A new Democratic donor network is springing up ahead of the midterm election with a focus on raising cash for candidates under 50.
The Next 50 is a group of 17,000 donors that’s already raised $3 million for candidates in 2022, emphasizing support for younger candidates who are running in battleground races from state legislature up to the U.S. Senate. The group’s mission is to build up the Democratic bench — at the candidate level, by seeding campaigns with national donor cash, and at the donor level, by bringing along a new generation of younger Democrats new to political giving.
The group, whose members range from small-dollar contributors to major max-out donors, is rolling out 22 new endorsements this week for candidates running in the midterms, details of which were first shared with POLITICO.
“We recognize that political power isn’t built overnight, it’s built over the course of years and decades,” said Zak Malamed, who founded the Next 50 in 2019 with Mackenzie Burnett.
The Next 50 is joining a crowded Democratic fundraising landscape full of high-powered groups that focus on lifting up specific demographics — like EMILY’s List boosting women who support abortion rights women and VoteVets backing veterans. But there isn’t another donor effort explicitly centered on generational change, at a time when President Joe Biden, at 79, is the oldest president in history and much of the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership is 70 or older.
In 2020, the group raised $1.2 million for Senate Democrats, as well as hosting an event for Black candidates on the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” list — people running in the top targeted House races.
Malamed said the network wants to confront the challenges that face younger candidates, including access to donors who can fund their campaigns, by “filling in this growth-stage role for our leaders.” He described a key moment for a potential officeholder where “they’ve shown some level of viability, but they need the access to a donor network to help take them to scale, to get to the point where the DSCC or the DCCC will support them.”
That’s where The Next 50 can step in, to help give candidates early access to money and enable them to build out their campaigns.
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, center, is shown at the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich., in January 2020.
