Thomas Mills is an erstwhile political consultant and former Congressional candidate who runs the blog PoliticsNC.com.

I made my first visit to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1998, when I was campaign manager for a longshot candidate running against an entrenched incumbent. By the time we left the building, we felt empowered and connected. We had a campaign roadmap that offered organizational and financial benchmarks, a point of contact with the committee, weekly talking points and an organization behind us that made introductions and offered advice when we needed it.

Fast forward 18 years. This time, I’m the congressional candidate running in a longshot North Carolina district in a year that many people thought might be a Democratic sweep. By now, I’d been to the DCCC numerous times to introduce candidates or meet with staff. Most of those experiences were similar to that first visit. But in 2016, things were different. I didn’t hear from the DCCC during the first six months of my race. After the primaries, I reached out to them. But despite leaving numerous messages on both email and answering machines, I never got any response. When I eventually used my Congressional connections to get an audience, I took my pollster and media consultant to a meeting that lasted all of 15 minutes. We left with little more than a list of reasons why the DCCC wouldn’t be helping our campaign.


Outside, my pollster quipped, “At least he could have blown a little smoke up our ass.”

I’ve spent 20 years working on political campaigns, and the political organization I encountered in 2016 was an utter disappointment. Back in the ’90s when I started out, the DCCC was tasked with contesting as many races as possible and providing staff, training and direction to the campaigns in the field. Today, they’re narrowly focused on a small number of highly targeted races. Other campaigns get little attention or support.

Democrats need to be sharper going into the next election cycle. With a 50-plus seat deficit in the House, the party will have to win more than just the most competitive seats. They’ll probably need a wave in which they figure out how to win some longshot races. That won’t happen unless the party actively recruits good candidates around the country and treats them with respect and encouragement. And it also won’t happen unless the party provides campaigns—especially in the toughest districts—with the training, support and infrastructure to create or take advantage of opportunities.

Democrats are going to need to seriously up their game if they hope to claw their way back to the majority. Maybe my experience with the DCCC over the years can help them find their way.

***

When I traveled to the DCCC headquarters 18 years ago, it was a trip worth making. After a short wait in the lobby, a man in his mid-30s in a blue button-down shirt came striding down a hallway, enthusiastically shook our hands, and introduced himself as Paul Frick, political director of the DCCC. As he led us to a small office, Frick thanked the candidate profusely for his willingness to run and thanked me for taking on the campaign. He made sure we knew that he considered us part of his team.

Frick was followed by Rep. Steny Hoyer, who greeted us with an air of confidence and bravado, assuring us that the Democrats planned to win big in November. After Hoyer, the woman who staffed the Southern Desk came to tell us the nuts and bolts of the DCCC program and their expectations for us. By the time we left the building, nothing had changed in the state of our race, but at least we had relationships, clear expectations and the sense that we were part of a larger program to take back the House.

By then the DCCC was a robust strategic and opportunistic organization. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the DCCC had brought congressional campaigns into the age of modern marketing, introducing innovative tactics like polling, opposition research and targeting. The organization essentially professionalized campaigns, providing extensive training to managers, fundraisers, press secretaries and field operatives. In the process, they created a generation of professional campaign operatives around the country who understood the structure of campaigns and the strategies and tactics to be successful.

Congressional races are a big undertaking, even for those with experience in state legislative or statewide down-ballot contests, and this kind of support can make a big difference. If candidates are going to be successful, they require structure, guidance and competent staff. Granted, the DCCC is only going fund the most competitive races with big dollar contributions, but all campaigns should be given a baseline of support to give them a fighting chance.

They also need introductions to the Washington establishment. I still have a file from the the late 1990s named “DCCC PAC contacts.” The committee didn’t necessarily recommend campaigns, but they helped introduce candidates to labor and progressive organizations who could provide financial and grassroots support, especially if a race got hot.

The DCCC did more than just train the candidates and campaigns that filed. They aggressively recruited candidates to make sure they contested as many races as possible, even if the districts weren’t considered very competitive. In doing so, they forced GOP candidates to spend money in their own districts instead of others. This also meant they were prepared to take advantages of scandals, political missteps or wave elections that could turn a noncompetitive race into a competitive one.

For instance, in 2006, DCCC Chair Rahm Emanuel personally recruited former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler to run in a district that had been held by a Republican incumbent for more than 15 years. When Shuler said that he was reluctant to file because his small children needed him, Emanuel made a habit of calling him throughout the day. “Heath, I’m dropping my kids off at school.” “Heath, just wanted to call from my son’s soccer game.” He got Shuler, and in the 2006 wave, he got the seat.

***

Over time, the DCCC has lost much of its innovative spirit and edge—which is evident in the fact that, today, support seems to be available only to a select group of targeted races.

