These local lawmakers think they can help solve the Democratic Party’s identity crisis

After significant Democratic Party losses in 2024, a small group of Pennsylvania elected officials and the Democratic candidate for New Jersey governor have banded together to create a playbook for the party and to help rebuild a broad base of support.

They are part of a new member organization, called Majority Democrats, which brings together more than 30 Democratic elected officials from local, state, and national levels. The group includes younger elected officials who have outperformed the party or won tough races, and touts them as “the next generation of Democratic leaders.”

The group plans to host town halls across the country, including in Pennsylvania, where Democrats have already begun strategizing for a handful of upcoming competitive U.S. House races.

Majority Democrats will help members draft and develop campaign messaging and policy agendas and recruit, endorse, and support candidates, including “nontraditional” ones.

The group registered as a hybrid political action committee on Thursday, meaning that it will raise money through a traditional PAC arm that can donate directly to candidates with limits and a super PAC arm that can raise and spend unlimited funds to message for or against candidates.

Disclosure of donors is required for contributions of $200 or more, though untraceable donations are known to flow through super PACs.

Pennsylvania has national, state, and local representatives in the membership organization: U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, 48, who represents part of Philadelphia, Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, 35, and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, 44. They’re joined by U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, 53, the Democratic candidate for New Jersey governor, and U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride, 34, the representative for Delaware.

Davis said in an interview that the initiative stems from conversations after the 2022 midterm elections “when a group of Democrats really just got together and decided that, you know, we needed to make sure that we were creating a party that really reached the majority of Democrats.”

What binds them together? According to Davis, “we know how to win, we’ve overperformed,” and “we’ve proven that we can bring people together.”

Davis is the youngest lieutenant governor in the country and the first Black person elected to Pennsylvania’s executive branch. He replaced a longtime state representative at age 28 and four years later, in 2022, won a three-way primary for lieutenant governor by a landslide before winning the general election on a ticket with Gov. Josh Shapiro. He has taken a more active role in the administration than his predecessors.

Davis said the group wants the party to have a “big tent,” an ideology championed by Sherrill in her New Jersey gubernatorial race.

A news release announcing the group’s launch says its members are “willing to challenge the establishment and break with party orthodoxy.”

To Davis, that means candidates and elected officials who “are willing to not just represent the party, but represent the people that they seek to serve and to speak to a set of politics that puts forward a vision for our future, one that people can rally around.”

He believes the party has suffered from not being “as inclusive or as broad to different swaths of folks” in Pennsylvania and across the country.

Sherrill, of Montclair, had a broad message during her gubernatorial campaign while other candidates focused on more specific lanes. She flipped her congressional district blue in 2018, defeating a Republican opponent after the GOP incumbent retired.

Sherrill had the support of the New Jersey Democratic establishment throughout the state in her primary race, but she has also spoken out against politics as usual. She was the first member of Congress in Pennsylvania or New Jersey to call on former President Joe Biden to step down from the presidential campaign last year. If elected, she would be the first woman to be governor of the state from the Democratic Party.

Sherrill said in a statement that the “new leaders represented here are mission driven, innovative, and laser focused on effective government that delivers for people.”

“It’s time to stop talking about what’s wrong and do something,” Sherrill said.

“This group isn’t in lockstep — we are from all over the country and serve vastly different constituencies,” she added.

In Philadelphia, Boyle’s district includes parts of safely blue Center City as well as the swingy Northeast Philadelphia, where part of his district voted for Trump and where Republican State Sen. Joe Picozzi won. Boyle outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris’ margin in his district by 7.3 percentage points in 2024 and Biden’s margin in 2020 by 2.3, according to data from The Downballot, winning more than 70% of the vote in both years.

He said in a statement that he is looking forward “to working with my colleagues to revitalize the Democratic Party and help lead it back to victory.”

“I am honored to be one of the small number of prominent younger Democrats who was asked to be a part of Majority Democrats, an initiative to bring together national Democratic elected officials who have consistently won tough races and over-performed,” he said.

Cognetti, the Scranton mayor and the most local representative in Pennsylvania participating in the group, is the first woman to lead Scranton. The Democrat first won the seat as an independent, declining to partake in the local party’s nomination process. She previously worked for former President Barack Obama and for Eugene DePasquale, the former Democratic auditor general of Pennsylvania, and Biden appointed her to a trade policy advisory committee in February 2024.

McBride, the first transgender member of Congress, who has shown a willingness to work across the aisle despite vitriolic attacks on her identity from the Republican party, and former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate for Virginia governor — both friends of Sherrill’s — are also part of the group.

Sherrill and Spanberger are already benefiting from the group’s “expertise in communications, fundraising, digital strategy, policy development, and opposition research,” according to the group.

“This initiative represents not just a path to winning the next election, but a long-term effort aimed at ushering in a new era of Democratic leadership,” the group’s release said.