In my first
diary on the 2006 Democratic Perfect Storm I briefly reviewed how the Republicans were swept into power in 1994. In my second
diary I showed why 2006 is the Democratic Perfect Storm. In this diary I hope to illustrate through personal experience lessons that can be applied to 2006 along with suggestions for success.
How can we win if we don't fight the fights worth fighting?
Before I start let me point you to excellent
diary about why Democrats need to run everywhere, even in races with incumbents who seem unbeatable.
NO UNCONTESTED SEATS NO UNCONTESTED SEATS NO UNCONTESTED SEATS G-D DAMMIT! Dems MUST learn this basic lesson in 2006 so that we can have a lot more people seasoned and ready to run in 2008 and beyond. The enemy will teach you how to defeat him! If we had grasped this simple point earlier we would be in better shape with lots of pre-tested candidates ready to take advantage of the perfect storm political climate sweeping the across the country today.
From JUST PUT SOMEONE ON THE BALLOT: Political Strategy 101 by
TrueBlueMajority
Below are lessons that I learned about elections while trying to change the city council of Pullman, WA.
Pullman, WA is a small college town of 25,000 people that routinely votes strongly for Democrats in partisan elections, but when I first came to Pullman I found a `non-partisan' city council with six Republicans and one Democrat on it. After being involved in local Democratic politics a couple of years I decided I was going to change the city council. The first campaign I worked on for city council was for a Democratic PCO who had run and lost two years earlier. Unfortunately, the one Democrat on the council left so his seat was open and the Republicans appointed a Republican to the seat and now had 100% of the council. Fortunately, the Democratic PCO decided to run again and with a little help from me and two of my friends he took the seat getting three times the votes as the appointed Republican. Shortly thereafter another Democrat was elected from the same district.
The Lesson:
Persistence pays off. In 2006 we need candidates to run and if these candidates lose we need them to run again in 2008. We will be electing a new President in 08 and if Democrats nominate a great candidate we can build on our 06 victories.
Over the years I was unable to convince anyone to challenge these council members finally I was able to get a college friend to run. Just before filing the incumbent decided not to run for reelection. My friend filed along with the Republican pick. One of the first things I did was look for the Republican candidate's voter registration information, I wanted to see where he lived to get an idea about how much money he might spend and if I knew any of his neighbors. I drove by his house and realized he didn't actually live in the district he was running for. I waited until after the filing period had closed then proceeded to call the local newspaper, then the would be candidate, then the chair of the Republican party, then the County Auditor to mention that he might not live in the district and if so couldn`t run. This left my candidate unopposed barring a write-in campaign.
The Republican incumbent then decided to resign from the council and the council decided they were going to appoint someone to fill the position. I got my friend to apply and briefed him on what the council would ask him. I had attended every city council meeting for 2 or 3 years by that time and had seen their meaningless appointment process a couple times. No matter who applied they always appointed the Republican. Fortunately, this district largely had students living in it and the Republicans couldn't find anyone to apply. Another student did apply but didn't know anything about problems the council dealt with so did not come off well during the public Q&A. I had also talked strategy with the two Democrats about how to handle the Republicans in the executive session where they choose the replacement. The main point was to let the Republicans talk and don't show your hand. My friend's appointment was quickly done and no one ran against him as a write in. Ironically, the two most Republican members of the council nominated him and seconded his nomination.
The Lesson:
In 2006 or any other election year anything can happen. When I recruited my friend I actually believed we would have a tough uphill campaign against an entrenched incumbent. Instead we didn't have to fight for a single vote or raise a single dime. Had he not filed though someone else would have filled the seat.
That gave us three Democrats to four Republicans which then allowed us to stop a giveaway of public money to a private developer because the Republicans had nothing wrong with 6 to 1 votes or the occasional 5 to 2 vote because obviously since these votes are so lopsided there must be something wrong with the people in the minority but a 4 to 3 vote was too close for comfort when at least one of the Republicans had ambitions for higher office. By getting the public behind us, with support from our Democratic council members we forced the issue to the general election ballot which we then overwhelmingly won. Again, ironically, one of the Republicans thought that by placing another issue on the ballot, a community center, he could kill that idea. The public overwhelmingly supported it.
