The "Start-up" Attitude: Supporting growth in Local Party Committees

Local Party Committees, formed to organize party members and leaders in local and regional communities, are one of the primary organizing bodies for supporting candidates for public office. Yet, they are some of the most undervalued and under-invested parts of the US Democratic Party. There is a wide diversity of professionalized and under-professionalized committees, a condition attributable to:?

1. an environment mostly driven by the electoral competitiveness of their state and local area, and?
2. a lack of attention to building party infrastructure except during an election cycle.?

As more voters drift from both the Democratic and Republican Parties and disconnection from the party increases, we need to begin closing the professionalization gaps in our party committees and help committee leaders to become results driven and outcome focused.?

To do that, we have to encourage party committees at every level to adopt the start-up mindset, and rethink how we do business as usual.?

The Professionalization Gap

As a general rule, party committees, especially in emerging battleground states and localities, should not be waiting for campaigns to bring them resources and know-how to be more effective. Instead, leaders should be looking at their peers to better understand how they can be doing better, and building professional relationships with those who can impart knowledge not readily introduced via electoral campaigns.?

Too often, party committees get wrapped up in ideological battles and partisanship, a distraction from the committee’s ability to develop relationships with its voters and ill-suited for the limitations of a highly polarized environment. They neglect to build and grow sustainable party infrastructure beyond what is given by the state and national party organization, from the financial and fundraising activities that can help them scale their political outreach operations to the people infrastructure (staffing, community relationships) that build trust with voters, beyond party branding and ideology. If you are committee leader waiting for a demographic trend, or campaign professionals to put you on their radar, you are missing opportunities for growth (your proverbial waiting for Godot problem).

During my career, I have been fortunate to work with many party committees that have demonstrated varying levels of professionalization. One such committee I worked with over two election cycles was the Prince William County (PWC) Democratic Party of Virginia. In 2017, the Committee had a loose volunteer base that was not representative of the changing electorate or ideological face of the party. Year after year, the Virginia State Party and candidate campaigns would bring professional staff in to organize voters and work with committee volunteers. After candidates like mine won their elections in 2017, nearly taking the Virginia House majority, the PWC Committee began professionalization in 2019. The State Party helped fund an Executive Director to manage committee operations and support Get-Out-The-Vote. Financial support doubled to just shy of $70,000 before the end of the 2019. By 2023, as of this writing, the committee raises and spends nearly $200,000 in an off year election cycle and employs part-time staff. With its broader membership and volunteer base, the committee is better positioned to support a Democratic majority in the PWC Board of Supervisors and its state legislative delegation.?

The local party committee began the professionalization process in large part because the State Party and other partners began to make investments in candidate campaigns, followed by a commitment to strengthen the ground game. Candidates and outside groups have spent millions of dollars on advertising and staff in the county, because they understood a path to maintaining power in the state runs through there. Coupled with a more engaged political donor base and supportive stakeholders, the local party is able to support its elected officials, candidates and members throughout the election cycles. But this is not the case with most other committees. By not being part of a candidate’s intentional organizing plan or state party committed to supporting them, they are left behind.?

Party Building - Professionalizing the Start-up Mindset

Party leaders need to start thinking more like “start-up” leaders, political entrepreneurs that are motivated by results and growth, focusing on increasing electoral power. As a campaign professional, remember: Every dollar invested in a party committee or campaign should yield increasing impact, compensating for our finite resource: time. Campaigning is a time intensive activity, even for regular candidate campaigns.?

In the era of polarization, ideology limits growth, placing more pressure on candidates to connect with voters rather than the party committee. Party committee chairs and volunteers can redress that balance by operating their committee more like a nonprofit business, responsive to the needs of expanding their voting coalition and constantly seeing growth and scalability. Committee leaders need to think more like project managers, showing stakeholders why the power of their donation and support is a more impactful investment as opposed to their competitors. They must be visionary, and recognize the limits of what they can do without investing in 1) their current volunteer and activist leadership and 2) their professional staff.

Closing the professionalization gap is most needed, especially in non-battleground areas where the committee leadership is not exposed to the more metric and results driven culture of professional campaigns. There are two groups of local committees where closing the gap makes a big impact:?

• Metropolitan committees where the electorate already skews more liberal and Democratic, but do not get the kind of funding and professional support except in high turnout campaigns (Presidential and statewide elections).
• Areas that are traditionally neglected due to geographical access or because of political factors like gerrymandering or party loyalty shifts.

Committees can take concrete steps in these situations by working with stakeholders to deliberately embed staff and support closer to them, and develop the technical institutions necessary for sustainable, long-term change. Training staff and volunteers as project managers and utilizing project management software and tactics, for example, can create the culture of measured success and progress, and make party committees more deliberate in how they use their limited time and resources. We can also get better results that help us see where our real gaps are, helping members and volunteers become more effective and fill the gaps with professional assistance.?

Building party capacity and expanding the party footprint in places where the party is traditionally weak is also the kind of territory where start-up minded professionals and volunteers (even candidates) can make the greatest impact. They are great places where we have the most room to grow, innovate and experiment with the best practices of political entrepreneurship. It is also the place where state parties can do better by allocating resources to grow our political footprint. As I noted in my previous article, What's Next? Envisioning Growth for Political Parties & Candidates, being intentional about what we do after an election can be seeing how far we can extend the value of our dollar. Party building through professionalization of local committees is a great opportunity to extend that value.

In summary…

Encouraging local party committees to become more results-driven and fostering startup-minded leadership party leaders can enhance their effectiveness and adaptability in today's dynamic political landscape. This also means retaining campaign staff from elections, even making them part of the committee, and encouraging partnerships between local committees and professional staff. Campaigns teach us a lot about how to build organizations, but not necessarily about sustaining them beyond one election cycle. By training or retaining technical and people infrastructure over several election cycles, and investing resources to back up that investment, we can raise the performance floor for future election cycles.?