Mandela Barnes launches PAC to boost candidates written off by establishment Democrats
Cami Mondeaux
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Failed Senate candidate Mandela Barnes is reportedly set to launch a new political action committee targeted toward boosting Democratic candidates who are at risk of being written off by the party establishment.
Barnes, who ran for Senate in Wisconsin in 2022, is planning to launch the Long Run PAC, which aims to boost candidates who are at risk of not receiving support from Democratic leaders because they don’t “fit the mold,” he told Axios. The committee will target women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and working-class candidates to aid their campaigns.
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“Too often, fairly or unfairly, the questions of ‘Can this person win?’ and ‘Does this person have what it takes?’ come up,” Barnes told the outlet. “Sometimes those questions aren’t always asked in good faith.”
While Barnes ran for Senate during the midterm elections, the Wisconsin Democrat said he faced questions about his electability because he was running for a seat that had never been held by a black Democrat before. Barnes ultimately lost to Republican Ron Johnson by just 1 percentage point.
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The Long Run PAC is scheduled to launch on Tuesday and will later announce an initial slate of candidates it plans to support in the 2024 election cycle. The committee is expected to take on a grassroots approach, similar to Barnes’s strategy in 2022 when he refused to take money from corporate PACs.
“There are a lot of quote-unquote different candidates out there who don’t get the attention they should be getting or the initial investments that they should be getting,” Barnes said. “But it’s those ‘different’ candidates who often make the biggest difference when elected.”