America Coming Together Coming Apart?

By DHinMI

After the last election the blogs were full of stories about how America Coming Together (ACT), the 527 dedicated to doing field and get out the vote (GOTV) activities that would help Democrats, had been a failure. Some folks looked at it as the least sophisticated will, declaring that if Kerry didn’t win that it was a failure. Others complained that it didn’t match up to the Republicans’ highly targeted GOTV, which drove out lots of new voters in places where neither party had previously dedicated resources for field activities. Still others complained that its geographic scope was too narrow, with most of the activities focused on high Democratic areas, primarily urban areas with large African-American and Latino populations. What these criticisms lacked was an understanding of why ACT was created, its funding, and the inextricable link between its funding and its strategy. By any informed measure of ACT’s performance, it was a huge, huge success. And that success makes this news absolutely demoralizing:

A year ago, the liberal group America Coming Together was on the cutting edge of national politics, spending tens of millions of dollars on a massive voter-mobilization project in every presidential battleground state.

The dream was that ACT -- heavily funded by billionaire George Soros -- would play a decisive role in getting Democratic nominee John F. Kerry elected president and then remain in business as a permanent force in liberal politics.

Instead, the group this week began sending e-mails to most of the 28 people who make up the remaining ACT staff warning that their paychecks would stop at the end of August. All the state offices have been, or are soon to be, closed…

The architect of ACT was Steve Rosenthal, who had won his spurs as political director of the AFL-CIO and by 2003 was determined to build a liberal voter-mobilization organization that would be independent of the Democratic Party, labor unions or other traditional interest groups.

The idea captured the imagination of liberal donors. Soros and other wealthy contributors saw ACT as a vehicle for taking the fight to President Bush, whose policies in

Iraq

and at home they vehemently opposed, at a time when many Democrats in Congress were treating a war president gingerly.

Soros and his close associate -- Progressive Corp. Chairman Peter Lewis -- together put $38.5 million into ACT and the Media Fund. With this seed money, the two organizations collected $196.4 million, enough to set up voter mobilization programs in every presidential battleground state and to flood the airwaves with pro-Democratic commercials in the early spring of 2004 when Kerry's campaign was broke.

By all measures but one, ACT and the Media Fund were a great success, helping to turn out record numbers of new voters. But that one measure was the one that counted. After Bush's reelection and GOP gains in the House and Senate, Soros and Lewis pulled the plug on their support…

For now, ACT will be reduced to a research operation, analyzing strategies to turn out key blocs of voters…

"It has proven much tougher to sustain this as something year-round than we had anticipated," Rosenthal said. Now, he said, the task he and others face will be figuring out "just how to ramp up and ramp down" as donor interest rises and falls. Rosenthal will continue to work with ACT, but he said he now plans to start his own consulting company.

The first thing to understand about ACT is that it created out of the reforms of the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reforms. Prior to McCain/Feingold, the national parties were able to use so-called “soft money.” Roughly defined, soft money is money that comes from either corporations or union dues money (but not political action committees associated with a union, corporation or trade group), or from an individual in excess of the amount that could be given to a party organization for federal candidates. (I believe an individual’s contribution limit to the RNC or DNC was $20,000 per 2 year campaign cycle.) This money could be used for “issue ads” and “non-partisan get out the vote activities” but could not be used for “express advocacy,” in other words any activity or communication that urged somebody to vote for or against a federal candidate. (Most states have similar restrictions.)

Democrats had an advantage over Republicans in the soft money sweepstakes. They were probably about even in terms of large individual donors, but labor unions—in addition to their PAC contributions of “hard money”—were also large contributors of soft money to the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the federal accounts of state, county and Congressional district party organizations. McCain/Feingold risked costing Democrats one of their only financial advantages over Republicans unless something was done to harness those resources and use them to help elect Democrats.

