“The idea that some faceless hacks are calling themselves Democrats while sitting in a DC office throwing bombs at a pro-choice Democratic woman in support of a lawyer who built her career at a law firm for union-busters is precisely why Democrats lost over 1,000 elected offices over the last decade,” said Annie Weinberg, the electoral director at Democracy for America.
- and will a DCCC "Blue Wave," their way, lift all boats?
FURTHER: The Texas primary is March 6. Not only did DCCC interfere, it moved with short notice. We shall see a result next Tuesday. There is no justification for DCCC screwing Moser. She had an Our Revolution endorsement a week before DCCC took aim.]
............................................
First notice of the situation by Dev Crabgrass, Alternet, this link. Causing this websearch. A sampling of returned links, Guardian, Vox, Texas Monthly. WaPo. ABC. The Intercept.
The DCCC hit piece against Moser, here. The DCCC's "red-to-blue" roster, without any presently endorsed dog in the hunt, Texas Congressional District 7. Yet absent handicapping a choice, DCCC posted:
Laura Moser
Texas’s 7th (TX - 07)
Updated: February 22, 2018
Narrative
Democratic voters need to hear that Laura Moser is not going to change Washington. She is a Washington insider, who begrudgingly moved to Houston to run for Congress. In fact, she wrote in the Washingtonian magazine, “I’d rather have my teeth pulled out without anesthesia” than live in Texas. As of January 2018, she claimed Washington, DC to be her primary residence in order to get a tax break. And she has paid her husband’s Washington, DC political consulting firm over $50,000 from campaign contributions; meaning 1 of every 6 dollars raised has gone to her husband’s DC company.
[UPDATE: Vox sets out the full remark written by Moser. Compare it to what DCCC published, and go figure:
One of the core pieces of evidence against Moser appears to be a 2014 article in the Washingtonian about DC housing costs titled, “Yeah DC is Pricey — Get Over It Already!” that ran under the heading “Rant.”
In the article, Moser wrote, “On my pathetic writer’s salary, I could live large in Paris, Texas, where my grandparents’ plantation-style house recently sold for $129,000. Oh, but wait — my income would be a fraction of what it is here and I’d have very few opportunities to increase it. (Plus I’d sooner have my teeth pulled out without anesthesia, but that’s a story for another day.)“ (Vox obtained the original article. You can read it below for full context.)
The pdf "original article" link; end of UPDATE]
SO - Wtf is the DCCC up to? Presumably they are up to something, aside from pure arbitrariness. (Angie Craig should renounce their premature [pre-caucusing] endorsement per The Intercept's detailed reporting. Ditto, Dean Phillips. DCCC is unstable.)
At any rate, NY Times published at length yesterday about the situation. An extended excerpt:
Let me try to explain, since the D.C.C.C. did not respond to phone calls or emails. On the ground, this race looked tough from the beginning, though not for obvious reasons. Three of the strongest candidates — Alex Triantaphyllis, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher and Laura Moser — all went to the same fancy private school, which meant that many well-heeled Houstonians had to go through the social agony of choosing one over the other two or giving to all three.
To make matters worse, the ideological differences among these three — and the other four candidates — are microscopic. And what’s more, they are all white. As time went on, Mr. Triantaphyllis, a Harvard Law School graduate and a consultant who left a big firm to work for a popular nonprofit, won the hearts and minds of the downtown powers — the liberal ones, that is — while Ms. Fletcher, a corporate litigator and Planned Parenthood bigwig, got the most backing from Hillary Clinton loyalists. She was thought (by them) to have the best chance of appealing to Republican women who had had enough of President Trump.
Ms. Moser, whose husband was the videographer for President Barack Obama, skewed a little farther left. Her work history was spottier: She has been a stay-at-home mom and a freelance writer. After Mr. Trump’s victory, she created Daily Action, a service that allowed the grief-stricken to barrage their public servants in Washington with angry texts. All three candidates were native Houstonians, though Ms. Moser came home from Washington to run.
By the end of the third quarter of 2017, Mr. Triantaphyllis had raised the most money — more than Mr. Culberson. Ms. Fletcher came in second and Ms. Moser third. At the same time, Ms. Moser, who somewhat resembles a taller and younger Carol Burnett, was more colorful in person and better at grass-roots organizing than her competitors. If her politics were a little squishy, she was more entertaining — supporters could take a spin class with #MeToo’s Alyssa Milano!
