‘I question their competency’: Devin Nunes challenger rips DCCC – By David Siders (politico.com) / Sept 18 2018
Despite minting money online, Democrat Andrew Janz says party officials won’t return his calls.
FRESNO, Calif. — Andrew Janz emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s top online fundraisers this year, marshaling an army of small donors in his campaign to unseat Republican Rep. Devin Nunes.
But there’s one thing he says he can’t get: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to return his calls.
The 34-year-old prosecutor contends that the Democratic Party’s House campaign arm has cut him out of promised fundraising money and frozen him out in his bid to unseat Nunes, a top ally of President Donald Trump who has worked tirelessly to delegitimize the probe into Russian inteference in the 2016 presidential election.
In an interview with POLITICO, Janz and his campaign manager, Heather Greven, said the DCCC misled Janz about the support he could expect from the DCCC in the Central Valley-based district. And Janz said he has asked DCCC staff and members of Congress for a five-minute call with DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján, but “he won’t return my calls.”
“I can’t even get him on the phone, and I’m raising more money than any one of their targeted races here in California,” Janz said.
Following the June primary, he said, “A DCCC spokesperson basically told me to my face, ‘Janz, you’re on your own.’”
Rifts between candidates and party committees such as the DCCC are not uncommon. The committees have limited resources and must focus attention on the nation’s most competitive House contests. That often requires a form of political triage — making tough decisions about sidelining races that are deemed too far out of reach.
Yet it’s rare for those disputes to spill into public view. And Janz’s candidacy is unique — both for his fundraising prowess and the high-profile opponent he faces, a top target of Democrats’ vitriol nationwide.
Janz raked in more than $1 million in July alone through ActBlue, the online Democratic fundraising platform. That’s more than two of the party’s biggest online fundraisers — Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — collected on the platform during the same month.
Janz declined to name the DCCC spokesperson he said told him he was “on your own.” But Greven said DCCC staffers and congressional members assured the campaign last year that if Janz demonstrated an ability to raise money, the DCCC would be helpful.
“If our national party can’t get up and get excited about taking down Devin Nunes, the person that stands closest to Trump, I don’t know who they can get excited to take down,” said Greven. “I’m sure [the DCCC] thought this kid’s never going to raise any money, and this is going to go away.”
The DCCC’s lack of investment in Nunes’ conservative-leaning district was not unexpected. In an agricultural region where “Vote to Make California Great Again” signs are strapped to cotton trailers on the roadsides, Nunes never figured to face a stiff challenge. Trump carried Nunes’ district by nearly 10 percentage points in 2016, and even Democratic polling puts Janz behind.
“There is nothing in the primary that pointed to a sudden Democratic takeover … [of] one of the most challenging districts for Democrats in the state,” said Rob Pyers of the California Target Book, which handicaps races in the state.
Even with his built-in edge, Nunes is taking no chances. Capitalizing on his controversial role in the investigation of Russia meddling in the 2016 election, Nunes has raised more than $7 million this election cycle, with $6.1 million in cash on hand at the end of the last quarter.
With Nunes’ cash and structural advantages in the district, as well as Janz’s ability to raise his own money, Pyers said, “It would be a complete waste of DCCC resources to do much there.”
In an email, DCCC spokeswoman Amanda Sherman said “the DCCC trusts candidates to run campaigns that work best for their individual districts, which is exactly what Andrew Janz is doing.”
She said he “has built a strong, independent, Central Valley focused campaign, that will make this race competitive.”
A DCCC aide said the committee continues to monitor the situation and that a political staffer assigned to the race has been in the Central Valley twice. The aide said the DCCC “has never offered any aid to Janz that it hasn’t delivered.”
Yet local Democrats have long complained that the party’s inability to make inroads in the Central Valley owes, in part, to national Democrats’ lack of attention here. The party has failed in previous elections to flip two nearby Valley districts that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.
“The DCCC’s behavior is apathetic,” said Humberto Gomez Jr., the California Democratic Party’s regional director in the area. “Here we have a candidate in [California’s 22nd District] who’s the most viable, who’s raised the most, and who has the most attention. … What does the DCCC do? Screw everything up.”
Amanda Renteria, a former top Clinton campaign aide who was trounced by GOP Rep. David Valadao by more than 15 percentage points in a neighboring Valley district in 2014, said the DCCC is “extremely data oriented.”
“I get how they might think this is out of reach,” she said. “What they don’t know is there’s never been a CD-22 race like this.”
Greven said the DCCC has given Janz access to a generic database used by Democratic candidates nationally and compiled an opposition research book on Nunes worth $9,000. But she said the DCCC has not provided any substantial assistance, including with voter registration, turnout or other field operations.
The DCCC has not included Janz in its “Red to Blue” program, designed for top-tier candidates in the nation’s most competitive House races. And Janz was not invited to appear with former President Barack Obama at a DCCC event in Anaheim this month. The DCCC said the event was limited to Democrats running in seven Republican-held House districts in California that Clinton carried in 2016.
Following the June primary, Greven said Janz appeared at a DCCC event in Washington with other candidates and was promised a share of the fundraising proceeds, but that “the check never came.” Ever since, Janz said he has been telling donors not to give to the DCCC, but rather to contribute directly to his campaign.
“We don’t need their help. … We are fine without them at this point,” said Janz. “I just question sometimes their motives, and I question their competency.”
“Historically, Democrats have not targeted the Central Valley, they have not targeted districts like mine, and have really given up,” Janz said. “And this has allowed people like Devin Nunes to return to Congress year after year after year.”
Janz has drawn some measure of support from Democrats outside the DCCC. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who has helped Janz raise money, said Janz has never complained about the DCCC to him and that Janz has “raised the money to tell his story.”
“[It’s a district] where we have no business being as close as we are,” said Swalwell. But with Janz, he said, “We’ve got a hell of a shot.”
Janz has done little to ingratiate himself to the DCCC. A gun owner with a moderate profile, he has said publicly that he would not support House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for speaker if Democrats retake the House in November.
“Look, we’re one of the few races here in California where the DCCC isn’t pulling the strings behind the scenes, and I think that allows me to go out there and be myself,” Janz said. “I’m not using DCCC talking points, I’m not using their consultants. I’m really being my own person.”
Describing the campaign as an “arms race,” Greven said, “This is the only time we’re ever going to get a hit at this guy. This is our one shot.”
The DCCC, she said, is “blowing it.”
