Biden nominates Jaime Harrison to be the next DNC chairman

• Jaime Harrison of South Carolina is President-elect Joe Biden's pick to lead the Democratic National Committee.
• Harrison's run against Sen. Lindsey Graham in November broke fundraising records and earned him a reputation as a fundraising juggernaut.
• Going into the 2022 midterms, Harrison will try to keep the Democrats from losing their House majority and build on the party's brand post-Trump.

Jaime Harrison, the former South Carolina Senate candidate who shattered fundraising records, is President-elect Joe Biden's pick to be the new chairman of the Democratic National Committe.

Biden announced his slate of DNC nominees Thursday evening.

"We need to elect Democrats across our country and up and down the ballot," Biden said in a press release. "To do that is going to take tireless leadership, committed to strenghtening Democratic infrastructure across our states."

Harrison's nomination was first reported earlier in the day by The New York Times.

Other nominees include Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Duckworth, both for the position of vice chair, and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for vice chair of civic engagement and voter protection.

Members of the DNC will vote for their new leadership on January 21.

As Insider's John Dorman reported back in October, Harrison established his bona fides as a fundraising juggernaut in his challenge to Sen. Lindsey Graham in the 2020 election. While he ultimately fell short to Graham in the traditionally red state, Harrison's haul of $57 million in the third quarter of 2020 reverberated around the political world.

That skillset will come in handy at the helm of the DNC.

Going into 2022, the Democrats will be vulnerable to losing their House majority. Republicans defied expectations and picked up seats in 2020, and an incumbent president's party tends to suffer losses in Congress at the midterms - as was the case for President Donald Trump in 2018 and former President Barack Obama in both 2010 and 2014.

Harrison grew up in Orangeburg, S.C., going on to graduate from Yale University and the Georgetown University Law Center. He cut his teeth in Congress as an aide to Rep. Jim Clyburn.

After a lobbying stint, Harrison became the first Black chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

Harrison will replace DNC Chair Tom Perez, who took over the job after Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz drew significant negative publicity from the Wikileaks scandal for her emails dismissing Sen. Bernie Sanders in his challenge to Hillary Clinton back in the 2016 primary.