A super PAC with close ties to House Democratic leadership is taking a more active role with House candidates ahead of next year’s elections, expanding its political operation into the realm traditionally occupied by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
While many Democratic strategists and elected officials welcome the new hands-on approach from House Majority PAC, some question whether it excessively overlaps with the DCCC, reducing the committee’s role and ceding some responsibility for candidate management to the outside group.
Mike Smith, the president of House Majority PAC and the DCCC, said the two organizations are working together closely. But after some narrow losses last cycle, Smith said the PAC leaders felt they needed to get more involved.
“There’s always a reason to say that someone else should be doing something, right? ‘The state party should be doing XYZ, the DNC should be doing this,’” Smith said. “And I think we got sick of that.”
In years past, House Majority PAC, like many super PACs focused on congressional races, devoted most of its time and resources to general election ads in the last few months of a campaign. Now, however, House Majority PAC is actively recruiting candidates, vetting their backgrounds and even potentially running ads on their behalf in competitive primaries, according to Smith.
That kind of direct interaction with candidates has traditionally been the provenance of the DCCC, the House Democrats’ political arm, which leads all of the party’s House races. House Majority PAC’s rise has, in the view of some Democrats, coincided with a step back in involvement in primaries from the committee.
“You can’t help but notice there is a push and pull there,” said one Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive party dynamics. “One entity that used to be involved more aggressively in shaping these races, in shaping these primaries, retracts and pulls back a little bit. And one leans in more.”
DCCC officials vigorously dispute that they plan to reduce their involvement in primaries or have done so in the recent past, citing more than $1.5 million the committee spent last year boosting a pair of candidates in primaries. The DCCC has also not ruled out becoming involved in primaries next year.
Smith said House Majority PAC would continue to work closely with the DCCC and did not suggest that his group’s expansion was trying to replace the committee in any way.
Unlike the DCCC, House Majority PAC can operate outside the official Democratic structure and rules. It can raise money in uncapped sums and is not strictly beholden to the members of the House Democratic Caucus.
Already, House Majority PAC leaders, including Smith, executive director Abby Curran Horrell and campaigns director Elizabeth Davis, have met with dozens of declared and potential candidates, offering strategic advice and soliciting input about the electorate’s mood. In some cases, the group has offered detailed presentations showing prospective contenders their path to victory, rooted in focus groups and polling of battleground districts.
“We’re gonna make investments, we’re gonna invest both in staff and candidates, in technology to make sure that we are best prepared to win back the House,” Smith said. “So if it doesn’t happen, it’s our fault … it’s on us.”
The belief among some strategists is that House Majority PAC’s ramped-up involvement this cycle represents a shift in how the Democratic party approaches House races, one in which the super PAC assumes more responsibilities.
“It hasn’t gone unnoticed in Democratic circles that HMP has rolled out several new initiatives this cycle that significantly increases their footprint, including jumping into lanes that traditionally have been the purview of the DCCC,” a second Democratic strategist said. “This raises interesting questions about where to house core tasks — candidate recruitment/support, research, press — in a changing campaign finance world.”
Strategists interviewed by NOTUS said even if they thought the DCCC’s role was shifting, it remained an indispensable hub for the party’s efforts to win races in 2026.
Top officials with the DCCC dispute that the committee has reduced its footprint at all or ceded ground to House Majority PAC, saying any expansion in mission from the super PAC is only additive to what the DCCC was already doing.
“The DCCC is proud to work with HMP as we engage in an all-hands-on-deck effort to retake the House in 2026,” said Julie Merz, the committee’s executive director. “As Leader Jeffries says, ‘more is more’ when it comes to communicating, recruiting and raising money so we have the authentic, independent-minded candidates and the best message to win back the majority.”
Democrats fell short of a House majority last year by three seats, making gains compared to 2022 but still turning in an ultimately disappointing performance. Democrats lost the majority because of 7,300 votes spread across three districts, a tiny spread in an election where more than 150 million votes were cast.
