Late-night television personality Jimmy Kimmel is set to lend his celebrity clout to House Democrats as the featured draw at a high-dollar fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Los Angeles next month.
According to Mediaite, the event was revealed when MS NOW contributor Teddy Schleifer shared a screenshot of the invitation, which lists the fundraiser for the evening of March 10 in Los Angeles. The move underscores how deeply late-night comedy, once broadly apolitical entertainment, has become intertwined with Democratic Party fundraising and messaging infrastructure.
Kimmel, along with fellow late night hosts like Stephen Colbert, has long been a lightning rod for conservative criticism, particularly from President Donald Trump, who has accused the hosts of partisan bias masquerading as comedy. Trumps ire has included threats of some sort of intervention from the Federal Communications Commission and calls for him to be fired, though Kimmel has largely treated the attacks as a badge of honor among liberal audiences.
Thus far, Kimmel has managed to shrug off the attacks from the White House, other than a brief suspension that arguably raised his profile in anti-Trump circles, and just signed a contract extension with ABC last December. His prominent role at a DCCC event will likely reinforce the perception on the right that major entertainment platforms function as an in-kind arm of the Democratic Party.
According to the invitation, Kimmel will be a Special Guest at the event, alongside headliners Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Also listed among the ambassadors, Democratic donors, and other politicos on the host committee is Shonda Rhimes, the television producer behind several hit series and a reliable Hollywood backer of Democratic causes.
The invitation outlines a tiered structure for participation, with the minimum price of admission set at a $25,000 donation to the DCCC. Higher levels include the $44,300 Leaders Circle, the $100,000 Event Chair, and the top-tier designation of Jeffries 300 for donors willing to contribute $310,100.
It is not clear what exactly the 300 is referencing. Mediaites calls to the DCCC representative or consulting firm listed on the invitation were not returned at the time of publication, leaving the branding choice unexplained.
Democrats need a total of 218 seats in the House to take back the majority; Republicans currently hold 218, Democrats 214, and three seats are vacant.
Perhaps it is a hope of finding 300 donors at that level (which would rake in a glorious campaign war chest of more than $93 million), or a reference to the Spartan warriors whose courage at the Battle of Thermopylae during the Greco-Persian Wars was portrayed (with a good dose of creative license) in Zach Snyders 2006 film, a comparison that may strike many conservatives as an awkward metaphor for a party increasingly reliant on Hollywood money and late-night partisans to stay competitive.
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