According to a DNC email that went out this morning shortly after the start of the Forum, there are four additional candidates running for chairman, bringing the total field of candidates to 11. The four newcomers are:
Peter Peckarsky, Wisconsin
Sam Ronan, Ohio
Vincent Tolliver, Georgia
Robert Vinson Brannum, Washington, D.C.
I’ll add more biographical/political details about them as I get them.
Maria Teresa Kumar
Voto Latino
Learned in 2008 that way millennials and Latinos gather infrmation is through peer-to-peer
Latinos broke 50 percent mark for first time in this election, because there was a candidate who came after us and questioned whether we were American or not.
Growth opportunities: 141 percent Latino growth.
Texas will be a minority majority state.
Georgia: by the time early voting finished, 144 percent increase in Latino early vote from 2012.
In 2012, $6 billion spent. $20 million of that spent on building infrastructure in the Latino community.
The fall of Pete Wilson was not accidental. We are living a Pete Wilson moment across the country. Proposition 187 defeated in courts and galvanized Democrats. California a reliably blue state in presidential elections since 1992 and Republicans control less than20 percent of the state legislature.
California – took 25 years to cement a legislative base. In less than 6 years, we kicked out Joe Arpaio and cementing a stronger Arizona.
In 2018, 84 House Districts have Latino population of 4 percent or more. In a tight race, that could make all the difference.
54 percent of Latinos voted before Election Day – those not part of exit polls.
Cubans in Florida voted more for Deocrat than Republican for president.
They voted for Marco Rubio, but at top of the ticket they voted for Hillary Clinton.
20 percent of America is Latino, but we don’t have leadership that looks like us.
Suggests party start talking about wage enforcement as a policy. Voters don’t want to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, but they voted for Trump because they wanted to stop competing against undocumented workers for the same jobs.
Invest in key states: NC, Georgia, Texas. “Florida not lost, just needs massaging.”
I would argue that one of the reasons we lost is we left voters on the table.
Here in Texas, we were registering voters for $3.31,
3 million young Latinos under age of 35.
Lost state by single digits.
Gilberto Hinojosa
Chairman, Texas Democratic Party
Trump is a minority president, not in way most of us use word minority.
Trump is a minority president because majority of people in this country didn’t vote for the SOB.
In Texas, we did a lot better than in a long time. First time in 20 years we came within single digits in a presidential election.
In Harris County, we won every countywide position by 2,000 votes.
In 2016, you kicked ass! 165k margin.
In 2020, margin will be 400k.
Change view of Democratic Party. Texas can be a blue state.
Donald Trump will help us build a wall – a blue wall.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman pointed out:
According to the Free Beacon, six out of the seven candidates running for chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee were in Florida last Saturday during a retreat of major Democratic donors organized by David Brock. The one exception: South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg:
Brock’s retreat was planned independently of the Women’s March which took place the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. If any of them had known that march was going to be as big of an event as it was, they all probably would have gone to the nearest local march. This also raises the issue about the party’s relationship with donors and big money, a question which came up during the first DNC regional forum in Phoenix as well as interviews with the different candidates running for the job. One question to watch in Houston this weekend will be whether Buttigieg uses this issue to distinguish himself from the rest of the candidates.
One other point worth mentioning about the Women’s March: George W. Bush had to start a war two years into his presidency to get that kind of global opposition and protest against him. Donald Trump accomplished it on the second day of his presidency.
The California state Senate voted to confirm Rep. Xavier Becerra as the state’s next attorney general on a party line vote of 26-9. Becerra will be sworn into office tomorrow after his resignation from Congress, some time before Governor Jerry Brown’s State of the State address.
In a statement, Becerra said, “I’m deeply grateful to the State Senate for voting, like the State Assembly, to confirm me as California’s Attorney General.
It is humbling and exciting to assume responsibility for vigorously advancing the forward-leaning values that make California unique among the many states.”
Politically, the California attorney general job is a much bigger platform for the national stage for Becerra than if he had remained in the Democratic minority in the House of Representatives. As the state’s top law enforcement officer, he will most certainly be involved in litigation with the Trump administration on issues ranging from immigration, the environment, and civil rights. If he wants to run for the Democratic nomination in 2020 or wants to be a strong contender in a future Democratic administration, being in the legal trenches fighting against the Trump administration would probably make for a very good credential, particularly if he can get legal victories in federal court or the Supreme Court.
This is the third installment of the “Future of the DNC” series.
Ray Buckley
Current positions: Chairman, New Hampshire Democratic Party
President, Association of State Democratic Chairs
Vice Chair, Democratic National Committee
Candidate for: Chairman of the Democratic National Committee
How did you get involved in Democratic politics?
My parents were both brought up in extraordinarily dysfunctional families. Both of them experienced childhoods that Dickens couldn’t even… Both had great horrors happen to them growing up. They found each other as teenagers. My mother was 15, she got pregnant. She dropped out of 9th grade, my father dropped out of 11th grade. They struggled until I was 3. We moved out to Detroit, Michigan, where he had learned the skill of welding. A friend of his called him up and said, “Hey, come out and stay with us.” We ended up living in Detroit, Michigan for three years, from age 3 to 6. I went to preschool and kindergarten in Detroit, at the Ella Fitzgerald Elementary School. We had an integrated school, integrated neighborhood, integrated church, so I had no concept that somebody’s skin color was any different than somebody’s hair color.
Then we came back to New Hampshire. My dad’s job in Detroit, we were having a terrible time. We were actually living in the basement of this elderly couple as my father was trying to find work. In February 1967 – fifty years ago in February – my teacher made everything about Abraham Lincoln. So I’m in second grade, sitting there. I remember exactly where I was sitting, where she’s talking about the life of Abraham Lincoln and then talking about slavery. Although I was 7 years old, my mind was completely blown that the great grandparents or great great grandparents of my friends that I left in Detroit were actually owned. It so horrified me, and then I saw that Lincoln changed things by being involved in politics, by getting elected.
So in 1968, I was 8 years old, a guy was going down the street canvassing, running for governor and I was playing in the front yard and I said, “Hey, you want me to go with you? I’ll introduce you to all the neighbors.” So I consider that my first canvas, at 8 years old. I was very involved in Ed Muskie’s campaign when I was 11 and 12 in the presidential primary.
