GregsOpinion.com

I'm a bit slow on the uptake in regards to this debate, but this little excerpt by JesseLee at the D-Trip got my attention pronto ...

... it is not in our power to get people to give up their lives (and livelihoods) for a year in every single district with little to no chance of winning and with no ability on our part to promise them substantial support. We would certainly like to have a candidate do this in every district, and it is never our preference not to field a candidate, but ultimately it is up to the prospective candidates to decide whether or not to run. It is a very difficult decision obviously, and we cannot blame them for declining under extremely unfavorable circumstances.

Let's go back to my take on the Martin Frost Q&A to fully understand why ...

... if you view a 50-state strategy with guiding a grassroots organization to sustain itself while it builds, growing the party by connecting Dems to one another, giving them a candidate who gets out of the house, actively campaigning, even if on a shoestring ... and most importantly, campaigning with ideas that positively reach all 50 states ... then you see the baseball analogy as fatally flawed.

That's where I think Frost is most off track. He sees the job as a simple calculus of money and staff. And to a large extent, that's not entirely a wrong view. There will always be those dogfight elections that require oodles of both. But to complete the map and spread the blue, it takes another viewpoint to grow the party ...

So let's explore that other worldview for a sec, shall we?

If you know me through this blog, you can probably sense my Gore-esque sighs and eyerolling whenever I read a bloviating Deaniac raving about their Sacred Idol's latest mutterings, endorsements, and/or bowel movements. But one area where I'm in devout agreement with is the concept of fielding a full slate of candidates ... everywhere ... every campaign ... no exceptions ... no excuses. Without a doubt, that's pretty ambitious of a goal, and I'm not viewing it as an abstract future end-state ala George W. Bush. I'm talking here and now, for 2006 and beyond. And if that doesn't convince you that I've gone off the deep end, perhaps the suggestion that I think this is very doable and very realistic might convince you of that. I'm fine with that because I like to keep my readership on its toes.

So with that, let me take a tangent of this debate and zoom in on it some. MyDD's Jerome and Chris Bowers focus on Congressional races and the need to field a full slate on that level and I'm in agreement. Particularly when Jerome offers up this:

80 challenges, or even 120 or 150, is doable, it just likely doesn't involve the DCCC.

So what on earth brings me into complete and total agreement with a blogger who flames me on my own site by encouraging me to switch parties?

Well, pardon the gear shifting towards the local scene, but here in Texas, we've got a little scrap on our hands trying to regain our hold on the State Lege. Ask any Texas Dem and they can draw you a chart to show how that influences the Congressional races.

So it is that I tend to focus this little effort on Texas State House and State Senate candidates.

It's my contention that the Texas Democratic Party and the various county parties ought to field a full slate on those levels. Yeah, I'd like to see every race challenged, but my first line of attack is on the legislative agenda. I've already done a minor pitch to my own county party chair for a proposal that would allow us to field 25 State Rep candidates without draining resources from the campaigns that rightfully need them the most while at the same time, expanding the organizational structure and campaign presence of active, energized Democrats all throughout the county. I'm not one to brag, but I think it can serve as a model for other out-of-power counties.

I write while Texas Democrats are fielding the absolute best and brightest possible State Rep candidate in a district that is voted for Bush over Kerry 65%-35%. Charles Soechting and former Harris County Party chair Sue Schechter deserve high praise for taking up that challenge and giving it all they've got. From about 200 miles away, I wish them the best, win or lose.

But for the typical nigh-to-impossible district, I don't think we need to trot out 70 year old former State Supreme Court Justices at the State Rep level. In Harris County, we left 8 Republicans unchallenged (in districts that accounted for a whopping 36% of the county's registered voters and 39% of ballots cast), including our most odious opponent, Joe Nixon. Each of them had won big the last time, and even though Nixon had ethical baggage, he also had $180,000 that a GOP challenger may not have even made a dent in. Yet an independent candidate got 20% of the vote, and the extrapolated hypothetical vote that Nixon would have gotten from a Dem challenger (with a nod to Andy Taylor here) would be very similar to the Bush/Kerry numbers of a 56-44 GOP District. Call it a missed opportunity and you'd be kind. But the rest of the districts weren't of that nature. Chances are, if you check back in a few decades, most will still be in GOP hands. And yet, I say put a challenger in walking shoes and field them.

Insanity?

Of course not. Imagine if you put a candidate in such a race that they actually do some organizing, some blockwalking, some door-knocking, manage to rake in some small donations here and there, and for all their troubles watch some hideously low vote total next to their name. Who would want to do that? Who would want to give up their weekends for blockwalking campaigns? Who would want to give up their weeknights for fundraisers, meet & greets, and hours on the phone?

The Party Builders ... that's who.

You have no realistic shot of heading to Austin to represent your neighbors on legislative matters, but damned if you don't sense some responsibility to speak truth to power and challenge for the sake of challenge without betting on probably victory or defeat.

You manage to recruit a small (at first) gaggle of friends, neighbors, activists ... you organize a group of 5-10 people willing to blockwalk, launch a postcard drive, make phone calls ... whatever it takes.

