To prevail in midterms, Democratic donors should help unseat centrists who undermined Biden’s agenda

President Joe Biden recently unveiled a new minimum tax on billionaires in the budget. While this idea is a great first step in ensuring wealthy corporations and individuals pay their fair share in taxes, it can’t come to fruition if certain elected officials in Biden’s own party are hellbent on blocking his agenda like they have been for months now. 

That’s why we, the Patriotic Millionaires — a group of over 250 wealthy business owners, investors, and Democratic donors who contributed $20 million to Democrats in 2020 — have decided to support progressive primary challengers to incumbent Democrats in Congress for the first time ever.

We’re throwing our support behind Texas’ progressive incumbent-challenger Jessica Cisneros, whose race is currently going into a runoff as she is neck-and-neck with Rep. Henry Cuellar. We’re also supporting Rep. Lucy McBath, who, after being pushed out of her old district by Georgia’s redistricting, is now challenging Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in Georgia’s 7th District.

Cisneros’ runoff, and McBath’s continued candidacy, come as no surprise. It’s loud and clear that people are fed up with centrist Democrats’ empty promises. Bordeaux and Cuellar are the first targets out of a group of 15 problematic incumbents, including House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), all of whom have undermined the president’s agenda over the past year.

Perhaps most prominently, during the House debate over the Build Back Better Agenda Reps. Bourdeaux, Cuellar, Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) and six others led by Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) threw a public tantrum in the Washington Post when House Progressives held the bipartisan infrastructure bill in stasis until the meat of the Build Back Better Plan (included in the reconciliation package) could be passed simultaneously. 

At the time, the key provisions of Biden’s proposal included universal preschool, paid family leave, an expansion of Medicare, all paid for by an expanded tax increase on wealthy individuals and corporations. Yet these Democrats refused to support this overwhelmingly popular agenda because many of their wealthy donors didn’t want to pay a penny more in taxes. 

This was, to put it plainly, a betrayal of their constituents and their supporters. Many Democrats mobilized to support Bourdeaux’s attempt to flip a weak Republican seat in the heart of Georgia in 2020 in the hopes that her candidacy would help bring about the policies outlined in the president’s agenda, not that she would crater them.

Cuellar is even worse, with a district that has a significantly higher poverty rate than the national average. The jobs and infrastructure provided by the Build Back Better package would go a long way to addressing the inequality crisis facing his constituents. But again, he chose to look out for his donors rather than those who elected him. These kinds of Democrats should no longer be welcome in the party. 

In a Congress where Democrats have the majority, their obstruction of the president’s agenda has done more harm than any amount of Republican opposition ever could. These Democrats need to be held accountable for the harm they caused both to this country and their peers’ reelection chances. Yet those who are best positioned to do something about it — namely, Democratic donors — have actually done little beyond voicing their frustrations. 

If Democrats are going to have a chance at keeping their majorities in Congress this year, their supporters need to do more than complain about the problem. They need to be part of the solution. In particular, Democratic donors need to take tangible steps to hold the centrists in Congress who have sabotaged Biden’s agenda accountable.

Many major Democratic donors, from Tom Steyer to the Soros family to Josh Bekenstein, supported Bourdeaux’s run in 2020, and many others supported Cuellar. We need them and other top donors to reevaluate their choices in the coming election and throw their weight behind candidates like McBath and Cisneros who will be champions, not roadblocks, in the fight for progress. 

McBath has been a leader in the fight to make our democracy more fair, open, and equal, was an outspoken advocate in the House for the Build Back Better Act, and supports much-needed changes to both our tax code and the federal minimum wage. Jessica Cisneros has unabashedly centered her campaign around her progressive values, basing her support for higher taxes on the wealthy, a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation, and the PRO Act (Henry Cuellar was the only Democrat to vote against this important union-strengthening legislation) on her own personal experience living paycheck to paycheck. They would clearly be far better for the country and their respective districts than Bourdeaux and Cuellar.

If Democrats want to convince voters to support them, then being a Democrat has to mean something. It has to mean working to pass the president’s overwhelmingly popular agenda. It shouldn’t mean cozying up to millionaires and billionaires who want to protect an unsustainable status quo. 

Like many others, my organization has had enough with the obstruction from a fringe group of representatives, and we’re going to take them on this cycle. We hope that the rest of the Democratic donor community will do the same.

Morris Pearl is the chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, a former managing director at BlackRock, and co-author of ‘Tax the Rich!’