Questions For The TNDP Chair Candidates
The Tennessee Democratic Party (TNDP) is currently undergoing its internal election for a new Party Chair. Our PAC doesn’t get a vote in who the TNDP appoints as Chair, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t watching what is happening. There have been a lot of interesting proposals made and there are some enthusiastic folks looking to take the wheel, which gives us a lot of hope. That said, we have some questions for those that wish to be the Party’s new leader.
First though, we would like to thank Mary Mancini for her hard work. Mary has spent the last decade having to pay for the sins of her predecessors. It is easier to blame her than to blame the Dem leadership from 2000-2010 that allowed for a systemic collapse in the party. That generation, got old, died off and left nobody to fight on in its place. That in combination with some nice gerrymandering and we have a lost decade politically. Mary wasn’t responsible for that, but she was frequently the one that people wanted to blame. In her time as Chair, Mancini has earnestly tried various permutations of how to bring the party out of the electoral wilderness, so far, without success.
So, it is with some interest that we hear folks proposing things that sound an awful lot like what the TNDP has tried under Mancini. We hear folks saying that we should try to run someone in every district especially the rural ones. Tried it. We should focus on targeted seats with polling to help those candidates. Tried it. We should try to ramp up fundraising to help down ballot races. Um yeah, that’s what she tried to do for years.
In short, we hear people promising to try to do roughly the same things Mancini and her team tried cycle after cycle. Now, it could be that they have the ability to execute those plans more successfully. Alternatively, it could be that these candidates might be missing the big picture of what is wrong with the TNDP.
Fundraising and Fund Allocation-
This is the most important function of the Chair. Every other objective flows out of whether the Party has the resources to execute. Most cycles the TNDP simply doesn’t have the money it needs. Any candidate that doesn’t have a serious answer for how she or he will bring in an additional couple million dollars a year in contributions should probably reconsider running.
Next, we need to figure out how to break the “Golden Rule” of politics. Every once in awhile, TN Democrats HAVE the money to win but we grossly misspend it. Under the golden rule of politics, whoever has the gold makes the rules. This effectively means that the biggest fundraiser for the state will primarily direct where funding goes. The natural outcome of that is that a candidate for Governor or Senate who had no connection to TNDP decision-making previously is suddenly put into a position where he directs the vast majority of funds raised in that election cycle. The priorities of those individual candidates rarely overlap with those that are trying to flip down ballot races. Statewide candidates under a tight time crunch will push to turn out voters in heavy D districts and to flood media with TV ads. None of that does anything to help flip red or purple districts. The end result is that money does not get prioritized to turning out D voters in competitive down ballot districts where the investment could actually make a difference.
The biggest example of this phenomena was in 2018 where money poured into the state for the Bredesen/Blackburn matchup. The $20+ million spent on that race provided more than enough money to help down ballot races. Indeed, that year, the TNDP had successfully recruited candidates in almost every House and Senate district. We had the money, we had a full slate of candidates, but the money largely failed to get to those folks. Now, Mancini took a look of flack from campaigns that came up short and needed more help, but it wasn’t her that made the call that the TNDP would get only get about 5% of these state-wide funds to work with. So, future Chair, how are you going to solve this problem? How do you get more money into the party generally and how do you make is so the money we have goes to where it will do the most good?
Candidate Recruitment –
You can’t win something with nothing. If you are going to flip seats you need strong candidates to run. To get a strong candidate to run for a State House seat in West or East TN, it is exceptionally hard. Let’s be honest, state House seats aren’t glamourous. The pay is also much less than other political positions. The job is theoretically part-time. However, if you live outside of Middle TN, it is likely going to crowd out any other work prospects that you have.
So, if you are in the TNDP and you look at recruiting a businesswoman or attorney or nurse to run for office against an incumbent in a red district, your pitch goes something like this:
I would like for you to spend the next 6-8 months campaigning and asking everyone you know for money. We will not be able to provide you any help until after the primary (which will only give you a paltry 2 ½ months with any party support before Election Day). You need to raise $100-150,000 on your own. Your opponent is going to have double that amount spent on his behalf from dark money sources that will bombard your district with mailers calling you everything but a child of God. If by some miracle you win, then you get to uproot your life, likely disrupt your job and spend a huge chunk of your life in Nashville where you will make $24,316/year… So, when can we start circulating those petitions to get you on the ballot?
The fact that the party can’t act on behalf of a candidate until after a primary means they will never be able to get early money to a candidate when it will do the most good (money in January means a lot mor than money in October). The fact that the TNDP is in Nashville, means that it is inherently distant from the grassroots folks that will serve as the backbone for any effort to flip a district. These sorts of factors all lead to an environment in which strong candidates will rarely answer the call to run in supposedly red districts.
It is exactly this problem that Future901 has sought to address over the last four years. What we do at Future 901 is that we start working a district before there is a candidate and continue to work the district after the campaign is “over.” We develop teams that are committed to flipping a particular district and we start raising seed money that is there starting in January, not October. The promise of a campaign team with district-specific memory and early seed money IS effective at getting strong candidates to run. We think this combination has made a difference.
Quickly, we will give you one example from District 83. In 2016, the Dem candidate lost by 28%. Our PAC worked in 2018 to help first-time candidate Danielle Schonbaum raise money and run. Members of our steering committee left the PAC to work on her race. She lost by 12% in a district where the prior Dem candidate lost by 28%. Immediately after that loss, we welcomed Danielle, herself, into the Future901 steering committee where she continued to work with us on fundraising and candidate recruitment. We struck gold with Jerri Green who ran an amazing race. We helped her do that by contributing $7,500 to her campaign and by using our growing social media presence to promote her race. Early visibility and money were a useful springboard for her. She ended up raising more money than any first-time candidate in TN. We came up short (she lost by 7.9%), but in the two cycles where we were involved, District 83 experienced +20% Dem swing while running against a 10-year incumbent. We are just getting started in the district.
Our way has started working here, but different parts of the state face different recruitment challenges. However, EVERY district we need to flip shares this same problem. So, the question for the Chair candidates is what are you going to do to attract candidates to run to win in the districts we need to flip?