Election 2026: A Note of Thanks

Dear Suzan Delbene:

When you agreed to chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Joel Connelly wrote in these pages that you had “risen quietly in the House.” Quietly, perhaps. But never softly. You stated your purpose plainly: “Democrats are dedicated to showing Americans that governance can work.” In a season when so many were writing the obituary of democracy, decrying its broken promises and attacking its institutions, those words were almost defiant. You did not join the mourners or naysayers. You believed in our democracy, in our institutions. You stood firm as Plymouth Rock.

From the start, you understood the vision, the purpose, and what it would take. Donald Trump and Project 2025 were 50 years in the making, beginning with Lewis Powell’s 1971 memo. Think tanks founded, scholars funded, judges trained and confirmed, model laws written, and unions weakened. The whole enterprise was built patiently, funded generously, and never slowed by single elections. The opposition played the long game. You knew Democrats could not answer it with one good night or slim margins. It would take a shift in Democratic attitude: from defense to offense, from hoping to building, from settling for enough to fighting everywhere.

And the voters would have to come out in droves and deliver a blue tsunami.

And so you started, from a living room in Redmond, where only 60 or so gathered. You were determined. One person at a time. Grateful for every dollar, every nickel. I remember the moment a well-meaning gentleman suggested your goal was too lofty and urged you to settle for something more realistic. Your jaw set. Your eyes took on the cool stare of an osprey sizing up a lake. With the smile only a woman who has just been mansplained can manage, you thanked him for his opinion. I swear I heard the click as you locked in. Game on. In the next four years, you ignited 50 states, built an army, and then funded it. You turned the vision into a plan, and the plan into daily work.

Tuesday night your work paid off. The House turned blue – not by a few, but by a tsunami. The voters threw out the politicians who traded on their offices and schemed to overturn an election, and they took the gavel from a majority that shut down the House rather than open the Epstein files. 

Scott Perry, who helped scheme to overturn the 2020 election, is out. Rob Bresnahan, who traded stocks while writing the laws, is out. In North Carolina, a congressman facing censure from the House Ethics Committee quit, and a Democrat took his seat. Ken Paxton, impeached by his own party in Texas, is out, beaten by James Talarico despite the more than $200 million the richest man in the world, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, poured in to save him. Even Susan Collins, eternally concerned and dogged by a pay-to-play scandal, is out, defeated by a logger from Aroostook County.

Back in 2022, Joel named your first task: keep Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in southwest Washington. Four years later, she’s still in the fight. Suzan, stop slacking!

Along the way, you showed the country what good leadership looks like. And Washington is proud. You set the DCCC fundraising record for a presidential cycle, $250.6 million by August 2024, then raised $21.5 million in March 2026, the committee’s largest March ever. (Thank goodness the fundraising emails will stop. At least until Friday.) You launched the DCCC’s first program devoted to rural voters. Your voter protection team, detailed and relentless, held the line as best it could. You put 46 challengers in Republican districts, from Bill Hill in Alaska to Leela Gray in Florida. But you did not stop. “The DCCC is confident we can win anywhere,” you declared.

You continued to speak out for principles while you served in a House that had abandoned its duty. It let a president wage war in Iran without a vote. It shut itself down for nearly eight weeks, on the Speaker’s orders, to avoid a vote on the Epstein files. It did not even swear in its own elected member. It suffered a severe case of amnesia about January 6. Doing whatever Donald Trump wanted.

You built your army on the common principles that form our culture and our country: 1) the balance of power, 2) honesty over corruption, 3) the rule of law, 4) free and fair elections, and 5) following the rules even when they do not favor your side. You grounded it so firmly in those principles that the nation joined in, whatever its political leanings. Republicans, independents and Democrats did come out in droves. Even the Bush family, Republican royalty, crossed over and voted blue.

You prepared for the dirty tricks you could see coming: the gerrymanders, the purged voter rolls, the attacks on mail-in ballots. It is no small task to prepare 50 states for what may or may not come down the pike. But you did. You built the largest voter protection team the DCCC has ever had. When Republicans redrew maps to rig the midterms, California answered: voters passed Proposition 50 in a landslide, and five Republican seats were put in play. And sometimes they were dirtier than anyone could anticipate. The president himself called Texas and demanded five seats, a sequel to Tom DeLay’s raid on the Texas map in 2003. The Justice Department turned its guns on your own committee. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named poured nearly half a billion dollars into the other side. You did not flinch. You widened the map.

For the first time in a while, Democrats woke up smiling. The House goes back to doing its job. Committees will ask questions again, and this time somebody will have to answer. The corruption will be exposed and cleaned out. A runaway executive will no longer seize power simply because the Speaker shuts down the House rather than stand up to him. Laws will be written to lower costs for families, not to reward the few. The balance of powers the founders designed will be balanced once more. And across the country, Americans who had stopped believing their votes mattered have seen that they do. Now the healing of our brokenness can begin.

“The right demeanor.” Great to work with. A friend. True heart. You lead with a “thoughtful and steady hand.”You are the leader who built a coalition of tens of millions – every color, every gender, every paycheck. Across party lines.

In these days of victory, when you deserve enormous praise, you will be the first to share it – the mark of a true leader. Many do deserve credit, more than this space allows. The honor roll is in the postscript. But you, dear Suzan, must take your place as Joan of Arc, circa 2026.

Good work, Suzan. Now keep it up.

P.S. There are so many to thank.

Hakeem Jeffries and Katherine Clark, who helped lead the caucus through the lean years in the minority. The Texas House Democrats, who walked out of their own state to stall the gerrymander, just as their predecessors had in 2003. Gavin Newsom, who answered the Texas map with Proposition 50. Don Scott, Jay Jones and Marc Elias, who fought for Virginia’s voters in court. Julie Merz and the DCCC staff, and the members who recruited, defended and organized across the country. Andy Beshear, who stood behind Zach Dembo in Kentucky. And the candidates themselves.

The students in Greensboro and Charlotte who, when their campus polling places were taken away, marched to the polls together. In Greensboro, they walked in the footsteps of the four A&T students who sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960. The voters who stood in line for hours, with books and knitting and patience. Those who put a first-class stamp on their ballots so that no postal slowdown could hold back their votes. Those who walked to an actual polling place to drop their ballots in by hand. The poll workers and poll watchers, who stood guard over every count. At 6:30 on the evening of November 3, Seattle’s Garfield Community Center was hopping.

This list is only partial, and no matter how long it grows, someone will be left out. If you are not named here, know who you are, and know that your contribution was great. Thank you all. Thank you on behalf of our country.