It wasn’t hard to figure out how threatening that could be, especially to the old-line Clinton Democrats who lost to Mr. Obama in 2008 and remembered the betrayal of Bernie Sanders in 2016. Those people undoubtedly influenced the political action committee Emily’s List to endorse Ms. Fletcher — and should have listened to the grumbling among female voters here, who thought the organization should not have chosen between two female abortion-rights supporters.
Then came the D.C.C.C., with its high-stakes gamble of attacking Ms. Moser on its website. Maybe it believed, along with The Houston Chronicle, that Ms. Moser was too liberal to beat Mr. Culberson. (The paper endorsed Ms. Fletcher and another Democratic candidate, an oncologist.) Maybe the committee thought its gripes were legitimate — it complained that Ms. Moser was a “Washington insider” who had used her husband’s firm as her political consultants. But the first wasn’t true, and the second showed only that her husband worked cheap. Ms. Moser stated publicly she wouldn’t want to live in Paris, Tex.? Wow. Most urban Texans wouldn’t either.
Besides, there is nothing Texans hate more than East Coast political operatives meddling in their business. Especially those who don’t know anything about Texas.
Virtually overnight, the story of interference from real Washington insiders went viral, and Ms. Moser became a glorious martyr, quoting Michelle Obama (“When they go low …”). Her profile is skyrocketing, her fund-raising is booming. And no doubt John Culberson is ecstatic about the Democrats being in disarray.
Note to the D.C.C.C.: Next time you think about sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, try believing in the democratic process instead.
[italics added] Other outlets could be quoted, but readers already have links. Yet, some are worth attention.
A criticism against the DCCC annointed roster, where are blacks?
A Texas outlet reporting:
The DCCC posting, which features the kind of research that is often reserved for Republicans, notes that Moser only recently moved back to her hometown of Houston and that much of her campaign fundraising money has gone to her husband's political consulting firm. It also calls her a "Washington insider."
But DCCC spokeswoman Meredith Kelly went even further in a statement to The Texas Tribune.
"Voters in Houston have organized for over a year to hold Rep. Culberson accountable and win this Clinton district," Kelly said.
Then, referring to a 2014 Washingtonian magazine piece in which Moser wrote that she would rather have a tooth pulled without anesthesia than move to Paris, Texas, Kelly added: "Unfortunately, Laura Moser’s outright disgust for life in Texas disqualifies her as a general election candidate, and would rob voters of their opportunity to flip Texas’ 7th in November.”
Later Thursday evening, Moser obliquely responded to the allegations on Twitter, quoting former First Lady Michelle Obama: "When they go low, we go high."
Later in the evening, she expanded her comments in a statement.
"We're used to tough talk here in Texas, but it's disappointing to hear it from Washington operatives trying to tell Texans what to do. These kind of tactics are why people hate politics," she said. "The days where party bosses picked the candidates in their smoke filled rooms are over. DC needs to let Houston vote."
[...] Until this point, the DCCC so far this cycle has gone to great lengths to avoid the impression it was taking sides in primaries across the country. A Democratic source did point out to the Tribune that the campaign committee made a similar effort in a 2014 California House race.
A former Democratic operative emailed the Tribune suggesting that the posting was intended to signal to allied groups where and how to make paid attacks.
Texas' 7th Congressional District is new offensive territory for Democrats and an ancestral GOP stronghold. But Hillary Clinton carried the district in 2016, and a flood of Democrats soon raced to run for the seat.
Moser's bid has been picking up momentum practically daily. Earlier on Thursday, her campaign announced it had raised nearly $150,000 in the first 45 days of the year. And in recent months she has amassed a massive online following for a first-time Congressional candidate. She is also a favorite interview subject of national publications and women's magazines and has a passionate following among many people who supported U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in 2016.
[italics added]. Bernie hate? Is that the DCCC basis? They seem to have circled the wagons as to motive.
As to that item saying, "Until this point, the DCCC so far this cycle has gone to great lengths to avoid the impression it was taking sides . . ." ask Jeff Erdmann, MN CD2, linking here (already a posting subject on Dev Crabgrass). That anti-Erdmann decision apparently was money-talks-all-else-walks based, not Bernie hate since Erdmann's campaign seems to not be allied that way.
