| You talk about coming together - how do you make that a reality, and not just something that sounds nice as a campaign slogan?
We don't win if we're not unified, and we haven't been unified. That's a flat fact. I believe I have enough experience and work with what I've done to bring people together. You don't have to like everyone you work for, but you ought to respect them. And I think that's critical to the health and growth of our party.
I want to make our SDEC meetings more open to anybody in the party, so that they are also scheduled around workshops and training programs. Active party participants should get something out of those meetings, and not just the SDEC members. I want to have regular conference calls with our county chairs. I want to have more sit-down meetings with various Democratic organizations, and try and prevent us from having feuding among various Democratic organizations.
I want to start a Chairman's Council that has direct meetings and a direct impact on the direction of our Party. This is in the formative stages still, but I'd want members of the African-American community, the Hispanic community, our growing Asian community, the GLBT community - from every spectrum of our party, to come together and create policy that will get our candidates elected.
I think we should be willing to explore every avenue that's out there in order to get that done. If it's new technology, that's great. If it's block-walking in an area, that's great. It's tough to block walk out where I live because you've got five miles of barb wire in between houses. So we've got to come up with a way to bring everyone's ideas together, and then deliver those ideas and that message out. Whether it's new technology, or block-walking, or direct mail, or cable access -- whatever works best.
I wanted to ask about your background - how did you first become involved with politics?
It's hard for me to remember a time I wasn't involved in Democratic politics. I got started when I was ten years old - I've been doing this for fifty years. My Dad was a local campaign chairman for Ralph Yarborough, who was running for Governor at the time. I had a paper route, and we'd get materials and go knock doors. I did that for years for any local campaign I could sign up with.
At the tender young age of fourteen, I left home and went to D.C. to be a U.S. Senate Page. There was no adult supervision of pages - you lived on your own. I went to school from 7 to 10 in the morning at the Library of Congress, then go work on the floor until they adjourned. I was responsible for paying my rent, cleaning my clothes, getting my meals, the whole thing. But I went up there, got a place to stay, and arranged it so that I would be up there to see John Kennedy inaugurated. Needless to say, that helped shape my ambitions for political involvement for the rest of my life.
It seems you got started at a young age. Did you stay active after that?
After school, I moved back to Washington D.C., with my wife Betty, and took a job with what is known today as the Federal Regulatory Commission for about a year. But I couldn't stand that bureaucracy. So I moved back to Texas, and eventually took a job with a lawyer in Graham who was running for district judge. I helped campaign for him, and he was elected, and then I had a private practice there for four or five years.
I ran for District Attorney there - at that time it was a 3-county judicial district - against an incumbent that was basically a closet Republican, but everyone ran on the Democratic ticket at that time. We were successful, and I was elected, and I served almost a full term until my father died of a heart attack. I resigned to go take care of his office, and took a job as a prosecutor in the D.A.'s office in Wichita Falls until I could get my Mom on her feet and get everything settled again. And I've practiced law ever since.
Were you working on campaigns during all this time?
Yes, of course. There were various local campaigns for county judge, commissioners, sheriffs, district attorneys. To me - the key to everything is winning those local elections. The gold standard, to me, is working those local elections, in those smaller towns and communities. Going out, knocking on doors, and making personal contact with your friends and neighbors.
One of the reasons we started losing - and I say this with tongue in cheek - is that we got too used to central heat and central air. We go home, get into our huts with our AC, turn on the boob tube, and don't talk to people anymore. We don't talk to our neighbors about what their problems are, and what matters to them. And this isn't just a rural, small-town kind of thing -- the same thing happens in the suburbs of all the major cities in Texas. We just don't have that sense of community that we used to have.
When you come together as those communities, you have a real sense of each other, and develop a true sense of purpose about issues and candidates. I can't tell you how many times we had caravans from Wichita Falls to Burnet, or Lubbock, or Amarillo for various people and various campaigns, just to get out the message and get out the vote. And we could do that and organize those people because we all knew each other and were comfortable coming together.
