The billionaire donors won't come back unless Democrats jettison the Left side of the Party

The Republican National Committee heads into the year before the midterm election with a significantly bigger bank balance than the Democratic National Committee, a reflection of the GOP’s dominance in Washington and the minority party’s ongoing struggles.

The gap is a warning sign for Democrats as some of their donors remain skeptical of the party’s direction and of whether there is a viable plan to win again.

At one point earlier this year, the DNC reached out to big donors to host a San Francisco-area fundraiser headlined by former Vice President Kamala Harris. Most of the donors rejected the request, according to several people familiar with the conversations.

Upon receiving the invitation, one replied with a profanity-laced rejection. Others said they didn’t want to give to the party until it produced substantive plans to win elections. Those who declined told the national party they had commitments and couldn’t make it work.

Rachel Pritzker, a donor and fundraiser who chairs a group trying to push Democrats closer to the center, said many party donors are concerned that the progressivism pushed by such figures as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist favored in New York City’s Nov. 4 mayoral election, will hurt Democrats.

“They’re worried that the way the party looks and sounds can’t really compete and win elections,” said Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune and a relative of the Democratic billionaire governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker. “They’re worried that it needs to reorient toward the cultural mainstream and it needs to basically rebrand.”