Move over Saturday Night Live. The real “Not Ready for Primetime Players” continue to be the Utah Democrats.
Seven of the candidates for Utah Democratic Party Chair made their case at a forum on Wednesday night. To put it nicely, most were underwhelming and seemed ill-prepared to take the reins of a party that is desperate for direction to find their way out of the political wilderness.
It’s no secret that Democrats are at their lowest point in a generation in Utah. They are a non-entity outside of Salt Lake County and virtually irrelevant on Utah’s Capitol Hill.
Most of the headlines from the event will focus on the sideshow involving Rob Miller and the allegations of sexual misconduct that are dogging his bid for party chair. Miller was chased from the event by protesters who stood and turned their back every time he tried to speak. After several minutes and a verbal showdown with moderator Scott Howell, Miller relented and left. It’s clear that Miller’s candidacy has been fatally wounded by the allegations, and it would take a miracle for him to win.
But, if you dig past the Miller circus, only a few of the candidates really seemed to have new ideas on how to make Democrats relevant again. I’m not saying these ideas would work, but they were clearly different from what we’ve heard from Democrats recently.
The two standouts were Ed Schwartz and Juliane Waters.
Schwartz is a prototypical old-school political brawler from the east coast who proudly says he reads Donnie Brasco and worked for Sen. Bill Bradley in New Jersey. Schwartz mapped out a pugilistic future for Utah Democrats, vowing to take the fight “to the streets” and opening an office in the GOP stronghold of Utah County.
“Utah County is the child we don’t want to talk about,” said Schwartz. “But it’s the fastest growing population in the state. If we get our messaging right, there could be an opportunity for us.”
When was the last time you heard a Democrat call Utah County an opportunity?
The other new idea that bubbled to the top Wednesday came from Juliane Waters, a Bernie Sanders supporter who has serious fundraising chops. She suggested decentralizing the party and organizing mostly by house districts. Oh, the county parties would still play a big role, but Waters said that organizational structure is problematic when one house district in southern Utah is contained in parts of six different counties. She also said the state party has become too top heavy and reliant on big donors. She thinks she could follow the Bernie Sanders model and bring small-dollar donors into the fold.
“We need to decentralize the party. When I dug into the income and expenses for the state party, I don’t want to say I was appalled, but it was quite alarming,” she said. “Some of the things they were spending on didn’t make sense. I’d like to take that money and give seed money to these organizations outside of Salt Lake County so they could start raising money on their own.”
The rest of the candidates pretty much rehashed ideas we’ve heard a million times before in Utah Democratic politics.
Find a way to appeal to rural voters? Check.
Focus on minority populations? Sure.
Donald Trump? You betcha.
Public lands? Yep.
Reach out to younger voters? Oh, you know it.
Same old, same old.
If they were a color, the remaining candidates would be beige. If they were a flavor, it would be beige. If they were a car, it would be a beige Volvo.
What I’m saying is there wasn’t a lot for Democrats to get excited about Wednesday.
In the end, it all comes down to getting Utahns to vote for Democrats. How do you get them, the vast majority of whom vote Republican almost by reflex, to at least listen to your sales pitch?
Again, the only really new idea came from Schwartz. He’s proposed a three-tiered communication system from the state party. One would target Salt Lake County, one would focus on rural Utah, and a third would zero in on voters in Utah County.
“Our messaging is skewed all over the place,” he said. “If we can attack the Republicans in a loving, caring manner, I believe we can get unaffiliated voters and some moderate Republicans to vote for us.”
Easier said than done.
But, at least it was something different.
