With my last post here as Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, I wanted to share some thoughts and advice with the next chair of the Party.
Your time as Chair will go by in a blink of an eye. Enjoy the ride -- and it is in fact a wild ride. As you prepare to begin the job of leading our Party, here are some things I have learned. I hope they are helpful for you.
I believe it comes from Proverbs but a favorite quote of mine is, "without vision the people perish.” Have a vision of where we are going; be able to articulate it and inspire others with it. Remember you are the captain of a ship. People will look to you for how you react and respond to challenges and setbacks. The worst thing a captain of a ship can ever do is run around screaming, "Oh my God, we are all going to die."
Tell people every day you’re going to win the next election and why. Most people walk around thinking we are always going to lose and all hope is lost. This is a coping mechanism. Inspiring people to believe you can win is the first step to winning. First you convince your people, then donors, then the press, then the voters. But it starts with you. We are always going to win the next election.
Support organized labor. Yes, they help you financially but this isn't why you should do it. Do it because labor unions stand up and fight for respect and dignity for those that deserve a secure life in exchange for their labor. In my tenure we saw attack after attack on labor unions. Every time this happened I called a few key leaders and said "give us the marching orders, right now we work for you." Solidarity is more than a buzz word; it means being there when the shit is hitting the fan. Walk the walk.
If you win a big race put out a statement congratulating the candidate and thanking everyone who helped. Everything else will take care of itself. Party chairs don't take victory laps; the candidate won, the Party won, not you.
If you lose a big race, do a press avail the night of the election and one the next day. On the night of the election be conciliatory and thank those who worked hard and congratulate the other side. On the day after be upbeat about the future and start talking about winning the next election. This will be hard. But you must give people hope for the future.
Be a gracious loser. I always congratulate a candidate who beat us and called the RPW Chair personally. It's just the right thing to do.
If you lose you'll be given an opportunity by some reporter to anonymously trash the losing candidate, their staff, their strategy, etc. Don’t do it. Even if they committed major malpractice in your opinion leave that to others to gossip about in the press. It's just not the right way to operate.
Know that if you lose a big election there will likely be a giant piling on of negative attacks on you. Some will call for your head, some will call you names, and some will say unbelievably horrible things. Victory may have 1,000 parents, but defeat is always an orphan. Look in the mirror, the orphan is looking back at you. Don't let it drag you down.
One of the best pieces of advice I have ever gotten in my life is to not read your own reviews. Of course you'll still read them but remember you’re not as great as your positive reviews are, they will just give you a big head. You’re also not as bad as your negative reviews say you are so don't let them drag you down. Learn to be agnostic about your press.
Yes, the editors and higher ups that run PolitiFact, the Journal Sentinel, and Journal Communications are out to screw you, you’re not imagining it. Still do your best to go see the editor and even the CEO. They'll still screw you but you can at least have a conversation about it. It won't change anything but it's worth doing.
Never yell at a reporter -- doesn't get you anywhere and won’t change their minds. Realize that most reporters who cover politics are overworked, underpaid, and required to produce exponentially more content than just a few years ago.
Never underestimate how important one really good county chair can be for the ability of a whole county party to grow and flourish. Most people live their lives waiting for leaders to come along and empower them. Identify and cultivate those leaders. Being able to have 75 people attend a meeting in West Bend monthly is good for the cause, even if no one else thinks so.
Partner with county parties to keep offices open year round. Don't pay for more than half the cost. Help them put together a revenue plan to pay for the rest and an action plan that has the office open and functioning year round. Where there are bricks and mortar you will find stronger parties. Period. Plus, real estate in Rice Lake is cheap!
Send cards when party members get married or start a family, and send flowers when you learn of a party member passing away. Sadly, you may send a lot of flowers. It's worth it; the person gave not just of their money but also likely their time to the cause. That matters.
One of the best things about this job is by the end of it you will have a small list of people that if you ever have to walk through Hell you will know who you would ask to come with you.
Hire a great executive director. Someone that you feel you can trust completely, and whose strengths complement yours. More importantly make sure you have the type of relationship so when the executive director speaks it's the same as you speaking. This may require constant calls or emails but every time I left a meeting or had a conversation I briefed my executive director on it and vice versa. Two heads are better than one and allow the party to cover more ground.
