Dr. James Zogby

On Building Our Party and Expanding Our Base

By Dr. James Zogby
AAI
Posted on Tuesday July 21, 2009

Address to Democratic State Party Chairs: May 7, 2007

I want to begin with two stories.

• * *

I was born a Democrat. My mom worked our precinct and I can remember going door to door with her passing out slate cards, and going to the polls to work on election day.

In 1996 at the age of 89, my mom was interviewed on “Good Morning America” as to why she, a senior citizen and Catholic who went to Mass every day was voting for Bill Clinton.

She told the interviewer that she was a Democrat and she wanted a President who would protect Social Security and provide a helping hand to those in need. That, she went on, was what the Party had always done since her family had come as immigrants at the turn of the last century. Back then they were greeted by and helped by the party, and made to feel welcome in America.

The interviewer persisted: “But Bill Clinton supports abortion,” to which my mother responded: “Sure it bothers me. I think abortion is a terrible problem and I go to my priest for matters like that, not my President. What I want my president to do is take care of our seniors, the poor and those in need.”

• * *

In 1984 I went to the NAIF Dinner featuring a joint appearance by Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan. I will never forget that night.

Mondale spoke first. His speech had nine applause lines – most when he mentioned the name of his running mate, Geraldine Ferraro. The rest of his speech was a litany of issues and pledges, as in “I’m for the unions…” and “I’m for teachers…”

Ronald Reagan came next and, after a pause, began something like this.

“My grandmother, like yours, came to this country with nothing but her hopes and dreams. She worked her fingers to the bones, believing in the promise of America that some day one of her own could run for President of this great country. I stand before you the beneficiary of her hard work, the fulfillment of her dreams.”

I left that night knowing that Reagan would win the Italian vote – and he did. And I left troubled because the speech he gave was the one Democrats had given when I was growing up.

It evoked themes of family, heritage, hard work, and the values and promise of America. It represented the messages we had lost.

Our message had become clouded and detached from our history, and as a result we were in danger of becoming detached from our ethnic immigrant base.

• * *

When we gathered at the White House in 1994 to form the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Committee (NDECC), I recalled the NAIF dinner – noting that if our goal was to bring our communities back to the Democratic Party, we had to focus, as well, on formulating the Party’s message to resonate in the ethnic communities.

We were representatives of nineteen European and Mediterranean ethnic communities – while our groups had historically had a home in the Party, it was from our ranks that the so-called “Reagan Democrats” had come. We wanted to win them back.

Our effort consisted of three parts.

Part of our focus was on message. We sought to reconnect the Party with our history. We, immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, treasured America’s freedom and opportunity. At the same time, we had, in our lifetimes been the beneficiaries of the progressive role of government in protecting those freedoms and expanding opportunity in ways that promoted the welfare of all our people.

Part of our effort also focused on numbers. In each election, since the founding of the NDECC we have compiled demographic data in targeted congressional races and battleground states – demonstrating the importance of the ethnic vote. In some cases, it might be the Armenian vote that could be key, in others the Slovak, the Irish, the Italian, Polish, Eastern and Central European, Arab and others factored in as well.

We also were able to demonstrate from past elections that when Democrats lose these voters, we lose elections, and we knew from our studies that outreach to ethnics did not come at the expense of outreach to other base constituencies.

In 1999, working with my brother, I wrote “What Ethnic Americans Really Think.” In this book and in our continuing culture polls we found a significant overlap in the values shared by African Americans, Latinos, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Arab and Pakistani Americans.

1) They embrace values that were both progressive and traditional. They were progressive on the role of government in public education, health care, Social Security, minimum wage and labor standards; but traditional with regard to their commitment to their families and their communities.

2) And while all are American, they embraced a complex identity which embraced their commitments to their heritage and their unique experience in America and the world.

3) And while they are all people of faith, they identified principally with their ethnicity, not their religion.

Our message to the Party was simple – if we recapture our Party’s history, we can better speak to these communities, and the rewards of doing so were as great as the risks of not doing so.

Finally, our effort focused on inclusion, saying quite simply: do what the Party did to my mother’s generation, invite new (and old) groups into the Party and invest them in our success. You have no idea how empowering it is for an immigrant community when one of their own can be elected to a post, however modest and become a part of our American political process.

You know, when I speak to my community and other ethnic groups who ask me to talk to them about politics I say, “The best kept secret in American politics is American politics.” Most Americans have no idea what the parties do – how we operate or how to become a member.

To them it’s a mystery. If we are to succeed in winning over new groups and winning back old groups, we have to unlock this mystery and make involvement and investment in our Party more accessible.

Speaking now of my own work with Arab Americans…

My institute has committed itself to breaking down that mystery.
• We’ve formed Democratic Clubs,
• Researched the rules and found out the deadlines, and encouraged people to run for precinct posts, party committees – to get them invested in the Party.
• We even made one-page sheets that gave them “how to run” for National Convention Delegate,
• And where the rules of the process are complex, we do training programs.

In 1984 we had four delegates to the San Francisco Convention. In every one since we’ve had 40-50. Those who run and win stay invested as Democrats.It was hard and we did it – but it shouldn’t have been as hard as it was.

Thanks to inclusive, far-sighted democratic leaders like: Mark Brewer in Michigan, Terry Lierman in Maryland, and Governors like Ed Rendell in Pennsylvania, and Mark Warner and Tim Kaine in Virginia we’ve not only secured a place for Arab Americans in these states, but we’ve secured their votes as Democrats.

What worked for my community will work for other new constituencies: Pakistanis, Vietnamese, Nigerians, Salvadorans, Iranians. But we must also go back to our older ethnic communities and reestablish our bond with them: the new Irish, the Polish, the Serbs, Lithuanians, Slovaks, etc.

1) Celebrate their heritage days.
2) Go to their ethnic cultural events.
3) Send stories to their ethnic press.
4) Register them as they become citizens.
5) Work with them on voter registration and help them organize GOTV efforts with their networks.
6) Recruit their representatives to run for Party posts from precinct to central committee and slate them as delegates.

Make them feel welcome again, invest them in our party, give them a stake in our victories so they become their victories, too. Make our Party the party of all Americans, and we will continue to win.