AP Photo Top DNC fundraiser to depart following shakeup

Jordan Kaplan, the Democratic National Committee finance director, is now leaving too.

Three weeks after the shake-up sparked by the WikiLeaks dump that forced the resignation of the chair and three senior staffers, the top fundraiser for the official party apparatus is leaving the building himself.


Kaplan’s were among the emails released, but he didn’t lose his job in the immediate wave of housecleaning. And unlike the others who left, he’s not going far: Kaplan will be the DNC's outside point person for events that involve President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as they raise money for the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and other candidates going into the final phase of the election.

A DNC official confirmed the news, which was announced to senior staff Friday morning.

“Jordan Kaplan has decided to return to his consulting business full time. He will continue to manage DNC finance events featuring the president and first lady,” the official said.

The move will come with a further absorption of what would normally be DNC operations into Brooklyn, with fundraising for the party now falling under the portfolio of longtime top Clinton money man Dennis Cheng.

Kaplan is among the aides whose roots with Obama go back the furthest, all the way back to the president’s 2004 Senate campaign in Illinois, and he was one of the first people raising money for Obama’s presidential run. He was Rahm Emanuel’s finance director for his 2011 mayoral run in Chicago, and then he went back to Obama for America as the Illinois finance director of the reelection. He’s been at the DNC since March of 2013.

A DNC official said that Rachel Rauscher, currently the finance director-at-large for the DNC, will take over Kaplan's responsibilities. But as the restructuring and rebuilding continues, Rauscher won't get Kaplan's title.

Fundraising for the party, with much higher donation limits than for an individual candidate, is traditionally a major force at the end of a national campaign cycle. That task has gotten even more complicated this year, with the data hack leading to questions about management and identity theft, and interim chair Donna Brazile spending much of her time on the job reassuring jittery members, donors and other stakeholders.