My thoughts on the NCDP officer elections and candidates - and my "Dream Team"!

I have been an active Democrat since 2003. I’ve watched this party go from having majority control of NC state government for 112 years (won through a racist, white supremacist coup in 1898) that ended in 2010 because the party lost it’s “mojo”. We went from being a party chaired by the Governor’s choice prior to 2005 to a party chaired by the “People’s Choice” – which worked to turn NC “blue” for Barack Obama in 2008 with a 50-state and 100-county grassroots on up strategy started in 2006.

Then as soon as we nominated a white female candidate for governor and an African-American male candidate for President, a group (consisting of OFA, the DNC, our gubernatorial nominee and the usual round of “suspect” consultants started dismantling the 50-state/100-county strategy beginning in June 2008. It continued on through 2009 and culminated with a historic ass-kicking in the 2010 general election.

A lot of people have some interesting opinions of what happened in 2010 through now, but most focus exclusively on what I call “electionitis”. It’s been defined as “an abnormal tendency about elections” as in: “politicians are tormented by the obsession of electionitis”. Lots of money has been spent on these elections and all the consultants can brag about the number of “voter contacts” made by them or the campaigns, but that really doesn’t explain what happened from June 2008 that lost us the majority in 2010.

I have talked with two main challengers to Bobbie Richardson (Anderson Clayton and Eric Terashima) and neither of them know how the party worked to turn NC “blue” in 2008, only to get our asses kicked in 2010.

A little history...

The problem since 2009-2011, and from 2015 on was too damned much “electionitis” and not enough realizing that the party functions best when it’s organized from the grassroots on up so that as many people as possible have a voice in the party and a seat at the table. So that we have rules that create an open and transparent NCDP that’s accountable all the way from Goodwin House to the precinct level. So we can pass resolutions at the precinct level - and then incorporate those that are passed at the state level into the party platform. Then elect a majority of Democrats who will work to turn that platform into public policy.

OFA took over and started running the DNC after Hillary conceded to Obama in June 2008, giving the nomination to Obama. That’s when Obama For America took over control of the DNC, and started to dismantle the very 50-state strategy started by Dean that helped Obama overcome the internal advantage that Queen Hillary Clinton had for all those years PRIOR to 2005.

Right here in NC, SEC members who voted for Jerry Meek – a grassroots activist Democratic Party Chair in 2005 - lost their nerve and “mojo” and voted for the Governor’s choice for NCDP Chair in 2009. We went from having 3 staffers working for NCDP paid for by the DNC to 5 former OFA staffers who took their marching orders (but only half their pay) from OFA. They were sent down to Charlotte (along with $750K) to help elect Obama’s buddy Anthony Foxx to be Mayor of Charlotte (build up his resume) where he won by 3K votes. Basically the serious work of the party that enabled us to elect Obama in 2008 and hold onto the majority was thrown out the window for short-term gains.

By 2010, all OFA and the DNC (and most if not all state parties) cares about was whatever would get Obama’s legislative agenda passed - and nothing else mattered. So neither OFA, the DNC nor any state party thought it was important enough to win the majority of state legislative seats in 2010 in a census/redistricting election. But the Republicans knew better, and they targeted with laser precision those seats they’d need to win to take over.

Previous NCDP Chairs never ran for re-election after such disastrous results 

The NCDP Chair who served from 2009-2011 at least had the decency to not run again in 2011. David Parker had some decent plans to reform the NCDP, but those plans were thwarted by greedy consultants who created a false sexual harassment scandal to try and get rid of Parker in May 2012 so they could elect a replacement party chair (current Mayor of Raleigh MaryAnn Baldwin – who never served as a party officer before May 2012) who would let them steal all of the Taxpayer Checkoff money. And those people attacking Parker were vicious bastards who also went after his business and livelihood. So after 2012, he decided not to run again for Chair. Randy Voller ran and won in 2013, but was under attack from the corporate establishment conservaDINOs almost from the beginning.

