Looking Back Cringe

Mortification and Nostalgia make strange bed fellows ...

A bunch of years ago, I got it in my head that Utah Democrats needed a swift kick in the pride. A little more RAWR in messaging. A little more taking the message where people are getting it, and skipping a lot of traditional media where the message was only getting to people on their way out.

My belief at the time was pretty simple: The Party Chair (at the time) was being held back and forced to the middle right by Boomers and Bluedogs. No shit, we were once pitched on the benefits of the abandonment of pro-choice positions by a sitting Democratic Utah Senator because SHE said it polled better to be GOPlite. This led to several WEEKS of debate on the dipshit idea that a swing to the hard right would mean victory.

I really thought that in order for him to break free of constraint and message from a left position, all he needed was a challenge from the left (enter me) to pull him out of the prison that the money people put him in.

Holy Shit, was I wrong.

I’d spent two years having smoke blown up my ass by this guy. I was fired by this guy because of some blowback from doing something he told me to do. I’d been handed every bit of evidence that maybe what I was dealing with was a guy who was comfy with the status quo and was pretty annoyed with me trying to rock the boat.

I ran against him anyway.

He had union money. I did not.

He had a campaign bestie, his Vice Chair, who lied, cheated, and stole throughout the whole ordeal, even though he really didn’t need to. I did not.

The guy was a union boss, very popular and well thought of. I didn’t have a chance, and I knew it. I was trying to help.

HINDSIGHT: I should have maybe explained, slowly and with charts, what the fuck I was doing. I did not do that. I thought it was pretty fucking evident what was going on. It was not. That’s on me.

Flash forward a few months and it’s the day of convention.

Trying to put our best foot forward, a few days before the convention I’d spent a shit load of money on breakfast foods for a few hundred delegates: fruit, juice, pastries; a nice spread. I got a call from the State Party the night before telling me that food was not allowed in the venue. “Well, shit” I thought, looking at a kitchen full of food.

The morning of convention, we’re getting set up and in comes the Chair’s team, with platter and box after platter and box, hauling food into the venue and laughing in our direction. I was stunned. I’d was used to the campaign fucking with me. It happened so often I was always expecting it. This is the first time the actual Party had joined in. I walked over to the Party guy who’d called and told me of the fake venue rule about food, and he apologized telling me he’d been told to make the call from the Vice Chair. One last expensive lie. There were a few more inexpensive lies to come that day, but this was the last big one.

I’ve now been preaching the need for modernization of communications for months. I have branded myself, basically, as the technology candidate. “The Future Is Now!” emblazoned across all my lit and signs. Somewhere between filing with a purpose and the Big Day, I got pissed off about all the lies, cheating, and other bullshit and wanted to win. I really did. I knew I couldn’t, but that didn’t stop the need to perform.

This is where it gets kinda silly. I’d spent the night before re-writing everything. I moved my presentation from my trusted and well known PC laptop to a Mac because everyone kept talking about how they never, ever fucked up… yeah, about that …

There was more dipshit and drama throughout the day, until finally it was time to address the delegates. He got up, gave a nice little speech about The Winds of Change Blowing Through The West. It was bland puffery, and it landed nice and soft.

I was gonna blow these delegates away.

I had a video presentation. Good music, great visuals, Barack Obama quotes, even a little vintage Dean thrown in for fun. I had one of my nominators actually IN the video (as opposed to on stage with my other friends) the video was supposed to play, the nominator does his thing, another friend on stage would deliver the second nomination, a little more video, a tasty Obama sound bite, and I’d drop ‘em dead with my little speech, then move forward to losing in what I thought would be a 60/40 loss.

The Mac Laptop shit itself. Absolutely shit itself.

Hooked up, it would either play audio or video, but not both. It looked silly. I’d lost my first nominator. I couldn’t see my speech. It was a shit show. A flaming ball of failure that, after months of bullshit and abuse, was entirely of my own failing.

I started trouble shooting the laptop and made up a speech off the top of my head. I typed and I talked, in a flop sweat until I was rescued by one of my friends on state who moved me aside and nominated me, then my second nominator did the same. I was WAY over time, I unhooked the last Mac laptop I will ever use, slunk off stage, and brokedown a little bit… a lot.