Those losses were the impetus for House Majority PAC’s new recruitment effort (which was first announced in December as a $50-million program) and expanded overall operation, Smith said.
In the opening months of this election cycle, House Majority PAC has hired recruiters to scour the country looking for candidates with nonpolitical backgrounds who might not otherwise think to run for office, Smith said. The group also expanded its research operation to start vetting Democratic candidates who launch campaigns to make sure the party doesn’t face any unwelcome surprises late in the general election.
House Majority PAC has started doing more research on Republican incumbents — including some in ruby-red districts the party ignored in previous elections — and running ads targeting some GOP lawmakers as a signal to prospective candidates that the group plans to be involved in the race. It has also started polling in districts, in part to encourage Democrats to get into the race and in part to start figuring out which candidates would be the strongest in a general election.
Smith said House Majority PAC’s senior leadership has also met with dozens of potential and declared candidates to get a better sense of why they’re running, while swapping tips on political strategy. Smith, a veteran of Nancy Pelosi’s political operation who has been the PAC’s president since 2023, said the group was motivated to play a larger role in candidate recruitment after watching some Democratic candidates significantly over-perform the top of the party’s ticket last year, including Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Pat Ryan of New York.
The super PAC now wants to find candidates who can match that type of performance in both marquee swing districts and also seats generally considered safe Republican territory, in hopes that a pro-Democratic electoral wave next year could turn once-uncompetitive races into top battlegrounds.
House Majority PAC and the DCCC have so far met with Matt Maasdam, who announced last week he would run for a House seat in Michigan, and Janelle Stelson, who is considering another run in Pennsylvania, according to an official with the PAC.
Whether House Majority PAC, which spent more than $250 million in the last election cycle, starts directly intervening in primaries to help their preferred candidates remains to be seen. That sort of intervention is always controversial, and prior efforts to do so haven’t always worked out well for the group. In 2022, the decision to back a House candidate in Oregon drew major backlash, and the PAC’s preferred candidate ultimately lost in the primary.
Asked directly if the group would run TV ads in Democratic House primaries, Smith declined to rule out doing so.
“I think there is real value to competitive primaries to see who can rise to the top, who can raise the resources, who has a compelling story, who can actually relate to voters in an authentic way,” Smith said. “But we’re not taking anything off the table in terms of whatever we need to do to make sure that we win back to the House.”
Super PACs are legally barred from coordinating with candidates and party committees over how to spend money during a race, one of the primary reasons outside groups usually have only minimum interaction with candidates themselves. But laws do not prohibit the organizations from communicating more generally with official party committees or candidates.
Some Democratic strategists also disputed that there was conflict between the super PAC and the political committee, saying they thought both sides welcomed the infusion of resources into House Majority PAC as the party tries to gain every possible advantage in a competitive slate of House races.
“I think HMP is definitely expanding from what they’ve done in the past, but I think it’s more of a complementary thing,” said Tim Persico, a former DCCC executive director.
Former Rep. Susan Wild lost her battleground seat in 2024 by single digits and blamed messaging from the Democratic apparatus in part for why Republicans outperformed in her state and district.
“It drove me nuts that so much of the Democratic messaging just focused on abortion, abortion, choice, that kind of thing and not nearly enough on the kitchen-table issues,” she said. “When we get [independent-expenditure ads] in races, at least on the Democratic side, those are not coordinated, and so we don’t really know what they’re going to be talking about. HMP does a lot of” independent-expenditure ads.
Asked about whether the PAC was taking over some responsibilities from the DCCC, Smith said his group and the committee had a “strong partnership” and were each trying to play to their strengths.
The two entities are “trying to leverage the unique skill sets of both organizations in terms of staff capacity, focuses, proximity to the caucus, all those different things,” Smith said. “So we work hand in hand with the DCCC. Because we’re little bit more removed, we’re trying to help amplify and make investments in places that maybe have been underfunded in the past.”
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Alex Roarty is a reporter at NOTUS. Daniella Diaz contributed to this story.