You don't raise much, but the party works with you to get the most basic of online resources set up so that you have a reachable (and professional) presence where voters can get some info on you if they're online. You have a campaign coordinator that demands of you one night every two weeks to meet with your fellow candidates to go over the detailed metrics of your sure-to-lose campaign: How many voters registered? How many doors knocked on? What precincts? How many phone calls? To what criteria of voter?

So when does this start making sense, you ask?

Well, I'm not about to join the ranks of unrealistic bloggers who ignores the difficult challenge of candidate recruitment. In my own conversations with my own party chair, I got more than an earful of just how difficult that is. But when you think about this plan, as its fleshed out ... why should a county party chair have to recruit such candidates? They shouldn't.

We, as a party, have no problem recruiting people for a job that pays squat, demands of their time, often requires active party-building and organizing. They're called the State Democratic Executive Committee (and in fairness to Gerry Birnberg, they're also called Party Chairmen). So there's precendent for putting out a call for party builders as I've laid out. Just, instead of getting to meet in a cushy meeting room, you have to hit the streets for voter registration in the heat of Texas summer. Damned if I'm not the cruel sort.

Alas, we've already seen candidates take on hopeless causes, running for office despite the odds, willingly putting in the hours, blood, sweat, and tears ... all for a good cause (as they saw it). Just that we used to call them Republicans back in the 50s and 60s. James Baker ran for Attorney General, lost, but still managed to find a niche as a successful Secretary of State at the end of the Cold War. George H. W. Bush took on a race for teh US Senate twice ... lost both times. He made it to the top once, seems to have had luck getting his kids ahead, too. But those are more of a macro-level campaign.

At the micro level, we've seen two candidates just this past cycle that accomplished a net plus for their party all while suffering for their cause: On the Democratic side, we saw Charlotte Coffelt take on Joe Crabb in about as Republican a district as they make. She got trounced badly ... earning only 29% of the vote and likely a deep desire that people like me would stop remembering that number. On the GOP side, Arlette Molina ran as active a campaign as anyone could and still won about the same percentage in a district that was as Democratic as Tom DeLay DID draw up. Yet both candidates did something very positive for their parties ... they gave the countywide campaigns a reach into areas that might have otherwise been ignored for lack of significant numbers of votes. Was Paul Bettencourt doing any blockwalking in Gulfton? No, but Arlette probably drove through there on more than a few occassions - letting Hispanics know that there was a candidate that might be for them (I stress ... might). I'm not sure how many meet & greets Kathy Stone, Guy Clark, or John Webb did in Atascosita, but chances are they were there a lot less than Charlotte's corp of teachers might have made it out to.

The central truth here is simple: campaigns revolve around candidates. Ideas, no doubt, drive campaigns (I say this as an idea person), but candidates are the messengers. One active shoestring candidate hustling up votes in the Galleria is worth more than the Sharpstown Mall satellite office I was fortunate enough to man. We need both approaches as a party, but for too long, we've been ignoring the biggest asset our party can put forth: a candidate.

So here's a simple proposal ... turn over candidate recruitment to SDEC members for these hopeless cause districts. Let them search via another candidate criteria. We don't need to ask them if they have $50,000 to start a campaign with. I maintain, they can start with $2,000. That gets you the filing fee, some minor printing costs, and enough to get going on a bit of fundraising here and there that might end up being a total of about $10-20,000 for the full campaign.

The key is not how well of a job they do in getting to 50% of the vote (though it'd be nice) so much as it is that they actively organize the district, reaching out to Dems, persuadables, and Independents ... and more importantly, piggybacking with other candidates who are either running countywide or in a safer district seat.

Making the rounds for fundraising and find soeone willing to write a small check for you? Great ... ask for another one for another candidate that is working with you. Trade volunteer resources with said candidate as well. One weekend, offer your rag tag team to a countywide ... the other, have them swarm your cubbyhole within the county for one big push. Spread that work out and suddenly, the nearly 40% of the county that does not get an up-close look at a candidate suddenly gets that closer look.

To be fair, there are various paper candidates that have merely plunked down the filing fee and went to sleep. Leave it to SDEC members to weed them out or recruit challengers. Paper candidates are killers for a party. We need shoe leather candidates ... more of them. Now.

So there ya go ... one fine-tuned local variation of this "fight everywhere" theme. I suggest it would make the SDEC members better in representing their areas ... it would also help raise the votes for us in areas that we've been ignoring for too long. And the cost? As minimal as it gets. Ideally, such candidates could be self sustaining. Just committ your weekends and a few nights per week (easy to say for this bachelor), and you'd be doing your party some good. The two, three, four, or five percentage points you raisethe Democratic level to could add up to a serious countywide reversal of fortune. It might expose a major pocket of support that we've let slip due to decades of inactivity. Who knows ... you might win a race here or there.

Any takers? Richard Morrison is already talking of fielding an increasing number of candidates in Ft. Bend County to accomplish much this samee purpose. When was the last time a Democratic candidate for State Rep walked the streets of Sugar Land? Well, let's top that and start putting some Dems on the mean streets of Champions Forest ... Cypress ... Atascosita ... Baytown ... Clear Lake ... Katy (no, I'm not going to scream).