DCCC endorsements – As the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee rolls out endorsements under its “2026 Red to Blue” program—including former Republican Marlene Galán-Woods in Arizona—its strategy is hitting headwinds in primaries and drawing sharp backlash from the party’s
Early in May, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that it was backing Marlene Galán-Woods for Congress in Arizona’s First Congressional District—betting she had the best shot to unseat Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz.
The headline endorsement came with a jolt. Galán-Woods had been a Republican until 2018. She supported failed political projects linked to former Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah. The DCCC’s explanation for stepping into Arizona’s primary with that kind of backing was direct: it was a calculated move designed to give Democrats the best possible chance to win in November.
Election results are making that pitch harder to swallow than the DCCC’s confidence suggested. In the contest where the DCCC most clearly tested its theory—California’s 22nd District—the party endorsed state legislator Jasmeet Baines. a deeply conservative and business-aligned Democrat. in a jungle primary where candidates from all parties compete and the top two vote getters advance to the general election. Yet Baines was underperforming her main opponent. Visalia school board trustee Randy Villegas. in fundraising—and in the race itself. at the time of writing. she was trailing.
The DCCC’s “2026 Red to Blue” program is part of a broader effort to take a more active role in Democratic primaries. The committee has a longstanding policy of supporting incumbents, including during primaries. But the endorsements rolling out now are landing in races where Democrats are trying to face Republican incumbents—and they’re also signaling a preference for a certain kind of Democrat: more conservative than both the progressive wing of the party and the broader mainstream.
Galán-Woods isn’t the only example. The DCCC endorsed Bob Harvie. vice chair of the Bucks County Board of Commissioners. in the open primary in Pennsylvania’s First District. It endorsed state Sen. Joe Baldacci in Maine’s Second District, also an open primary. Baldacci is running to the right of former state auditor Matt Dunlap and Jordan Wood. the former executive director of democracyFIRST. a bipartisan pro-democracy political organization.
In critics’ telling, that pattern isn’t accidental. Progressive figures inside the party argue that these endorsements reflect an apparatus that wants candidates more conservative than what many Democrats see as the base. The DCCC’s choices, they say, don’t just target electability—they also shape party identity.
That tension is showing up as Democrats test the difference between endorsement and inevitability. In terms of primary success, some races are going the way the DCCC would want. Harvie won handily in his primary. But Baines’s California primary outcome looks more complicated. with her trailing Villegas at the time of writing and the race too close to call.
Maine’s June 9 primary was also described as too close to call, based on polling ahead of the vote. In Arizona’s First District. a single poll from February suggested Galán-Woods started from behind her opponent. Amish Shah. though the piece emphasizes that one poll from months earlier isn’t likely to be predictive of the July 21 primary.
The DCCC itself points to a careful process. A person familiar with how the DCCC makes determinations on who to endorse said the committee’s thinking behind Galán-Woods was that she was the candidate and campaign best positioned to flip the Republican-held district—helping the party win back the Majority so it could return to “fighting for working people.” The same person said that when the DCCC engages in a primary. it does so only after a full assessment that includes local. state and national endorsements. momentum on the ground. fundraising and polling. The person also said the committee works closely with local stakeholders. community leaders. and activists to build as broad a coalition as possible.
Yet in practice, the committee’s track record is being measured against its own past performance. Compared with the DCCC’s 2018 Red to Blue primary endorsements. the current results are described as a sign that the endorsement may be less of a near-sure ticket to the general election than in past cycles. In 2018, the DCCC endorsed 30 non-incumbent primary challengers, and 28 won.
Supporters inside the party have celebrated that earlier success. even as some of those endorsed candidates experienced mixed outcomes in the general election. Out of 88 candidates endorsed by the DCCC as part of the Red to Blue program ahead of the general election—including those endorsees that advanced from their primaries—43% won. a rate described as about a 48% success rate. For primary races specifically, 18 of the 30 candidates who received DCCC endorsements in their primary won.
The Galán-Woods endorsement, in particular, has become a lightning rod inside the party because it asks Democrats to square a mainstream pitch about values with a history that critics say mirrors the rightward turn the party has spent years trying to defeat.
During her time as a Republican, Galán-Woods donated $1,000 in 2016 to John McCain’s campaign. In 2009, she donated $140 to former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s gubernatorial campaign. Her husband became the co-chair of Brewer’s campaign in 2010.
Brewer signed SB 1070, a state-level immigration enforcement bill, notorious for its section nicknamed the “show me your papers” provision. Critics said the law empowered police to arrest people they suspect are undocumented immigrants. They also said it undercut a presumption of innocence fundamental to U.S. law. with critics arguing skin color and race often became determining factors when people were asked to prove their citizenship. even as the law included vague provisions prohibiting racial profiling.
Romney, R-Utah, adopted SB 1070 as a model for his immigration platform in his 2012 presidential campaign. The aim described in the source is “attrition through enforcement. ” including making the lives of immigrants miserable enough that they would give up on immigration proceedings and leave the country.
Galán-Woods supported Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008. though she said in an interview with The Arizona Republic that she now regrets supporting Romney. The piece also says she insists her values haven’t changed since then. At a recent debate, Galán-Woods said, “I have always been pro-choice, pro-democracy, pro-climate. My values have never changed. What changed was the Republican Party.”.
