In the aftermath of losing the presidency, Democratic National Committee members’ most important decision this year will be who leads them out of the political wilderness as chairman of the national party.
The Feb. 25 selection comes as the party’s left wing, protesters and establishment types have drawn battle lines over which faction would be most persuasive in a role concerned more with leadership than ideology.
Yet, in an era of wide party division, ideology and political purity are trumping the core skills that used to be regarded as essential for the DNC chair: the abilities to raise money, run a party organization and be a messenger for elected Democrats.
Only 447 party members will choose the chairman in a process that will be contentious and make it plain that a civil war is raging among Democrats, even if it is not on the public’s radar.
The party is bruised not just because it lost the presidency. It remains in the minority in both chambers of Congress, and holds a historically abysmal number of seats in state legislatures across the country.
Seven Democrats are now running to head the DNC: New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley, former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jamie Harrison, Idaho Democratic Party Executive Director Sally Boynton Brown, former Fox News analyst Jehmu Greene and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind.
Buttigieg (pronounced “BOO-dah-jej”) is emerging as the one contender who understands how important it is to grow the party, rather than retreat into an internecine battle over ideological purity. Despite being a little-known mayor of a town known mainly for Notre Dame football and for manufacturing Studebakers in the past, he happily embraces his underdog status. And he comes from a state President Trump won in November.
“As I see it, the race is wide open and there is a real appetite for someone to bring about a fresh start for the party,” Buttigieg said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
“As I continue to have an opportunity to present myself and my ideas, I think we have a real shot at this.”
All seven contenders have spent the weeks ahead of the Feb. 25 vote at forums across the country showcasing their positions and giving party members and activists an opportunity to meet them in the Midwest, South and West.
Most of them represent factions fighting over what the party should be.
Ellison is backed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Perez by former Vice President Joe Biden. Buttigieg has no such endorsement, but is determined that his party should have a strong message.
“A lot of voters in this past election did not look at our party’s message and think it included them,” he said. “We talked about ourselves, and we talked about our opponents, but I think people sitting at home watching all of that would say, ‘When are you going to ask about us?’
“That fault may be an area of great opportunity for Democrats. When you get down to the actual lives and the real people, we have a really good case to make as to why we are the better party with better solutions. We just have to start making that case.”
While his rivals speak in progressive language, Buttigieg’s tone is more big-tent inclusive. “We need to embrace and unite behind the shared values we all have, like families, freedom, fairness and the future.”
Buttigieg believes the party “cannot build a bigger bench without getting back to the basics, and that starts with paying attention to redistricting.” Of course, he believes he has the best leadership qualities to take on that challenge.
Buttigieg’s biography is impressive in many respects. But, the way he tells it, it’s ordinary.
“I am 35 years old, I live a couple of blocks from my parents, I went to Harvard, I was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, I was deployed to Afghanistan as part of my service in the Navy Reserve and I am in the second term as mayor of my hometown,” he said.
He also is gay, which he disclosed publicly in 2015 as he campaigned for his second term as mayor, an office he not only kept but won with bigger numbers than in his first-term race in this predominantly Democratic Rust Belt city.
Buttigieg breezes through his personal background to get to what he really wants to talk about, which is rebuilding, reshaping and reinvigorating the party in which, he says, he has so much faith.
“If we just ask people how their lives are going to change for the better, given who is in power, we have the better argument to make. But we have to do it not in terms of the politics or the politicians or with the Beltway games or data or statistics. Instead, we have to do it in terms of people’s actual life experiences,” he said.
He is not without big-name support, either.
It’s not a vice president, but a well-respected former DNC chairman, Steve Grossman, who announced his support for the overachieving but relatively unknown mayor.
Buttigieg is painfully aware just how much support the Democratic Party has lost across the country. “We’ve gone from 59 U.S. Senate seats to 48, lost over 60 U.S. House seats. I think it’s 62,” he says correctly, “as well as a dozen governors’ offices and nearly 1,000 state legislative seats.”
Buttigieg said an effective chairman needs not only to be someone who can raise funds, but also someone capable of rebuilding those down-ballot seats that were ignored during the Obama years.
“Look, the party is in trouble,” he explained. “Even if we had won the White House, I think that the really important thing to recognize is, we would have still lost all of those down-ballot seats.
“When you are a mayor, you see how important the decisions that are made in statehouses are. I mean, they affect so many people in so many ways in their lives. We need to win those seats, and we haven’t been.”
Any DNC chairman has several critical roles to fill, according to Mike Mikus, a Democratic political strategist who has worked on House, Senate and governors races across the country.
“First, they have to effectively be able to run an organization and deliver the party’s message, hire competent people and raise a lot of money,” Mikus said.
“The fact that Buttigieg is a mayor and a reservist shows he has the leadership skills that could translate into running a committee that manages various bureaucracies, as well as being an effective spokesperson, which is vital,” he said.
Mikus, who has no political dog in the DNC race, said that because the mayor is open to replicating the effective 50-state strategy that was constructed under former presidential candidate, party chairman and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, he may have the vision needed.
“For us to get in the majority in the Congress, we do have to expand and be competitive in places where moderate Democrats can run and win,” he said. “We cannot go around punishing people who fit their districts,” and instead should “welcome them into the party.”
Whoever wins the chairmanship will have to lead elected officials who still must decide if they want to be a party of protests or one with a strong message that offers voters a reason to support it.
It is a dilemma, considering today’s backdrop of regular protests against Trump. The problem for the party’s candidates is that people who might consider voting for them are tuning out and turning away from the atmosphere saturated with outrage.
“We as a party have to have laser focus on a single issue, like Paul Ryan’s ‘Better Way’ agenda to expand our universe, and we need a chair that can articulate that message, as well as raise money off it,” Mikus said.
That single-issue Republican agenda, along with former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus’ consistent reinforcement of both Ryan and former House Speaker John Boehner’s “Where are the jobs?” messages, helped the GOP build its impressive nationwide bench of officeholders and candidates.
The GOP’s coalition was built on the backs of centrist Democrats who felt pushed out of their party by ascendant progressives who, just 11 years earlier, were part of the 50-state program that then-chairman Dean built in a controversial move to expand the party.
Buttigieg insists that the party needs to reinstitute that program today, to broaden its appeal and to get more Democrats into elected offices.
“The Republicans have patiently and cleverly built up a bench and a lot of winning campaigns and agendas, all the way down to sheriff’s offices,” he explained. “They wisely did not simply focus on the White House. We need to be that focused, and we need to invite all Democrats to join us in that effort.
“I don’t think that supporting just one part of the Democratic coalition should happen at the expense of abandoning another,” he said. “We have to speak to all of our constituencies through universal values, rather than trying to assemble sort of a salad bar for everybody.”
And that is where Buttigieg will begin, “if I am given the honor of leading.”
