For our purposes forget that this is about the Democratic Party.
We can also set aside the fact that this is about any political party.
Think in terms of RC as a movement. Think of the future.
All kinds of useful ideas for building RC into a vibrant movement.
B.
------------------------------
Politico
How the Democratic Party Lost Its Way
During my 20 years in Democratic campaigns, I’ve seen the party operation
decline into an insular and myopic letdown. But I also know how it can
recover.
By THOMAS MILLS
December 10, 2016
By THOMAS MILLS
December 10, 2016
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I made my first visit to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
in 1998, when I was campaign manager for a longshot candidate running
against an entrenched incumbent. By the time we left the building, we felt
empowered and connected. We had a campaign roadmap that offered organizational
and financial benchmarks, a point of contact with the committee, weekly
talking points and an organization behind us that made introductions and
offered
advice when we needed it.
Fast forward 18 years. This time, I’m the congressional candidate running
in a longshot North Carolina district in a year that many people thought
might be a Democratic sweep. By now, I’d been to the DCCC numerous times to
introduce candidates or meet with staff. Most of those experiences were
similar to that first visit. But in 2016, things were different. I didn’t hear
from the DCCC during the first six months of my race. After the primaries,
I reached out to them. But despite leaving numerous messages on both email
and answering machines, I never got any response. When I eventually used my
Congressional connections to get an audience, I took my pollster and media
consultant to a meeting that lasted all of 15 minutes. We left with little
more than a list of reasons why the DCCC wouldn’t be helping our campaign.
Outside, my pollster quipped, “At least he could have blown a little smoke
up our ass.”
I’ve spent 20 years working on political campaigns, and the political
organization I encountered in 2016 was an utter disappointment. Back in the ’
90s when I started out, the DCCC was tasked with contesting as many races as
possible and providing staff, training and direction to the campaigns in
the field. Today, they’re narrowly focused on a small number of highly
targeted races. Other campaigns get little attention or support.
Democrats need to be sharper going into the next election cycle. With a
50-plus seat deficit in the House, the party will have to win more than just
the most competitive seats. They’ll probably need a wave in which they
figure out how to win some longshot races. That won’t happen unless the party
actively recruits good candidates around the country and treats them with
respect and encouragement. And it also won’t happen unless the party provides
campaigns—especially in the toughest districts—with the training, support
and infrastructure to create or take advantage of opportunities.
Democrats are going to need to seriously up their game if they hope to
claw their way back to the majority. Maybe my experience with the DCCC over
the years can help them find their way.
When I traveled to the DCCC headquarters 18 years ago, it was a trip worth
making. After a short wait in the lobby, a man in his mid-30s in a blue
button-down shirt came striding down a hallway, enthusiastically shook our
hands, and introduced himself as Paul Frick, political director of the DCCC.
As he led us to a small office, Frick thanked the candidate profusely for
his willingness to run and thanked me for taking on the campaign. He made
sure we knew that he considered us part of his team.
Frick was followed by Rep. Steny Hoyer, who greeted us with an air of
confidence and bravado, assuring us that the Democrats planned to win big in
November. After Hoyer, the woman who staffed the Southern Desk came to tell
us the nuts and bolts of the DCCC program and their expectations for us. By
the time we left the building, nothing had changed in the state of our
race, but at least we had relationships, clear expectations and the sense that
we were part of a larger program to take back the House.
By then the DCCC was a robust strategic and opportunistic organization. In
the late ’80s and early ’90s, the DCCC had brought congressional
campaigns into the age of modern marketing, introducing innovative tactics
like
polling, opposition research and targeting. The organization essentially
professionalized campaigns, providing extensive training to managers,
fundraisers, press secretaries and field operatives. In the process, they
created a
generation of professional campaign operatives around the country who
understood the structure of campaigns and the strategies and tactics to be
successful.
Congressional races are a big undertaking, even for those with experience
in state legislative or statewide down-ballot contests, and this knd of of
support can make a big difference. If candidates are going to be
successful, they require structure, guidance and competent staff. Granted, the
DCCC
is only going fund the most competitive races with big dollar contributions,
but all campaigns should be given a baseline of support to give them a
fighting chance.
They also need introductions to the Washington establishment. I still have
a file from the the late 1990s named “DCCC PAC contacts.” The committee
didn’t necessarily recommend campaigns, but they helped introduce candidates
to labor and progressive organizations who could provide financial and
grassroots support, especially if a race got hot.
The DCCC did more than just train the candidates and campaigns that filed.
They aggressively recruited candidates to make sure they contested as many
races as possible, even if the districts weren’t considered very
competitive. In doing so, they forced GOP candidates to spend money in their
own
districts instead of others. This also meant they were prepared to take
advantages of scandals, political missteps or wave elections that could turn a
noncompetitive race into a competitive one.
For instance, in 2006, DCCC Chair Rahm Emanuel personally recruited former
NFL quarterback Heath Shuler to run in a district that had been held by a
Republican incumbent for more than 15 years. When Shuler said that he was
reluctant to file because his small children needed him, Emanuel made a
habit of calling him throughout the day. “Heath, I’m dropping my kids off at
school.” “Heath, just wanted to call from my son’s soccer game.” He got
Shuler, and in the 2006 wave, he got the seat.
***
Over time, the DCCC has lost much of its innovative spirit and edge—which
is evident in the fact that, today, support seems to be available only to a
select group of targeted races.
