For Democrats, Opportunity Knocks

Contributed

Going door-to-door didn't die with the vacuum salesman, it's alive and well and, some pundits posit, the key to gaining votes, especially in rural areas. Jim Wertz, candidate for State Senate, is no stranger to the practice and makes sure to give each resident as much time for deep discussions as they need.

Kyle Foust almost forgot to run for office. As the son of Erie Democratic royalty, politics runs through the two-term Erie County controller's blood. But Foust was nearly 30 before he ran for office. He told me that a 2003 radio announcement about campaign deadlines "just sort of instantly crystallized in my head that I'm going to take petitions to run." Defeating a GOP incumbent, he served 16 years on the Erie County Council. In 2019, he defeated yet another incumbent Republican for county controller. Foust revealed his political secret to me, "Be a Democrat who can appeal to many different types of people."

Foust must be doing just that. In 2023, he routed his GOP challenger, Wade Root, 58-41 percent. To do so, he divulged, "You gotta go door-to-door. That didn't go out of style with the vacuum cleaner salesmen." Donald Trump's rise was fueled by Twitter polemics. MAGA, and more than a few liberal trolls, maximize their reach by mainlining social media sturm-und-drang to their activist base. But the antidote to tech-induced hyper-partisanship is the FM radio of door-knocking and human connection.

Michelle Hornish, executive director of Every State Blue, put it another way, "small deeds done are better than great deeds planned." In politics, the small deeds are the nitty-gritty of retail campaigning. Defeating both Trumpism and hyper-partisanship requires a 50-state retail politics blitzkrieg.

The Harris/Walz campaign may very well defeat Trump/Vance. But a presidential win is not the same as building an enduring majority. For that, Rickey Cole, the two-term chair of the Mississippi Democratic Party, urges a 50-state strategy. To Cole, Democrats, by targeting only specific races in certain blue states, have unwittingly ceded large swaths of the political field to Republicans. He told me, "Those of us who are out here in the grassroots, we see things differently. We see real opportunities where the folks inside the Beltway just have their particular rubric."

Kyle Foust does not follow this rubric. The Democrat built a political career by winning purple and red district voters. The rubric of only targeting "winnable" races was born in the 1990s. As DNC Chair in the early 2000s, Howard Dean countered with a 50-state strategy. Ironically, the pragmatism of the Clinton era re-emerged in the aftermath of Barack Obama's 2008 landslide. At the White House level, Democrats competed in enough states to win reelection. At the state and local level, Democrats quit showing up, especially in Red America. Consequently, during the Obama years, Democrats lost 29 state house and senate chambers, 960 state legislative seats, 10 governorships, 62 Congressional, and 11 Senate seats.

This trend has only worsened in the post-Obama era. Throughout Red America, Democrats fail to field candidates. In state representative races in "Red" Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio, for instance, more than half of all Republicans faced zero Democratic opposition. These down ballot races have profound consequences for Democrats at the top. Hornish told me, "If you put someone on the (bottom of the) ballot, you get anywhere from 1.5-2 percent vote share increase for the top of the ticket." By this calculus, if Mississippi Democrats had fielded state representative candidates, Brandon Presley would be governor. And today, thousands of Mississippians would have healthcare through Obama-care expansion. Jess Piper, executive director of Blue Missouri, told me this practice means "we are training people to vote Republican."

Chelsea Oliver can attest to this. In 2022, the former Corry city councilwoman ran for Erie County's State House District 4. Like Foust, she learned door-to-door campaigns tell voters "that they are important." Oliver told me, "People wanted to talk…[because] nobody knocks on doors anymore." Oliver estimates that the last time anyone, Republican or Democrat, went door-to-door in the Fourth District was Obama in 2008. That year, the Obama campaign organized in Corry. And the African American Democrat won all four of Corry's lily-white wards. Obama's showing in Corry was no one-off. You may recall, the Democrat also took Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and came within a combined 14,000 votes of winning Missouri and Montana. But then, mystifyingly, Democrats quit organizing in what were deemed Republican states. The party disappeared. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won about half of Obama's 2008 vote in Corry.