In 2016, I filed to run in a rural district in North Carolina that former Democratic Senator Kay Hagan had won in 2008. That year, most Democrats on the ballot had won in the district, but Barack Obama lost it by eight points. Four years later, he lost it by 10. My chances of winning were slim; but in a wave election, this was exactly the type of district Democrats would need to take back the House.

In the weeks after filing, I expected some sort of outreach from the DCCC, though I wasn’t hoping for it. I wanted to put together the initial infrastructure of my campaign without outside interference. Still, a few weeks after filing, I was surprised that I had heard nothing. On a congressional race that I helped in 2012, the DCCC sent a handbook shortly after my candidate filed her candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.

As the only Democrat to file, I officially became the Democratic nominee after North Carolina’s June primary and I decided to reach out to the committee then. By now our campaign was up and running. We had money in the bank, a social media campaign and a small staff to run the operations. I knew, though, that to win I’d need help from the DCCC and their progressive allies. I found the contact info for the Southern desk and started calling and emailing. I left numerous email and phone messages letting them know that I was the Democratic nominee in NC-08. Nothing. Finally, I called a friendly congressional chief-of-staff and asked for help. She agreed to put in a call and I finally got a response. In a brief call with the Southern Desk, I got little encouragement but set up a meeting anyway.

A few weeks later, I arrived in Washington D.C. with my media consultant and pollster. An email to my scheduler indicated we would be meeting with the executive director of the DCCC. However, the receptionist told us there was no record of a meeting with her. They did escort us to a conference room and we met briefly with the guy staffing the Southern Desk. We weren’t asking for money, but we did hope to take advantage of the organization’s vast network. Instead of any encouragement, we heard all the reasons the DCCC wouldn’t be helping our campaign. “We can get a lot of races 47 or 48 percent,” the man from the Southern Desk told us. “But it will take millions to get most of them to 50.” The meeting lasted no more than 15 minutes.

I lost my race, and nothing the DCCC could have done would have changed that in a year like this. Still, the organization charged with getting Democrats back in the majority should do much better. Now, more than any time in my lifetime, our country needs a better class of politicians and better qualified operatives. It’s the DCCC’s responsibility to find them and train them.

Democrats should be thinking broadly instead of narrowly. Successful political organizations are entrepreneurial and opportunistic, especially when they are 60 seats in the minority. But despite the dismal record it’s racked up in recent years, the DCCC has become insular and myopic. Candidates and consultants can’t reach high-ranking staffers. Reaching ranking members is unthinkable. The circle of people influencing the political strategists rarely reaches outside of the beltway, which means the strategists—like so much of Washington—have lost touch with the people whose votes they need to attract. They rely on polling and focus groups to give them an understanding of the challenges facing families today. Those tools would be greatly enhanced if the people using them had regular contact with the people they are trying to reach.

Much of the insularity seems to be rooted in a lack of accountability. For staff, there’s little penalty for failure. They often either get rehired or go to work for consulting firms that have contracts with the DCCC. And the Democratic Congressional leadership comes predominantly from safe districts. Most ranking members haven’t run competitive races in many years, if they’ve run them at all. They don’t understand the skills and experience they need in a caucus staff since they don’t really know what a professional campaign organization looks like and they don’t understand what candidates in competitive districts need to succeed.

The DNC stopped providing its training academy in the late 1990s. Since then, training been contracted out to organizations like Wellstone Action, which has a heavy field emphasis or EMILY’s List, with a fundraising emphasis. We’ve lost the intensive trainings that focused on basic management and strategic skills.

It’s not only the training that’s taken a hit. Despite their 60-seat deficit heading into 2016, the Democrats didn’t appear to do much candidate recruiting except in the most competitive districts. In Texas, Hillary Clinton won in a congressional district where Democrats didn’t even field a challenger. Numbers, not potential, guided the DCCC efforts. Instead of looking for possibilities, or trying to create them, the committee only paid attention to the districts that looked viable on spreadsheets.

The DCCC and other campaign committees ought to retool their campaign operations looking back to the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, they introduced research and polling to campaigns. Now, they should be teaching campaigns how to use social media and online operations to reach voters early and build low-dollar fundraising operations.

Today, Democrats are so far in the hole that they could use the opportunity to try new tactics and strategies to see if they can win in some unlikely places. Longshot and marginal races are not won in the final two months of a campaign. They’re won because candidates put together campaigns that prepare them to take advantage of opportunities throughout the cycle. Social media and online fundraising give candidates the platforms to build profiles and low-dollar fundraising operations, as well as create excitement among their base before the paid media and field campaigns begin.

For Democrats to be successful, they need leaders, both campaign professionals and elected officials, who understand how modern communications and campaigns have changed. They would be wise to reach out to operatives and consultants who live outside the Washington, D.C., bubble to better understand voters. They should get back to their roots: recruit candidates to compete in as many races as possible; create an army of professional operatives across the country to run campaigns cycle after cycle; provide a base level of support for every candidate who files; introduce innovative strategies and tactics and teach campaigns how to use them. They’ll need the leadership to take them there.