Enter AFL-CIO Political Director Steve Rosenthal. When AFL-CIO president John Sweeney was elected to head the labor federation in 1995, one of the first people he hired was Rosenthal. After an anemic performance in the 1994 election, where voters from labor households comprised only 14% of the electorate, Rosenthal implemented a worker-to-worker program at the AFL-CIO, and urged his fellow political staffers at the AFL-CIO affiliated unions to do their own individual programs. Bringing a more sophisticated pro-worker educational message to members, especially in person at the worksite, combined with vigorous GOTV programs, organized labor (which also includes the non-AFL-CIO National Education Association) increased its share of the electorate from 14% in 1994 to over one quarter of the electorate in every election since. Unionized workers make up only about 12 or 13% of the national workforce, so this was obviously a stupendous achievement.

Rosenthal’s AFL-CIO program was directed specifically at union members. Thus, because it was internal, it could be done with dues money. But to take the program to the general public, he would either need hard money or limit the program to non-partisan “issue advocacy” and non-partisan GOTV. With the demise of party-based soft money operations, Rosenthal decided to take what he learned at the AFL-CIO, solicit soft donations from his contacts in organized labor, assemble a Democratic who’s who of board members (such as former Clinton Dept White House Chief of Staff and operator extraordinaire Harold Ickes) to help bring in large donor money, and attack the problem of low turnout in the most democratic areas of America, especially in those states expected to be battlegrounds in the race for President.

There aren’t many precincts in America that are more than 70% Republican.  In most Republican places in the country, if you go door to door in a Republican precinct, 25% to 40% of the people you talk with are likely to be Democrats.  Thus, even in their stronger areas, for Republicans a "full sweep" GOTV, where you try to register everyone and drag them to the polls, would be a bad idea, because the people who need prodding to vote may be disproportionately Democrats.  Thus, the GOP has to really target their GOTV.  Doing so requires hard money; large individual donations, corporate money and union treasury money (as opposed to PAC donations) can't be used for something like this which is clearly partisan. Thus, for the GOP in the last election, they used hard dollars to combine persuasion and partisan GOTV, where the message was quite explicitly one urging people to vote for George W. Bush.

In contrast, there are plenty of places in America that are over 80% Democratic. In fact, as Gary Jacobson shows in the latest edition of Political Science Quarterly (subscription only), there is only one Congressional district where the 2000 vote for Al Gore was under 25%, but on the other side there are 32 CD’s where the vote for Bush was under 25%.  In those places, if you pull everyone out, you’ll probably pull some Republicans here and there, but you're still going to end up with a large net gain of Democratic voters.  Thus, in those areas you can do "non-partisan GOTV," where you're not telling anyone who to vote for, just urging them to vote.  This type of activity can be done with soft money.  This is exactly what ACT did. And they did it without taking any funds that could have been used by the DNC, State Party federal accounts or the Kerry campaign. Winning statewide races in a large majority of the swing states requires increasing turnout in heavily Democratic enclaves, and ACT did it masterfully.

Conducting targeted persuasion and GOTV in contested areas, like the GOP did in 2004, is necessary for optimal Democratic performance. But as mentioned, that has to be done with hard money. On the other hand, the volatile participation rates of heavily Democratic voters in mostly minority neighborhoods can be addressed in large part with soft money and “non-partisan” messages and activities (as long as the candidate and the overall campaign message aren’t so hostile or tepid as to alienate or dismay potential voters who have to be urged to participate). It’s one of the only structural advantages available to Democrats, and one of the reasons why the GOP would like to get rid of 527 organizations like ACT. There’s a good chance the GOP will succeed in getting rid of the 527’s that do field operations that benefit Democratic candidates…that is if the 527’s aren’t first killed off by the declared allies of the Democrats.

Comments

[emptypockets]

so we can target Dem congressional districts with soft money, but to target Dems house-by-house we need hard money. What is the level of resolution when it switches? The question probably is irrelevant if one thinks in terms of funding tv broadcast ads, but if one thinks in terms of organizing house parties, organizing block-by-block, it could matter.