A separate dispute has further complicated the Arizona race. The Galán-Woods campaign highlighted controversial votes Shah took in the state legislature and said she may not be the only former Republican in the Democratic primary. The Arizona Agenda reported that Shah may have voted for Trump in the 2016 Republican primary. citing Democratic sources who claimed Shah may have voted in that primary in what they described as “crossover voting”—voters in one party voting for the candidate they believe is weaker in the other party’s primary.
Shah rejected the claim. He called it “absolute misinformation” and said on journalist Brahm Resnik’s 12News show, “I voted for Hillary Clinton, I voted for Joe Biden, I voted for Kamala Harris.” Shah’s campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Galán-Woods’ campaign manager. Jonathan Miller. said in response to a request for comment that “no candidate in this race has built the local support Marlene Galán-Woods has.” Miller said: “Twelve labor unions representing Arizona’s grocery workers. teachers. and first responders. statewide officeholders from the Attorney General to the Secretary of State. dozens of local elected officials. and over 1. 700 in-district donors have all united behind Marlene because they know she is the strongest Democrat to defeat whoever emerges from the MAGA Republican primary and deliver for working families.”.
Beyond the day-to-day fights in individual primaries. the endorsements are also described as a way for party leadership to build a pipeline for future national power. The DCCC endorsement can be an early signal that the party might later consider a politician for higher office or a leadership position.
Some major names illustrate how that can work—and how it can fail. Govs. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., and Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., received DCCC endorsements in 2018. The party also endorsed Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., and Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., who is described as the party’s nominee for Senate in New Hampshire this year. But the piece points out that many of the DCCC’s picks have flopped in bids for higher office. It cites former Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., who lost both a Senate and gubernatorial bid in California; former Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who lost one of the most expensive Senate campaigns ever in Texas in 2024; and former Rep. Debbie Murcasel-Powell, who lost a bid for Senate in Florida in 2024.
The effort isn’t confined to House primaries. On the Senate side, the piece says leadership-backed candidates like state Rep. Josh Turek, D-Iowa, received support from establishment-aligned groups and eventually won the primary. Turek is described as not being a conservative in the same way Galán-Woods was; he ran as the perceived moderate against a progressive opponent. state Sen. Zach Wahls.
But there are counterexamples. The piece describes establishment-backed Senate recruits running in the rightmost lane in their primaries struggling to succeed. including in Maine. where Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign due to oysterman Graham Platner’s popularity there. It also cites Michigan, where Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive, is surging past his more moderate opponents.
Even groups that back competing candidates say endorsements don’t just reflect preferences—they reshape spending. Ravi Mangla. the national press secretary for the Working Families Party. said. “The DCCC endorsement can unlock outside spending for one candidate and chill it for another.” Mangla’s point is illustrated in California’s 22nd District. where pro-Israel groups like the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC spent some $500. 000 against Villegas. and where the Blue Dog Action PAC and the group New Democrat Majority also launched ads against Villegas. In Iowa, VoteVets spent $4.5 million to support Turek in the primary there.
The political argument around these endorsements has sharpened beyond purely tactical questions. The issue is described as a hot-button topic within the Democratic Party. especially after Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign prominently featured former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in 2024 messaging. Some insiders considered the Cheney appearances politically savvy; others questioned whether associating with the Cheneys was a winning move for a Democratic candidate.
Crobin Trent. a Democratic strategist and the executive director of A Fight Worth Having. argued that party leadership is more comfortable with a moderate Republican than with a Democrat who wants to change the system. Trent told the outlet that in his view. “The leadership of this party is far more comfortable with a moderate Republican than with a Democrat who wants to change the system. They think America would be in great shape if it weren’t for Trump. They’ve got this misguided idea that their problem is messaging, not personnel. It isn’t how Democrats brand themselves. It’s what they’re willing to do to turn this country around.”.
Trent compared the current maneuvering from the DCCC to former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s recruitment strategy in 2007 and to the role superdelegates played in the 2016 presidential primary. He said, “Over and over they choose moderate Republicans and corporate Democrats, even after losing again and again.”.
He went on: “They intervene to elect people whose ideas don’t match their own base and keep down the ideas voters actually want. ” Trent said. “This endorsement is exactly that. a former Republican in a primary. centrist Blue Dogs over the progressives and populists who represent the base. It’s the same leadership that drove us off a cliff. lost more than a thousand seats during the Obama years. and handed Trump and MAGA the House. the Senate. and the White House more than once. They couldn’t have been more wrong, and they keep doubling down. There’s no sign they can change, so what’s left is to replace them.”.
For now, the DCCC’s bet is still unfolding race by race. The promises made in endorsement statements and the logic of calculated primary strategy are colliding with the early reality of close contests. underperformance in fundraising. and a progressive wing that sees the committee’s choices as more than electoral math.
The committee may be aiming for a path back to majorities. But in the primaries where it’s pushing for more conservative voices—even those coming from the Republican side earlier on—the party’s next fight may be just as much about who Democrats choose as it is about what happens in November.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee DCCC 2026 Red to Blue Marlene Galán-Woods David Schweikert Amish Shah Jasmeet Baines Randy Villegas Bob Harvie Joe Baldacci Matt Dunlap democracyFIRST SB 1070 “show me your papers” Mitt Romney Jan Brewer SB 1070 critics Liz Cheney Kamala Harris Working Families Party Ravi Mangla VoteVets Josh Turek Zach Wahls Janet Mills Graham Platner Abdul El-Sayed