My question, then, would be how you -- as Democratic Party Chair -- would make this emphasis on local elections and door-to-door campaigns a successful strategy here in Texas?
Well, first of all, we've got to get our financial house in order. If we don't do that, the rest doesn't matter, because we won't be able to keep our doors open. We've got to do a better job of keeping money here in Texas, and make people realize how important the party structure is at a local level. But we can't do that if we're not able to sustain our field operations. And I'm tickled to death about what Howard Dean has done with the field staff, and what we're doing now by way of the Trust.
But we've got to be able to identify donors, and that's got to be more than sitting down with a list of trial lawyers. We've got to find who's giving money in Texas, and re-direct that to giving to this Party. If we don't do that, we can't rebuild the structure.
For example, my wife ran for State Representative in 2000 in an area where there had never been a female candidate for that job. It was her first try at any office, and we had thirteen counties spread across 11,000 square miles. In ten of those counties, there was no Democratic organization to speak of. So, in essence, we had to go in and reinvent the wheel in each of those counties, which took enormous amounts of time, energy, and money that we didn't have. But it had to be done, because you can't cover eleven counties all by yourself. We did the best that we could, and I'm very proud of the fact that she got 43% of the vote.
So, number one, we have to be able to fund field staff to go out and establish and re-establish the local party structure across the state. Because in many of these local counties, we still control the courthouses, and that's a good place to start. Those people have been running for years and being elected as Democrats for years, but we need to educate the people about the importance of the party and why it's important to vote Democratic all the way down the ballot.
Well, as you know, we face a challenge of having to communicate across local and congressional campaigns, and across rural and suburban areas of the state. How do you build an infrastructure that allows you to communicate with all these different Democrats on different levels in different areas of the state?
There was a strategic plan that was adopted by the SDEC in 2004 that was going to do exactly that. It was going to identify people in all areas of the state, respond, and communicate electronically, and set up local meetings with all kinds of people all over the state. For some reason, and I don't know why, that was never implemented. Now, whether that was because of lack of funding - and I suspect that's the case - or something else, we've got to get that going. We have plenty of people for this party that are articulate and can be great spokesman for this party. But we've got to get that plan in place.
How do you deliver that message across 254 counties?
There are certainly all kinds of tools that we can utilize. The internet, obviously, gives us the opportunity to do all sorts of good things that were unheard of fifteen years ago. But, we still have to recognize that there are a great many people in the Democratic Party that are not of your generation, Phillip, and that don't own a computer and don't communicate with that technology. Not everyone wakes up and reads a blog first thing in the morning - no offense. They wake up, make breakfast, and get to work.
I should look into that. Breakfast instead of blogging…
You should! Anyways, there are also lots of young people, and disadvantage people, from San Antonio south, that can't afford computers. So you have to rely not only on technological communication, but on personal contact, and you do that by utilizing field staff and setting up that infrastructure in the counties. That way, people can go to their county chairs and precinct chairs, establish that kind of communication, and have all forms of communication available to them.
We got all these tools and technology available to us - and they are all wonderful and useful, no doubt - but they are what they are. They are tools to be utilized. Politics is still about people talking to people. If it isn't, then why is it that every single person I've ever come across has told me that the gold standard is block-walking and knocking on doors? The reason it's the gold standard is because we're having this conversation. It's much easier to trust a person than it is to trust a piece of mail, or a TV ad, or an e-mail.
What we need is simple: we need money to be able to afford our grassroots efforts in every county. With that money, we need to have a message we can take out to the people, and we can take that message out with whatever the best tools may be for that local race. But if we don't have the funding, and we don't have the people, then it doesn't matter what tools are there.
In addition to communicating better with people across the state, how do you help rebuild the infrastructure of the TDP?