Moser initiated Daily Action, but it is unclear how that might be any cause for DCCC scorn. Possibly entrenched retributive DC cages got rattled by an action alert. Who knows?
In closing, with quoting, The Intercept is a best source for digging up detail illuminating, possibly, motivations or biases, as with its coverage of Erdmann by Ryan Grim, who also on Feb. 22 wrote:
EMILY’s List is dumping big money into an upcoming Democratic primary in Texas’s 7th Congressional District, pitting the women’s group against a pro-choice woman who was, in the months after the election of Donald Trump, a face of the resistance.
Laura Moser, as creator of the popular text-messaging program Daily Action, gave hundreds of thousands of despondent progressives a single political action to take each day. Her project was emblematic of the new energy forming around the movement against Trump, led primarily by women and often by moms. (Moser is both.)
It was those types of activists EMILY’s List spent 2017 encouraging to make first-time bids for office. But that doesn’t mean EMILY’s List will get behind them. Also running is Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a corporate lawyer who is backed by Houston mega-donor Sherry Merfish. EMILY’s List endorsed her in November.
The 7th District includes parts of Houston and its wealthy western suburbs, and Merfish and her husband, Gerald Merfish, are among the city’s leading philanthropists. Gerald Merfish owns and runs a steel pipe company in the oil-rich region and Sherry Merfish, who worked for decades for EMILY’s List, is a major donor to the Democratic Party and to EMILY’s List.
Actor Alyssa Milano, another face of the Trump resistance, is backing Moser, and plans to drive voters to the polls as a campaign volunteer. “I like EMILY’s List a lot but I feel like they missed the boat on this one,” Milano told The Intercept. “Laura is a proud progressive Democrat and her values are the values of the majority of the country, which is evident by the success of her grassroots campaign and her broad base of support.”
Read the rest. A day later, Feb. 23, Grim wrote of the DCCC's trashing Moser:
“Voters in Houston have organized for over a year to hold Rep. [John] Culberson accountable and win this Clinton district,” DCCC Communications Director Meredith Kelly told the Texas Tribune. “Unfortunately, Laura Moser’s outright disgust for life in Texas disqualifies her as a general election candidate, and would rob voters of their opportunity to flip Texas’ 7th in November.”
The comment followed the release of an opposition dossier the party compiled on Moser. To date, the DCCC has made only two such memos public, one on Moser, and the other on arch-conservative Rick Saccone, a Republican running in an upcoming special election in Pennsylvania.
“Democratic voters need to hear that Laura Moser is not going to change Washington. She is a Washington insider, who begrudgingly moved to Houston to run for Congress,” warned the DCCC in its memo.
The dropping of the opposition research on Moser came after The Intercept published an article Thursday morning highlighting a rift in the race, with the pro-choice women’s group EMILY’s List backing Lizzie Pannill Fletcher against Moser. The DCCC and EMILY’s List often work hand in glove. [...]
Fletcher, a corporate lawyer with ties to a mega-donor steel magnate, worked for a firm that routinely represents employers. The firm recently defeated local janitorial workers in a labor law case by studying social media feeds to ensure the jury had a healthy number of Trump supporters, a tactic it later boasted about publicly. Fletcher said she didn’t work directly on the case. But the local AFL-CIO made a rare non-endorsement in the race, urging residents to vote for any candidate other than Fletcher, and pledging to do what it can to defeat her.
The suggestion that Moser, a freelance writer, has “outright disgust for life in Texas” takes a snippet of Moser’s writing from 2014 in Washingtonian magazine out of context. In an article about her preference for city over rural life, she wrote that she would “sooner have my teeth pulled out without anesthesia” than move to the town where her grandparents had recently sold their house: Paris, Texas. National Democrats may not be familiar with Texas — indeed, the DCCC failed to field a single candidate in a Dallas district that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 — but in fact Paris, Texas, and Houston, Texas, where Moser is running, are hundreds of miles apart and very different places. Houston is a city.
But the more serious charge the party leveled at Moser was to imply corruption and self-dealing. “In 2017, Moser paid over $50,000 in campaign money to her husband’s D.C. consulting firm. More than 1 of every 6 dollars spent by her campaign went straight into her husband’s D.C. company’s bank account,” wrote the DCCC.
