The Jack Abramoff scandal had broken wide open and one of Abramoff's biggest lackeys was Montana Senator Conrad Burns. Democrats saw a glimmer of hope of taking back the Montana seat that Burns had won from John Melcher in 1988. In 2000 Burns was barely reelected-- 50.6% to 47.2% against Brian Schweitzer. Montana had been trending red-- in 2000 Bush won the state 58-33% and in 2004 was reelected 59-39%. But Burns was unpopular and the Abramoff revelations made him a lot less popular.





It was 2006 and Chuck Schumer was chair of the DSCC. He had decided the candidate to put up against Burns was a Wall Street hack, state Auditor John Morrison, a total establishment nothing. Locally and nationally, activists realized Schumer was clueless and that the way to win against Burns was to offer a populist and progressive, which is exactly what John Tester was at the time. It was the first time the blogosphere went up against Schumer and did everything he could to manipulate the race for Morrison and against Tester. Schumer successfully insisted the media report the primary as deadlocked even though Tester was way ahead and had all the momentum. In the end Schumer and his handpicked nothing candidate were smashed to smithereens and Democratic voters picked Tester 65,757 (60.77%) to 38,394 (35.48%). In November, Tester unseated Burns, beating him 199,845 (49.16%) to 196,283 (48.29%)





A few months ago I ran into Bernie and reminded him that I had also gone to James Madison High School in Brooklyn, his alma mater, albeit after he had graduated. "Oh, yes, you were there with Chuck, weren't you?" I was and Chuck was as big a know-it-all asshole then as he's been ever since. After his whooping Montana, he continued to pick corrupt conservative candidates and the Senate slipped into Republicans hands, frustrating the progressive movement that Schumer hates more than he hates the GOP.





L.A. Times reported that the DSCC, still 100% controlled by Schumer, is being Yesterday, Jennifer Haberkorn, writing for thereported that the DSCC, still 100% controlled by Schumer, is being accused of trying to hinder progressive candidates in key Senate primaries . She doesn't have the story exactly right, but she's figuring it out. Schumer is doing his best to disadvantage progressives Andrew Romanoff (CO), Maggie Toulouse Oliver (NM), Betsy Sweet (ME) and Eddie Mauro and Michael Fracken, both in Iowa, while pushing-- furiously-- for his more conservative picks, Frackenlooper, Ban Ray Lujan, Sara Gideon and Theresa Greenfield.





Progressives have been complaining that Schumer is interfering with their primaries and telling him to stay out of their states, accusing the DSCC-- technically run by a very right-of-center puppet of Schumer's Jackie Rosen-- "of actively working against them in primaries" to help corrupt conservatives who will never exercise any idependence, and-- like Rosen (a 2018 Schumer pick for Nevada)-- will do exactly what he tells them to do. "Progressive candidates in Colorado and Maine-- two of the most competitive 2020 Senate races-- say political consultants and vendors have refused to work on their campaigns after being warned that doing so would risk a future boycott by the DSCC, which endorsed other Democrats for those primaries," wrote Haberkorn.

“They want to blackball us,” said Andrew Romanoff, a Democrat who is hoping to take on GOP Sen. Cory Gardner in Colorado in next year’s election. “We heard the same from enough firms. It’s not an accident.”



The DSCC threw its support behind former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a pro-fracking moderate [Haberkorn uses the charged word "moderate"-- to describe conservatives; she isn't terribly bright, reflexively buys into Beltway spin and doesn't know any better] almost immediately after he announced his bid for the Senate seat late last month.



Romanoff, who backs “Medicare for all” and aggressively combating climate change, said at least five political vendors that had expressed interest in working with him later told his campaign that officials at the DSCC, which helps recruit and finance Democratic candidates, said the vendors would get no other business from the committee if they worked for Romanoff’s campaign.



A political consultant at one of those firms confirmed the account but refused to be named for fear of retribution, saying that the firm was told by an intermediary for Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) that “under no circumstances were we to work with Andrew Romanoff.” If it did, the firm would get no more DSCC-related business, including lucrative referrals to work on other campaigns or to put together outside political advertisements...



Schumer’s office referred questions to the DSCC.



DSCC spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua [a well-known professional liar who no one takes seriously] said the committee has no policy that forbids vendors from working with Democratic candidates that it does not support.



But she added: “In our role as a campaign committee focused on winning Senate seats, we have ongoing conversations with strategists and advisors about battleground races.”