Hire great people. Let your ED guide the hiring process, lay out what you want, let your ED find a candidate and make sure you’re comfortable with that person. But let your ED or their designee make the call.
Pay people well. There are a lot of places to be cheap and look for efficiencies. Your staff isn't one of them. Many people view their compensation as a sign of how much you value them, so value them.
Build up your staff. Don't be afraid to hire someone a little green for a job as long as they are hungry and you believe in them. However, build them up and empower them. Bring them to meetings, introduce them to everyone, and make sure they participate. Encourage them to look for ways to further their own abilities; be it a class on management, a training, or national opportunities. Build them up, because it makes them better, makes you better, and makes the Party stronger.
Schedule time to unplug and de-stress. Be it working out or just sitting and closing your eyes for 30 minutes in an afternoon. Do something. It's so easy to get sucked into the 400 emails a day that you can stop thinking. It will open up your brain for some creative thinking. Never forget you are doing a job that most sane people don't want. This goes for the staff too.
I found the less time I spent in the party office in Madison the easier it was for everyone to get stuff done. This doesn't mean you aren't working full tilt, you definitely are. It's just being in the office can be a distraction for your staff and executive director.
With that said you can for sure bet I spent all the time I could in the office the last four to six weeks before an election. It might be the GOTV junkie in me but everyone is killing themselves at that point so I just felt it important to be around and to be able to serve as a pinch hitter. Seeing your team in what is likely their finest hour is always very gratifying and inspirational. Be sure to take an opportunity or two to get on the all-staff call and tell all those organizers what a great job they are doing. Thank them and remind them what they are doing matters.
Also, during GOTV you should follow the lesson I learned from a wise woman and go buy a bunch of Clorox wipes and bottles of hand sanitizer to place around the office. You should take the time (because no one else will) to wipe down door knobs, table tops, phone receivers, everything people touch. You can't afford people going down and everyone is pushing their immune system to the brink. Plus it's a job that's hard for the Party chair to mess up. Unlike, say, labeling door hangers with the wrong polling place.
Write plans. As Eisenhower said, "Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” Do a yearly strategic plan. Have your staff go away for a full day, you don't have to go, just give your ED your over-arching goals, have them go through everything you and they want to do the coming year. Come back and have each department submit it in writing to your ED. Have them edit and combine it. Then you should edit it. Then proof the daylights out of it and ask someone smarter than you to tear the plan to pieces and help put it back together again. And for the love of God use page numbers.
Be loyal. Loyalty is all too rare a quality in life but especially in politics. Be loyal to those that got you there, those that came before you, and to your team. Do your best to ensure they know you have their back, period. Care about them and their lives. People will call you to complain about your staff, sometimes they’re right, sometimes not; always say you will look into it but your prone position is to support your staff because they are excellent.
If you do the above and get lucky you may find yourself at a moment in time when you have a great team that gels and becomes like a family where people both feel and give respect. When you find yourself in a groove like this the job can be so much fun and incredibly fulfilling. The challenges and daily BS you face seem so minor because you have this great family around you. When you’re in the middle of this try to take a moment to savor it because it inevitably won't last. People will leave and time will simply march on. And while you likely won't appreciate it when you’re in the middle of it, if you are lucky enough to reach that point you will look back on that time years later as some of the most fun and fulfilling time you had in your professional life. And you will feel truly blessed.
There is such a thing as being too loyal and wanting so badly for someone to succeed in a job that you become blind to the negative consequences to the Party. This is difficult but if you find yourself here, make a change but still do your best to still be loyal to that person. Life sometimes deals people bad hands or people make unforced errors. But to the best of your ability don't leave someone behind. You never know when you will find yourself out in the cold.
Don't be shocked when people you've invested your heart and soul in show absolutely zero loyalty in return. It happens and will happen to you. The number of people that you open doors for and push up the ladder who will just drop you in a second can be astounding and hurtful. In my experience these people generally lose in the end, no matter how talented. People don't realize the damage losing a close unwavering ally can do long term. People may say their actions are just "professional." My experience is whenever someone tells you it's "just professional" it's generally as personal as it gets. Just because you wouldn't treat someone like that in a thousand years try hard to not let it drag you down. When you figure this out tell me how.
