Sisyphus Was a Bad Democrat (In Which I Sass Thomas Mills)

 

Most all troubles come from having standards.

--Thomas Berger, Little Big Man

We Democrats are deciduous. We fade, lose heart, become torpid, languish, then the sap rises again and we are passionate.

--Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat

Democrats are always characterized by their gene for unrequited conciliation.

--Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close To Call

Jerry Meek, 2007

Democratic blogger and political consultant Thomas Mills dropped a turd in the punchbowl yesterday -- "The Low Stakes of State Party Chair" -- in which he argues that even if the reformist insurgency of Anderson Clayton wins the election for party chair today, it won't make any difference. Oh, it'll produce a momentary high for the young and the restless. But then, deflation. "The party chair only has as much power as the establishment, both here and in Washington, allows," Mills concludes. "The chair will either cooperate and become an arm of that establishment and have money, or they will buck the establishment and have none."

I pay attention to Thomas Mills, even when he makes me wince. He's a righteous Democrat, gives off the aura of a scrappy street-fighter, but generally speaking, he's moderate to the point of caution. Mills helped recruit Dan McCready to run for Congress in 2017 and worked as a paid consultant on that 2018 campaign. McCready wrote the definitive book on caution. He's not currently in Congress.

Mills remembers the last insurgency that took over the state party differently from me, the administration of Jerry Meek, but Mills was in a better position to observe and knew the insiders better than I, so I don't discount his recitation of facts: 

While he was popular with the party base, Meek never established much of a working relationship with Easley. Not much really changed within party headquarters. The executive director, who oversees the day-to-day operation of the party, stayed the same and kept his working relationship with the governor, which in turn kept the funds necessary to keep the party operational. The state house and state senate caucuses continued to operate as if nothing had happened. Meek was able to tamp down the restlessness among the party faithful, but he couldn’t change the fundamental reality of politics: it takes money, and lots of it.

One correction: Our "restlessness" with the state party in Watauga was more than "tamped down" during those Jerry Meek years. From our perspective, we had a much more open road, paved with cooperation from Raleigh, leading directly to the total sweep of president, governor, and US Senator in 2008 because we had tested and perfected an intense, data-driven field operation (Meek himself came to one of our canvasses to learn). I give Jerry Meek credit for turning several county parties around between 2004 and 2008, because he was deliberately pursuing a "hundred-county strategy" inspired by Howard Dean's "fifty-state strategy." 

Yet Mills doesn't think his impact amounted to much. Maybe he's right. But I'm pretty dug in with my lived experience.

Mills's downer post isn't just about seeing political history differently. It's also about declaring that the current enthusiasm for change in the party is doomed from the get-go, that "not much is going to change regardless of who is state party chair" because of the stranglehold of a self-interested Establishment. The money grip is iron -- eternal, ineluctable, and insidious. 

Much of the dissatisfaction of the party is far beyond anybody’s control. Those who believe Democrats need a year-round organizing operation have never said how they plan to fund it. The state Democratic Party is dependent on the support of the governor or from some organizational component of the national party. There’s no independent funding base for the North Carolina Democratic Party itself.

[Current party chair Bobbie] Richardson is getting blamed for not implementing a robust statewide field program during the 2022 cycle, but that’s not her fault. All of those operations are funded by national money and have been for decades. In 2022, those folks largely took a pass on North Carolina. Field programs are expensive and take millions of dollars to implement in a state the size of North Carolina.

Money, of course, but also whatcha gonna do with money once you get it?

If I believed that no amount of reform, even reform mixed with a widespread willingness to spend sweat equity, was bound to fail, even as it was being born, how the hell could I go on as a party activist? Hell, how could I go on paying the bills as a simple functioning member of a community held together by a social contract?

Yeah, I'm a fucking idealist.

The Fight for the NC Democratic Party

As soon as current Chair David Young announced that he would not be seeking another term as titular head of the NC Democratic Party, Iredell County attorney David Parker, who's a member of the Democratic National Committee and was a "super-delegate" to the 2008 nominating convention, jumped out as the first announced candidate.

That news was first posted on the News&Observer site at 2 a.m. Thursday morning. Before the Parker announcement had time to circulate far and wide, party activist and consultant Chris Church posted on his Facebook page at 4:07 a.m. that morning that he thought David Parker "would make a great chairman." At 8:32 a.m. former state party Chair Jerry Meek came back at Church with this comment: "I think he would be a disaster. All talk and no action."

Whoa.

