Dan Lipinski is the kind of candidate Democrats need more of for the party to win the House in November. But the national Democratic Party is refusing to endorse him.

The seven-term congressman from Chicago, who opposes abortion and voted against Obamacare, marriage equality and immigration reform, is one of the most conservative members of the House Democratic Caucus.


The question of whether the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will officially back Lipinski for reelection — he faces a stiff primary challenge from the left — has triggered an outbreak of ill will and finger-pointing from each wing of the party toward the other. With less than a month until the March 20 primary, tensions that have been brewing privately for weeks between the caucus’ centrist and progressive lawmakers are now spilling out into a messy public spat.

Caught in the middle are House Democratic leaders, who govern a caucus more aligned with Lipinski’s opponent, Marie Newman. But they are wary of appearing to kick one of their incumbents to the curb, aware of the potential long-term implications for a party that is struggling to regain its standing with blue-collar voters.

“I don’t think what the DCCC does or says means a lot for my race as much as sending a signal to other Democrats who are looking to run,” Lipinski said in an interview.

“Democrats have to know that they’re going to have the full support [of the DCCC] even if they’re not straight in the party line,” he added. “And we need candidates who are not straight along the party line to win the districts we need for the majority.”

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Lipinski is one of three co-chairmen of the Blue Dogs, a coalition of center-left Democrats that has been struggling to rebuild since Republicans took back the House, wiping out many of the group’s members, in 2010.

After years of feeling ignored and sometimes shunned by the DCCC — Blue Dogs have said the campaign arm is historically biased toward progressive candidates, even if they aren’t the best fit for a district — this election cycle was supposed to bring a better working relationship between the two groups.

With that in mind, Blue Dog leaders Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.) pressed DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) about the Lipinski race over dinner in January.

Was DCCC planning to endorse Lipinski ahead of the primary? they asked Luján at Acqua Al 2, a popular Italian joint on Capitol Hill. Luján responded that the campaign arm would support Lipinski, and Cuellar and Costa walked away from the dinner thinking an endorsement was in the works, according to both men, who recounted the conversation to POLITICO.

“We would be disappointed” if that endorsement didn’t come, Cuellar said recently. “Especially when I personally spoke to the chairman and the chairman told me ‘We will be supporting the incumbent.’”

Three sources close to the Blue Dogs said other lawmakers in the 18-member coalition were also under the impression in recent weeks that DCCC would publicly endorse Lipinski.

But a week after the dinner, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a fellow Illinois Democrat and member of DCCC leadership, broke ranks and endorsed Lipinski’s opponent. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, another progressive Democrat from Illinois, also backed Newman that day.

Now, with three weeks until the primary, national progressive groups are ramping up their support for Newman through a barrage of TV ads and mailers — and a DCCC endorsement for Lipinski has yet to materialize.

Some Democrats speculated that NARAL, the powerful abortion rights group that has been aiming to take down Lipinski for years, is behind DCCC’s decision not to publicly support Lipinski. Steven Kravitz, a chief executive at NARAL, is the treasurer of a newly formed super PAC that has recently spent more than $400,000 to boost Newman.

NARAL did not return multiple requests for comment.

While at first glance the dispute between the Blue Dogs and DCCC might seem like a simple disagreement over semantics, several Democratic lawmakers and aides said the campaign committee’s refusal to publicly back Lipinski, even if it is offering some help privately, is much bigger than that.

DCCC’s actions, those members argued, could have a chilling effect on current members and potential candidates who don't line up with the progressive purity test liberals are pushing.

“If someone is a big donor to the DCCC or is a big voice like Schakowsky, if members go astray, are they going to have to watch their back?” said a senior Democratic House staffer.

“I think it’s shocking that the DCCC or Chairman Luján can’t say that they support Congressman Lipinski. Supporting incumbents should be No. 1 there.”

Lipinski has a huge name-recognition advantage — his dad was the district’s congressman for two decades before him — in addition to a strong campaign war chest and several important local endorsements, including from the AFL-CIO. The campaign’s most recent internal poll has Lipinski up 57 percent to Newman’s 21 percent.

But Newman has racked up a bevy of high-profile endorsements — including from the SEIU, another powerful labor group with significant sway in Chicago — and a super PAC that is funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into the district on her behalf.

"Democratic Party institutions’ reticence to endorse Rep. Lipinski is understandable — Rep. Lipinski is a Democrat in name only,” Erik Wallenius, Newman’s campaign manager, said in a statement.

Newman and her supporters argue that Lipinski is out of step with the heavily Democratic district— a working-class area on the southwest side of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs — where one-third of the residents are Latino.

Lipinski counters that his views have evolved in recent years as his district has changed. He now supports marriage equality and would vote for the DREAM Act on the House floor, though he is still not a co-sponsor of the bill.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez was pressed by MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt earlier this month whether there’s room in the party for Democrats who oppose abortion rights, and why he wasn’t supporting Lipinski even though he’s an incumbent. “One thing I've learned from primaries in the past is that when the DNC gets involved in those races, then we sometimes get accused of trying to put the thumb on the scale,” Perez responded.

House Democratic leaders haven’t publicly weighed in on the race. But Lipinski praised House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for saying that there’s no litmus test for Democrats who oppose abortion. And House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has donated to his campaign.

That’s why Democrats who support Lipinski say it’s baffling that the DCCC is so reluctant to back him.

“Congressman Lipinski is taking this race seriously, he has ample resources and support at home, and is running to win,” Luján said in a statement in response to questions from POLITICO.

A DCCC aide followed up to say the campaign arm has provided the kind of support it offers to all incumbents, including analysis of the district and recommended consultants. The aide disputed that there was any kind of commitment from Luján to endorse Lipinski during the dinner in January or that it was even requested by the Blue Dogs.

But both Cuellar and Costa dispute that account. “I remember that Henry [Cuellar] said, ‘Are you going to support Dan Lipinski? And Ben [Ray Luján] said then, as he said to me yesterday, yes,” Costa recalled last week. “Henry followed up, ‘What’s that mean? Does that mean you’re endorsing?’”

Now the Blue Dogs are calling for Schakowsky to step down from her leadership post at the DCCC, where she is the national chairwoman for candidate services.

“If you decide to take on the Democratic incumbent [while] having a leadership position within the Democratic Congressional Campaign, those are counterproductive activities, and they're counterproductive to the larger focus on the districts we need to gain,” Costa said.

But Schakowsky told POLITICO she has no intention of resigning, calling her endorsement of Newman a local issue that doesn’t reflect on her leadership within the campaign arm.

The district is heavily Democratic and doesn’t have a serious Republican challenger — the only GOP candidate is a Holocaust denier — so her endorsement won’t cause Democrats to lose the seat, Schakowsky argued.

“This has nothing to do with going after people who differ in positions from me around the country. This is a particular race in this district, in my state,” Schakowsky said. “I’m not on a crusade to get rid of Blue Dogs by any means. We hopefully will elect more in this election cycle.”

Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report.