Thanks for the helpful breakdown, I otherwise would have assumed ideology not technical rules on finance had been what set ACT apart (and in turn were responsible in part for its breakup).

[DHinMI]

As a general rule for GOTV that I've been involved in for candidates (where the issue wasn't about funding sources but simply efficiency, as in does it make sense to put a door hanger with the Dem candidates on every door in a neighborhood), the cut-off point is usually 65% Dem performance and higher. That way, your random selection is probably going to be 2 to 1 Dems over Republicans. Anything under 65%, and certainly anything under 60%, you're starting to get into some vague territory. As to the level of resolution where it switches, the best you probably have is the precinct level. Here in Michigan, there are plenty of places where you would want to do GOTV and go after just about everyone in a neighborhood/precinct to help out statewide candidates even though the area is within a strongly Republican congressional district (such as Grand Rapids, Lansing, Muskegon, Benton Harbor, Kalamazoo and Pontiac). Between those six cities, there are probably more than a couple hundred precincts where it would make sense to do ACT-like work, even though the CD is pretty strongly Republican. But in each of those cities (except Benton Harbor) there are places that are Republican enough that you wouldn't want to do anything except GOTV/persuasion that's highly targeted down to the household.

[Sara]

I think there are many fallacies built into the ACT strategy. First off, I don't think you can build party identification and consistent voting behavior around that identity without connecting it up to specific candidates.

My own solution to "who does the ground game" is to build up local groups with the proper competencies, and then attach these to local candidates who understand that they have to work with them on behalf of the whole ticket.

One group that works with this approach is Wellstone Action -- and it is a total non-profit (not a 527) that focuses on training -- candidates yes, but also campaign managers and local GOTV coordinators. In 2004 they had any number of trainees who worked with state legislative races (defeating at least 20 Republicans) with each GOTV effort specifically designed for the district. Part of the training is about how to strategically match tactics with the demographics of particular districts. It is the theory of shifting the tools down to the most local level possible.

Evaluation of ACT's work in 2004 needs to also look at it from the bottom up. I've heard just too many reports of poor quality work done by students and other workers paid 8 dollars an hour that ended up having to be re-done. Voter Registeration cards, for instance, not completely filled out, requiring someone to go back and have them completed. If this is done by a local candidate with volunteers (and I am a strong advocate of providing Gourmet food for your volunteers) -- you get much better quality control.

[DHinMI]

Sara: I don't think it's an either/or situation. Most of the places ACT worked there aren't competetive general election races, so there's no candidate-based GOTV that's going to happen. I can assure you that if in Detroit, for instance, we relied on the state legislators or even Conyers and Kilpatrick to deliver the vote, no vote would be delivered.

Now, because in Michigan labor is so strong (compared to the rest of the country except probably NY, AK and HI), they've covered us relatively well (especially in SE Michigan). But in few states is labor as engaged in GOTV as they are here, so there's a big void unless somebody else steps in. ACT did that very well, as the results show.

As for the quality control, I agree. In some places it was very good, others less so. Considering it was the first campaign cycle, I would consider this to be "lessons learned for the future," were there to be a future for the organization.

[kid oakland]

I agree with Sara.

One of the enduring questions of 2004 is how and why so much money and idealism was used so "vaguely."

we just don't really know the impact...(and I get the feeling K/E didn't really either)...

of the massive ACT drives, of the cell phone calling, of the double and triple contacting of voters, of the "failed registrations", how the "netroots" money impacted the campaign.

On the ground level in Oakland....2000 was focused on Oakland, with volunteer power and people working "in community." We all got mixed together, but it was a smaller operation using old fashioned techniques.

In 2004, the activism level was HUGE, but we were split in smaller groups...with many activists simply going out of state, many folks doing ALL their activism from private homes or cell phone banks that were not close to public transportation. Downtown was still the HQ....but even downtown had a different vibe, with large numbers of young kids doing paid work in an office down the hall...and volunteers coming in off the street and sitting on the floor.

