normally, the party out of power overperforms the fundamentals in off-year races. Just look at Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and former Rep. Conor Lamb’s (D-PA) results in red-leaning House seats in 2017 and 2018.
But while those seats were truly in play— Ossoff narrowly fell short while Lamb won— Weil doesn’t have a good shot of winning. But the story of how close Florida’s 6th District race could get is arguably more important than the final result itself.
This is Weil’s most current TV ad, blanketing the district’s airwaves, with, as we said, no help of any kind from the DCCC, not even advice. They’re just so, so not inspiring in any way, just like their multimillionaire chairwoman.
From what I understand, though, most of Weil's massive warchest has been going into one of the most powerful door-knocking and get-out-the-vote efforts anyone has seen in Florida since Alan Grayson ran for Congress in 2008, beating conservative Democratic favorite, and perennial loser, Charlie Stuart and then Republican incumbent Ric Keller. That was a race the DCCC ignored and that was won at the front doors across the red district.
And... here’s the brilliant 1977 song that Johnny Thunders could have easily written about for today's DCCC when he was putting together the songs for The Heartbreakers’ L.A.M.F., their first and only studio album. This should be the DCCC's theme song and should play on an endless loop in their building. Can you imagine that this song was never a hit!
DCCC is as useful as a screen door on a submarine. In 1990, they wouldn't help Newt's challenger in a House race in which Newt barely scraped by by about 1,000 votes. Now, they're not helping Weil. My guess is that, were my MOC, Frederica Wilson, to get a badly overdue primary challenge next year, the DCCC would rally behind her.
DSCC is no better.