Leslie Dach to Serve as Campaign Chair
Washington, DC — Protect Our Care announced today that longtime democratic strategist and former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Communications Director Brad Woodhouse has been appointed Campaign Director for the health care coalition that has worked to stop repeal of health care and protect people’s health care. Leslie Dach, who served as the coalition’s founding Campaign Director will become Campaign Chair, focusing on longer term planning and strategy.
“President Trump continues to deliberately sabotage people’s health care out of his own spitefulness, and we are going to make sure the public is constantly aware of every move this Administration makes until Congressional Republicans stand up and make them stop,” said Woodhouse. “Health care continues to be the number one issue for the American people and we will make sure they have the facts to hold their representatives accountable for playing politics with their health care. I’m honored to lead a coalition devoted to protecting the gains we’ve made in health care for the American people but am daunted at the huge shoes Leslie is leaving me to fill.”
“Protect Our Care will maintain eternal vigilance when it comes to stopping health care repeal, protecting Medicaid, and preventing sabotage,” said Dach. “Brad is the perfect person to make sure that day in and day out we are shining a bright light on any attempt Congress or the Administration are making to harm people’s health care.”
Woodhouse has held leadership roles in multiple prominent progressive and political organizations including as President of Americans United for Change (AUFC), which for over a decade was one of the nation’s leading progressive issue advocacy organizations that was originally created to stop then-President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security and later was integral in building the infrastructure on the progressive side to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Woodhouse, as AUFC President, was a founding steering committee member of Health Care for America Now (HCAN) which laid the ground work in 2007 and 2008 for a post-Bush Administration push to pass health reform and later played an integral role in passing the ACA during President Obama’s first term.
During the campaign to pass the ACA in 2009 and 2010, Woodhouse was a senior adviser and Communications Director at the DNC, where he worked directly with the White House, Organizing for Action (OFA) and Congressional Democrats to pass the law. After leaving the DNC in 2013 and returning to Americans United for Change, Woodhouse and AUFC took the reins of Protect Your Care, an organization which had been established after the ACA was passed to promote and defend the law as it was being implemented. Under Protect Your Care’s banner, Woodhouse ran a field and rapid response communications effort nationally and in nearly a dozen states to push back on the efforts by, among others, the Koch Brothers, to undermine implementation of the law and to discourage people from enrolling in it.
In addition to his role as chair of POC, Dach will be working with the Rockefeller Foundation as a senior advisor, and be engaged in a number of other health care and foundation projects.