It was humiliating as hell. Worse than the 11% I got in the vote.

That’s my life, really. Summed up. Work, work, work and BOOM! The fickle finger of fate, having fucked, moves on.

It was a pretty good little speech, though. Lot’s of bits about the future, how important it was to spend the next decade party building … stuff like that.

Good morning Democrats!

My children have never seen a Democratic Governor in this state. They have never seen a Democratic House, Senate, indeed, any Democrat control the political narrative in this state. They are able to see the shining promise that national leaders such as Barack Obama provide, but they have no concept of what a Democratically run Utah would look like.  It is for this reason that I am running for Chair of the Utah Democratic Party.

They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results; yet this “stay the course” mantra seems to dominate party decisions.  Year after year candidates are told that they should stay moderate, that the party will message for them, and that they should not expect to win this time around.  At the same time we are told that the winds of change are blowing through the west. 

Folks, in 2006 we gained two house seats, in 2008 we gained two more, lost a Senate seat, and spent $1.4 million in the process. Lets not forget that Rob Bishop, Chris Cannon (then Jason Chaffetz), Orrin Hatch, Jon Huntsman, and, yes, Chris Buttars, all won in the past four years. The winds of change in Utah feel more like a light summer breeze.

In short, the Utah Democratic Party must Educate, Communicate, and Evolve. It can not be done overnight. We need a commitment to sustained growth that carries on beyond the next two years, and starts to plan through the next ten, and twenty years.

We must educate people on what a Democrat really is, not what Republicans say we are.  Most people in this state think that we are anti-Mormon, anti-family, and anti-small business.  I am here to tell you what you already know: these are utter lies. By advertising in off years such as this what true Democratic ideals are – the ideals of equality, of quality health care, of strong schools and infrastructure, of workers rights and supporting veterans, of being good to your fellow man – by advertising this, we will be able to take control of the dialogue.

We must communicate these same principals when elections start to pick up.   By playing aggressive offense rather than tepid defense, we will show voters why we are the better choice, not that we are simply the alternative choice.  This means that we are more vocal and more forceful on the issues we know we are right on.  Now, some of you may cringe when I say that, but that reaction is part of the problem. The party must support its candidates in this mission by placing our advertising dollars in electronic media – not in dieing forms such as newspapers.

In short, we must evolve. We must recognize that that our current strategy is, at best, working at a snails place. In the survival of the fittest reality of politics, we must evolve the party to better integrate systems that work, reject ideas that continually fail, and not be afraid to try innovative ideas to continually better ourselves.

When you cast your vote today for chair today, I ask that you contemplate two questions: Is this party, our party, where I expected it to be four years ago and do I think that the status quo will get us their in another two years?  If your answer to those questions are yes, then I am not your guy – but if you honestly feel that this party deserves more – more respect, more dignity, more power, then cast your vote for me.

It’s that simple. Communicate or disintegrate.

Thank you.

This was 2009. What a dumbass, eh? Jump forward a few years and Democratic Party leadership stopped pretending that they were Democrats at all, voted out an actual Democrat running for US Senate, and nominated a REPUBLICAN for Democratic support to run for the Senate seat. A Republican. Utah Democrats voted to run an actual, factual, proud to admit it Republican.

When was the last time you saw a Utah Democratic party ad on TV? The Radio? Hell, in the newspaper?

Between scandal, betrayal, and simple incompetence, the Utah Democratic Party doesn’t even rate a pathetic response ask from the Thrifty Nickel let alone a legitimate news source.

I don’t think I would have been a great party chair, to be honest. I’m not a great fundraiser. I AM a good fund spender, though. I know media, I know advertising, I know communications. All I wanted to to spend a few years building communication habits that would long outlast me. To give the party voice some volume.

The votes are out there, they’re just drown in apathy. Look at medical cannabis! The right message, repeated over and over again, can break through, it really can. Giving up and presenting as GOPlite … Utah Dems have been doing this for decades and it’s achieved … nothing.