Where's the Money in That?

One of the surprises in November's midterm election was in Washington's 3rd Congresssional district, where barely funded Marie Gluesenkamp Perez defeated a firmly MAGAt candidate Joe Kemp in a red district.

How did she win? By aggressively recruiting and using volunteers to canvass door to door.

Just a few miles south, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who got significant DCCC support her defeat defeating the contemptible corrupt incumbent Kurt Schrader, (Schrader refused to endorse her, and went on to endorse right-wing independent candidate for Oregon governor) went well funded and, got anan office full of paid staffers, lost in a blue leaning district.

This Gluesenkamp Perez's campaign seems to be an inexpensiveness and low risk route to electoral success.  This strategy does not preclude any other actions, because the resources required are relatively small.

This is why the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will studiously avoid learning lessons from this campaign, because efficiency cost the consultants money, because they get a percentage of the media buys.

Amid the punditry and late-night quarterbacking of the postelection season, a major lesson is getting lost: The importance of volunteers knocking on doors.

It's not getting lost, it is being studiously ignored, for the above stated reasons. 

A case in point is the astonishing victory that an army of volunteers more than 500 strong, most of them young mothers, pulled off in the last weeks of the race in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District that includes Vancouver.

The pollsters at FiveThirtyEight had given Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a down-to-earth auto body shop owner and Democrat, a 2% chance of winning the district against Joe Kent, a career soldier and rising MAGA Republican star who was crushing Gluesenkamp Perez in their debates.

Frightened by Kent’s white nationalist extremism, hundreds of people volunteered for Gluesenkamp Perez. Tim Gowen, the campaign field director, a college friend of Gluesenkamp Perez, was swamped; but he was all in for marshaling these recruits.

Crucially, Gowen identified key volunteers and gave us a green light to form a “call squad” of 12 people — not to call voters, but to call volunteers, many of them first-timers, and dispatch them around the community to influence voters at their doors. Half of the squad were volunteers from the district, and half were people of color who had been trained by Base Building for Power, a school for grassroots organizers. A squad member phoned each volunteer several times a week, assigning shifts and offering encouragement and advice.

In all, the volunteers knocked on nearly 40,000 doors, narrowly clinching the race for Gluesenkamp Perez. FiveThirtyEight called her win “the biggest upset of the election.”

………

Early on in Gluesenkamp Perez’s campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee decided it had bigger fish to fry, leaving her largely to fend for herself. Just across the river, the party threw its weight behind Jamie McLeod-Skinner, the incumbent in Oregon’s District 5, south of Portland. The DCCC funded a field staff at least five times larger than Glusenkamp Perez’s but recruited many fewer volunteers. McLeod-Skinner lost by 2 points.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is not in the business of winning elections.  The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is in the business of paying for their kids private school educations.

To paraphrase General Smedley Butler, "The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is a racket."