A Major Taboo Was Broken at the DNC Last Weekend

I have been a member of the Democratic National Committee for 33 years. During this time, I attended many meetings and was often frustrated by the lack of member engagement I saw. Last weekend’s meeting in New Orleans was different, for reasons I’ll describe below.

Throughout my tenure at the DNC, I have fought, alongside other like-minded members, for reforms to how the party operates, particularly for greater financial transparency, accountability, and internal democracy.

Current DNC ​​Chairman Ken Martin was elected a little over a year ago in part because he promised to implement these kinds of reforms — and, indeed, some of that work was visible in New Orleans. There is greater transparency in the budget. The DNC allocation to state parties was significantly increased (leading some consultants to complain that there was less for them). Instead of the president appointing all individual members of the DNC and selecting those who will serve on the permanent decision-making committees, members elected by their states or by party caucuses and councils are now entitled to vote on a portion of the at-large positions. Although more can always be done, these first steps have serious consequences.

Two other important developments occurred during last week’s meetings that are worth noting. First and foremost is Martin’s insistence that we take steps to prevent corporate and dark money from taking over our elections. The second was the debate on this issue that took place during the DNC general session.

At the party’s August 2025 membership meeting, Martin managed to pass a resolution calling for banning corporate and dark money from the Democratic presidential primaries. Dark money refers to election spending that is not subject to federally mandated limits or reporting requirements. This does not include campaign contributions from individuals or registered political action committees, both of which have established limits and must be reported to the Federal Election Commission and then made public at regular intervals. It also does not include the actions of membership groups that have the right to support candidates and spend money in consultation with their members. These are also regulated by law and must be reported.

In contrast, the virtually unregulated world of dark money allows billionaires to create groups with non-descriptive names that will spend millions of dollars on a campaign to promote or reject favored candidates or causes – all without disclosing any of these activities to the public. The amounts of this dark money spending have increased so dramatically in recent years that, in several election campaigns, they exceed by 10 times the amounts spent by the candidates themselves or by the party committees that support them.

In 2023 and 2024, I was part of a group that tried to get the DNC to pass a resolution banning dark money in all Democratic primaries. In both cases we failed. So we were thrilled when President Martin took the lead last year in passing his resolution to ban dark money in the presidential primaries. His attention was limited to the presidential primaries for two reasons. Although dark money is a problem in all elections, the party has greater control over the processes involved in presidential primaries and is therefore the best place to begin to address this problem. Second, Martin’s resolution only addresses primaries so as not to suggest that Democrats would unilaterally disarm in a general election against Republicans. Following the passage of his resolution, Martin created a reform task force to develop a plan to implement this dark money ban in time for the 2028 presidential primaries.

At last weekend’s meeting, two separate additional resolutions on black money were submitted by some members to the party’s resolutions committee. One called for banning dark money from groups supporting artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency interests. The other highlighted the negative role played by pro-Israel individuals and groups who targeted progressive candidates for defeat. The first resolution was amended to remove mention of the specific groups cited. The second was rejected and forwarded to the party’s Middle East working group.

At the general assembly, when the final report of the Resolutions Committee was presented for review, a motion was made by the assembly to reconsider the addition in the final resolutions package of the two original proposals mentioning the three cited sources of black money. Chairman Martin and Resolutions Committee Chairman Ron Harris agreed that the reconsideration motion be debated, and a debate ensued with multiple speeches for and against. The motion was ultimately defeated, but it was nonetheless newsworthy. Here’s why.

In my more than three decades as a member of the DNC, with 11 of them chairing the Resolutions Committee, there have been only a handful of occasions where a controversial issue was actually debated and then voted on by the full membership. For this reason, I have sometimes described being a member of the DNC as being an accessory to filling seats at meetings and listening to speeches. Because I’m Catholic, I felt I could compare it to going to church, where you learn when to stand, when to sit, when to clap, when to leave and not ask difficult questions.