This is in New Hampshire?
All in New Hampshire. We got back to New Hampshire in ’67. Because of the primary, because of all the trappings in New Hampshire, it’s politics 24/7 there and I got brought right in. When I was 15, I was part of the 32-member student committee for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign, as a 15-year-old. And that’s when I met Bill and Jeanne Shaheen. Billy Shaheen was the chair of the campaign. The thirty-two of us would gather every Wednesday night at the Carter headquarters. Nobody in the world knew who he was. I really started from there.
When I was 18, I got elected county chair. I’ve been a member of the Democratic state committee of New Hampshire since I was 18. I’ve never had a minute of my adult life without being on the state committee. So I have run campaigns, I’ve run for office, I served as local alderman, I served eight terms in the legislature, I was the deputy leader, I was the whip, and very involved in building the LGBT community. In 1985, I was one of the founders of the Citizens Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Rights.
Was there a big stigma on that at the time? That’s at the height of the AIDS epidemic during the Reagan era.
Oh, good God, yes! I got frustrated after a couple of months, because they were mostly about talking and I’m about doing, so I ran for legislature and that was my first term. In that first term was when John Sununu the elder was governor, he signed a law making it illegal not only for gays to donate blood, but we also were prohibited from being foster parents, custodians, or adopting. For me, my parents divorced after we got back here and remarried, so I have eight younger siblings and half-siblings. I was brought up to think of them as my duty.
Being a sitting legislator, to have the state of New Hampshire say that if something happened to either set of my parents, that I was not legally fit to raise my younger siblings was one of the most painful things that I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was very difficult. I fought it with everything I could, but I was unsuccessful. They passed it, passed the law, and in 1999, I repealed it. I put the bill in, I worked my butt off, and we repealed it. We passed every possible LGBT law through the legislature. Marriage equality New Hampshire was through the legislature, not through the courts. School bullying bill, all those things we did…
But New Hampshire is traditionally sort of a libertarian state, not a socially conservative state like South Carolina, right?
True, but there was no… when I was growing up in the 70s, I never imagined that I was going to be able to be involved in politics and be out. There was nobody there. The only person that came out was when I was 18, Harvey Milk, and he was assassinated.
His nephew just endorsed you, right?
Yes. So it was a terrifying time, if you think of ‘85. I was going to a funeral a month. How I escaped it and a few of my friends escaped it…
You’re talking about the AIDS epidemic? Even in New Hampshire?
Oh, good lord, yes! There would be in the statewide newspapers, almost everyday, it would say, “23, was living in San Francisco.” It wouldn’t say the cause of death, but you knew obviously that it was AIDS-related. It was a terrible time, and I thought it was important for us to stand up and fight as a community.
You and other candidates have said on the issue of superdelegates that you will defer to the Unity Commission…
The Unity Commission must come up with a result where every state’s delegation reflects the vote within that state. My solution to that – it doesn’t have to be the one that passes, as long as that’s the end result. My proposal would be that if the superdelegates endorsed pre-final, because most state party delegates selection is actually a three-step process that takes place over the course of several months, if you are a superdelegate and you endorse prior to the final process, you get counted as a delegate. So at the end of the day, you could not flip a state by superdelegates, because if you took up the total number of delegates and you won the state by 60 percent and I only got 40 percent, at the end of the day the delegation has to be 60 percent for you, 40 percent for me. So if you had a superdelegate, it would come out of your 60 percent allotment, so those superdelegates would be allotted within that.
Do you think their powers should be reformed or limited, or should the position be abolished altogether?
I worked on this merely eight years ago, after ’08. President Obama very much wanted to eliminate superdelegates. I had multiple conversations with members, and I came to realize that we would not be able to get the votes, because you would be asking the superdelegates to get rid of themselves. So I think that the real rub is the fact that superdelegates are able to come in and flip a state or make a difference, so they should be counted in whatever your allotment. So at the end of the day, when you get to the convention if you added up all of your votes, add up all of my votes, the total vote at the convention would reflect the vote that occurred.
Would you be willing to reform the primary calendar so that other, larger states can have more say early on in the process, or is that not on the table right now?
Not one person has brought up the calendar. I think we have a number of issues that we do need to deal with regarding the nominating process, whether it’s reforming how the caucuses are run so that they are more uniform, so that they are more accessible to more people and that they are welcoming to as many voices as possible, to get more people to participate in them. It is crazy that we have a caucus in one state, right next door another caucus, and they actually don’t in any way mirror each other in how they are conducted or run or who gets to participate. We really need to create some uniformity.
Why I think it’s not an issue this time: Iowa and New Hampshire performed their jobs, when Bernie was able to get 60 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. Bernie would not have had that opportunity if he had gotten in some sort of big state. It is building that sort of grassroots operation that allows people to rise.
Historians speak of a president’s First Hundred Days in office. If you are elected chairman, what would you do in your First Hundred Days, in order of importance?
I would gather those who had not been successful together, along with the officers that were elected, and maybe some of those that were not elected but were highly talented, and bring them together for two days. This has got to be a team effort. One person cannot do everything that has to be done. Every person has to be empowered to bring the best of their abilities in. The DNC chair is authorized to create titles, it allows people to participate at a high level in the party. Any sort of title, whatever got them to sign on to being involved. I think you heard a lot of great voices today. All of them should be at that table, they all have a very important role to play. That would be Number One.
Number Two, I would go and visit the congressional leadership, both Senator Schumer and Leader Pelosi, and talk about my relationship that I’ve had with my elected officials in New Hampshire, and how I would expect that to be very open process, and that they feel very comfortable reaching out to me and I hope that I can feel comfortable reaching out to them to make sure that Democratic values and principles are being supported, and talk about bringing up some of their elected officials as being spokespersons and encouraging a larger bench to be created.
I would then create a group of individuals who are talented to find the very best of the best to populate the building with, for staff.
I would also then bring the traditional donors and fundraisers together and saying, “Here’s what our plan is. I need you to start writing your checks now and start raising money right now, because we have just days to start getting ready for 2018.” We can have a very strong response to that if we have the resources to build up what we have to do in those communities.
