Justice Democrats

Justice Democrats is an American progressive political action committee and caucus founded on January 23, 2017, by two leaders of Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign, Saikat Chakrabarti and Zack Exley, as well as political commentators Kyle Kulinski and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks. The organization formed as a result of the 2016 United States presidential election and aspires "to elect a new type of Democratic majority in Congress" that will "create a thriving economy and democracy that works for the people, not big money interests". The group advocates for campaign finance reform (reducing the role of money in politics) and endorses only candidates who pledge to refuse donations from corporate PACs and lobbyists. Kulinski and Uygur are no longer part of the group with Kulinski having since become a critic of it. Alexandra Rojas became the organization's executive director in May 2018. During the 2018 elections, Justice Democrats ran 79 progressive candidates against Democrats, Republicans and Independents in local, state, and federal elections. The seven Justice Democrats candidates who won their electoral congressional races in 2018 were Raúl Grijalva, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. The group endorsed considerably fewer candidates in 2020 than in 2018, a move its communications director defended as a strategy to focus its resources on the most promising candidates. Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Marie Newman were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020.