The Lesson:
Close votes matter. The Republicans didn't have to let the public vote on this. They could have simply kept voting for the project at every stage. However, since at least one of them had future political ambition, he and the other Republicans were forced to send it to the public. In the same way Democrats in 2006 need to try to get Republicans to vote on embarrassing legislation. The pay as you go budget vote and the vote on raising the debt ceiling in the Senate were important. Because all Democrats voted the same on these issues only a few Republicans could use their votes as cover leaving the rest vulnerable to attack on fiscal responsibility .
Unfortunately, one of our Democratic council members decided to resign and move away. Fortunately, a friend of mine convinced a Democrat to apply. Of course, a Republican applied, one who was beaten at the previous election by the Democrat who was leaving the council. Once again, I talked strategy with the two remaining Democrats and decided that the only way to keep the Republicans from appointing their person was to make sure that it would be obvious to the public what they were doing. I would apply for the seat since I lived in the district and when they went into the non-televised executive session they would strongly argue that I should fill the slot because I was the most knowledgeable on city issues. Since I had now attended more council meetings than most of the council members it would be an easy argument. Of course, by this time the Republicans knew who I was and would never vote for me but the vote and interviews are televised. If the council voted 4 to 2 to appoint the Republican we could make the case that those council members didn't care about anything other than what party the person belongs to when it came to these appointments. This would help us out in the next council elections later that year if anyone ran for office. However, the intent of this strategy was to get the Republicans to suggest a compromise candidate that everyone could agree on. They didn't know that the other guy was a Democrat. I knew the strategy had worked when after an hour in executive session the City Manager came out and told us it would be another 30 minutes or so. Sure enough when the council came out of their session and sat down in their seats all but one member was scowling and they appointed the Democrat.
The Lesson:
If you are willing to compromise don't start out supporting the compromise. I believe this is what killed the Clinton Health Care proposal. It started out as an attempt to please everyone. Instead Republicans could fight it as extreme and Democrats had no place to go that wouldn't be seen as even more extreme. In a sense, Harry Reid's shutting down the Senate to force a review of Bush's warrant less wiretapping almost worked. He forced a confrontation, the Senate would either investigate or it would be shut down. The Republican's agreed to the compromise of investigation. Feingold's Censure should be seen the same way, since the Senate won't do a responsible investigation and instead wants to retroactively make the program legal then Censure is the right option. Let the Republicans support a compromise that avoids the Censure debate.
At this point I had high hopes of recruiting people to run. Two seats were up for grabs and one was at-large which meant anyone in town could run. Unfortunately, everyone turned me down. So, even though I was working two jobs at the time and knew I didn't have the time to beat the guy I filed for the at-large seat. A few days before filing closed I tried one last time to get my best political ally to file but she refused citing the same stuff I heard from everyone else, "He is so well known and has been there so long he can't be beat." My response was, "If you don't file then you have to accept that you are responsible for every vote he makes." To my surprise on the last day of filing I received a call from her cursing me and telling me she had just filed but she wasn't going to do anything other than go to candidate forums. Well, she won every precinct by large margins except for the one where the incumbent lived and even there she was within a few votes. I came within 97 votes of beating my opponent even though I had only been able to attend candidate forums and doorbell one precinct. We were fortunate to have some good volunteers and I had run the previous year for county auditor in 1994(the bad year) so had built up some name recognition plus I had goodwill for opposing the giveaway of millions of public dollars. Republicans were now the minority on the council and the worst council member was gone.