Republicans commissioned their famous autopsy of the 2012 election. They wrote it, they published it, basically proceeded to ignore it, and went ahead and won this election. If elected chairman, are you going to commission any study or autopsy for the lessons learned of 2016?
I think you are going to see some generally bright people come up with some post mortems. I’m not saying I have all of the answers, but I know what worked in New Hampshire and I know what sort of voters we have in New Hampshire, and they’re not unlike a lot of those states that we lost narrowly. It is about building the infrastructure of the party. I absolutely believe that if we had kept the funding level of the 50-state strategy under Howard Dean, continued through the past eight years or increased, we would not have the results we that we have in our state legislatures, governors, Congress and the White House.
There are two dynamics in rebuilding at the state level. You have states where Democrats have historically on the national level not had much presence or infrastructure, places like Idaho or North Dakota. On the other hand, you have places where Democrats have had presence and success in the past, but it’s sort of atrophied or diminished in recent times, in places like Ohio, Missouri…
As president of the state chairs’ association, I am extraordinarily aware of the abilities of every single one of these state parties already. There is zero learning curve for me, because as the president of the state chairs’ association, I’ve had to work with them, or at least deal with some of the issues in every one of the parties over the last eight years.
Obviously, there is no cookie cutter solution for all 50 states. How are you going to deal with these different competing dynamics that are at play?
There absolutely is not. By bringing in some phenomenal new leaders that can help, and staff that can help as well. Do a real assessment. I want each state party to do a 10-year plan, on where they want to be in 10 years and what we have to do to build that up. There are so many fantastic ideas. Developing mentoring programs, emerging leader programs, outreach to the communities, building my idea of having a permanent Democratic headquarters in every congressional district. How is that built out? Do we have a staff person in there or is it volunteer-run? Each state would create that in their own way, and allow them… My program has every state party getting $10,000 every month and the ability to ask for an additional $15,000 per month for a specific project or program. What I want to do is encourage them to be creative and to figure out what works there. Even in New Hampshire, even though we’re a very small state, what works in one town doesn’t work in the town across the river. So let people come up with what works in their community, and let’s figure out how to make that work for everybody.
Looking ahead at the calendar, this year you have state races in New Jersey, Virginia and North Carolina, as well as mayoral races and special elections to fill vacant seats lost to the president’s cabinet. Further down the road, you have a difficult Senate map in 2018 but you have a promising statewide map that same year for governors and legislatures.
Historically, in the midterm elections for the out party, there is a boost. My commitment would be, I think whether we don’t improve ourselves at all, I think we’ll still have an OK night. I want us to have a great night. I want us to go into districts and states where we can make a huge difference, and I think we can do that if we actually have a real gameplan, everyone is coordinated and working together. So we take things like, “DGA, you target a governor’s race. DSCC, you target a Senate race.” Let’s get together and figure out how we’re going to build this out, those sorts of conversations, instead of everyone waiting for the other folks to show up with money.
Where do you think the next generation of Democratic leaders and stars is going to come from? What would you do as chairman to discover and nurture these new talents as they climb the rungs of power?
Well, I think that you see what we’ve done in New Hampshire just this last election cycle. We elected a number of folks under 30 to the legislature. I think that’s very important as we’re building and bringing people forward. First we need to elect them to school office, and then encourage them and support them as they move into state office. It is a multi-tiered step. There may be some that are ready right from the get-go to run for Congress or run for governor or run for U.S. Senate in their mid-30s. That’s not practical for everybody. A lot of people need to step up. I think that we have the ability to capture the nation and be the majority party in a generation. But my thought has been for the last couple of years, “When America, because of the changing demographics, does flip, are we going to be ready? Are we going to have candidates that are prepared to serve in those positions that are going to be acceptable at that point to the voting majority?” It’s very important that we encourage and nurture a vast diversity of people from their backgrounds, whether it’s economic or whether it’s their ethnicity, religion, whatever. Everyone needs to be brought up and encouraged, because we are… it’s clear this country is going to become more multicultural and we have to make sure that everyone feels the Democratic Party is a home for them.
It should also be noted that but for 80,000 votes in three states, Democrats would be having a very different conversation right now.
We wouldn’t be having a conversation. The conversation would be waiting for who Hillary was going to pick for DNC chair.
Democrats have seen the end of four eras over the last several months: President Obama, the Clintons, Joe Biden, and Harry Reid. What role do you see for them within the party in the future?
Each and every one of them have massive affection within the Democratic Party across the country. One of the items I talk about is promising that at least one of our top surrogates goes to each state, at least one, each state per year. So I would go to them and ask either the former president or the former vice president or Secretary Clinton or Senator Reid, actually commit to going to all of these states, whether that means going to the Oklahoma state party dinner or going to the Alaska state convention, we need to show up. That’s how we’re going to build it. They are the folks that will attract the most amount of attention, along with Senator Sanders and a number of other individuals who are highly popular. They are people with some amazing star power, and they need to be utilized to build a grassroots and to be a voice of the party as well.
I don’t know what measures Donna Brazile has taken already in the wake of the Russia hacks. If you are elected chairman, what additional measures might you take to protect the party’s electronic infrastructure?
Since Donna took over, there has not been an incident. We have hired CrowdStrike, which is one of the top-rated if not the top-rated cybersecurity agency in the world. She created a working group, some of the top individuals in cybersecurity to advise us how to move forward. She also established a cybersecurity office, where there is actually somebody in the building, a full-time staffer working on that. We are never going to allow what happened to us to happen again.
Do you think this will change the internal communications in terms of how you discuss sensitive subjects and strategy? Clearly there were some rather embarrassing emails that people lost their jobs because of them. Do you think this episode will change how you communicate or handle things internally?
I’ve been state chair now for 10 years. I’ve had for the last eight years an office within the DNC with three staffers, sometimes more. There’s not a single incidence of any of that sort of behavior by me or anyone that works for me. That is about a culture within the building that was acceptable by some people. If it is unacceptable to you, then everyone who works under you understands that is not the sort of behavior you participate in. Nobody that works for me nor I have to change anything, because I went through thousands of my own DNC emails and my communications back and forth. There is zero that was bad. We went through our staff, we combed through to find if there was anything there. There wasn’t.
