Jessica Mackler

Democrats are bullish on their chances to take back the House in the 2018 midterm elections. And if they succeed, it’ll be powered in part by the work of Jessica Mackler.

Mackler was named the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s director of independent expenditure last September, the first woman to hold that position.

“There couldn’t be a more exciting cycle to be involved in congressional campaigns,” Mackler said in an interview with Playbook. “I think about this a lot, the bigger picture, the importance of this election for Democrats — for the country — that’s something that really weighs on my mind all the time.”

A party committee’s independent expenditure director controls tens of millions of dollars in mostly television advertising spending which, if done right, could swing elections around the country. They, along with their staff, decide exactly how the committee will wage the air wars against the other party’s candidates.

However, that big spending account comes with one major hitch: They remain isolated from much of the rest of their party’s infrastructure. Mackler’s role has been described as “the loneliest job in politics” because she is not allowed to communicate with campaigns, outside groups and other DCCC staffers not on the independent expenditure team due to campaign finance law.

Instead, Mackler will have to rely on public signals from Democratic operatives and the committee to figure out the best way to help her party win the House, point by point, district by district.

“Her job is not to single-handedly win the House,” said Jesse Ferguson, who held the same job as Mackler in the 2014 cycle. “Her job is to make as much of a difference at the margins as she can.”

She has honed her political chops over a long career in Democratic politics. Mackler can trace her Democratic roots through her parents, who both volunteered for George McGovern’s presidential campaign in California in 1972.

Mackler herself has worked at marquee Democratic campaign institutions like EMILY’s List and American Bridge, where she served as president before taking the DCCC job. She also ran then-Rep. Shelley Berkley’s (D-Nev.) ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 2012.

Mackler will have a wide range of targets to pick from in her role. The DCCC has laid out what is perhaps the most expansive battlefield in a generation, naming 104 Republican-controlled districts as potential targets, with Mackler closely watching the “exceptional” candidates in many of the districts.

“Most importantly, [there are] candidates who really fit the districts they’re running in,” she said, naming Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb, Illinois’ Brendan Kelly and Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin as candidates with compelling, district-tailored stories to tell.

She stressed that there is no one-size-fits-all messaging that her team will look to plug into races across the country. But broadly, she thinks Democrats have key messages that will help sweep her party back into power in the House.

“[It is] more broadly, about what the Republican Party is doing. The Republican Party has spent the last year and a half trying to take people’s health care away. They passed a tax bill that’s incredibly unfair to the vast majority of the country,” she argued. “People are fed up.” — Zach Montellaro

Photos by John Shinkle/POLITICO.