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Howard Dean's efforts on his "50 State Strategy" within the democratic party are beginning to bear fruit.
Efforts on local level strengthening party, winning over skeptics Read a recent headline by Rick Klien on 3/13 in the Boston Globe. (I'd put a link up but they have an arcane and byzantine registation process and it's not worth the trouble)
<...> a year after the crusading former Vermont governor took over the DNC, the party has reacted in some surprising ways. <...>
<...> many Dean skeptics in state Democratic parties -- especially in places like New Mexico, a swing state that voted Republican in the last presidential race -- have been won over. The reason is the millions of dollars Dean has spent rebuilding Democratic organizations in places that haven't seen a coordinated Democratic effort in a long time.
It's a high-risk strategy: Democrats have historically done this kind of grass-roots organizing only in the voter-rich big cities, and right before Election Day. Building the party in rural areas involves spending precious resources long before voters go to the polls.
But as Dean's mini-army of more than 150 DNC-paid operatives have fanned out across the country, many rural and conservative-leaning Democrats are nodding with approval.
''I've never really been a Dean guy," said John Wertheim, chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party. ''But I've really bought into his program. Is it risky? Sure. But I think it's a darn good investment."
In Albuquerque, Dean sent four staff members -- trained by and drawing paychecks from the DNC -- and they have split up the map of New Mexico, a state more closely divided than Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.
The DNC's new employees are doing the trench work per Dean's staregy, assembling voter lists, organizing county-level caucuses, and installing precinct chairmen in rural portions of the state that have voted overwhelmingly Republican in national campaigns.
I can't imagine a better expenditure of our DNC funds, although the volume oriented hoarding types in DC are shaky about not having it there.Dean has spent a ton on this long term grass roots effort most of the $61 million the party has raised since the beginning of 2005, according to Federal Election Commission That leaves the party with $6.9 million, which by DC standards is low, because they aren't used to spending anything on the once withered grass roots.
I'm not worried, I know how fast Howard Dean can raise money.DNC's fund-raising was up 20 percent last year over 2003 -- the last year that didn't have congressional elections. Sure, it's less than the RNC, but the DNC always raises less than those guys.
The funding gap has provoked private grumbling from some Democrats, who would rather see the national party save its resources for the presidential campaign and targeted state races. We all have seen the success record of that in the past two elections.
Howard Dean's goal is no less than to rival the grass-roots monster machine that Republicans have. In 2004, White House political adviser Karl Rove was able to bring together some 1.2 million volunteers for the president's campaign push, including organizing busses and church groups to bring hundreds of thousands of elder and infirm voters who otherwise wouldn't have made it to the polls.
"We weren't everywhere, and we weren't in the rural areas," Dean said in an interview. ''You can't win the presidency unless you pay attention to the school board and the city council and the mayor's race." That's the crux of his strategy and always has been.
All the locales I have contact with, including New mexico, Iowa, Ohio, rural California, Idaho, Washingtton, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, the refrain is the same. Local Democrats feel like there is something there, something they can relate to, a party that is active 24/7 and growing stronger fromthe bottom up.
Globe: ''When we first met Howard Dean, we thought he'd be a nut," said Nick Casey, West Virginia's party chairman. ''But that's not the guy who's been delivering the goods, and he has been delivering to us."
Casey's state party has doubled its number of precinct chairmen and is halfway to its goal of having one in each of West Virginia's more than 1,900 voting precincts. The three new staff members sent by the DNC have given the state party more than twice its previous manpower.
Party chairmen across the nation tell similar stories. In Ohio, the five people being paid by the DNC have helped set up ''Victory Squads" -- teams of about 10 Democrats who are eager to knock on doors or set up lawn signs -- in 65 rural counties where Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry fared poorly in 2004.
Mississippi's Democratic Party has established an infrastructure in 10 counties where the organization had atrophied. The DNC has sent resources to hire five full-time workers -- up from just a single part-timer previously -- helping Democrats secure victories in five special legislative elections over the past year, party chairman Wayne Dowdy said."
That's a far cry from cranking up a dubious and creaky mechanism six months before a presidential election.
Globe:"In 2004, as in other recent presidential years, the DNC under then-chairman Terry McAuliffe saved most of its cash to help the nominee with television ads and paid operatives. But by the time teams from the national Democratic party showed up in swing states like New Mexico and Ohio in the summer, they found state parties that were too cash-strapped to have reliable voter lists. And many of the new arrivals had no clue about the states they were sent to.
In New Mexico, the Kerry campaign sent thousands of volunteers into urban areas. Kerry won big in the cities, as expected. But Democrats watched in vain as thousands of Bush volunteers streamed over the Texas border into eastern New Mexico. Bush won the state by nearly 6,000 votes. The pattern was repeated in other closely divided states, such as Ohio and Nevada.
Dean's efforts are aimed at making sure that doesn't happen again. Though he insists that the party will be able to raise plenty of money for the presidential race as 2008 draws closer, Dean said building the infrastructure is the party's top objective.
<...>
The four fresh-faced DNC workers who began working in New Mexico in October are concentrating on 2006, even as they dream of a Democratic majority in 2020.
Said Jenny Garcia, Democratic chairwoman for Colfax County, ''We're letting the community know, we do have a Democratic Party here."
I only hope they get it back inside the beltway. Thus far, they show no signs up comprehension.
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