If you had been DNC chair within the past few weeks, how would you and the organization have responded to events in North Carolina, where the state legislature voted to curb the powers of the incoming governor, and in Congress with the upcoming votes to repeal Obamacare?
I think that it is important that we be very strong and very firm. We are in a transition period with the party right now, so it’s hard to say here’s what we would be doing or should be doing. If we were in the midst of a four-year term, I certainly think we would be very aggressive and be able to fight. But right now, the DNC staff is a skeletal staff, because post-election there is always a release. What Donna has done is to make sure there is enough money in the bank to operate. She has let go of an enormous number of staff, so we do not have a large number of staff at the DNC right now. She has created that war room that I think is getting out terrific messaging. Obviously, if we were in a better financial situation and weren’t in the middle of a transition, we would have multi-times more people all doing this and pushing it out, being able to organize that. There is time. Progressive organizations have stepped up and been very supportive and involved and engaged. We learned in New Hampshire that you have to be factual, you have to be truthful, you have to be honest, but you can never hesitate to throw a punch. It is a winning strategy for us over the years. We have done well for us because we have never shied away from making sure that if the Republicans do something horrific or behave in a bad way or attack one of ours, to attack with a stronger punch back.
The Obama coalition which elected him president twice has not turned out in the same numbers and intensity when he is not on the ballot, as we saw in 2010, 2014 and 2016. How do you plan to change that?
As I’ve talked about what happened in New Hampshire in ’14 and ’16, where we didn’t suffer the horrific losses that other battleground states did. We were able to sustain that by building local organizations. We were never going to sit back and assume the Obama coalition was going to thrive simply because he was in the White House. It was a very large mistake to cut back on the 50-state strategy, to cut back on the funding of the state parties. If we had built that, I believe we would have gotten better in 2010, and better in 2014 and better in 2016.
As chairman, how do you want voters, donors and elected official to judge your success? What are your benchmarks or metrics for success?
Every state party chair is judged by their win-loss ratio. We live by whether we win or don’t win. That’s how I’m judged in New Hampshire, and that’s how I will be judged as chair. Now, much of the work that’s going to happen in the next four years is long term. We may not be able to win a House majority over the next four years, but we may be able to in 2022, because we will be able to unscramble the gerrymandered districts in so many states that have allowed Republicans to do it, despite the fact that the population of that state doesn’t actually support that number of Republicans going to Congress. That is the margin of the majority, in state after state. The work to unscramble them will have to be done this term. I might not be judged for having flipped Congress into a permanent Democratic majority, but I would hope that I would be seen as the person who laid the foundation for a permanent majority.
Who do you consider to be your political heroes?
As I mentioned, Abraham Lincoln’s childhood and poverty. I was able to connect with that, and I was able to see that he gave his life for doing what he believed was right, freeing a nation and America’s soul. I don’t think there’s a higher calling than that. So Abraham Lincoln’s life story and Abraham Lincoln’s success is something that has motivated me throughout.
I have a number of individuals that I consider heroes for so many different reasons. I think of FDR, his Four Freedoms speech to me is the essence. Dr. King, speaking out there. When I got to go to the memorial for the first time, it was a near religious experience for me, because I believe that he so changed, the power of his voice changed the way that the country is right now. I’m from New England, so the entire Kennedy family has been somewhat heroic to all of us. Very excited about young Joe in Congress as well, and having gotten to know some of them has been an amazing experience.
That said, obviously as a small child or teenager working on Jimmy Carter’s campaign, seeing him go from nothing to winning the New Hampshire primary to winning the nomination to being elected president, and then the work that he has done post-presidency. He will forever be a hero to me. And what Bill Clinton has done, and the millions of lives he has impacted post-presidency as well has been phenomenal. But Barack Obama took it to a whole different level as president, for what he has done for the LGBT community, for health care. He has touched the lives, there are literally millions of Americans’ lives who will forever be better because of his presidency. So I look at him and then I go back to Johnson and the Great Society. I was helped as a small poor kid by some of those programs. One of my first jobs when I was 14-15 years old, the Food Stamp Program, and the Surplus Food and all those programs that we survived with.
What do you consider the biggest success in your political career and your biggest setback? What lessons did you learn from both of them?
My biggest setback, let’s start with that. My failure in 2000 to convince Nashville – i.e. the national Gore campaign – to invest more resources in New Hampshire.
If he had won New Hampshire, the outcome in Florida would have been irrelevant.
Exactly. It is a burden that I take seriously, and I have vowed that never again will a Republican carry New Hampshire. As long as I am alive, they never will. New Hampshire’s four electoral votes will be Democratic, if I have to drag every 15th cousin twice removed to the polls to make sure that happens. It’s just not going to happen, because the world was negatively affected by those eight years of George W. Bush, and I feel a responsibility. I believe that if I had been able to convince somebody in Nashville, and I tried, I tried my best but I was unsuccessful. That will be forever the darkest times for me in politics, whether it was the economy in the second part, or the Iraq War and the hundreds of thousands of lives around the world that were extinguished because of that. I take that very personally.
As for success, I have to say that it probably changes a lot. I don’t have one overwhelming. I will say that two weeks ago, sitting in the Senate gallery watching Jeanne Shaheen – who I’ve known since I was 15 years old – as the senior U.S. senator from New Hampshire escort Maggie Hassan, who I’ve known for many years as well and am very personally friendly with. These are two women who are my personal friends and I adore them so much, and to have the two of them on the Senate floor to be sworn in, and then see the two of them casually chatting together, that made me so proud.
Read other installments in the “Future of the DNC” series:
I meant to post this several days ago but got sidetracked. Alex Seitz-Wald of NBC News did an excellent story on the history and demographic/social forces behind the Democratic Party’s current woes, with data, graphics and charts to show it. The whole thing is well worth reading to understand how and why the Democrats got to their current predicament. This story is arguably better and more insightful than any post-election autopsy.
According to TMZ, the former president and First Lady are getting on a plane after tomorrow’s inauguration and heading straight to Palm Springs.
The Obamas will remain in Washington D.C. for two more years, until youngest daughter Sasha graduates from high school in 2019, according to the Chicago Tribune. In the meantime, they will be renting a home in the Kalorama neighborhood belonging to former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart.
