Democrats want to be the party that rejects corporate spending and big money influence on politics. They also want to compete with billionaires like Elon Musk, who are pumping money into Republican campaigns.
As the party gears up to elect new leadership, its ranks are grappling with how to strike that balance — with some Democratic National Committee members openly calling for Democrats to seek big money donors.
“It makes no sense to tie one hand behind our back and put ourselves at a disadvantage if our opponents on the other side of the aisle have more resources,” Rep. Marilyn Strickland told NOTUS. “The reality of how you win elections in the U.S. right now is that you have to have money to get your message out. We need to be open to any organization or individual who wants to donate to our cause.”
DNC National Finance Chair Chris Korge, who is running for reelection unopposed, has echoed the call, saying it would be “absolutely foolish” not to get as much money as possible from wealthy people.
“They’re giving us tons of money, and they know what we’re all about,” Korge said in the DNC’s first virtual candidate forum on Saturday. “We should just say thank you and ask how many friends they have that can give us money too.”
Two of the top candidates in the crowded race for DNC chair — Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler and Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin — have struck a different tone.
“We don’t have the power to make laws to ban outside big money right now, but we have the power to build up our strength to be able to fight back,” Wikler said in a candidate forum hosted by progressive organization Our Revolution this week. “We do this by choosing the fights we fight not based on who’s making donations, but based on delivering change in the lives of working people. … We need to not care if that means that donors walk away from the party.”
Martin, in the same forum, made a commitment that the DNC would not take money from “people, corporations or others that are union-busting and preying on vulnerable communities” under his leadership.
He’d also like to see small-dollar programs established well enough to the point where Democrats wouldn’t need to rely on high-net-worth donors.
“We need to stand side by side with those who want to end Citizens United, get corporate money out of politics, overhaul our campaign finance system and return the power to grassroots donors,” Martin said. “We should only be taking money from people who share our values and are committed to lifting up the voices of our party.”
In 2024, eight of the top 10 individual donors to political campaigns supported Republicans, including billionaires like Musk and Timothy Mellon. That level of financial backing cannot be sustainably matched by small donations alone, several DNC members said. Though many noted that the party will have to make sure these donors don’t have outsize influence.
“Many people on the Democratic side are not maximizing the amount that they’re able to give, whether that’s in a primary or during the general election season,” Dr. Quintessa Hathaway, a candidate for DNC chair, told NOTUS. “Rebuilding the party is going to take a substantial amount of financial capital. The primary concern will have to be doing extensive background research on who donors are and what they believe in.”
“We need both, but it needs to be clearly stated moving forward that donations do not come with strings,” said Jennifer Marshall, a DNC member from North Carolina. “We’re not the Republican Party. It’s brutal, but we need to be honest with [donors].”
Those who believe the party must do more to pull in big-dollar donors have former Maryland governor and DNC chair candidate Martin O’Malley on their side.
“As the only experienced national fundraiser in this race, I know the tough reality is campaigns are extremely expensive today,” he said in a statement to NOTUS. “When I’m DNC chair, we aren’t going to fight Elon Musk and the billionaire boys club with our hands tied behind our backs, and we aren’t going to compromise our values to fund our campaigns either.”
Reps. Robert Garcia and Joyce Beatty, both voting members, agreed, telling NOTUS that the party should not be weighing an either or when it comes to wealthy donors.
“We’re a big tent and in a party like ours, it shouldn’t be to any one side on this,” said Beatty, who launched a bid for DNC vice chair of civic engagement and voter participation.
Under that big tent, a group of progressive organizations, including the Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats and Gen-Z for Change, published an open letter on Tuesday to DNC leadership candidates asking them to commit to a pledge to revive former President Barack Obama’s 2008 ban on contributions from corporate lobbyists and PACs to the DNC.
Washington Democratic Party Chair Shasti Conrad, who is running for DNC vice chair, said she supports that initiative.
“I worked on the Bernie Sanders campaigns in 2016 and 2020, and I saw how a grassroots movement can fund a presidential campaign,” Conrad told NOTUS. “When we’re trying to hold Republicans accountable for all of the oligarchs running their party, we have to have our hands clean.”
“It makes it very difficult for us to be able to do that if we’re doing the same thing,” Conrad added.
The impact of super PACs and corporations on politics has also been detrimental to grassroots movements within the party itself, some Democrats say. Nadia Ahmad, a Muslim delegate of Florida who peacefully protested during President Joe Biden’s DNC speech in August, pointed to the “uncommitted” movement. The movement received contributions from the Movement Voter Project, a Democratic-aligned PAC, which some “uncommitted” volunteers reportedly believed was why the movement didn’t endorse a third-party candidate.
“Democrats have to realize that they need to listen to people instead of just kind of having them be controlled,” Ahmad told NOTUS. “These big donors and large PAC groups really concentrate the resources and the decision-making. They just create a number of blind spots that will continue to be problematic down the line.”
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Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.