“While Republicans are cutting taxes for billionaires, we have members of Congress in swing districts who are fighting for their communities every day and standing up for their communities every day….That’s why they won in tough districts—and why they’ll continue to win in tough districts.”
DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene spoke with Courier Newsroom recently to discuss how results-oriented candidates and an economic, get-it-done message contrasted with House Republicans’ record of broken promises, rising prices, and cuts to Medicaid is the recipe for House Democrats’ success in the midterms.
Excerpts from the story and Chair DelBene’s comments below:
As chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, DelBene is tasked with recruiting and supporting candidates to take back the House in 2026.
“I actually think the things that make a great candidate [in 2026] are the same things that made a great candidate before, too,” she told me in an interview in the U.S. Capitol last week. “Folks want people who understand what’s happening on the ground at home, and are coming back to Washington, D.C. to fight for them to get things done.”
DelBene, who represents Washington’s 1st Congressional District and serves on the House Ways and Means Committee—where she’s championed policies like the expanded Child Tax Credit that helped cut childhood poverty in 2021—led House Democrats’ campaign arm in 2024. Last November, the party outperformed expectations despite a tough national environment.
Democrats gained two seats overall, expanded the diversity of the caucus, and reduced the GOP majority to its slimmest margin in nearly a century. They held onto almost all of their vulnerable incumbents, flipped 10 GOP-held seats—including four in New York and three in California—and denied Republicans the sweeping governing mandate they claimed voters had entrusted them with.
The performance prompted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to reappoint DelBene as DCCC chair for 2026, giving her the chance to finish the job of winning back the majority.
During a recent caucus meeting at DCCC headquarters, she presented research showing that the GOP’s sweeping reconciliation bill—a “megabill” to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, increase defense and border spending, and enact historic cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP—is backfiring politically. Voters are increasingly turning against it as they learn more.
Independent analysis shows the legislation would strip health coverage from 16 million Americans, slash food assistance programs like free school lunch, and overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy. Internal and public polling alike suggest the bill is politically toxic: Just 31 percent of voters believe it would help their family, while majorities say it rewards the rich and hurts working families.
DelBene also pointed to growing protest activity—outside district offices, at town halls, and in cities across the country—especially over Medicaid and nutrition cuts and the Trump administration’s mass deportation operations.
She argued that the bill’s unpopularity has pushed vulnerable Republicans into defending it with lies.
“They can lie all they want, but there’s no denying the objective harm it will cause,” she said. “With this vote, vulnerable House Republicans have already sealed their political fate.”
The president’s party usually loses seats in the midterms. And just as Republicans were punished in 2018 for trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Democrats believe the GOP megabill—cutting Medicaid and SNAP to pay for tax cuts—sits on similarly unpopular terrain. The expectation is that Trump’s polarizing agenda will prove just as potent an organizing tool as it was in his first term.
If DelBene succeeds, it won’t just be by recruiting top-tier challengers. She’ll also need to help Democrats in competitive and Republican-leaning districts—the DCCC’s frontline members—hang on.
“The number one thing we hear across the country is how important it is that people are fighting to lower costs for working families,” DelBene told me. “While Republicans are cutting taxes for billionaires, we have members of Congress in swing districts who are fighting for their communities every day and standing up for their communities every day….That’s why they won in tough districts—and why they’ll continue to win in tough districts.”