Be careful who you trust. If you have staff who doesn’t keep your confidence, lose them. But be very careful with what you say or email about others. Assume everything you say will be repeated. No matter how long you've known someone or how much you think you can trust them remember that for the most part there are no secrets on campaigns or in politics.
Do your best to not hold grudges. In politics there is such a small circle of people that holding a grudge can harm the cause you’re working on and prevent you from utilizing all potential resources (smart people) to win an election. This wisdom was imparted to me in a Starbucks coffee shop in Milwaukee six weeks before the 2010 election with a simple question: "So you've decided that since this smart person hurt your feelings six years ago that your ego is more important than having all the smart people at the table? Tate, we are in a dogfight, we can't afford to not have the best and brightest in the room."
Keep your mind on your money and your money on your mind. No one cares about the Party’s finances the same way you must.
Always, always, always end the year with enough cash on hand to get you through the first few months of the new year at a bare bones level. Some think that just because campaigns are a business designed to go out of business that you should be too. That is a recipe for debt and disaster. If you start the year broke (especially after an election year) you will have to cut back on core staff, which means cutting back on core programs, which means you have less to sell. In the heat of a campaign people may give you a lot of grief for this, but too bad. Always protect the Party.
Any power you have comes from being able to say yes to stakeholders, both electeds and activists. I wanted to always find a way to say yes if a key leader asked for something. That’s another reason for having ample financial resources year-round.
Don't act like you’re in charge -- that is the fastest way for you not to be in charge of anything. Have ample resources, listen to your leaders, and look for openings to nudge people in the direction of what you feel is best.
Watching a campaign make mistakes and not being able to change anything is one of the hardest parts of this job. Sometimes you can change things, often you can't. It is maddening and heartbreaking to watch a campaign not worthy of its candidate or the real people that winning the election would help. If you do this job long enough you will have a front row seat to some major malpractice. The reality is sometimes you'll win with malpractice, sometimes you'll lose with a campaign that played largely error-free ball. If the campaign doesn't want or respect your opinion, do your best to accept this as quickly as possible, suck it up, and go do what you can to help at the margins.
Choose your battles. You’re most likely going to lose, so choose wisely.
Go to DC at least four times a year. Go and do the rounds. Make sure to go see all your delegation members. It's great for relationship building and they often have more time to talk in DC than Wisconsin. Tell them what you’re doing and ask for feedback. Follow up with them on their feedback. Go see all the unions and do the alphabet soup (DCCC, DSCC, DNC, DGA, DLCC, etc). Put a face to a name. Seek their input and talk about your work. It helps to have a face to a name and an established relationship when funding decisions get made.
The DNC is not here to bail you out, they are not a charity. Strive to be the easiest and most competent state party they work with; it’s especially important for your communications team to be in sync with theirs. I tried to rarely, if ever, ask for anything so that when I did it was taken seriously. Treat them like any other donor, pitch them on what you’re doing, go to them after you've got support for a program in-state, and sell them on why giving you money correlates into votes. Be just as gracious and kind to them as you would any other donor.
I think the Party should be viewed as the Giving Tree. Not only will candidates and campaigns take advantage of you, they SHOULD take advantage of you. This may make your staff crazy at times. They will carry a huge workload for a particular race only to see the glory go to others. Inevitably this will be hard on you too. So just remember you need your candidates to win and give all you can in service of that goal. Don't let any real or perceived lack of gratitude bother you and counsel your staff against it too. Just remember though, in the end of the Giving Tree they cut the tree down, only rarely visit, and when it is visited people sit on it. This is a lot like being Party chair.
I wouldn't trade the experience of the last six years for anything (well I'd trade them for Tom Barrett or Mary Burke being Governor but besides that). Seriously though, you’re signing up for a crazy job. It is the best, worst job you will ever have. Just know that even on hard days when your feet hit the floor in the morning you get to give your all to further a cause that is just. There has never been a day on this job that I haven't had reason to feel joy, passion or pride in the work. Everything else is just the bullshit you need to plow through to make sure life is a little better and a little fairer for everyone.
And not everyone gets to do that every day.
Good luck.