DCCC exec resigns amid furor over minority representation

The executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) resigned abruptly on Monday amid members’ complaints that the committee’s upper echelons lacked diversity.

Allison Jaslow, a top aide to DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), told committee aides she was quitting effective immediately at an all-staff meeting on Monday, one person in the room confirmed to The Hill.

Jaslow later confirmed her resignation on Twitter, writing that the job had been “an honor and a true privilege.”

My statement on stepping down from my post at the @dccc today: pic.twitter.com/Fft4rK9DtK

— Allison Jaslow (@jaslow) July 29, 2019

{mosads}Her departure was first reported by Politico. It came after Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) and Filemon Vela (D-Texas) openly complained about the lack of diversity in the senior management positions of the House Democrats’ campaign arm. 

Gonzalez and Vela said the DCCC was in “complete chaos.”

Jaslow has been a top aide to Bustos since 2012, when she managed her winning campaign against then-Rep. Bobby Schilling (R). Jaslow served as Bustos’s chief of staff before leaving to take a job running Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Most senior DCCC officials this year are white men. The most senior person of color at the committee, chief of staff Jalisa Washington-Price, left in February, just months after Bustos took over, to take a senior position on Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-Calif.) presidential campaign.

Bustos has been managing the fallout from the staff crisis since last week, when she held an all-staff meeting. Another conference call over the weekend failed to assuage doubts, and Bustos returned to Washington on Monday to oversee another all-staff meeting, where Jaslow quit.

The DCCC did not immediately say who would head the committee in Jaslow’s place.