In 2022, nearly a generation after Obama, Oliver set her sights on the rural Erie County state house seat. Oliver was the first Democratic politician many voters had encountered since 2008. Living in a media environment dominated by Fox News, Oliver found that many held Democratic positions they believed were conservative.

Jess Piper also encountered this. Rural Missouri voters regularly admitted to the liberal Piper, "Ah, shit. This is what I believe, too." But Oliver also found a radically changed environment from 2008. With Democrats largely absent, MAGA Republicans were left to dictate what Democratism means while also establishing new norms. Oliver admitted that some voter encounters resulted in "physical and emotional intimidation." She admitted, "The empowerment from Trump to act like you want to act is very real." Oliver lost her state house contest to Republican Jake Banta. But in winning 10,276 votes, she helped John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro at the top of the ballot.

Like Oliver, Adam Frisch also ran a race no one believed winnable. In 2022, Frisch challenged Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. Exasperated by the MAGA-darling's "angertainment," Frisch ran in a district where Republicans outnumbered Democrats 2 to 1. Making the race even harder, Colorado's third congressional district encompassed nearly half the state.

Driving 65,000 miles, Frisch spent 20-25 days a month canvassing the district. The son of a Jewish émigré, as a boy he helped run the family store that catered to miners and ranchers. In his twenties, he waited tables in New York City before "falling into" finance where he managed 200,000 employees who lived across 80 countries. In this, Frisch learned how to understand a wide variety of people. When urban liberal friends ask Frisch, "why 'they' vote against their interests," he tells them, "Pride and dignity will trump pocketbook issues every time." He paused, smirked, and told me the secret to his voters is understanding, "It's the dignity, stupid."

In 2022, Frisch lost to Boebert by a few hundred votes. In 2024, he is running again. And Boebert is so scared she switched districts. The Democrat told me that his experience taught him that "authenticity and sincerity go a long way."

Frisch's lesson is one Sam Talarico knows well. The Erie County Democratic Party Chair has a bevy of normie veteran candidates who define the Democratic brand to area voters. Ryan Bizzarro represents suburban Millcreek and Fairview in the Pennsylvania state house. Talarico thinks Bizzarro wins his right-leaning district because "he does a great job with constituent service." As for state senate candidate Jim Wertz, the chair told me "He has been hitting the doors and phone banks. His ground game is outstanding." These efforts do more than win an individual race. In a presidential contest decided by razor-thin margins, Talarico told me, "It makes a small difference. They are canvassing for themselves but also the party."

Canvassing in 2024 is not what it was a generation prior. Jim Wertz, who along with his campaign team have knocked over 10,000 doors, uses data to drive canvassing efforts. He told me, "We are engaged in deep conversations because we are hitting the right doors." And 2024 is an especially fruitful time to combine old school tactics with technology. In the field, Wertz says, "Republicans are falling out of love with their party. They want to have deep conversations." And these conversations take time. The Democrat recently spent 2.5 hours canvassing 16 homes.

The state senate candidate is running an uphill race against a Republican incumbent, but many GOP voters remember an era before Trump. They are open to a conversation to mull a party switch or a cross-over vote for Wertz. This is possible because in Erie County, Democrats have been showing up even in "purple" and "red" regions.

And Wertz assures me that this matters. He told me, "What is most important is remembering that a Democrat is something different at the local level. The value set is the same, but the skill set is different. At the national level you get caught up in these larger tropes. But Erie's local Democrats are your friends and neighbors. There are two degrees of separation."

Phil Heasley, who manages Preston Nouri's congressional race against Mike Kelly, notes that Republicans are using thousands of paid canvassers in Pennsylvania. The difference, to Heasley, is "paid canvassers are doing a job. They have a quota. They aren't having real, meaningful conversations with voters you need to have." The 20-year veteran of western Pennsylvania politics thinks such discussions are crucial. That is why he told national Democrats months ago, "If you don't have your ass in Erie County then you can kiss [Pennsylvania] goodbye."

Judging by the canvassing and door-knocking, Democrats, up and down the ballot, listened.

Jeff Bloodworth is a professor of American political history at Gannon University. You can follow him on Twitter/X @jhueybloodworth or reach him at bloodwor003@gannon.edu