The People's Party vs the Governor's "Follow the Money" Party

Nobody seems to be aware of the tendency for top-down top-ticket campaigns like Obama, Biden or Cooper (and Stein) to interfere with the NCDP officer elections precisely because these campaigns and their BIG donors want a state party they can control so they can launder money through it and make sure that their favorite consultants, operatives and vendors get paid. In many ways it’s equally (if not more) important than actually winning the race. Because if you can’t control the money laundering, then - God Forbid - someone like Bernie Sanders (or Barack Obama) sneaks in and wins!

Virtual meetings suck!

And I don’t like these virtual meetings - it’s too easy for the people running the meetings to cheat and boot people they don’t like out of a meeting and blame it on stuff like internet access. They can and have cheated at in-person meetings as well.

Not all party staffers are neutral in party officer elections!

At the May 2012 SEC meeting which rejected David Parker’s forced resignation, I told one staffer about the results of the vote and that Parker was headed back to the meeting (he had been so sure he’d get the boot that he was cleaning out his office). That staffer said Parker “can’t do that - it screwed up everything” (meaning the money laundering). The issue that drove Parker to resign was a bullshit “scandal” that later on was proven to have been concocted by the consultants so they could keep nearly $1 million in taxpayer checkoff money for themselves instead of letting it be used by the Congressional District Chairs in their counties.

Less than a year later, that same staffer and two others were out in the hallway calling local DINO Dems to come in and take proxy votes to vote for the establishment candidate and against progressive Randy Voller. The staffers were cheating because by this time quorum had been declared and under Roberts Rules proxies weren’t acceptable. The staff and other establishment conservaDINOs didn’t want Voller (or Parker before him) because both promises party reforms that were desperately needed once we lost the majority so we could get it back again, and the donors and consultants involved in the money laundering didn’t trust that Randy would guarantee the flow of money would go the right way and grease the right palms. They hated Randy so bad that there were death threats made to him during an Exec Council meeting in April 2013 (also while Randy would not cover their asses during the investigation of a campaign finance worker’s murder that might uncover the whole house of cards).

Talk about potential and/or actual election fraud!

There is no reason why party officer elections shouldn’t be conducted with the same openness and transparency as elections for public officials. We don’t conduct those elections on the Internet and deny the public or the candidates the right to watch counting/recounting and audits – yet party elections are conducted via Google Docs and candidates are not allowed to be at Goodwin House to observe the staff and volunteers to make sure that people who support one candidate won’t commit an error or mistake that sways the election. And the rule about members being responsible for their own internet connections is BS as well. Does anyone remember the NCDP convention in June 2020 when hundreds of delegates got tossed out of the Zoom meeting? That was hardly their fault! With such a rule and no non-partisan observer at Goodwin House, how can we be sure that we actually have quorum if lots of people suddenly and mysteriously lose their connection to the SEC meeting?

The real disconnects with the NCDP!

And few of the candidates are willing to discuss the big disconnect in the Democratic Party that accounts for our party hemorrhaging voters. People are tired of being told they must vote for Democrats who once elected sell out those voters and stab them in the back.

Why do you think so many Obama voters in 2008 didn’t vote in 2012 and in 2016 voted for Trump? In 2008, Obama ran on “hope and change”, but once elected the first thing he did was protect the Wall Street bankster scumbags and let lots of people lose their homes and retirement nest eggs. He sold out on the public option to make sure that small business owners like me had health insurance costs rise so much that I’ve been without insurance (because ACA is ridiculously complex for self employed people who might have big income fluctuations) since 2013.

The incumbents have already had their chances and failed!

Since I am not going to be voting for NCDP incumbent candidates for any office (because they have utterly failed to lead the party and I do not believe they have the ability to fulfill their campaign promises recycled and reworded from 2021), I am only voting for the candidates with no previous state party officer experience.

