Not bad for a sophomore (then again, so is fellow vice-chair Bruce Braley):
New Jersey Rep. Albio Sires has been tapped as vice chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
In his new position, Sires will be charged with heading up the committee’s member participation and outreach, meaning he’ll be pushing Democrats to get more involved in fund raising and close races.
Over at Congress Matters, though, Kagro makes a good point:
How does this bode for the 2010 cycle in Florida’s 18th, 21st and 25th districts, currently held by Cuban-American Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, respectively? In 2008, Wasserman Schultz, though chair of the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program, famously refused to go all in for the Democrats running there. Now she goes into the 2010 cycle as a vice chair. And although it won’t necessarily be Sires’ job to turn those districts blue, you wouldn’t be crazy to wonder whether his heart won’t really be in that job, either. R or D, the Cuban-Americans in Congress don’t tend to get in each other’s way, at the very least, and in some cases are in fact very close friends.
That doesn’t make Sires a bad choice for the job, though. Just that it’s not likely to get better for Democratic Cuban-American candidates in Florida in terms of support from incumbent Dems.
Sigh. He’s probably right, especially with DWS being the other vice-chair.