President Obama will be leasing office space in the World Wildlife Fund headquarters near Dupont Circle and George Washington University. He has hired Anita Decker Breckenridge, an aide since he was a state legislator contemplating a U.S. Senate run in 2003, to be his chief of staff. He will be involved in efforts to rebuild the Democratic Party, as well as the National Democratic Redistricting Committee led by his former attorney general Eric Holder. He will also begin fundraising for his foundation and presidential center, which is scheduled to open in Chicago in 2021.
As for the outgoing first lady, the Washington Post has a great story on her possible post-White House plans: after a break, she will hire a small staff and get an office space. Her team will be led by Melissa Winter, her longtime deputy chief of staff since 2007.
Both the President and the First Lady are expected to write their memoirs after leaving office. Literary agents and book publishers told the New York Times the Obamas’ potential book deals could range from $10 to 45 million. One key detail from the NYT: “Under a $1.9 million contract he signed in 2004 with Crown, Mr. Obama is obliged to produce another nonfiction book for the publishing house. But Mr. Barnett has said that book would not be a memoir, and no one interviewed for this story thought Mr. Obama would deliver that book to Crown under the 2004 terms.” This means that President Obama likely has more books in him (at least one more, per his 2004 contract) than just his memoirs.
The Obamas’ popularity abroad could make the foreign rights to any books they write even more valuable. They are both expected to make the rounds on the speaking circuit, which has proven to be a lucrative source of income for former presidents and first ladies.
The other thing to remember is that in addition to their popularity at home (President Obama is leaving office with a 60 percent approval rating, according to a recent CNN poll) and abroad, the Obamas are relatively young compared to other former presidents and first ladies: he’s 55, she’s 53. Considering that both Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush are in their early 90s, this means the Obamas will likely have a long post presidency ahead to continue to defend and shape his White House legacy, as well as other endeavors.
The seven DNC candidates are participating in a debate organized by the Huffington Post hosted at George Washington University being streamed live online. Read the live blog below the break…
Continue reading “Huffington Post DNC Chair Debate Liveblog”
This is the second installment of “The Future of the DNC” series.
Jaime Harrison
Current position: Chairman, South Carolina Democratic Party
Candidate for: Chairman of the Democratic National Committee
How did you get involved in Democratic politics?
I first started my involvement in Democratic politics I guess, when I was a sophomore in high school, so that was ’92? So the Clinton campaign was my first campaign, that I volunteered, worked on, did voter registration, and GOTV [Get Out The Vote] activity.
This was for the primary or for the general?
For the general. So it was an amazing thing for me. No one in my family had ever been involved in politics. I’d always followed politics, was always fascinated with the presidency, so it was an important year, ’92 was such an important year. You’ve got this guy Bill Clinton whose story sounded so much like my own: single mom in the rural south, young guy who didn’t have family involved in politics, but he really got involved. His story was an inspiration for me, and to have him win and become the president, and at the same time for the first time since Reconstruction, South Carolina elected an African American to Congress in Jim Clyburn. That happened that year as well. So it was a really pivotal year for me in terms of politics, and shortly thereafter I got an opportunity to meet with the congressman and the rest is history.
That’s really how I got involved in politics on the national level. I invited Jim Clyburn. During my junior year, I was the president of the National Honor Society for my high school and the regional president. I invited Jim Clyburn to come and talk to our regional conference, and he graciously said yes. He came to my high school. After the meeting, I went up to the congressman and said “I want to work in your office.” He said, “Well son, go to college first, and then we can have you come and intern.” And I never forgot that. My junior year of college, I had an opportunity to intern with him, and the rest is history.
You went to Yale, correct?
Yes. I was the first generation in my family to go to college. My mom was young when she had me, she was like 15 or 16 years old, and my grandparents helped to take care of me. They didn’t have a whole lot of education, but nonetheless they knew the importance of it. So I got into Yale University, in spite of a lot of people saying they didn’t think I had a chance, but I did. It was great, it transformed my life, and it was a wonderful time.
Most candidates running for DNC chair have said they will defer to the Unity Commission on the issue of superdelegates. What is your personal opinion: do the powers of the superdelegates need to be reformed or limited, or should the position be abolished altogether?
I definitely would love to see what the Unity Commission comes up with. My personal take is I think the superdelegates play a really important role. One: some of the superdelegates are members of Congress and governors and the like. I don’t think those people need to run against grassroots activists for spots to go to the convention. That’s part of the reason we also have superdelegates, because it gives those people an automatic entrance into the convention so that they don’t have to run against their constituents, which I think is smart in terms of politics. You want to give grassroots folks an opportunity to participate in the process.
Secondly, I believe that at the very least the chair and vice chair of our party should reflect the vote of their state, either in the primary or the caucus. So that was the thing that I pledged. I pledged in South Carolina that I wouldn’t come out one way or another in terms of endorsing one candidate, but I would endorse and support the person who ended up winning the South Carolina primary, because that just makes good sense on politics. You also don’t want to have a state party chair and vice chair do something that is different from what the vast majority of Democrats in the state decided in the primary process.
Would you be willing to amend or reform the primary calendar so that other, larger states like California or New York can have a bigger say early on in the nominating process?
I think those states have a big say in the process. Part of the unique part about the primaries that I think is really interesting, I think the candidates appreciate having smaller states up front because it gives them the opportunity to refine their message, to refine how they go out and do television. If you have California or New York very early on, that means you’re going to have to raise a whole lot of money very early on in the process because TV advertising is so important when you have states that are that large. But a state like South Carolina, five million people, it’s small enough that you can get around the state. You can go anywhere from Columbia in two and a half hours in the state, so you can hit multiple media markets, you can talk to people. It’s small enough where you can do all the pat-on-the-back type politics, and at the same time, allow the media to interact with voters in such a way. So I don’t know that we need to frontload it with the largest states, I think the way that the primary system works now is good in terms of having a mixture of smaller states that kick off the process, and then you ramp it up as you move along.
Historians talk about a president’s First Hundred Days in office. If you are elected DNC chair, what will you do in your First Hundred Days on the job, by order of importance?