If NCDP were a sports team with this win-LOSS record, the fans would be demanding to replace all the coaching and management staff and burn the playbooks.  

My "Dream Team"

Here is my dream team (no incumbents serving in any other capacity):

Chair: Eric Terashima (second choice would be Anderson Clayton)

1st Vice: Anderson Clayton (second choice Eric Terashima – anyone else but Floyd)

2nd Vice: Nazim Uddin (anyone but Matt Hughes)

3rd Vice: LeVon Barnes (anyone but Chris Hardee)

Secretary: Anyone else but Melvin

What I want to avoid...

I am not really thrilled with the idea of putting anyone with experience or close ties (officers or staffers) to Independent Expenditure groups like Lillian’s List, New NC Project, Carolina Forward, etc. I agree with the former Florida Democratic Party Chair who said that those IE groups have been poaching volunteers and leeching money from the party over the years. And I can’t see that they’ve done a good job of increasing Democratic voter registration or turnout! And while a group like County 2 County is kind of a part of the Orange County Democratic Party, its work overlaps the work that should be done by the Association of County Chairs.

So let’s look at the candidates besides Bobbie...

Anderson has lots of energy and appears to be able to identify with rural voters, but like many of the other candidates fails to understand how we need to add rural voters to what works in the urban/suburban and exurban areas. In fact most of the slate is from rural areas. And even more concerning to me is that hardly any of the other candidates (except Bobbie and other incumbents) are talking about the non election party organization stuff that keeps the party running from the grassroots org perspective. Like the standing committees, or appointments sustaining fund committee, Council of Review, etc. To say nothing of their roles in shaping the makeup and providing oversight of the SBE and 100 CBEs.

Chairs of Committees:

Resolutions and Platform: Nazim Uddin (doing what Matt Hughes has done as Chair of Res & Plat Committee

PORC: Jonah Garson

Legit Concerns for party officers:

Anderson and LeVon are still working and trying to earn a living. And while the Chair might be getting a stipend (??), I am unsure they’ll be able to maintain their standard of living while being Chair. And they could very well be vulnerable to having problems with their jobs due to decisions they make as Chair being unpopular with establishment Dems, donors and consultants.

The only candidate with actual experience leading large multi-level organizations

Only one candidate has any experience with running a large organization from the bottom on up. And has the financial independence to buck the establishment conservaDems is Eric Terashima. He entered USMC as a 2^nd Lt, and rose up through the ranks and retired as a full bird Colonel, earning each rank by successfully doing his duty and completing missions - not getting his badge of rank just because he showed up/as a trophy.

It's not just about electing Democrats - but electing them to turn the platform into public policy!

Being a party officer isn’t about showing that you care by holding “listening tours” or patting their hands. It’s simply being able to tell people that they should register as a Dem to join the party and work to elect Dems that will turn the party platform into public policy. And to hold those miserable corporate establishment conservaDINOS responsible for stabbing voters in the back and then kicking them out by running and voting for progressives who will do what’s expected of them.

Some Dems would rather lose to Republicans than have progressive grassroots Dems in charge!

That’s why I’ve said we have people in the party like donors and consultants who would rather lose races than lose control of the money laundering machine. I know Bobbie doesn’t get it - otherwise why are electeds like Cooper and Stein, and consultants like Morgan Jackson and former NCDP ED Scott Falmlen (who formed top consulting firm Nexxus Strategies after leaving NCDP in 2005) supporting Bobbie?

Sports-team comparison!

Bobbie has been an NCDP officer since 2019. Matt has been 2^nd Vice Chair at least as long. If 2022 was the best Bobbie and the other officers and staff could do, then it’s time to give them all the boot and start fresh.

Follow the money!

But if Anderson, and Levon don’t get it (and I’ve really heard nothing from any of them that indicates that they do know about the money laundering and that they want to reform it), then I’m voting for Eric. Certainly not for Floyd as 1st Vice Chair and not for Matt Hughes as 2nd Vice Chair.

