Democrats continue to fight in public and in private over what the future of the party will look like, but ultimately, it’s candidate recruitment — the kinds of people party leaders try to lure into running for office — that will tell us a lot about what Democrats think needs to change after last month’s election.
NOTUS’ Alex Roarty and I took a look at the earliest candidate recruitment steps through the lens of the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, a newly reconstituted party organization that is launching its first recruitment drive with the express purpose of building out a bench that can eventually win higher offices (ones perhaps more powerful than Lt. Govs., like senator or governor. No offense to the Lt. Gov NOTUS fans out there).
The word you hear most when asking Democrats about candidate recruitment right now is “authentic,” which seems to be code for “not afraid to anger college grad liberals by publicly breaking with orthodoxy on social issues.” Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, the current vice chair of the group, thinks he has an answer to the question “What kind of Democrat can win?” And yes, he used the word authentic.
“We need more candidates for office who have authentic, lived experience. Quite frankly, we need less lawyers running for office, less millionaires,” he told us. It’s people with working-class backgrounds, he suggested — economic lives similar to the ones voters are living.
“Personally, I think that identity politics needs to go the way of the dodo,” Sen.-elect Elissa Slotkin told reporters recently.
This is not an especially easy needle to thread, however. Can candidates really go on Joe Rogan but also be the voice of the party’s socially liberal college-educated voter bloc?
A simple answer to that question has not emerged. When Alex asked Sen. Chuck Schumer if he needed candidates who were ready to jump on a plane to spend three hours in Austin chopping it up with Rogan, he said, “We have to reach out to everybody.” Simple stuff, really.
—Evan McMorris-Santoro | Read the story with Alex Roarty here.
View From the (Small) Winner’s Circle
North Carolina Lt. Gov.-elect Rachel Hunt was one of only two Democrats last month to flip a statewide red seat to blue (in her case, with the good fortune to be running as a replacement for the GOP’s disastrous Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson). And yes, she says she won by being authentic.
“There are going to be commercials and they are going to lie. There’s nothing we can do about that,” Hunt told NOTUS. “What we can do is show up, so people know what kind of candidate this person is, and then they can tell people, ‘I’ve actually met her, and she’s not a crazy liberal communist.’”
Hunt said she plans to spend a lot of time in her new role out on the road, attempting to reconnect with some of the voters Democrats have lost.
—Evan McMorris-Santoro
Make Wray for Kash
The big news of the weekend (and likely into this week) was Donald Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Kash Patel to lead the FBI and replace current head Christopher Wray, who still has three years left in his term.
“He’ll either resign or President Trump will fire him,” Sen. Ted Cruz said of Wray on “Face the Nation” yesterday. “It’s no secret to anybody, including Chris Wray, that he’s not going to continue to serve as the head of the FBI under Donald Trump.” (Wray, of course, was nominated by Trump after he fired James Comey.)
Patel, a top Trump loyalist, has vowed retaliation against Trump’s political enemies, pledged to investigate journalists and has long railed against the “deep state.” While several Republicans rallied around Patel’s nomination this weekend, it’s TBD if he can get the votes in the Senate.
—Kate Nocera
Hunter Gets a Pardon
After repeatedly pledging he would not, Biden issued a pardon to his son Hunter last night, NOTUS’ Violet Jira reports.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” Biden said.
Hunter was scheduled to be sentenced later this month.
Front Page
- An Immigration Crackdown Could Make It Harder to Contain the Bird Flu Outbreak: Threats of mass deportation might further discourage farmworkers from seeking testing and care for the current bird flu outbreak.
- Where Trump’s Band of Health Nominees Converge and Split With RFK Jr.: The president-elect’s health nominees don’t always see eye to eye.
- Trump and Linda McMahon Are Poised to Reshape Higher Education: Schools are bracing for changes Republicans eagerly want.
The Belief Matrix Inside Trump’s Planned HHS
The big news in public health governance for 2025 is the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head HHS. But NOTUS’ Margaret Manto went deeper, examining the potential impacts of the slew of public health nominees Trump is sending for congressional approval.
Their views sometimes differ from RFK Jr.’s in nuanced but potentially consequential ways, Margaret reports.
Take FDA commissioner nominee Marty Makary, for example: “While Kennedy has claimed that radiation generated by cell phones and wireless communication networks can cause cancer, Makary posted on X in 2011 that ‘the association between cell phones/cancer is too weak to stop using.’”
Not Us
We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by … not us.
- Reporters Brace for the Frenzy of a Second Trump White House by Natalie Korach at Vanity Fair
- Yes, That Viral LinkedIn Post You Read Was Probably AI-Generated by Kate Knibbs at Wired
- Mar-a-Lago becomes a magnet for foreign leaders, haunting Biden’s final acts by Karen DeYoung at The Washington Post
Week Ahead
- The Senate is back tonight and the House is back tomorrow, kicking off the end-of-the-year sprint. Government funding questions abound, as do questions for senators about Trump’s nominees.
- Senate Democrats are holding their leadership elections on Wednesday.
- The final hearing of the House’s Task Force on Trump’s assassination attempt is on Thursday, and the group is expected to deliver a report on Dec. 13.
- The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a landmark case on transgender health care for minors.
Meet Us
Welcome to “Meet Us” where we introduce you to a member of the NOTUS team. Up today is Em Luetkemeyer who is an AJI fellow and reporter covering Oklahoma.
- Hometown: Columbia, Missouri
- Past: University of Missouri School of Journalism and the Columbia Missourian newspaper.
- Why journalism: I love to write and work with data, and I want to hold powerful people accountable.
- AJI highlight so far: I enjoyed watching one of our editors pretend to be a congressman who doesn’t want to talk to us. It was really informative, actually.
- Thing you can’t live without: My cat, Lucy.
- Best advice you’ve ever been given: “It depends.”
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