Maine Senate hopeful Betsy Sweet said she’s had similar trouble hiring finance staffers for her primary campaign. And Iowa Senate primary candidate Eddie Mauro said one vendor indicated that Washington Democrats “put pressure on them not to work with people like me” although he did not name the DSCC.



As in Colorado, the DSCC has endorsed more moderate [poor dumb Haberkorn means conservatives when she writes "moderates"] Democrats in Maine and Iowa who they hope will beat sitting Republican senators in November 2020.



Vendors initially “are saying they’re excited [to work with the campaign,] and then they say they can’t do it,” Sweet said. “If you’re part of the political industrial complex and you’re making a career out of it, whether it is implicit or explicit, you don’t want to go up against that machine.”



The DSCC has endorsed Sara Gideon to take on GOP Sen. Susan Collins in Maine.



The intervention does not appear to be nationwide. Senate candidates in other races around the country said in interviews that they have seen no such interference in their campaign hiring.



But Sweet likened the DSCC’s meddling in her campaign to efforts made behind the scenes by the Democratic National Committee to bolster Hillary Clinton for president over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries, moves that bitterly split the party.



“We in Maine have done a lot of work to reunify [since then]. This has just made it really hard,” she said. “It adds to the cynicism of people getting involved in politics.”



The DSCC’s counterpart for the House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, adopted a new written policy on vendors this year. The committee forbids vendors from getting DCCC business if they work on a primary challenge to a sitting Democratic House member. In that situation, the DCCC is trying to avoid Democrats trying to kick a sitting Democrat out of office.



...Many of the Democratic candidates, even those who said the DSCC is not interfering with their hiring process, said they resented the committee’s endorsement in their race instead of letting a primary play out among voters.



That anger is most acute in Colorado, where a competitive Democratic primary between a dozen candidates was well underway when Hickenlooper dropped out of the presidential primary contest and announced he would run for the Senate.





The DSCC’s quick endorsement incensed candidates who were already in the race, an anger undoubtedly fueled by Hickenlooper’s prior comments that he didn’t want the Senate seat and wouldn’t be good at the job. Several of the self-identified liberal Democrats in the race say Hickenlooper-- who opposes progressive standard-bearers such as Medicare for all and the Green New Deal-- is too centrist for Colorado. They argue that Gardner is so vulnerable that almost any Democratic candidate can beat him.



“It’s hard for me to get in their head on this because a blue rock beats Cory Gardner by 10%,” said Alice Madden, one of the Democratic hopefuls.



Madden and the five other Democratic women in the race signed a letter last week asking the DSCC to reconsider the endorsement, arguing that it implies “that we should defer to a male candidate because you seem to believe he is ‘more electable.’”



Schumer had long made no secret that he wanted Hickenlooper, who has tremendous name recognition in the state, to take on Gardner next year. Democratic strategists say polling shows that Hickenlooper’s popularity would survive intense negative messaging, making him the strongest candidate in both the primary and general election.

One top tier Senate candidate told me-- on a promise of anonymity-- that Schumer's 'thumb-on-the-scale' tactics are going harm to Democrats' chances of winning back the Senate. "He squeezes out viable candidates, mostly by starving them of conventional sources of operating funds. The word goes out, 'Money sent to the Non-DSCC chosen candidate means money wasted.' If the process could proceed unimpeded, with market forces equaled, primary voters would be more heavily vested in a fair fight. Surely the ill feelings in the Bernie crowd kept his supporters home on election day… costing Hilary votes. People felt screwed. We have the equivalent of a circular firing squad; better hope everyone is a good shot and all bullets hit bone…which the DSCC is oh-for-three in doing, of late, in my state. The clarion call is this: 'Washington, butt out.'"

One of the top Democratic elected officials in Maine told me-- also on condition of anonymity-- that both Gideon and Sweet are "good candidates" but that Sweet is somewhat better policy-wise. "You won't heard Gideon talking about Medicare-for-All or a Green New Deal... Sweet is far bolder. Gideon’s voting record is strong but she takes a more incrementalist approach, and behind the scenes she’s willing to bargain with groups like the Chamber. I suspect her record in the Senate would track King’s." For those not watching that, Angus King has an "F" from Progressive Punch and there are only 4 Senate Dems with more conservative voting records-- Kyrsten Sinema, Doug Jones, Joe Manchin and Jacky Rosen. My source continued that "Schumer should let the primary sort itself out. A strong but not divisive primary would be better in terms of mobilizing support for the eventual nominee. He’s making it unnecessarily divisive. And he’s potentially harming our ability to defeat Collins."