And last but not least...subject of another posting!

As for Chris Hardee as 3^rd Vice Chair. Given his history with the party, I am appalled that he’s running for this position and making the claims he’s making on the candidate’s page.

The Progressive movement can be a policy agenda!

David Sirota wrote a great article entitled "Progressives pay the Price for Confusing a Party with a Movement", claiming that progressive constituencies within the Democratic party engaged in party building activities to elect Democratic candidates against their own best interests. And he wrote about the reasons why some of the players in the progressive movement did this - in order to ensure their access to the power once we won the election. And how access to this power is keeping many progressive leaders from being effective with advancing their agenda.

I respect David Sirota, and agree with him on many things. But David is wrong about this. Not all parts of the party are loyal to their own power regardless of policy agenda. And not all movements are loyal to their own policy agenda regardless of which party champions it. The Progressive Democrats are a perfect example of this.

We are quietly and not so quietly building a progressive majority within the Democratic Party. Howard Dean said it best: If you want to take back your country, you must first take back your party. In our case, we are working to take our party back from the very people who are leading it at the national and state party levels - but leading it in a way that does not honor or even take seriously our party platform.

This is a perfect time for me to explain my feelings about what political parties are. The word "politics" comes from the Greek word "polis" meaning state or city. "Politikos" describes anything concerning the state or city affairs.

An association is a group of individuals who voluntarily enter into an agreement to form a body (or organization) to accomplish a purpose. A political party is an association of people to accomplish the purpose of being involved in city/state affairs. It's not just about winning elections, no matter how much the party leaders tell us. Winning elections is only a part of the equation.

What are the other parts? First - you have to provide some sort of organizational structure for people to come together under. You have Roberts Rules of Order and the NC Democratic Party Plan of Organization as a guide. You have the precincts, then the counties, then the US congressional districts, then the state party, then the DNC. Since the group is an association of registered Democrats, that is obviously one qualification for membership. You show up at your precinct meeting, where only Democrats can speak, run for office and vote. You elect precinct officers, and nominate other Democrats for delegate positions to other groups like the county convention. People elected at one level serve the next level up, where they repeat the process.

Now we have the association, and the rules and plan for organization, and the officers - what next? Next is what we stand for - and we decide that by using the rules and plan for organization to determine our Platform using committees and the resolution process.

Once we have our platform - how then do we get influence city or state affairs? By either finding candidates who feel the same way we do or they find us - because they believe in our platform. Just how much of our platform they believe in us usually a factor in our primaries, or at least it should be if we have more than one person running for a particular race. But as of late, we have been allowing our votes to be influenced by party leaders who tell us that one candidate is more "electable" than another - usually for reasons such as "they can raise more money (from big donors who may not share our collective values)", or "candidate A is more acceptable to the majority of voters in (insert whatever jurisdiction you wish) than candidate B based on gender, age, race, etc. Or sometimes we just defer to the opinion of someone just out of force of habit or custom, even though by doing so we are voting against some of the very things that the party stands for.

Once we have decided on our slate, that is when we can work to get them elected. At a bare minimum, the same organizational structure that was set up to elect the organizational leaders and determine our platform can be used to help get our party candidates elected by getting out the vote of our party members. We can certainly help a candidate get votes from voters other than those in our party, but clearly this part of the GOTV effort must be directed by the candidates campaigns themselves, since a candidate for one race might be targeting a different group of non Dems in one race than a candidate might need in another race.

OK - now that we have them elected - what do we do? It's not enough to create a platform. select candidates and then get them elected - you have to be able to hold them accountable. That is where I disagree with David Sirota - a political party is a perfect place to have a policy agenda. The policy is your party platform. But how do you hold the elected leaders accountable?