The Lessons:
A. Incumbents are not invulnerable. The one that lost had been on the council for 14 years and earlier, when Republicans wanted him to run for state senator, they did a poll and found he had more than 80% name recognition in the district which include the entire city of Pullman. He also owned at least three local businesses. Turns out that the people who knew him didn't like him but the aura of invulnerability kept people from challenging him. I knew he wasn't invulnerable because he was appointed to the council then defeated then appointed again then never challenged for the next 12 years. The at-large member I lost to by 97 out of 10,000 votes cast had run the Student Service Center for 30 years and was also known by everyone in town. In fact my boss's husband had worked for the man and my boss remarked to me after I let them know I was running that, "he is so well-known and respected in the community". Yet, neither she nor her husband liked him and in discussions with a very Republican Realtor who went to the same Toastmasters Club I did I found out that the incumbent had "ice for blood". Incumbents are difficult to beat but don't let the public perception of the incumbent fool you.
B. A small group of dedicated volunteers can change an election. I am not recounting these stories to show how good I am at some of this stuff. In fact, I am embarrassed at how little I actually did. A lot of the success of the Republican party today is because they have tapped into a dedicated core of committed volunteers to do the grassroots work. By focusing on a narrow core of hot button issues important to fundamentalist conservative Christian Republicans they have put together a small army that combined with their fundraising advantages have managed to gain control of a country that doesn't support their issues. I just shake my head when I think of how little it took to change the city council and how much effort was put into trying to change the minds of council members on issues. Yet, despite how easy it was to change the council once there were candidates, it was very difficult to get the candidates and the people to help them. In 2006 we have an easier job. Quality candidates are stepping up, now we need to use that to get the good volunteers and raise money.
Unfortunately, my friend who was a college student graduated and decided he needed to get a job somewhere besides Pullman. That left us with 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans and the Republican Mayor who would cast any tiebreaker. Once again, we Democrats strategized and decided that we would try to get everyone we could think of to file. If they had one Republican file we would try to get 100 Democrats and the odds would be that their Republican would not even be near the most qualified. In addition, I would try to recruit the person the associated student body had appointed to be their city liaison to apply. We had already met with him immediately after he was appointed liaison to let him know we were sympathetic to student concerns and he was an ally even though he was fairly non-partisan. If he would apply we could get him appointed with the idea that a student ought to be on the city council since students made up 16,000 of the 25,000 residents of the city. He agreed to apply and we were able to get three Democrats to apply. One Republican did apply, the head of the Men's Golf Club whose project we had squashed. The strategy was simple. In executive session the candidates would be debated and the Democrats would refuse to back the Republican candidate. Since we had recruited the four remaining candidates they would let the Republicans debate over them although the Democrats were to try to persuade them to pick the best qualified but if they rejected our three good Democrats then the "need a student on the council" argument would be put forward. It worked and the student was placed on the council. He did a good job representing the students.
The Lesson:
Have a strategy, even better if it is a proven strategy and stick with it. Too many campaigns lose because they don't lay out a strategy for victory and stick to it.
What can we Democrats do to optimize our success in 2006?
Many people have complained that the Democratic Party doesn't have a unified platform to run on in 2006. I am not going to agonize about that because even if I came up with the perfect platform I am not a Senator or National Party Chair or top influential Democrat. I am just someone who wants to take back Congress and beat Republicans. What I am going to do to help make 2006 a very successful Democratic Perfect Storm is get out the Democratic vote, register new voters, help local Democratic candidates develop their campaigns, help raise money for Democratic candidates. Finally, I live in a very blue area but we have a single Republican county officeholder who only holds his seat because it is only up in non-Presidential years. I also live in a sliced off area of the county that is represented by Republican legislators. I expect Democratic candidates to run against these Republicans, but if none file I will let the party put me up as a candidate and will run and use that candidacy to increase the Democratic vote and recruit new volunteers, and would use such a candidacy to run in 2008. These are the things that we can do to maximize the Democratic victories in 2006. We can argue about national Democratic strategies but what we are going to be able to do that really makes the difference are these grassroots activities that will help elect all Democrats and make a stronger party for 2008.
My next three diaries will focus Senate races that are pivotal in the Democratic attempt to regain control of Congress. First up is Jack Carter running in Nevada. Don't forget that March 31st is the end of the quarter and we need to get those contributions in before the deadline. The better the fundraising looks for our candidates the more money they will raise.