During the March Executive Committee meeting, the Executive Committee of the North New Jersey chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America discussed several items of concern that have come to our attention in the days since our February general chapter meeting. We want to be clear that the following statement is regarding the concerning and opaque actions taken by the NPC and our lack of confidence in National DSA’s ability to protect our members and the organization from legal jeopardy while running an Independent Expenditure campaign. This statement is not meant to focus on the candidate Bernie Sanders.
In the weeks leading up to the straw poll and the March NPC meeting, the NPC has withheld important and pertinent information from membership, and has been vague with membership at large about exactly what an endorsement would entail. The self-imposed 30 day deadline for an endorsement vote was unnecessary and harmful to the organization at large.
Information collected in the past few weeks from a variety of sources (tweets by NPC members, the DSA discussion board, which has a very low member participation rate and is not an adequate means of communication with membership at large, statements from other local DSA chapters, and comments made by National staff during regional conference debates) has demonstrated the cost of the Sanders campaign strategy as proposed by the Bernie 2020 Exploratory Committee would far outweigh the cost of the priorities voted on by membership at the 2017 convention. The lack of a campaign strategy with a projected budget, coupled with the strict campaign finance reporting requirements, concerns us to the point that we implore the NPC to defer the Bernie 2020 endorsement vote until the 2019 convention.
DSA’s visibility and popularity has reached unprecedented heights, and we will be subject to constant scrutiny by those who wish to see socialism in the United States fail. We would be remiss to ignore or minimize the risk of what an Independent Expenditure campaign could mean for us. It would also be naive of the NPC and the organization at large to assume that one or two full-time staff members would be adequate with regard to accurate reporting for a nationwide, twenty-month-long electoral campaign when our organization has more than 55,000 members across the country. Without a clear plan of action, endorsement will be setting this organization up for failure. If we withhold the vote until the convention, the NPC would have time to develop a clear outline for what an endorsement would actually look like, as well as provide membership a projected budget for total costs for the Independent Expenditure campaign, and minimize the legal risk to the organization.