My feeling, in retrospect is that for folks who did all their activism at cell phone banks in more well-to-do settings is that this was a true loss for us. We lost a chance at building a connection between Democratic activists across race and class lines here in the East Bay in a year when folks were truly energized.

We need to bust down what happened in 2004. So thank you DHinMI for this essay.

My feeling. We need everyone in the same room. "Salon cell phone banking" is a huge mistake for the long haul. And low paid volunteers were, at least to me, unimpressive in the extreme.

And, yeah, food is really important. Downtown Oakland would ship in Pizza for the paid kids....and somehow it would end up coming right past all the hungry volunteers in our separate room. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

[Sara]

What I mean by food for volunteers is decidedly not a Pizza delivery. I mean real food that says, We love you, and we very much appreciate what you are doing.

So -- food for the ground game. If it is still warm (August-Sept voter registeration door knocks) you serve a thick cold soup -- Gazpacho made from field ripened tomatoes from the local farmer's market -- or cold leek and potato soup. With it you offer home made bread, cut thick, with either herbed butter or a cheese spread. You have home made desserts, with waters, soft drinks, and a reasonable wine available. And yes, coffee and teas. If it is later in the fall, and colder outside, then you offer a home made vegetable soup served hot and I like to serve it with hot corn bread -- but you can also do the home made bread idea. In the fall you always have hot cider as one of your beverages. There are lots of people who cannot door knock but who will make a soup. Use their skills as part of your volunteer effort. If your volunteers leave the event feeling well fed, they will come back again and again.

I agree, in Michigan it might be appropriate to ground a GOTV effort in the Labor Movement -- but I would also take on Conyers as to why he is not building a political community. I do know why -- most incumbants in safe seats actually feel threatened by such. I live in such a district too -- in fact my Congressman got the largest margin in the nation in 2004 -- but we still force him to show up for door knocks, by making him a co-sponsor of many of them.

Here in Minnesota we do have a reward built into our political system that encourages elected officials at the local level to actively campaign and develop campaign organizations. It's small, but the number of delegate slots to future conventions representing your district is based on a formula that rewards DFL turn out in the last three elections. By having more delegate slots, you have more weight in the selection of state wide candidates, and the make up of delegations to national conventions. This is a small thing, but it can be done within party rules (in fact the DNC encourages it), and it is the party activists who benefit.

Doing GOTV work is one crucial area where you can connect "the party" and the "elected officials" with movements that are independent of party. It doesn't happen automatically however, you have to organize it.

[cameron corda]

DH, I've always admired your commentary, and not just cause it has often been the most accurate analysis of ACT.

As one of the 28 people whose paychecks will stop coming at the end of the month, I'd just like to point people to these results we've made public:
http://acthere.com/blog/archive/2004_data_spotlight/

While they're not the most specific numbers, I can assure you there is more internal research which backs up the overwhelming effect that ACT had. The numbers don't lie. When you take our universe of targets, keep meticuolous details over how and when they are contacted, and then match that back to county data showing who voted, you find that our universe of voters turned out to vote. And while our targets varied in many places, many of them were infrequent voters, just the kind of people you have to work to turn out. And this is even more important in off-year elections like 06.

The other thing people underestimate is the benefits to the entire progressive community which came from ACT's early efforts. By the time unions were ready to committ members, and volunteers ready to knock on doors, state plans had been put in place, repeated direct mail dropped, vans rented, voter files cleaned and ready to use, offices staffed, paid canvasses operating, and all the other nuts and bolts which have to happen before you can do GOTV. We were up and running in every state by I believe March.

By no means was everything perfect, but where ACT focused, getting the vote out in Dem districts, ACT performed a valuable service that will be sorely missed and can't just be duplicated by local parties or the grassroots.

[herefast123]

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