This past Saturday was the state College Dems conference for the western half of the state, held at the University of Pittsburgh. Seven colleges attended, including Pitt, Penn State, Slippery Rock, CMU, CCAC, and one other which I've forgotten since then. The day was designed to bring college students together to learn a bit more about campaigning, so there were workshop speakers on things like fundraising, campaign management, and grassroots communications. In addition, Mike Doyle (D-Pittsburgh), came to speak to the conference during the opening ceremonies, and Suzie Turnbull, the Vice Chair of the DNC spoke as the keynote speaker at the end.
Descriptions on the Flip.
Congressman Doyle was on fire - he was pissed that Bush came to PA the day before and accused liberals of lying about pre-war intelligence. He was excited to have college kids to talk to and interact with it, and in the end, he was inspirational to a lot of us. A central part of his speech was the idea that Democrats need their own `Contract for America' a la Newt Gingrich. As he extended upon this idea, he hit upon a few topics that could be on this "simple, single sheet of paper that would tell Americans what we feel":
- Energy Independence. Doyle compared this to the moon race saying that if we really put our mind to it, we wouldn't need to open ANWR or any other oil fields. Instead, putting the full forces of American science and research on the task, we'd be able to be energy independent using hydrogen fuel cells or some other means within 10 or 15 years.
- Health Care Reform - Make sure all people have insurance, by cutting the middleman and making the Government the payor for health care, dramatically reducing administrative costs.
- Pension security - Need to ensure that individuals are not losing their pensions because companies decide to ignore their obligations to their employees.
- Budget Deficit - He made the point that the Democrats could have balanced the budget in seven years with their plan, and pushed for repealing the tax cuts, as well as a focus on "pay as you go" rules.
Doyle ended by talking about the 2006 elections, encouraging the audience to be proud of what they stood for, and show that pride as they work on GOTV and grassroots connections in the run-up to the election.
After that speech, the day was spent in workshops with various campaign staff on the topics mentioned above. Mike Butler, a fundraiser from Bob Casey's campaign came to give the fundraising talk, while Mark Salvas, who is running Jason Altmire's campaign in the 4th district against Melissa Hart gave the campaign management talk. Khari Mosley and Paul McKrell, veterans of the Bill Peduto Pittsburgh mayoral campaign gave a talk on grassroots coalitions and alliances. I was handling registration all day, so only heard Khari and Paul speak, but in general every comment on the workshops I heard was positive. Khari and Paul did a great job showing case studies of local alliances that worked well, and offered a bit of advice on how to go about creating these coalitions.
After the workshops we had a short break before Suzie Turnbull was to speak, which mostly consisted of people getting soda or coffee (it had been a long day for many). Then Suzie started. At first, I have to say I was rather unimpressed by her speech. It started out quite bland, slow, with bad attempts to ingratiate herself with the college kids. You could feel the talking points from the DNC: "culture of corruption", "Democrats stand for the future", "Together, America can do better". As she got talking though, and actually got to possible positions or ideas for Dems, she was much more interesting and eloquent.
A few of her major points:
- State politics are by and large lousy, which is why the DNC is trying to encourage infrastructure and fundraising apparatus work by bringing in organizers for each state.
- DC needs to break its consultant culture and learn more about each state by actually talking to the states.
- The Democratic party needs to invest at the local level - field work should be happening around the clock, not just some of the time.
- Turnbull referenced the idea of defining our own message - and in regards to that, stated that the DNC is now sending weekly e-mails to every democratic official at every level to give them a defined message to work with.
- The democrats must take back the idea of "moral values". She suggested things like defining values as: People having food, reducing poverty and insuring health care.
As an ending speaker she certainly did not inspire me like I'm sure Dean would have. That being said, it was nice to hear from the DNC in person, and have some idea of what they are thinking. Certainly, most of the college students agreed that we needed to work on a grassroots level. After her speech, she was presented with the first annual "Progressive Panther" award.