WASHINGTON — House Democrats, stung by election losses that shrank their majority and facing daunting headwinds to protect it in 2022, chose Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York on Thursday to serve as the chairman of their campaign arm.
Mr. Maloney, a moderate from the Hudson Valley, promised to immediately shake up the group, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, after it lost nearly a dozen seats last month despite record fund-raising and soaring expectations that the party could expand its majority. His pitch — and Mr. Maloney’s own record of winning in a competitive district — resonated with rank-and-file lawmakers anxious about the prospect of defending their seats again in another two years.
In an interview after his victory, Mr. Maloney said he would conduct a data-driven deep dive into what happened, prioritize outreach to Latino communities, rethink costly polling and research operations that failed to predict Republicans’ strength this year, re-emphasize on-the-ground organizing complicated by the coronavirus pandemic and potentially scrap a ban on doing business with firms that work with Democratic primary challengers.
“My motto is cheaper, faster, better,” Mr. Maloney said. “That includes a rigorous after-action review of the 2020 election. We’re going to learn the lessons of this election, build a new battle plan and go forward as a united team and hold this majority.”
The task is an exceedingly steep one. Rarely in recent history has the president’s party maintained control of the House in the midterm elections of his first term. In this case, Democrats will also be fighting for re-election and seeking to recruit new candidates in districts redrawn based on the 2020 census that are likely to only further tilt the playing field toward Republicans. Simmering fights between moderates and progressives in their own ranks over the party’s future threaten to upend any plans.
Mr. Maloney, 54, will be the highest-ranking openly gay member of House leadership. He beat out Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, 119 to 107, in a secret-ballot vote that took place virtually because of the raging coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Cárdenas, the son of Mexican immigrants who has led the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s campaign arm, staked his bid around winning back Latino voters in key swing states that voted Republican this year. Party leaders were officially neutral in the race.
Beyond promises of operational and strategic changes, Mr. Maloney’s appeal for Democrats also lay in his profile. As an openly gay man, he has managed fives times to win a district that voted for President Trump in 2016 and argued that he was the best positioned to help more Democrats do the same.
The victory catapulted Mr. Maloney, who has been eager to increase his stature in Washington or New York, into the upper tier of House leadership at a time when a younger generation of Democrats is jockeying for positions guiding the party after Speaker Nancy Pelosi retires, as soon as 2022.
His earlier bid to lead the campaign committee had been unsuccessful, as had his 2018 run for attorney general in New York.
Ready to go on the offensive, Republicans already re-elected their campaign chairman, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, to lead the charge to retake the majority. His searing campaign attack strategy this year, portraying vulnerable Democrats as socialist sympathizers who want to defund police forces, clearly rattled Democrats and pleased the rank and file in his own party.
Mr. Maloney will quickly come under pressure to find a way to counter that messaging. So far, the party’s two wings have spent more time squabbling with each other over who is to blame for the caricatures than trying to change public perceptions. And some progressives remain skeptical of Mr. Maloney, worrying that he may be too similar to Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, the committee’s current chairwoman. Ms. Bustos resigned last month after Democrats’ disappointing showing in House races, in which they failed to unseat a single Republican and saw at least a dozen of their incumbents defeated. She also hails from a swing district and is a middle-aged white person in an increasingly diverse party.
Making matters more complicated are looming changes atop House leadership. Ms. Pelosi has led Democrats in the chamber for nearly two decades, tightly controlling the party’s legislative and campaign strategies and raising huge amounts of money for candidates — attributes her successors will have a difficult time replicating.
“I expect our opponents to throw the kitchen sink at us and I expect the party I’m from to do what’s right, which is stand up for racial justice,” Mr. Maloney said. “We should be prepared to fight for those things in a way that is smart and benefits from the hard experience of the recent election.”
As he sought to sway fellow Democrats, Mr. Cárdenas highlighted the political operation he built over a six-year run leading BOLD Pac, the campaign arm of the Hispanic Caucus. The group raised $30 million under his chairmanship, funneling money not just to Latino candidates but also other Democrats running difficult races.
Mr. Maloney rejected concerns that attempts to win back Latinos would suffer under his watch. In the interview, he indicated that he planned to elevate prominent Latino lawmakers at the campaign committee to help improve outreach, potentially including two of his leading supporters for the post, Representatives Linda T. Sánchez of California and Veronica Escobar of Texas.
“I share Tony’s concern that we improve our cultural competency across the many Latino communities where we need to do better,” Mr. Maloney said.
He added, “You will see Latinas in powerful positions in the new D.C.C.C.”
In a gesture to progressives, Mr. Maloney also said he would reconsider a ban the committee has placed on consultants who have worked with candidates who challenge incumbents. The policy was meant to tamp down on Democratic divisions and protect sitting members of Congress, but progressives, led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have argued that it is unnecessarily punitive and has denied the party access to cutting-edge firms.
“We must benefit from the most diverse and talented people working in politics, especially in the areas of social media and digital communications,” he said. “The blanket policy that exists now has not been working as hoped.”
Mr. Maloney’s plan for a data-driven analysis of the House battlefield echoed a study he conducted for the campaign committee after Democrats failed to recapture the majority in 2016.
The document never became public, but Mr. Maloney argued that it helped lay out the strategy for Democrats to win control in 2018. Some former officials working at the campaign arm at the time said that characterization was inflated, but did not dispute that Mr. Maloney’s analysis was credible.
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