Glen Maxey's answers to South Texas Chisme Questionnaire

[muse]

Glen Maxey's answers

South Texas Chisme Questionaire

1. What is your vision for the Democratic Party of Texas?

Empowerment of grassroots individuals is the first building block of what I envision. Creating and making accessible the tools, training, and support for precinct level workers and candidates at all levels is critical. We can build voter files in a cost effective manner that enable people to organize their street or their precinct.

When you make it possible for diverse folks to run for JP, or constable or county commissioner, you’ve built the infrastructure that easily translates into the building blocks for races for Representative, Senator, or statewide.

2. As state party chair, how do you plan to implement your vision?

I have over 30 years of organizational experience. My first rule of organizing is to trust and delegate to those with the experience, talent and vision to achieve the desired result.

You put talented staff in place and you set definable goals and timelines. You raise the money to produce a useable product. You take the time and make the effort to train and nurture your volunteers.

I’ve created non-profit groups and run very effective and successful candidate campaigns. In every case, people walked through the front door with expertise, talent, and the know-how to make amazing things happen. I know these innovative people are out there across Texas. I want to empower these folks to do for the Texas Democratic Party what they do for their communities, their churches and their non-political organizations. And most importantly, they’ll often do it for free.

3. How will you use technology to implement your vision?

Technology can revolutionize this Party. Data and communication tools are the key to streamlining and having good two-way communication between an individual Democrat working in their precinct and the folks sitting in a State Party office. I envision making data for campaigns available to any candidate who runs on the Democratic ticket. But more importantly, we must create these systems so that the precinct chair or the candidates can put information back into the system so that it can build a robust file for coordinated campaigns. In a general election, we need the Constable and the US Senate campaign to be sharing, in real time, their information. I’ve led coordinated campaigns that have done this in Travis County and it can easily be done statewide.

There is no better person to organize and motivate voters than their peers: neighbors, co-workers, or like-minded individuals. For example, today we ask people to make cold calls through a phone bank to unknown voters to identify Democrats. It’s inefficient and nonproductive for many reasons. Instead, it is an easy task to allow a volunteer to sit at their computer, identify fifty people they know across Texas by looking them up in an online voter file, code those voters with their emails and phone numbers, and then allow the volunteer to do GOTV efforts to his list. For John Smith to contact the people with who he works, worships, or plays baseball is much more effective.

4. List your campaign experience and describe how you would apply your experience as state party chair?

A complete list of activities is at www.MaxeyForChair.com . I’ve run for public offices in eight election cycles. As State Representative, I served as an elected official for 12 years.

I have been a staffer, consultant or manager in well over 100 campaigns. I’ve organized statewide, district and local campaigns. Going back as far as 1982, I have played a role in the statewide coordinated campaigns. Database management is my expertise.

Whether the issue is message development and delivery, fundraising from small donors or large donors, using the internet and technology, field organizing or data management, I have years of experience.

And I’ve not just supervised someone doing these things, Glen Maxey has DONE them.

5. The state party structure is a top-down organization with SDEC representatives elected in an expensive, time-consuming, formal way. Many, if not most, self-identified Democratic activists do not know or are not involved with their SDEC representative. How do you plan to involve the grassroots in your vision of the party? That is, how do you make the most of bottoms-up ideas and energy and how do you foster ownership of the state Democratic Party amongst the grassroots activists?

You empower every single Democrat to do their part in making this vision work. Using simple technology, you can bring every INDIVIDUAL to the planning table, and likewise, allow them to actually be a part of the decision making process. I would like to see some out-of-the-box thinking coming from day-to-day grassroots activists.

While maintaining the required structure to meet legal and statutory requirements, we have to build those decision making and consensus building communication tools so that all voices are heard. I’m committed to working with our Legislators to remove the statutory obstacles that keep the Party from functioning more effectively. I’d like to institute more workable decision making processes than the top-down structure in place today. It doesn’t work.

I’d institute discussion groups, idea sharing and other methods to let folks learn of new, innovative and effective ways to organize.

You foster ownership of the Party among grassroots activists by opening up the process and GIVING them the power to own it

[sonias]

1. Good answers too

"My first rule of organizing is to trust and delegate to those with the experience, talent and vision to achieve the desired result."

This is the thing I do know Maxey is good at. He can let things go, once he sees someone is much better at doing it than he is. Maxey is smart about delegating. We're much more effective as an organization if we let people do what they like and are good at. Keep the volunteers happy, keep them motivated. Make them feel like they have a stake in the party for real, because they do.

I know Glen's answers are high on the tech content, but honestly, the repukes are doing this much better than we are now and we have to catch up and exceed their capability. Not all of our party is tech savvy, but for those that are, we need to be able to tap into that. We all need to be experts and using the tools, getting out the vote, organizing, fundraising. Each of us needs to be our own little party machine, and also be links in the big state party chain.

I also like that Glen does know the rules of the Legislature. He was successful at getting legislation passed, even under the bush king. He knows the rules and he has the contacts to help us get the rule changes we need.

Maxey of course has that "you have the power" Dean Democracy message, which of course I'm biased about.

I like both Charlie Urbina-Jones and Glen Maxey. Can we get a two for one deal? Whichever candidate wins I want them to all keep involved in the party and all keep working to help us recapture this state. We know our state is blue, we just have to make those contacts and educate our voters that voting for the Democratic party is in their best interest. We are the party of the people.

Sonia

[WestHoustonDem]

2. That rule of organizing worked against him in NNIN

Some of the people in the chain of command, at least locally were not deserving of that trust. I think trust but verify is required here.

[sonias]

4. Agreed, but that one came up on us rather fast

With longer campaigns you have the time to reevaluate and adjust your strategy. With a statewide campaign that was essentially a wedge issue, with very little campaign funding, you have to be at least thankful that an effort was made. Two years ago, we couldn't have even had a coordinated response. Glen stepped up and took what we all knew going in was going to be a losing campaign. Every state where these measures have been put on the ballot has passed them. No state has won the battle for equality.

Glen took on the challenge and he did it because it was the right thing to do. Some might argue that he had a personal interest in it, that doesn't matter. We all know that this kind of inequality is wrong. And it was a waste of money. It was already a TX law as illegal. This was simply a campaign to bring out the worst in people, fear and hatred. The republicans were able to divide the state once again, on the politics of promoting hate.

Let's try to rewind the picture and play what if. What if Frank Madla wasn't in the Senate when the bill came up, and it was Carlos Uresti who was the Senator. The bill would have died because Uresti wouldn't have caved in to the republicans like Madla did.

Glen's not a miracle worker, but he won't let an issue like this go unchallenged.

Sonia

[SouthTexasChisme]

3. links

Here is a link to Glen Maxey's answers.

Here is a link to Charlie's answers on STC.

There is discussion on both posts.

I understand that Boyd Richie will be responding soon. So check back with STC. The deadline for responses is Wednesday.