In 2016, I filed to run in a rural district in North Carolina that former
Democratic Senator Kay Hagan had won in 2008. That year, most Democrats on
the ballot had won in the district, but Barack Obama lost it by eight
points. Four years later, he lost it by 10. My chances of winning were slim;
but
in a wave election, this was exactly the type of district Democrats would
need to take back the House.
In the weeks after filing, I expected some sort of outreach from the DCCC,
though I wasn’t hoping for it. I wanted to put together the initial
infrastructure of my campaign without outside interference. Still, a few weeks
after filing, I was surprised that I had heard nothing. On a congressional
race that I helped in 2012, the DCCC sent a handbook shortly after my
candidate filed her candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.
As the only Democrat to file, I officially became the Democratic nominee
after North Carolina’s June primary and I decided to reach out to the
committee then. By now our campaign was up and running. We had money in the
bank,
a social media campaign and a small staff to run the operations. I knew,
though, that to win I’d need help from the DCCC and their progressive allies.
I found the contact info for the Southern desk and started calling and
emailing. I left numerous email and phone messages letting them know that I
was the Democratic nominee in NC-08. Nothing. Finally, I called a friendly
congressional chief-of-staff and asked for help. She agreed to put in a call
and I finally got a response. In a brief call with the Southern Desk, I got
little encouragement but set up a meeting anyway.
A few weeks later, I arrived in Washington D.C. with my media consultant
and pollster. An email to my scheduler indicated we would be meeting with
the executive director of the DCCC. However, the receptionist told us there
was no record of a meeting with her. They did escort us to a conference room
and we met briefly with the guy staffing the Southern Desk. We weren’t
asking for money, but we did hope to take advantage of the organization’s vast
network. Instead of any encouragement, we heard all the reasons the DCCC
wouldn’t be helping our campaign. “We can get a lot of races 47 or 48
percent,” the man from the Southern Desk told us. “But it will take millions
to
get most of them to 50.” The meeting lasted no more than 15 minutes.
I lost my race, and nothing the DCCC could have done would have changed
that in a year like this. Still, the organization charged with getting
Democrats back in the majority should do much better. Now, more than any time
in
my lifetime, our country needs a better class of politicians and better
qualified operatives. It’s the DCCC’s responsibility to find them and train
them.
Democrats should be thinking broadly instead of narrowly. Successful
political organizations are entrepreneurial and opportunistic, especially when
they are 60 seats in the minority. But despite the dismal record it’s racked
up in recent years, the DCCC has become insular and myopic. Candidates and
consultants can’t reach high-ranking staffers. Reaching ranking members is
unthinkable. The circle of people influencing the political strategists
rarely reaches outside of the beltway, which means the strategists—like so
much of Washington—have lost touch with the people whose votes they need to
attract. They rely on polling and focus groups to give them an understanding
of the challenges facing families today. Those tools would be greatly
enhanced if the people using them had regular contact with the people they are
trying to reach.
Much of the insularity seems to be rooted in a lack of accountability. For
staff, there’s little penalty for failure. They often either get rehired
or go to work for consulting firms that have contracts with the DCCC. And
the Democratic Congressional leadership comes predominantly from safe
districts. Most ranking members haven’t run competitive races in many years,
if
they’ve run them at all. They don’t understand the skills and experience
they need in a caucus staff since they don’t really know what a professional
campaign organization looks like and they don’t understand what candidates
in competitive districts need to succeed.
The DNC stopped providing its training academy in the late 1990s. Since
then, training been contracted out to organizations like Wellstone Action,
which has a heavy field emphasis or EMILY’s List, with a fundraising
emphasis. We’ve lost the intensive trainings that focused on basic management
and
strategic skills.
It’s not only the training that’s taken a hit. Despite their 60-seat
deficit heading into 2016, the Democrats didn’t appear to do much candidate
recruiting except in the most competitive districts. In Texas, Hillary Clinton
won in a congressional district where Democrats didn’t even field a
challenger. Numbers, not potential, guided the DCCC efforts. Instead of
looking
for possibilities, or trying to create them, the committee only paid
attention to the districts that looked viable on spreadsheets.
The DCCC and other campaign committees ought to retool their campaign
operations looking back to the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, they introduced
research and polling to campaigns. Now, they should be teaching campaigns how
to use social media and online operations to reach voters early and build
low-dollar fundraising operations.
Today, Democrats are so far in the hole that they could use the
opportunity to try new tactics and strategies to see if they can win in some
unlikely
places. Longshot and marginal races are not won in the final two months of
a campaign. They’re won because candidates put together campaigns that
prepare them to take advantage of opportunities throughout the cycle. Social
media and online fundraising give candidates the platforms to build profiles
and low-dollar fundraising operations, as well as create excitement among
their base before the paid media and field campaigns begin.
For Democrats to be successful, they need leaders, both campaign
professionals and elected officials, who understand how modern communications
and
campaigns have changed. They would be wise to reach out to operatives and
consultants who live outside the Washington, D.C., bubble to better understand
voters. They should get back to their roots: recruit candidates to compete
in as many races as possible; create an army of professional operatives
across the country to run campaigns cycle after cycle; provide a base level
of support for every candidate who files; introduce innovative strategies
and tactics and teach campaigns how to use them. They’ll need the leadership
to take them there.
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