It’s another Saturday, so for those who tune in, welcome to a diary discussing the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic Campaign. If you’ve missed out, you can catch up anytime: Just visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide. Every week I try to tackle issues I’ve been asked about, and with the help of other campaign workers and notes, we tackle subjects about how to improve and build better campaigns.
All over the country, Democratic county and district organizing has a tendency to revert to the same thing: monthly meetings where mostly elderly individuals get together over coffee and complain about Republicans. The meetings can be cathartic and remind people that other registered Democratic Party members live near them, but the structure provides very little in the way of helping candidates, motivating young people, or building opportunities for new members to come in and see an opportunity to be effective.
In light of this, county and district organizations have started to look at entirely new ways to build party infrastructure for the future. How do they do it? Diversify. Want to know more? Let’s talk about it.
From 2017 to today
In 2017, I wrote a Nuts & Bolts that turned into one of the more shared articles I’ve ever written in this series. The piece, “Repairing Your County Party,” has been something I have continued to receive email about as counties and party organizations write me with the solutions that they have implemented.
One item in that diary: If your county party is really bad, take it over! This resonated with quite a few readers, who took time to make changes in their own county organizations. As they did so, they started to look at new and better ways to run county organizations.
Some of the ideas that were sent to me surprised me with their creativity and passion. Some ideas didn’t work, but no one had a problem trying something different. From water balloon fights to cookouts, poker nights, and even coloring books, a lot of county organizations tried new things to make more people feel welcome.
Be welcoming and have a purpose
One piece of feedback I received over and over was that the more a county organization was transparent in explaining how its events would work to elect more Democratic candidates, the more people paid attention. Yes, it’s fun to gripe about Republicans, but attendees of all ages hungered for hope, a sign that there was a path to change things.
As a result, county organizations that had put into place fundraising plans to support candidates and explained them to their members did better than those that just had meeting after meeting. Many county organizations had shifted their entire plan away from big meetings to small ones, bringing the party closer to individuals. By scheduling meetings that moved around a district or county, parties had provided a lot of people who had trouble attending in one location somewhere geographically closer.
By offering multiple times and places, county organizations provided more opportunities for people to be involved.
Integrating our county organizations
While it may be 2019, that doesn’t mean that the Democratic Party doesn’t sometimes struggle to focus on diversity. In a few emails, organizations pointed out that there would often be a racial or ethnic schism in their county party. Some counties told me stories of divided watch parties, where black Democratic members would attend one county event while white members attended another. Similarly, some county organizations pointed out divides within communities where meetings were often held in wealthy area rather than in economically challenged areas, where meetings almost never occurred, making it more difficult for those voices to be heard.
While moving a meeting around geographically can help, some of the challenges of better integration in our county organizations come down to extending a welcome and providing broader opportunities for leadership in our organizations.
In many large counties across the country, organizations provide district-level breakdowns, from a state house district to a senate district X. Counties found that by electing leadership in these smaller units, such as, say, the chair of House District 1, when they composed meetings, they had a leadership team that felt invested in the results. It also meant that they had welcomed all members of the community into their efforts.
For smaller counties, or counties where this kind of compartmentalization wasn’t feasible, the simple solution was most effective. From an email:
In three years, our meetings had been old, white, straight. Month after month. I know we have a really diverse Democratic base here but they didn’t attend. So, I asked in our executive meeting if anyone had ever asked them to come. The idea was so foreign to everyone present that I thought they were repulsed by the idea.
They were wrong. All it took to make our meetings better was to reach out and let people know you hope they can attend and make them feel welcome. It wasn’t as hard as they made it seem. No one had ever asked.
We have time left to rebuild our county organizations. We know it is possible. All it takes is a little effort and a commitment to use the organization to succeed.