One of the first things, I’m working on this now, is the organization of the party, the structure of the organization in the DNC and figuring out what that is. Organizational structure is a really good window into what your principles are, the things that you value. So we need to figure that out, and what’s really important. I believe there needs to be a section of the DNC that is geared toward protecting our democracy. What do I mean by that? Meaning fighting against voter suppression, fighting against gerrymandering, but also being proactive to come up with solutions to how we deal with issues that come from the Citizens United decision. Those are things that I think are fundamental threats to our democracy as we know it. As a party, we need to make sure that we educate voters about it, and that we take proactive steps to try to curb these things and reduce the harm that they have.
The second thing that I would like to do is, I fundamentally believe, Democrats are now in the minority in almost every aspect of government, from the state houses to governorships to attorneys general to Congress to the White House. We don’t control any of that at this point. We don’t have the majority in any of that. So therefore, it’s going to be particularly important that Democrats are all coordinated on one page as it relates to message, technique and strategy moving forward. So one of the first things that I want to do is call together the leaders from all of these various groups within the Democratic Party to make sure that we can actually coordinate on that level. That has not happened in recent history, and it’s something that has to happen when we’re going up against Donald Trump and this right wing Republican agenda.
After President Obama was re-elected four years ago, Republicans commissioned their famous autopsy. They commissioned it, they wrote the report, they published the findings, and basically ignored it and won the last election. If you were elected chairman, would you commission a similar postmortem?
We don’t need an autopsy report. We just had one that was done after the 2014 election, and if we had actually adhered to it, I think we’d be in a much better situation. That autopsy report said that we need to invest in our state parties more. If you asked me, “Is there one thing that has put Democrats in the situation that we’re in now?” I would say, “Yes. We forgot, we stopped investing in our state parties. We stopped moving forward with a 50-state strategy, or really a 57-state strategy when you count our territories and Democrats Abroad.” We have to once again invest in the infrastructure of the party, because it is the state party which is the foundation for the national party. It is the vehicle with which we get our message out. It is the way that we contact voters, that we interact with voters, and if they’re not strong, if they don’t have the resources they need, if they don’t have the training, if they don’t have the capacity, then they can’t do that fundamental step in order to connect with voters.
In rebuilding, there are two different dynamics depending on the state. There are states where national Democrats have traditionally had very little infrastructure or presence, or attempted to compete in states like your home state of South Carolina, Idaho, or North Dakota. Then you have states where Democrats do have a presence and they have had success in the past, but it’s diminished or atrophied in recent years, in places like Ohio, Missouri or Louisiana. Obviously no two states are alike, but how do you plan to rebuild given the challenges that you face?
We can’t cede any territory to the Republicans, and we’ve done that far too often. An example: take three states – New Jersey, blue state, right? Maryland, blue state. Massachusetts, blue state. What do they have in common?
Republican governors.
Republican governors. That means that the Republican Party has said, “Yes, we see you’re blue on presidential, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to contest for seats in your legislature and in your governorship.” But Democrats, what have we done? We have a governor’s race in South Carolina, right? Don’t invest in it. We have a governor’s race in Kansas or Idaho or North Dakota, we don’t invest in it because it’s a red state, Democrats don’t win in those states. I’m one of those people who believe that if you don’t put your hat in the ring, you’re right. We’re not going to win. If you never invest in it, you’re right. We’re not going to win. We’ve got to start going on the offense and stop playing so much defense. Part of the answer is the investment in all those states across the board.
The second part is the DNC can play a really good role in terms of helping state parties build capacity. What I mean by capacity is we always hear about building a bench, and whether the Democratic Party has to build a bench. In order to build a bench, you have to have an operation or a process by which to do that. It’s not something that just happens organically. When I inherited the chairmanship of South Carolina, it wasn’t like I had this trove of people or a candidate tree and all I need to do is go to the backyard and pick a candidate off and all of the sudden they magically appear. That doesn’t happen. You have to build it. You have to train, you have to cultivate talent. First you have to find it, you have to cultivate it, you have to train it, and you have to give them the tools to be successful. So that’s what we’ve been trying to do in South Carolina. Again, it’s not a process like tomorrow you wake up and all of the sudden you have it, it’s something that you have to really build and pour resources in.
So we launched the Clyburn Fellowship about two years ago, and that fellowship was geared to a few things, not just building a bench of talent for candidates but also county party leadership. The average age of county party chairs in South Carolina when I became chair was 60-something years old. We’re slowly trying to change that, to bring young people into the party, give them a leadership role in the party, help them shape the party, so that the way that we communicate with voters is different because they the world in a different manner, But also in terms of campaign field staff. Again, we had to import talent from other states because we were not grooming our own talent in South Carolina, so we came up with the Clyburn Fellowship. Last year, we graduated 32. This year, we have a class of 48 that even includes a young man who was a Rhodes Scholar. It’s becoming the blueprint for how you go about building a bench that, when I explain it and talk to other states, they’re like “Can you send me the information?”
Well, the DNC has to become that vehicle in which we communicate that. It has to have a culture of sharing and discussion so that when states are doing something really interesting, because they really are the laboratories of democracy, when they’re doing something really interesting they feel that they can share that with folks and the DNC can be that conduit in which that information is shared, people can learn from it, and they can replicate it.
Where do you think the next generation of Democratic stars are going to come from? What will you do as chairman to find and nurture those talents as they climb the rungs of power?
They’re all over. Partly, if you look at some of our staff, they’re all superstars. Folks who are here with me this weekend, they’re all Democratic superstars with tremendous pedigree, knowledge, experience smarts, but we’ve got to give them opportunities to shine. There’s this quote that says “In the darkest night, we see the brightest stars,” and that’s really true. This is the darkest of the dark for the Democratic Party in a long time, and I think we’re going to see some of the bright stars come out, and on a national level right now there are some folks right now that I believe are superstars, but there is a lot of talent, great talent that’s in the state parties that we haven’t showcased, and as chair, I want to make sure we do that. I want to give them an opportunity.
I started a web series in South Carolina called “Chair Chats,” and part of the push for “Chair Chats” was to make sure that we showcase our local talent. We have this young mayor in Johnston, South Carolina who worked for Outkast, so he gets the hip hop stuff, but at the same time this guy is wicked smart and really good, and he’s able to work with the rural white community and the rural African American community and bridge them together to do new things in this town, in a very small rural town. We showcased him on “Chair Chats” and we’ve given him opportunities to shine in the Democratic Party. We need to do that on a national level, as well.