You have a way to measure how well or poorly your elected leaders follow your policy agenda. Certainly if your party is not in a majority or leadership position, it's difficult to grade them when they don't control the respective branches of government. But when your party does this, there is no excuse for not holding them accountable.

We have a very good process for determining what our party stands for - it's the platform and resolution process. The problem is, we have no good way to evaluate how well or poorly our elected officials are working to implement the platform and resolutions into their legislation. I would suggest organizing resolutions along the lines of our party platform, and then issuing a report card at the municipal, county, congressional district, state, and national levels. Sort of like how the NAACP does with the HKonJ 14-Point agenda. We don't have a way to make sure our elected officials are accountable to us. Lobbyists and the big money donors who support them have those ways.

Once we have a way to measure how well or poorly our elected officials are following, then what do we do to hold them accountable? Do we continue to support them when they don't support us? This can be tricky, because party officers from the precinct chairs on up can be removed from their positions for supporting candidates of another party besides our own. But should we be required to support candidates who call themselves Democrats who don't support the party and/or our platform?

We can always run a challenger to an incumbent. Our county party replaces party officers all the time with challengers when the incumbents don't live up to our expectations - we did this in 2007 with the Wake County Chair, and in 2009 with the Wake Board of Elections. To some extent we did this in 2005 when the NCDP State Executive Committee elected Jerry Meek over Ed Turlington who was Governor Easley's choice for Chair. Jerry had the advantage of being 1st vice chair for a while and being well known across the entire state.

At times you even have to remove an officer during their term of office. The Wake Dems felt that a particular municipal vice chair was not working out (especially after sending out an e-mail encouraging the mass defection of Democrats from the party) and so we used the Council of Review and Executive Council procedures to remove this person from office. It wasn't pretty, and this person went out kicking and......well, I'll just say she didn't go quietly. But it had to be done. And the County Party did it.

What do we do when there is no challenger available and the incumbent is not representing the interests of the Democratic Party? This is a good question because Party officers who support a candidate of another party or any party other than the Democratic Party can be removed from office. Why is there no similar requirement that candidates support the party or it's platform?

Could it be because there are party officers at upper levels who really don't support the party or it's platform, but merely act as slight biased referees who see big money coming into the party from donors who want it directed to specific candidates who have promised to take specific action on behalf of those donors? We have seen this happen in our own state with the Democratic Party and the Sleasley mess. And we have heard of the bouts between Rahm Emanuel and Howard Dean over the 50 State strategy. Dean's 50 State strategy was a big part of the reason why we were successful in 2006 and 2008. It was a long-term strategy designed to strengthen and build up the party based on Dean's slogan: "If you want to take back your country, you first have to take back your party."

Emanuel didn't like the 50-State strategy, and is actively dismantling it now. When you put former OFA campaign staffers in charge of party building for the Democratic Party, do you seriously expect them to act in the best interest of the party or for the candidate, his campaign advisors or donors? Do they have any particular allegiance to the Democratic Party? Have they ever worked as a precinct chair or delegate to any level party convention? Did they ever serve as a party officer or as a member of the SEC? Were they even Democrats before the election?

The party is many things, but it can be a movement based on what the party stands for. Some candidates would rather us not think of the Democratic Party as a way to influence their policies. But going back to the definition of what politics is, a political party is made up of people who want to influence the affairs of state. We have every right to expect our candidates to reflect our views - not the other way around. And we have every right to tell our candidates that we expect them to take our party platform seriously - and that we work together. We work to get them elected and they should work to implement our platform. If they don't like the platform - don't run as a Democrat. But if you come to our Party meetings and ask us to work for you - you must expect us to expect things from you.

Grassroots Democrats are not paid professional political operatives. But those operatives have got to realize that they will not be able to win elections in 2010 and 2012 without us. If they continue to take us for granted and act in opposition to our party platform and the promises they made to rank and file Democrats and our constituency groups, they will find themselves out of power. The people with the money have no political party allegiance - they go with whomever makes them the most money. They are just using the Dems now to keep a little bit more of what they have than if they stuck with the GOP and had no influence with our party.

