MAKING HISTORY: DCCC Chairman Maloney Becomes First Dem Campaign Chief To Fall in Four Decades

New York Democratic congressman Sean Patrick Maloney made history Wednesday, when he became the first Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair to lose reelection in four decades.

Maloney called his opponent, Republican Mike Lawler, to concede the race around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, according to the New York Times. Maloney trailed Lawler by roughly 3,000 votes at the time of the call. The result is a deeply embarrassing one for Democrats, given that a DCCC chair has not lost reelection since 1980, when congressman Jim Corman lost to Republican Bobbi Fiedler in California's 21st Congressional District.

Maloney's tenure as House Democrats' campaign head was marked by months of gaffes and infighting. In February 2021, Maloney hired a former "triggerman" for an upstate New York gang to run the committee's diversity and inclusion unit. Months later, in August 2021, the Democrat defied State Department guidelines when he traveled to France to party maskless at a billionaire's estate. Maloney went on to publicly attack one of his party's most vulnerable House incumbents in November 2021, prompting some battleground district members to call Maloney's performance as campaign chair "a real fucking problem."