Democracy For America, a Vermont-based political action committee founded by former Gov. Howard Dean, will soon close its doors for good.
Politico first reported the pending shutdown earlier this month.
Dean created the progressive PAC following his failed 2004 presidential campaign. It sought to harness the grassroots energy of his insurgent bid to establish a digital network that supported federal, state and county candidates, as well as left-leaning policies.
After his election as chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2005, Dean turned over leadership of DFA to his brother, Jim, who led the PAC until 2019. (Howard Dean did not respond to requests for an interview.)
Self-described as “progressive,” DFA supported both liberal candidates — such as Bernie Sanders, in his 2016 presidential campaign — and causes like universal health care.
Arshad Hasan, a Burlington-based political operative, first moved to Vermont to work for Democracy for America in 2005 after volunteering for the Dean campaign.
“Howard Dean had an incredibly loyal base of followers,” Hasan recalled. “It was like nothing else that had come before it.”
During the Dean campaign, 800 localized groups supporting the former Vermont governor had monthly meetups around the country, and DFA later drew on that grassroots network, Hasan said.
“DFA pioneered and began email organizing,” according to Hasan. “It was economically freeing to not have to solicit money through a million pieces of junk mail” and a small group of wealthy Democratic donors, he said.
Whereas old school mail-based donor solicitations cost a lot and only brought in 1% to 3% returns, email was cheap and “orders of magnitude” more effective, Hasan said.
After working as the PAC’s training director, Hasan was promoted to executive director, growing the organization’s email list to a million addresses and drawing on roughly 90,000 individual donors to support progressive candidates and causes. Without relying on rich people for cash, DFA could pick fights with high-profile politicians and the Democratic party, Hasan explained, leading to progressive wins.
In its almost 20 years, Democracy for America raised $70 million, its staff said, and helped elect about a thousand candidates. DFA’s contributions peaked in 2012, when the PAC spent $7.9 million, while raising more than $8.4 million, according to Open Secrets, which tracks money in politics. At that time, DFA was in the top 20 for dollars raised by any PAC.
By 2022, DFA spent $3.8 million, while raising only $3.6 million, according to Open Secrets.
“DFA left it all on the field to stop the red wave and win critical elections up and down the ballot across the country,” Charles Chamberlain, a special advisor to DFA, told Politico earlier this month. “Now as we head in the next cycle in this difficult fundraising environment, we’ve decided to close the PAC.”
A second Politico story unveiled staff dissatisfaction with the CEO, Yvette Simpson. According to former DFA employees, Simpson spent little time fundraising, instead attending a leadership training and a wine tasting course in the PAC’s financially troublesome final days.
The PAC’s website now directs to its separate but related nonprofit, the Democracy for America Action Fund, which will continue to exist, Chamberlain said.
According to Politico, DFA had hoped large donations could save the PAC in the final days of 2022, but that had not occurred.
Hasan, reminiscing on his near-decade at the organization, described it as fundamental to his future career in politics and progressive organizing more broadly.
“I can’t really overstate how important my time at DFA was,” he said, “both for the movement — I strongly believe that — and for myself.”
