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Purple America
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Jul 25, 2007 08:06pm |
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| Category | Profile |
| News Date | Thursday, July 26, 2007 02:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Wilkes County--Bible-thumping, economically slumping--has stood out for its fire-and-brimstone conservatism. It's been a stiff challenge to find folks willing to run against the Republicans. Hell, it's been rare to hear anybody publicly admit to being a Democrat. "You've got a lot of people in this county who probably couldn't tell you if they've ever met one," Sloop says.
But in a scene playing out this year all across "red America," from these lush hills to the craggy outcroppings of the Mountain West, previously unfathomable crowds of Democrats are streaming up the steps of the old county courthouse, past bobbing blue balloons and Welcome Democrats! signs. They're hopping mad about the national state of things but simultaneously giddy with a new-found hope--finally!--for their party.
Suddenly, though, things actually are running, as Johnston notes after the meeting commences. "The county has twenty-two precincts," he informs the folks. "And I'm proud to announce that every one of them is organized as of just the other day." It might sound dull as dirt, but this is the kind of meticulous organizing--and pride taken in it--that has long been key to GOP dominance in places like Wilkes. The fifty-state strategy kicked off in 2005 by that other Yankee, DNC chair Howard Dean, has begun to level the playing field by putting field organizers, media directors and fundraisers into both "red" and "blue" states to stimulate grassroots organizing and year-round party-building.
The single oddest thing about the fifty-state strategy is surely the adjective often attached to it: "controversial."
Just how, exactly, could there be controversy over a national political party organizing nationally--especially after years of pissing billions into an ever-shrinking "target" slice of the country, ceding wider and wider chunks of territory and disdaining the grassroots while Republicans built a powerful army of ground troops? The DNC's fifty-state project is relatively inexpensive, compared with the costs of the thirty-second TV ad blitzes the party has increasingly relied on to target voters in Ohio and Florida. Salaries for the state parties run to about $8 million annually, considerably less than 10 percent of the DNC's budget and downright humble compared with what the GOP and its affiliates spend for similar party work.
In just two years, the belated catch-up effort has paid off in at least two tangible ways: It has exponentially multiplied grassroots party involvement and--in a short-term benefit not even envisioned by its architects--has helped win an impressive number of state, local and Congressional elections in majority-Republican regions. |
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