There is no reason why Progressive Democrats in our Democratic Party cannot be part of a movement within our own Party. There is no reason why the platform of the Democratic Party shouldn't be a way to measure how well or poorly our elected officials do the jobs we elected them to. We can exert our influence and make the politicians do what they promised. We just have to get some backbone and tell them we hold them accountable for what they do. And whenever possible - run someone in a primary against them.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/04-9

Published on Friday, September 4, 2009 by TruthDig.com

Progressives Pay the Price for Confusing a Party With a Movement

by David Sirota

The difference between parties and movements is simple: Parties are loyal to their own power regardless of policy agenda; movements are loyal to their own policy agenda regardless of which party champions it. This is one of the few enduring political axioms, and it explains why the organizations purporting to lead an American progressive "movement" have yet to build a real movement, much less a successful one.

Though the 2006 and 2008 elections were billed as progressive movement successes, the story behind them highlights a longer-term failure. During those contests, most leaders of Washington's major labor, environmental, anti-war and anti-poverty groups spent millions of dollars on a party endeavor-specifically, on electing a Democratic president and Democratic Congress. In the process, many groups subverted their own movement agendas in the name of electoral unity.

The effort involved a sleight of hand. These groups begged their grass-roots members-janitors, soccer moms, veterans and other "regular folks"-to cough up small-dollar contributions in return for the promise of movement pressure on both parties' politicians. Simultaneously, these groups went to dot-com and Wall Street millionaires asking them to chip in big checks in exchange for advocacy that did not offend those fat cats' Democratic politician friends (or those millionaires' economic privilege).

This wasn't totally dishonest. Many groups sincerely believed that Democratic Party promotion was key to progressive movement causes. And anyway, during the Bush era, many of those causes automatically helped Democrats by indicting Republicans.

But after the 2008 election, the strategy's bankruptcy is undeniable.

As we now see, union dues underwrote Democratic leaders who today obstruct serious labor law reform and ignore past promises to fix NAFTA. Green groups' resources helped elect a government that pretends sham "cap and trade" bills represent environmental progress. Health care groups promising to push a single-payer system got a president not only dropping his own single-payer promises, but also backing off a "public option" to compete with private insurance. And anti-war funding delivered a Congress that refuses to stop financing the Iraq mess, and an administration preparing to escalate the Afghanistan conflict.

Of course, frustrated progressives might be able to forgive the groups that promised different results, had these postelection failures prompted course corrections.

For example, had the left's pre-eminent groups responded to Democrats' health care capitulations by immediately announcing campaigns against these Democrats, progressives could feel confident that these groups were back to prioritizing a movement agenda. Likewise, had the big anti-war organizations reacted to Obama's Afghanistan escalation plans with promises of electoral retribution, we would know those organizations were steadfastly loyal to their anti-war brand.

But that hasn't happened. Despite the president's health care retreat, most major progressive groups continue to cheer him on, afraid to lose their White House access and, thus, their Beltway status. Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that Moveon.org has "yet to take a clear position on Afghanistan" while VoteVets' leader all but genuflected to Obama, saying, "People [read: professional political operatives] do not want to take on the administration."

In this vacuum, movement building has been left to underfunded (but stunningly successful) projects like Firedoglake.com, Democracy for America, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and local organizations. And that's the lesson: True grass-roots movements that deliver concrete legislative results are not steered by marble-columned institutions, wealthy benefactors or celebrity politicians-and they are rarely ever run from Washington. They are almost always far-flung efforts by those organized around real-world results-those who don't care about party conventions, congressional cocktail parties or White House soirees they were never invited to in the first place.

Only when enough progressives realize that truism will any movement-and any change-finally commence.

© 2009 Creators.com

David Sirota is a bestselling author whose newest book is "The Uprising." He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network-both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.