Democrats are really seeing the end of four eras coming to a head next week – Obama, the Clintons, Joe Biden and Harry Reid. What role do you see for them within the party now that their political careers are over?
I hope they don’t retire from helping the Democratic Party, that’s really, really important. We need all of them to go to our states, all of our states, to be ambassadors for the party. If I am chair, that’s what I’m going to ask them. I’m going to create what we call a Democratic Ambassadorship Program. Basically they are going to be the goodwill ambassadors going into our states, helping our state parties fundraise, helping us recruit folks for offices. Just think of the power of having a former President of the United States, a former Secretary of State, or a former U.S. Senator giving a candidate a call and encouraging them to run for Senate or running for the House of Representatives. That has tremendous amount of power, and being able to tap into their network to support these candidates would be tremendous. Having them come when we have training for all of these candidates that we find and that we try to groom, having them come and talk to them, tremendous things. It’s important that the Clintons and the Obamas and the Bidens don’t just step away and not do the things that are necessary to help us rebuild this party.
If elected chairman, do you foresee having to take any additional cybersecurity measures to protect the electronic infrastructure of the party?
One of the things I think we have to do, again I’m one of these people that focus on organization a lot. One of my jobs was I was COO for a non-profit and helped them build the systems and the infrastructure to grow into a more successful non-profit. That non-profit was College Summit. So I think about organizational structure and organizational behavior and culture a lot, in all aspects of the things I’ve been able to do. So thinking about the DNC and looking at the current structure, there is nobody on the senior level that is of a CTO-type level – Chief Technology Officer or Chief Innovation Officer – meaning that there is somebody who is thinking not only about “How do we keep the computers running?” but thinking about our cybersecurity and how do we keep our data secure, and not only just the proprietary data that we have on a national level, but the entities, for lack of a better word almost franchises of the DNC, the state parties, what are we doing in order to protect them as well from these attacks? Again, we can’t just be defensive.
We also have to be proactive and we have to be thinking about what are the cutting edge technologies that we need and the innovations that we need. So having somebody who can go to Silicon Valley and talk with the heads of these huge corporations and companies that are in this technology space and convene sessions and discussions about creating things that help us do our jobs better, have it be from the field side, from the communications side and how we talk to voters. The Republicans have caught up to us in terms of the technology. We no longer have the technology edge in politics that we had say, eight years ago. So we don’t have someone whose sole job it is when they get up in the morning and go to bed at night is thinking “How do we push forward on innovation in the technology space?” That’s what I want to create at the DNC.
Do you think this episode is going to change the way the party, party candidates and campaigns handle internal communications?
I think so. It has to, because listen, just because it happened we’re not going to fix this so that it never happens again, right? So I think how we communicate is going to be important. What we put in our communications are going to be very important. We definitely have to figure that out. There are a lot of people who have been, a lot of companies who have had to tackle this, so it’s not something that’s new, and I think we can get some guidance on this from folks who have had to deal with this for a long time.
If you had been DNC chair at the time, how would you and the organization have responded to the events in North Carolina where the state legislature voted to strip powers from the incoming governor and the upcoming congressional votes on repealing Obamacare?
North Carolina is our sister state, right across the border. One of the things I think we would have done, and I think it still probably needs to be done, well not now because we have a Democratic governor who is fighting to make sure, but this is when you have to flex your economic muscle as well. I know the NAACP was calling for a boycott, but it would have been great for Democrats to stand together and say, “Listen, we are not going to support these types of efforts,” so therefore there might need to be a boycott to demonstrate to the leadership in that state that this type of behavior is not going to be tolerated. You cannot, we’re not going to tolerate you walking on the rights of the American people. It doesn’t matter what state you’re in, we’re not going to tolerate that. So I would have moved forward in some type of action that way, again coalescing all of our supporters and groups to push in one direction, getting everybody all on one page is also very, very important, to come up with a strategy and technique that is cohesive and that is coordinated.
As it relates to the Affordable Care Act, we are doing some things. We’ve done some really interesting things in South Carolina. We were at the forefront in terms of, this is not about the Affordable Care Act but about the Ethics Office, in terms of applying pressure to members of Congress about the changes that they made, the attempted changes to the Ethics Office. Having our grassroots activists flood the phones with calls, sit-ins and the like, all those things are important ways that we can resist. But it’s also important, and I have an understanding of Capitol Hill and how things work there, is to make sure that our members are doing everything possible in order to thwart Republican attempts to change these types of things. I think that Senate Democrats need to pull out the cots and do an old-fashioned filibuster when it comes to to some of these things that they’re trying to do. In the Senate, they act a lot with unanimous consent. The Senate doesn’t function unless you get unanimous consent to operate in some fashion. Well, maybe instead of saying “We’ll filibuster this, but we’ll continue to move the agenda forward on other things,” just shut the whole thing down. It’s worth it. Twenty million people losing their health care is worth shutting it down, because that says to me Congress is not doing what it needs to do in the best interests of the American people.
History has shown that when President Obama was on the ballot in 2008 and 2012, the Obama coalition was a winning ticket, a winning combination. But when he was not on the ballot – 2010, 2014 and 2016 – that coalition wouldn’t necessarily turn out with the same numbers and energy in the way that was so successful for President Obama. How do you go about changing that?
President Obama in 2008 also benefited from something else that you didn’t mention in that, and that was the 50-state strategy. Take a look at the 2008 race and look at 2012. There was a drop in number of voters and all that. 2012 did not look as great as 2008. Well, in 2008 we had a 50-state strategy. Every state was getting infrastructure money. Every state had capacity in order to touch voters, talk to voters, get those voters out. That was amplified by the organization that President Obama also created. But by the 2012 election, the program that we had in every state was no longer running at the same level that it was in 2008, and as a result, we didn’t get the results that we got in 2008. So it’s really, really important.