Since Jerry Meek was the most effective chair of the state party that we've personally had any experience with, his opinion carries considerable weight in our immediate vicinity. He turned "Party Dead-Quarters" in Raleigh into a happening place, implementing Howard Dean's 50-state strategy on the state level with remarkable results in 2006. He was unfailingly available to county parties, and he was out there in the public press every time the Republicans did something stupid, which was pretty much every day. He also stood up to Gov. Easley and pissed the guv off, which in hindsight may have been the smartest political move of his tenure.

If we don't get another Jerry Meek, Party Dead-Quarters is going to become Zombieland indeed.

Sacking the QB

Jim Neal tackles Heath Shuler. Ouch.

Makes us recall that in 2009 Jim Neal ran briefly to replace Jerry Meek as state party chair. Since Meek left, the state party had nowhere to go but down. Maybe Jim Neal would like to make that race again.

Unless putting your mitts on the likes of a sitting U.S. Congressman is seen as a job-prospect killer. When the Congressman is that far out of line, it would appear to us as positive proof that you're up to the job.

Cal Cunningham

We've been hearing his name come up RE a potential Democratic candidate to challenge Dick Burr's reelection.

Every time we see the name, we ask, "Cal who?"

Today, Cunningham gets a nod from former state Democratic Party Chair Jerry Meek, in Roll Call. "He's got an excellent profile in terms of his biography," Meek said. "He's perceived as being a little bit more liberal than, say, Mike McIntyre and Heath Shuler."

O-kaaay. You have our attention.

Thumbnail biography: Cunningham's a lawyer and former state senator who served in the Iraq War and is currently part of the Army Reserve Judge Advocate General Corps.

Longer take: "From 2007 to 2008, he was on active duty in Iraq, where he worked as a military prosecutor as part of a team that prosecuted U.S. Department of Defense contractors on such charges as assault and illegal gun shipments. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his work in Iraq and in 2009 received the Gen. Douglas MacArthur award for leadership. While still in law school, he campaigned for the state senate, winning an open seat in November of 2000. He served on all three Senate committees on education and as vice chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. After redistricting in 2002, Cunningham declined to run for re-election after he found himself in a mostly Republican district. In 2004, he joined the Winston-Salem office of 'white-shoe law firm' Kilpatrick Stockton, handling commercial litigation."

"White-shoe law firm"? ... Wikipedia sez it's "a phrase used to describe the leading professional services firms in America, particularly firms that have been in existence for more than a century and represent Fortune 500 companies."

Cal Cunningham ... a potential rising star in North Carolina, with a striking personal resume. We're all ears: "I'm having conversations with friends and fellow Democrats," Cunningham said on Wednesday. "We're taking a very close and very serious look at this race."

All of this above set off by "Under the Dome."

Praise for Jerry Meek From an Unlikely Source

Katy at Katy's Conservative Corner goes on at some length about the sort of leader the NC GOP needs now to lead it out of this current wilderness. By way of comparison, she points at NC Democratic Party Chair Jerry Meek (stepping down next month after two successful terms in office) as the model for what she wants to see in Republican HDQs:

Your blogger hopes for a State Chairman like the former State Democrat Chairman, Jerry Meek. Despite his surname, he went after our party tooth and nail and he never gave an inch. He had daily e-mails that went out to anyone who wanted to subscribe, explaining the issues in an easy-to-understand format. He also supported his candidates and backed them up, day after day.

Your blogger most admires how Meek used technology to organize his troops and get out the vote....

Katy, incidentally, rejects for Chair any politician who intends to run for office in the future. That pretty much narrows the field significantly.

Thank You, Jerry Meek

We've known for some time that Democratic state party chair Jerry Meek would be stepping down after his second term. The State Executive Committee is scheduled to pick his successor at a meeting in Raleigh on January 31.

North Carolina Democrats owe a great deal to Meek, who during his four years of heading the party took us from what we here in the West used to refer to as "the state dead-quarters" to a near-complete sweep of the ballot.

Meek came to visit us here in Watauga more than once, and he didn't come to tell us what we were doing wrong but to learn what we were doing. In 2006 he came up and spent a day with us canvassing the county, learning our political terrain and how we dealt with it. We sent him to Meat Camp.

He did so much in his four years emphasizing the grassroots and helping the county parties devise and implement strategies. He retooled the state's website and its use of technology. And he's leaving the state party with a healthy bank account.

Gov. Easley wanted someone else for chair in January of 2005, but party activists defied the Guv and chose Meek, who in his turn helped choose Howard Dean as National Democratic Party Chair. As far as North Carolina is concerned, we would not be where we are today without those two.