Most of that money was for ad buys, which meant that it may have gone into the bank account, but it didn’t stay there long and was instead destined for TV station or digital coffers. But setting that aside, it has long been known that Moser is married to Arun Chaudhary, a partner at Revolution Messaging, a consulting firm that is most well-known for its work on the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. As The Intercept noted, Daily Action and Revolution had a financial relationship, as well, according to public disclosures.
That the DCCC would attack a Democrat for funneling money to a campaign consultant is itself rich, given how the organization habitually steers candidates to its own consultants. Its nickname in Washington, after all, is “the consultant factory,” as so many of its operatives go on to be campaign consultants working on the party dole. James Thompson, a congressional candidate in Kansas who nearly won a 2017 special election for the seat vacated by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, told The Intercept last month that the DCCC told him flat-out “to spend a certain amount of money on consultants, and it’s their list of consultants you have to choose from.”
This was made explicit in a memo sent to candidates seeking DCCC support last December. In exchange for that support, according to the memo, candidates must “hire professional staff and consultants who can help execute a winning campaign,” and “the DCCC will provide staff resumes and a comprehensive list of consultants as well as helpful resources to the campaign including staff trainings.” Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, said after the 2016 elections that the DCCC “need[s] to go on a consultant detox.”
The DCCC has instead done the opposite. Relationships like Moser’s and her husband’s are easy to find in Washington. A cursory look at the leadership of the DCCC, in fact, turned up a few.
The DCCC’s independent expenditure director, for instance, is Jessica Mackler, the spouse of BluePrint Interactive partner Geoff Mackler. Federal Election Commission disclosures show that Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, Moser’s opponent, retained BluePrint Interactive to help the campaign on its digital consulting work, paying the firm $7,500 in September. The firm also lists EMILY’s List, which is supporting Fletcher’s campaign, as a client.
Consultants often take a percentage of all media placement of election ads in addition to a consulting fee. That enabled consulting firm Mothership Strategies, founded by DCCC veterans, to earn $3.9 million from the failed special election campaign for Jon Ossoff in Georgia last year. Around $2.5 million of that Ossoff haul came from media buys. Mothership veterans also birthed End Citizens United, which has become something of a stalking horse for DCCC-backed candidates this cycle.
The DCCC’s new executive director, Daniel Sena, is married to Elizabeth Christie Sena. After Daniel was named executive director, Elizabeth was made a partner at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a prominent DCCC consulting firm. In the 2016 campaign cycle, the DCCC paid GQR $395,000 over two years. With Elizabeth Sena not just a partner at the firm but literally handling the DCCC account, according to her biography on the site, the firm has already pulled in $525,523 so far this campaign cycle.
This insight might relate to an outright crudely awful Angie Craig 2016 sound-bite-and-video-bite 30 sec promo thing noted earlier in Dev Crabgrass, where it seemed aimed at the Schumer hypothesis that not advertising appeals to the hearts and minds or progressives and "blue collar" voters could lose a blue collar suburban voter but will get two-for-one "moderate" independents and Republicans in the 'burbs to vote for corporate seeming Dems. See, this post, at the term "this insipid 2016 sound bite monstrosity," which linked to this thing on YouTube guessed then to have been the work of a DCCC favored flak shop. View it. It sucks. It was a Craig mistake, and Jason Lewis went to Washington.
(An aside - Ossoff will not run in 2018 for the Georgia seat for which The Intercept noted millions of dollars routed to DCCC allied consultants during the special election campaign where he lost.)
Final note, since first inkling of the DCCC hit-piece against Moser was from Alternet, the link to follow there is:
https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/democratic-establishment-attacks-progressive-democratic-house-candidate-laura-moser
Closing with that, may the circle be unbroken.
But wait- there's this:
https://moserforcongress.com/
That is the Moser campaign website link, for sending a check or Acting Blue.
After the crass load of shit the DCCC dumped on Moser I will be mailing her my check for a suitable multiple of $27 to help her fight stupidity in all its forms.
Feel the Bern. And with that closing note, and with The Intercept having helped explcated DCCC and Emily's List motivations in trashing Moser; this websearch, and irony, here, here, and here. Beltway strangleholds against grassroot progressivism need to be undressed to the public to show the ugliness behind the fashionable apparel. Feel the Bern.