I have been a state party legislative director and a political consultant to organizations friendly to Democrats. Also a County Chair. But in recent years I have been just a country lawyer. A year and a half ago I found myself with a small, unexpected pot of money and urgent concern about what might become of the Republic.
Insofar as it seemed clear to me that if things did not change no pot of money would survive, I decided to try to apply what I thought I had learned from a lifetime in politics, develop my own strategies, and deplete my little pot of money to staunch W’s hegemony of evil.
Factors in the strategies I developed include (1) Tom Schaller’s Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South (or as much of it as I actually read, and more so by a talk or two with a friend who had read it in its entirety), (2) what I thought I had learned from my own deep roots in a slave-holding southern family and from fighting Republicans in an overwhelmingly right wing local milieu, and (3) my own organic over-reliance on what I conclude are the lessons of history until something different happens.
One of the notions I applied was not overlooking the fact that whatever a district’s demographics there is a 100% chance that there will be a change in representation when an incumbent dies or retires.
A second is that party and legislative leadership funds and pacs are as inefficient as the dickens when it comes to getting dollars into growth opportunities. That cannot be overstated.
A third is that voter registration and get-out-the-vote are best driven indigenously by local candidates, particularly state legislative candidates. That has urban application in that really only local candidates can predict (and thus effect) the course of a door-knock interaction on a particular front porch on any particular block in their district. It has application in a variety of ways in rural settings, such as in certain Amish communities where in a given election substantially nobody votes or everybody votes. And where, when a community does turn out, it will vote overwhelmingly on one side or the other (depending on why they are all voting that cycle). Somewhat analogous voting behavior is found from time-to-time in some Native American communities.
In 2008 this latter notion that voter registration and get-out-the-vote are best driven by local candidates proved to be an example of my over-reliance on what I concluded was a lesson of history. The Obama voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts produced the political equivalent of an earthquake. Still I will not count on Washington producing similar results again (especially without Dr. Dean in the mix).
My major strategic thrust became one of supporting competitive Democratic candidates in non-slave-holding states that Democrats lost in 2000 and/or 2004, but where we might hope to be competitive in 2008. So I targeted a list of states that grew to New Hampshire, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska (to the extent of its Second Congressional District), South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Arizona, Nevada, and Alaska.
I learned as much as I could about what was happening on the ground in state and local races in those states. I learned all kinds of things. All kinds of things. For example, who knew that with $180 I could be a fat cat donating the legal maximum in some Montana races? (btw … I did not in fact max anybody.)
I found that within my target states I could help support the slightly questionable reelection prospects of several Members of Congress (and especially several who were facing reelection in historically Republican districts for the first time). I could help State House and State Senate candidates where control of the House or Senate was in question. I could help in competitive gubernatorial and United States Senate races, both those involving incumbents and those involving challengers. I found a Secretary of State challenger I believed to be important. But mostly, I found I could support Democrats running for Congress in Republican-held districts.
Then I donated to my target races online. I sent checks. I kept up on the changing landscape. I kept identifying races, kept targeting, kept donating online to the very end; kept sending checks to the very end.
Of course, we did not win because of the plan I executed. But Democrats did win a broad victory (a map-changing victory, if you will) in part because of my efforts yolked to the efforts of tens of thousands and millions of other ordinary people who also did their own thinking and did everything they could, whether their participation was online or at their union hall, at their church, or through a neighborhood association. Other entrepreneurial, inventive activsts, for example, targeted Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. Thank god they did. Still others focused on registering and turning out core Democrats wherever they live. Thank god they did. Losing was not an option.
Just before election day, Harry Teague invited my wife and me to his rural New Mexico Election Watch Party. Later, somebody or other invited my wife and me to inaugural festivities in Montana (and Washington, DC). Those things were neat.
And now I have some hope that the Republic is not yet lost; some hope that I can work hard, rebuild my retirement savings, and re-retire. That, too, is neat.
In the future I intend to use this diary to record my personal process of planning and executing a strategy for 2009 and 2010. That process will involve a number of factors, not the least important of which will be reading other blogs and taking in the thoughts, plans, and expectations of others.