When we last checked in with DNC Chairman Howard Dean, party leaders were kvetching almost uncontrollably about Dean’s aggressive spending spree throughout 2005. At the end of the calendar year, the DNC was left with about $7 million in the bank — about a fifth of the RNC’s coffers — because Dean invested heavily developing infrastructure and nurturing state and local parties as part of his broader, long-term vision.
How’s the strategy working out? Well, at this point, Dems on the Hill are openly questioning Dean’s strategy — but Dems at the state level are singing his praises.
[A] year after the crusading former Vermont governor took over the DNC, the party has reacted in some surprising ways. It’s the East Coast liberals who are grumbling about Dean’s talk-show gaffes and staring at the DNC’s near-empty coffers with dismay.
Meanwhile, 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.
As the Boston Globe explained, the DNC has always emphasized grass-roots organizing in “voter-rich big cities,” shortly before the election. Dean, instead, has created a “mini-army of more than 150 DNC-paid operatives” who are helping build Dem infrastructure in areas — many of them rural — where the party has historically been weak.
”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.”
It’s not just New Mexico.
”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.
Some of these states have received staff and resources in previous years, but at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The DNC sent teams to New Mexico and Ohio in 2004, for example, but just a few months before Election Day. The state parties didn’t have the money to have up-to-date lists for the staffers to utilize and the staffers arrived in a state with which they were not entirely familiar.
Dean’s strategy is risky — starting off 2006 with weak DNC coffers is frightening — but he’s made the right investments at the right time. As the Globe noted, “[T]he DNC’s new employees are building voter lists, organizing county-level Democratic caucuses, and installing precinct chairmen in rural portions of the state that have voted overwhelmingly Republican in national campaigns.”
People have been talking about DNC infrastructure for a long time, but Dean is executing a well-crafted strategy. He’s faced a lot of resistance, but if the party isn’t prepared to make these investments a year after a presidential election, when would it happen? There’s always another election coming up.
Time will tell if Dean’s investment pays off, but at this point, given the reaction from state leaders, it looks like it’ll pay dividends in November.