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A group of moderate Democrats is kicking off the midterm season by targeting one of the mightiest, if least-known, forces in their party: the interest group questionnaire-industrial complex.
Rohan Patel and Seth London, who oversee Majority Democrats — a group of young Democrats that have won competitive races — want their candidates to know they shouldn’t feel obliged to complete the often-expansive advocacy group forms. They’re also telling these organizations’ donors to think twice about contributing and urging the groups to heal thyselves by overhauling or mothballing the documents, which are typically used to determine endorsements.
“These questionnaires, and more broadly the interest groups, are hurting our chances of winning,” Patel told me. “They all have their own niche questionnaires, some of which are so broad as to be almost absurd, 20 to 30 pages of questions that don’t always have anything to do with their actual issue focus.”
While long a staple of campaigns up and down the ballot, and a bane for many a candidate and staffer, the liberal litmus tests are little-known by the broader voting public.
That began to change, though, in 2024 when Kamala Harris was hammered by Republicans for saying she supported taxpayer-funded trans surgery for prisoners. Harris made that pledge in the 2020 campaign, and it stemmed from an ACLU candidate questionnaire she filled out, in which she vowed to use executive authority to ensure transgender people, including those in prisons or immigration detention, would be granted “comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition.”
It was, Patel said of the ACLU form, “one of about 20 questions that were absolutely deranged.” Harris has been blistered for her answer, but what about the groups asking the questions in the first place, he asked.
Trans surgery for prisoners was no aberration.
As Patel and London will post on a site they’re calling “The Questionable,” other groups have asked candidates to commit to federally mandated 32-hour workweeks, halting the expansion of all fossil fuel projects and signing broadly-worded pledges on criminal justice that Republicans happily portray as defunding the police.
It's the first notably aggressive effort by Majority Democrats to confront their own coalition a year after the group formed in the wreckage of the 2024 campaign. And the offensive goes deeper than merely criticizing the forms, which are a symptom of a broader challenge confronting the party — namely the role of “The Groups,” online shorthand for the constellation of left-leaning advocacy organizations, and the campaign-to-government-to-groups staffer ecosystem which perpetuates their influence.
“In a normal, functioning environment, the party and the aligned institutions of the party would push back on this,” said London.
So why isn’t that happening?
“Because they’re reliant on these interest groups for funding and for staff,” he said.
There’s also something else at play, I think. And it can be seen in the DNC’s decision not to release its so-called autopsy about the 2024 election. With President Donald Trump on his back foot and Democrats winning off-year races and special elections across the country, most party leaders prefer to stay on offense and not revisit what went wrong in yesteryear. That keeps donors, activists and elected officials in an often-fractious party positive, engaged and generally living in harmony.
But it’s a mistake.
If Democrats today don’t re-examine what went wrong, they’re highly unlikely to in the heat of the midterms this fall, let alone during the next presidential campaign itself.
The temptation to simply push back on Trump’s daily eruptions and ride the wave of revulsion toward him, as they did in the 2025 elections, is understandable — it’s just misguided.
There are three glaring reasons why: the 2030 Census’ reallocation of House seats, Democrats’ structural challenge in attaining a real and lasting Senate majority and the white-knuckle ride every four years to hold the Blue Wall and claim 270 electoral votes for the presidency.
In case you missed it, Americans are voting with their feet by moving from blue states to red states. So even if Democrats are able — on a playing field constricted by gerrymandering and polarization — to claim a House majority this fall, they’re confronting a long-term challenge retaining that majority. If the party can’t better appeal to centrist or even slightly right-of-center voters, they’ll likely lose the House in the first midterm of a Democratic president in 2030 — and then struggle to reclaim it after the Census shifts more seats to red states.
The party’s Senate challenge is even more profound. And it’s quite simple: How can Democrats build an enduring, substantial Senate majority if they can’t compete in vast swaths of the country?
Consider: When Barack Obama was first sworn in as president, his party had five of the six Senate seats in Montana and the two Dakotas. Now Republicans have all six.
Yes, winning a bare Senate majority, breaking the filibuster and then granting Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood is one path to additional Senate seats. Yet that still won’t better the party’s chances across the South and Great Plains, which are vital to building a majority with cushion.
“You look at the next two to three Senate cycles, we’ll be scratching and clawing to get and hold 50 or 51 seats,” as London put it.
Then he lowered the boom, insert trigger warning here, invoking the names of the three current and former Senate Democrats the left most despises.
“We want more Manchins and Sinemas and Fettermans,” London said. “That is the cost of having a fucking majority. And our donors need to understand when you have a majority, you get to set the agenda.”
Last, but certainly not least, there’s the matter of Democrats’ coronary-inducing path to winning the presidency, as seen for a decade. Yes, they can still find their way to a significant Electoral College majority — see 2020 — but it’s built on extraordinarily thin margins in swing states. Does the party really want to keep betting American democracy on Philadelphia’s suburbs, turnout in Madison and how the auto economy and ancient Mideast enmities will shape metro Detroit?
While the main actors targeted by Majority Democrats are mostly progressive-aligned groups, it’s not all punching left. London singled out AIPAC, the pro-Israel group, as an organization that was becoming radicalized.
“They’re going after Tom Malinowski?” he said, alluding to the former House Democrat now running in a New Jersey special congressional election. “These are not anti-Israel people.”
The larger issue is groups stockpiling money from contributors who don’t fully grasp what they’re funding.
“The donors bear a lot of responsibility here because they don't always know that this is going on,” said London. “Your pet cause does not trump the need for us to win elections.”
Lawmakers, too, would appreciate relief from having to fill out the questionnaires and either dodge questions or risk handing Republicans ads that write themselves in the general election.
When I raised the issue of the interest group forms with one House Democrat, who has won a series of competitive races, I could barely even finish my sentence.
“We are asked by organizations to fill out questionnaires that sometimes have questions that have nothing to do with the core function and mission of those organizations,” said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.). “And it just takes an extraordinary amount of time.”
The challenge, though, is that for first-time candidates vying in competitive congressional or gubernatorial primaries, the groups can offer important stamps of validation with left-leaning voters — to say nothing of cash and foot soldiers.
There are, though, signs that some of the groups are recognizing they need to overhaul their forms for the good of the larger cause.
The League of Conservation Voters, a leading environmental group, recently changed their broad questionnaire for candidates running in 2026 and sent campaigns a more narrow version of the form, said Patel.
“I give LCV a lot of credit,” said London, who privately nudged the group to change some of their form’s questions. “They replaced it with something that — no, I don’t agree with all of it — but it’s significantly better.”
Will other liberal groups follow suit?
Some will surely bridle. This effort is meant to provoke. After all, one person’s “pet cause” is somebody else’s righteous mission.
But London said the groups face a choice: change or lose.
“When you’re a national organization, the expectation is that the member of Congress from New York City should have the same position as a rural district in Iowa,” he said, shaking his head. “That is how you lose.”
And, getting to the point, he asked about the Republicans: “Why are we just making it easier for them to beat the shit out of us?”
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