Part of the Obama coalition, part of the effort President Obama put out there was galvanizing the grassroots. Well, if your state parties can’t assist in that effort, then you’re not going to get the results that we need, so we have to go back to that 50-state strategy that is so desperate and so needed, and it’s something the Republicans have done, they really have. Reince Priebus, when he was chair of the RNC, invested in the state parties. We got to go back to doing that on the Democratic side.
If you are chosen to be the next chairman of the Democratic Party, how do you want voters and elected officials and donors to judge your performance? What would you consider to be the metrics and benchmarks for success as chairman?
We didn’t get into this situation overnight, we’re not going to get out of it overnight. But I think if we can take a look, if we can early on in this 2018 cycle build capacity and limit any losses that we have in the Senate, and push and get some gains in terms of governorships and state house seats, I think that will be a big win for Democrats going into this ’18 cycle. So making sure that we support New Jersey and Virginia in their races here in 2017 also very, very important. But we don’t have a lot of time to do that, those races are coming up in less than a year. So we need to make sure that we ramp up our capacity to be able to assist them. I think looking at, trying to perform better in the midterm elections is going to be important, but also putting in the systems to begin building a bench in our states, to changing and reforming how we go about doing our presidential primary system. I think those are the types of things that we look at in the short term, to see whether or not we’re on track, and then in 2020, which will be very, very big for us because we have to make sure that Donald Trump does not get re-elected.
Not only the presidential election, but it’s a census year, and you have redistricting shortly after.
That’s exactly right, it’s so important. The governor’s races, and the legislative races, we always like to think about Congress as the House and the Senate, but really the most important races in the ’18 cycle are doing what we can to make sure we retain our Senate seats, but we’ve got to focus on governorships, we’ve got to focus on legislatures.
You’re playing offense on that map, whereas you’re playing defense in the Senate.
Exactly. Twenty-five seats, 10 of the 25 are in Trump states.
Who do you consider to be your biggest political role models?
Jim Clyburn. I’ve learned everything, most things in politics from watching him. He is one of the true statesmen that we have in this country. That title is not one that I give freely, because they are becoming rare in politics, but he definitely is a role model because he’s not one to throw bombs, he’s not one to consume all the oxygen in the room, but he always takes a very thoughtful approach. He’s always thinking about how you bring people together. I learned from him that success for the Democratic Party is when we’re a party of addition and multiplication, rather than a party of subtraction and division. That’s really, really important in how I’ve conducted myself as chair, how I’ve conducted myself in other political capacities, and I will continue to do that.
Another person I would say is a role model and a mentor is Howard Dean. His 50-state strategy really was the framework by which I utilized when I first got into the chairmanship of the South Carolina Democratic Party. I have tremendous respect for him and what he was able to accomplish in his time as chair. If I am able to be elected chair, I will use a lot of what he did, bring that back and add to it.
But I would say right now, the two of them and of course, John Lewis was my neighbor. When we were in the House majority, my office was right next to Congressman Lewis’s, his leadership office in the Capitol. There were many times I went in, sat on his couch and talked to him, or just went in his office and stared at the pictures. He is a national treasure and a tremendous asset to our party and to the nation, so he’s somebody that I look up to.
What is the greatest success in your political career and the biggest disappointment? What lessons did you learn from both of them?
There are two things, I would say. The way I think about politics is I divide it up. Success as chair? Hands down, the Clyburn Fellowship. I think that is going to be my legacy that I leave for the Democratic Party of South Carolina, because we are going to build a whole new generation of leaders in that state, and that fellowship is going to be the foundation from which they spring forward.
When I was in the House and worked in the House Democratic leadership, we were able to accomplish a lot. It was a tremendous thing given the very diverse caucus that we had. But there is one bill that stands out in my mind as probably the most difficult thing to whip, and it was the greatest success that we had in that process. It was the first time that we took up the Matthew Shepard James Byrd hate crimes bill. As I told you, we had 233 seats in the House, so a 15-seat majority. When we were whipping that bill, we just could not get over 200 votes. For over a week, we whipped and we whipped and we whipped that bill, and there were some of our Democrats who just could not do it because they were scared of Motions to Recommit, sort of amendments that Republicans can put up in order to change the legislation. They were scared about the ads that they would hear, they were scared about the perception, how the LGBT community was seen, whether an attack ad would be produced against them for voting for this thing. We tried and we tried and we tried.
Nancy Pelosi came to Congressman Clyburn and said to him, “Jim, I want to put this bill up and I want to put it up on Thursday.” I think it was a Thursday. And he said, “Nancy, we just don’t have the votes at this time.” I told the boss, I said “Boss, I’ve tried. I can’t figure out how we get the votes.” Somebody came up, and I cannot remember to this day, I cannot remember who came up with this idea. I think it was in a staff brainstorming session. They said, “Why don’t we invite Matthew Shepard’s mom and the sheriff who found him to come to our whip meeting on Thursday morning?” Because we would have a whip meeting every Thursday morning, Clyburn would have the Southern breakfast and all the members would come. We were able to do that, I think Pelosi’s staff were able to get her on a plane and the sheriff to fly out to DC.
We were very fortunate that morning, because a lot of the members who were a “No” on that vote were actually in the audience. And the sheriff started off by explaining how he found Matthew’s body, and then his mom talked about what it meant to her, and what this legislation meant. I can tell you, it was the most amazing emotional thing I’ve ever seen in the House of Representatives. Because if members walked into that room with frost around their hearts, it all melted away. Not only did we pass it, but we had well over the 218 votes to do it. And it’s just a testament to me that you can never say anything is impossible, but you always have to try. If you can tell the story and if you make people feel it on a personal level, it has so much more power to really change the world. So, if there’s one vote that I’m most proud of from my time working on Capitol Hill, it’s that one, because I knew how hard it was to get it over the fence.
In terms of greatest failure, I don’t know. I don’t like to think to think of things as failures but as opportunities that I learned from. Yeah, there are moments in which I’m disappointed, and those disappointments happen all the time. But I don’t dwell on them very often, because I don’t think I have much time to do that. To be quite honest, I can’t think of any. There are things I wish would have happened a different way, but I’m also one of those guys that walks around the world and thinks things happen for a reason, even though I might not like them, even though they make me uncomfortable, but you got to learn from them and move forward. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Read other installments in the “Future of the DNC” series:
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