One of the things I would like to do if elected Chair is to have an assessment of the need of each and every county in Texas. I don't have all the answers, and I don't pretend to. But, if I call up the County Chair in Cook County, and I can talk to him or her about what it is they need and what works in there area, then we can give that to the field person for that area, then we can make it all happen. Unfortunately, it's been a long time since the Party has gone out into counties and made that assessment. In the longer run, we need to make an assessment of what Democratic assets are available in each county.
If a candidates goes into any county, we should know who the County Chair is, who the Precinct Chairs are, any Democratic organizations, any activists, any donors from within that county. Right now, the TDP doesn't have anything that gives candidates a leg up when they begin their race -- the candidates have to collect that themselves, and it starts new every time, with every election. That information should be something we give to each and every candidate that runs in any county, so that folks across Texas don't have to do what Betty and I did and go reinvent the wheel every two or four years.
There are lots of young folks out there that are energized, and want to be involved, and want to get their voices heard. How do you bring this younger generation of Democrats into the fold?
As a Party, we absolutely need to welcome the younger generation, and not shut them out of the process. I'd say to anyone on your blog - or anyone that asked - that wants to get their voices heard to just get involved and stay involved. Volunteer at the Party. Help run your local organizations. Work at the Capitol, or in the District offices, of your local officials. It's not glamorous - it's grunt work. But that's what I've done all my life, and that's what we need people to continue to do.
But there's lots of people my age that already do that, and want to continue to grow and be more active in the Party.
Well, if these are people in the cities - and you're a good example, Phillip - if you keep doing good work, people will notice, and you'll get to grow in your own work rather quickly. I'd also encourage people to run for County Chair and run their party offices. If they think they're not being heard, they need to be in the position to be heard. To some extent, you've got to go through the process. The problem that I see is that there are a lot of folks that come into the Party and expect that there is some magic bullet that can turn everything around with a quick fix. But there isn't one.
We're all frustrated with what's happened over the last ten years, and we'd all like to have that quick fix. But it won't happen overnight. It takes day to day commitment of grunt work to get it done, and you've got to talk to people, talk to people, talk to people. I'd recommend for folks to work with their officeholders, work with their local chairs, work on campaigns, work with their SDEC members.
What campaign have you worked on that you're most proud of?
I've done a lot of work for the campaigns in my area, and I've helped out on numerous other campaigns here and there, but I don't work on them to put them on a list. I work on them to help out and do my part where I can. That being said, I'm most proud of my wife's campaign, for the work we did and everything we've already talked about.
Our campaign that we ran for district judge was elected in our local area. We've run tough campaigns for JPs in our county, and I've been proud of those. I've worked on Charlie Stenholm's campaigns a couple times. I was truly proud to have participated in Dr. May Jackson's campaign, when she was Mayor of the city of Waco. She was the first African-American female to be elected mayor of that city.
By and large, though, I've worked on local elections. I don't do consulting - that's not my thing. I do the grunt work, the block-walking, and going door-to-door to build relationships with the people in our community. I think that's an area the Party should focus on the most - is the grunt work - and building an infrastructure that will help us win elections not just today, but in years to come.
I know you've talked about campaigns, and the role the Chair and the TDP should play in campaigns across the state. What about the legislative side of things?
I think we can help them out however they want us to, and again, be a resource for information. Help find them staffers, help coordinate their efforts with the efforts of other folks across the state. But by and large, their biggest responsibility must be not to the TDP, but to the people that elected them. And again, they will know what is best for their districts. We don't need to go in and tell them what to do -- we need to ask how we can help, and then provide them help they need as best and as efficiently as possible.
The biggest work the TDP needs to do with elected officials is creating a message that works for them and their districts. Republicans have gone so far to the right that there isn't any room for moderation. We haven't gotten there, as Democrats, and we've got to recognize that everybody in our Party has a voice, and it ought to be listened to and be respected. We shouldn't shut out the people on the far left of the party any more than we should shut out the people in the middle. We need to have a frank discussion with our own members, butt heads and get into it with each other, and continue respecting each other through the process. We're all in the same Democratic family. |
