Welcome back, Saturday Campaign D-I-Y’ers! For those who tune in, welcome to the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. Each week, we discuss issues that help drive successful campaigns. If you’ve missed prior diaries, please visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide.
Every so often, the structure of this series changes. For the next few weeks, we’re going to be focusing not on campaigns directly, but on party structures. Last week I was in DC for a meeting of the Rules & Bylaws Committee, and this week, I’m in Long Beach, California for a meeting of the State Democratic Chairs Association.
Every year I receive hundreds of messages that boil down to confusion about what a state party does in a state, and how it assists candidates and future leaders. In hopes that we can help demystify the party, this week, let’s look into what the state chairs can do for a state and how state parties prepare for elections
So, you are a state party chair
When I travel and speak to local organizations, one of the first conversations is often how a state or national organization didn’t properly help provide money and resources to an initiative in a district. State party chairs hear this claim daily.
In most states, the state party chair, vice chair and others are unpaid volunteers, and the state staff itself is run in a way that could best be referred to as “frugal.” This is because in the hierarchy of giving, donors often favor candidates (federal candidates); national entities (the party, DCCC, DSCC, DGA); and causes (Planned Parenthood, Moms Demand Action, etc.) long before they donate whatever is left to a state party.
State parties still have significant obligations, however, and they cannot avoid them. This includes cost related to voter file maintenance, legal agreements, ethics compliance, the salary of an executive director, year-round organizing bandwidth as well as maintenance of current elected officials from municipalities to state house.
As state party chair, one of your first jobs is getting your fundraising in line to make sure you pay the bills.
Building up your most valuable resources
Now as chair, you get your work done for your state, but keeping your lights on isn’t quite enough. Part of being a good state party is also helping your candidates with resources. Now, when I say help candidates with resources, most immediately assume money, but most federal campaigns and many state campaigns are by design in a better position to raise money and attract donors than a state party. So, what kind of resources does a state party have for candidates?
Organizations like ASDC, the Association for State Democratic Chairs, help connect state organizations with one another to build up their most valuable asset—institutional memory. While many will rail at “the system” or “insiders,” the truth is that some information and some practices can only be learned with experience, trial and error, and comparison with other entities. Campaigns only get one shot to get it right—even if they run again the race will be significantly different—whereas state parties which remain have to continually refine their best practices and toolkit to provide candidates the information, connection and guidance that can help them succeed.
So, how does an organization like ASDC help?
Think you have the best state party in the country? The worst state party in the country? Somewhere in the middle? The only way these organizations gain the strength needed to keep their heads above water and improve their process is often by comparing results with other states and organizations and sharing and improving their methods of best practice.
Current Chair Ken Martin, who leads the organization and serves as the Chair of Minnesota, works to help assemble the states together and create opportunities to build their best practices and share guidance on successful plans as well as plans that didn’t work so well.
The organization goes beyond teaching best practice, and, when working well, advocates on behalf of State Party Chairs with the national party and others to help provide everything from great speakers to advocacy in Washington, D.C.
As an organization, ASDC tries to meet once or twice a year to provide updates to state party chairs and help them network with one another in planned training sessions and overviews of best practices. These meetings also help staff communicate with one another, hoping to build up the institutional knowledge that gives state parties value.
Mortar and pestle
In good times, when the party is growing, state parties often provide the bridge between local and state level issues and activists and Washington, D.C. party entities and federal elected. Creating the glue to sit between these two can be a difficulty in and of itself; federally elected and statewide elected are not beholden to a state party, and activists aren’t committed to invest in a state organization either.
In order to create that network, then, a state organization is tasked with finding a way to navigate a minefield of expectations from every participating Democratic voter in their state and provide services for elected Democratic members from local to federal.
My state organization is TERRIBLE!
If you go back and read through Nuts & Bolts, you’ll often find commentary regarding problems in state parties. A lot of that commentary is dead on. While we should all respect and acknowledge the good President Obama did for the country, the one thing that Obama truly penalized us with is a party infrastructure that was often neglected to a subsistence level.
As a result, a lot of the resources that state parties rely on to be effective, especially in areas of institutional knowledge, quickly drained out of them leaving new chairs walking into poorly setup organizations with limited resources of all kinds.
Party entities also still haven’t reset an effective communications delivery plan for state entities, and it has been since 2009 that real state level guidance on issues like messaging and operational procedures had a rethink.
Many state organizations, as a result, suffer from atrophy. The lack of the one resource they should have: institutional knowledge, coupled with low access to funds has created volunteer jobs that few members of the party want to hold. Burdened with constant criticism, no pay and having to rebuild some entities from scratch, it is an uphill climb for some parties.
Making state organizations better will, as a result, take several things:
- More involvement of activists and local leaders who are willing to put some time, effort and in some cases money into building back up institutional organizations
- Involvement from national entities who go back to seeing the value of institutional entities
- Institutional entities stepping back and re-assessing how they convey to members a best use practice for them in a way that is transparent.
Next week on Nuts & Bolts: I’ll be returning from Puerto Rico, and we’ll handle “Why I’m a Democratic Voter” messaging.
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Nuts & Bolts: Building Democratic Campaigns
Contact the Daily Kos group Nuts and Bolts by kosmail (members of Daily Kos only). You can also follow me on twitter: @tmservo433
Every Saturday this group will chronicle the ins and outs of campaigns, small and large. Issues to be covered: Campaign Staffing, Fundraising, Canvass, Field Work, Data Services, Earned Media, Spending and Budget Practices, How to Keep Your Mental Health, and on the last Saturday of the month: “Don’t Do This!” a diary on how you can learn from the mistakes of campaigns in the past.
You can follow prior installments in this series HERE.
