Cheri Bustos Announces Fund-Raising Efforts For Anti-Choice Fanatic Dan Lipinski Just As The Alabama GOP Declares War On Women

Yesterday the big news was that Alabama Republicans had passed a total, punitive-- and unconstitutional-- ban on all abortions in their state. The worst DCCC chair ever, the odious Blue Dog from northwest Illinois, Cheri Bustos, thought that would be a good day to announce that she's hosting a fundraiser for Congress' most anti-Choice Democrat, fellow Blue Dog, Dan Lipinski. That's the invitation above. Please do not call Jeff Larivee at 202-821-5203.

Lipinski is utterly out of step with the values and goals of the Democratic Party. He has a long ugly record opposing equality for the LGBTQ community, opposing Choice, opposing sane, common sense gun safety laws, opposing immigrants, opposing healthcare, opposing shoring up Social Security... and supporting a right-wing agenda dictated by the corporate PACs who have underwritten his political career. But none of that is stopping Bustos, another right-of-center Blue Dog, sitting in a safely blue, gerrymandered seat that she always falsely claims that only she could have won. She also claims-- falsely-- that the reason she has been trying to stop primaries is to protect a shaky Democratic majority. The majority is far from shaky and she has never been able to explain how protecting a fake Democrat like Lipinski-- in a district with a D+6 PVI, where Obama won both times and where even Hillary was able to beat Trump 55.2% to 39.9%. Legitimate Republicans don't even bother to run in IL-03. In 2018 the Republican Party had nothing to offer by an avowed Nazi, Arthur Jones. Any Democrat could have beaten him with both hands tied behind their back and Lipinski scored a 73.8% to 26.2% win. Maybe Bustos should be using her time and resources to help defend seats where Republicans actually could win. But, no, Lipinski is exactly her kind of candidate.

There are still politically involved Democrats-- liberals even-- who have been so brainwashed by the establishment that they actually believe the DCCC is their friend or ally or something. This is the stinking heap of garbage who DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos-- rapidly making herself into the next Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- is raising campaign cash for:



Last year, Marie Newman was about to beat him when Mark Penn and his wife, Nancy Jacobson, laundered nearly a million dollars from wealthy Republicans-- like the Murdoch family-- and other conservatives to fund a last minute smear campaign against Marie so they could save Lipinski's scrawny neck. Earlier this week Sean McElwee's Data For Progress explained another way how it was Republicans who delivered Lipinski his narrow win in 2018. "There's no party registration in Illinois, meaning that primaries are open to any registered voter. This often leads to strategic voting, where Republican partisans vote in Democratic primaries and vice versa. Despite having no party registration, we can still get a good sense of whether someone is a Republican based on their primary voting history... [T]here were about 5,000 frequent Republican primary voters in the 2018 Democratic primary, about 5 percent of the electorate... [which] would entirely account for Lipinski’s narrow win margin."

The DCCC, under the leadership of Cheri Bustos, has implemented a new blunt force policy to box out primary challengers. They’ve told every vendor who wants to work with them they if they’re involved in a primary challenge, they’ll get blacklisted by the DCCC and won’t be eligible for any contracts from the DCCC. In addition to the damage this may do to any primary challengers, it’s a threat that requires the DCCC to be less effective at the job they’re supposed to be doing if they ever want to act on it. If the DCCC opts to not use a vendor they otherwise would have used, they’re either paying their new vendor more or giving the contract to one they believe to be worse.

Our analysis of FEC records shows something disturbing: it appears the blacklist is designed specifically to protect Dan Lipinski.

2020 may seem like an odd time to roll out this tactic. In 2018, only two primary challengers beat an incumbent Democrat in Congress, which is a pretty normal level. In 2016 it was 3, in 2014 it was 1, and in 2012 it was 2. The answer may lie in not in either challenger who succeeded, but one who didn’t: Marie Newman. Newman’s race was the marquee incumbent challenge in early 2018 before Lipinski’s Republican-aided win.

In 2018, there were a handful of primary candidates. We’ve searched through their financial records, and we it’s clear that if this ban had been in place in 2018, it would have affected Newman the most. Outside of IL-03, the blacklist would have affected three polls and a couple thousand in travel arrangements. Newman, however, would have seen roughly $132,000 in campaign investments become endangered. She employed 270 Strategies, a digital media shop, The Sexton Group, a consulting firm, and Normington, Petts & Associates, her pollster. All three also worked for the DCCC, who obviously stands as a larger client with more work to send their way.

Marie Newman is running against Dan Lipinski again this cycle. Cheri Bustos, who made the decision, is one of only two Democrats to donate to Lipinski in 2018 (in 2018, the DCCC chose not to endorse Lipinski and several Democrats outright endorsed against him). The other Democrat to donate to her this year, Henry Cuellar, has been a vocal supporter of the policy. In the race for DCCC chair, Lipinski very actively backed Bustos as DCCC chair.

January and February of 2019 saw the entry of multiple incumbent challengers who could reasonably be using traditional vendors: Kai Kahele in HI-02, Rishi Kumar in CA-18, Cristina Duran in CO-01, and Mohammad Dar in MA-08. Marie Newman started taking steps towards running in March. Two weeks after she did, The DCCC Blacklist was announced. Since then, it’s been a serious body blow to Newman’s campaign. She’s already had four resignations out of fear of the DCCC, and more firms simply refuse to work with her.

Newman has refused to back down in the face of the policy. She’s gone to the press about her experiences as an enemy of the DCCC, and hasn’t let up on her criticisms of Lipinski’s ongoing anti-gay politics. Progressives have rallied behind her, donating. In the four days after she talked about how the blacklist had affected her campaign, she received $45 thousand in small dollar donations. The next week, a coalition of five pro-choice progressive groups endorsed her in unison: Planned Parenthood, NARAL, PCCC, EMILY’s List, and MoveOn.

A final note: one defense of the blacklist that keeps popping up is that it encourages members to pay their DCCC dues. Lipinski publicly refuses to pay dues.

The DCCC is blacklisting progressive vendors to protect an anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-ACA man who won re-election due to Republicans.

Lipinski isn't even the worst of the Blue Dogs. Henry Cuellar's primary opponent will soon announce. And Republican-turned-Blue Dog Tom O'Halleran (AZ) already has a stupendous opponent in progressive former Flagstaff City Councilwoman Eva Putzova.