I've been mostly looking and listening around here since the election. I'm already fed up with the bickering and standing in a circle shooting each other. Part of the problem with any group dynamic, be it work, home, or politics is the egos that get in the way of achieving goals. Enough already, there's work to do.
Before I get started on what we can do from here forward, let me lay some bonafides on the table. I do it not in a chest beating, look at us attitude but in a this can work, we can win, there are ways.
I'm working at a county level with 37 towns, 44,000 voters but the lessons can be applied everywhere. Prior to this election our county had never raised much money..maybe $2-3,000 at a special event. This year we started with an auction that brought a great group together, got the word of mouth going, raised $17,000 net and never looked back. We raised 34k total. Last election 160 volunteers, this time almost 800. We made 50,000 local calls with local volunteers and completed over 11,000 voter ID calls and literally got all but a handful of them to the polls. We developed and paid for radio and newspaper ads.
Results: In 2000, Gore barely won this swing county by 260 votes. This year Kerry won by 3,656. We had a 45% Dem performance in 2000, 55% in 2004. The most improved performance of any county in our state. In the process we had to show and tell the 'coordinated campaign' to get lost because for the most part they couldn't help us. Why? Because we spent two years updating the crappy voter lists. Lots of drudge work but we had great phone lists as a result. Maybe one or two disconnects per page.
Where are we now? We've had several meetings, done a survey at our monthly mtg and have developed a Vison for 2006 and Beyond Plan.
Key elements include:
Headquarters
Fundraising
Issues Forums
Writers Groups
Voter Lists
Absentee Voting
Candidate Development
Candidate Support
Voter ID calling
Canvassing
Volunteer Recruiting
Persuasion Calling
GOTV
Town Committees
Technology
Community Outreach
Issues Development
Make no mistake, it's an ambitious plan and we still have much to learn and do better. We're also working to elect a more progressive state party chair who understands campaigns built on the bottom up principle and our county chair may well become the Chair of the county chairs and better enable us to do trainings around the state. Yes, we have many of the same problems you have in our state of dis-organization, mis-coordinated 'Coordinated Campaigns' etc. but here's the rub...
Top down campaigns happen if strong local efforts aren't happening. If the phone calls aren't being made, the precincts walked and all the other local activities happening, it's no wonder state and national campaigns plug in their phone banks, deluge with mail etc. The national or state campaign that figures out that taking the best of local efforts and replicating them around a state will do well, will do very well.
One example of what we plan to do: We're going to recruit a few people in every town to be part of a canvassing team. We'll develop a series of questionnaires with Dem elected officials and this spring people will start door to door efforts. We will do this three times between now and fall 2006. By that time we hope half of the doors we knock on will greet us by name.."Hey Chris/Jim how you guys doing, come on in".
And one last story. Yesterday a volunteer circulated an email that wounded soldiers at Walter Reed need phone cards. In 24 hours we gathered 2500 minutes in phone cards, gathered a small group at HQ, posed with the flag and a seasonal Peace on Earth Poster, got a local paper to come take a picture and the story will have a quote from an 80 yr old lady on Social Security about how she's 'disappointed' and 'ashamed' these soldiers have to pay for their calls home. All under the Dem Committee name.
Now, if you've stuck with this diary for this long and can provide me with your 'quals', a link to a website, a phone number, something to show me you ain't no Rethug troll, I'll email you a copy of our plan. I'll gladly accept a copy of your plan. No matter what, if we put the best of what works out and take that to the streets we can change from within become the change we all want. All politics is truly and really local.