YEP: Because diversity is not just the color of your skin but also your lived experience

 https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/05/opinion/democrats-trump-gallego-latino-voters/

Here’s what the Democratic Party needs to do to win back voters like me

I saw these things work in the campaign of Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who won a US Senate seat in a red state.

By Chuck RochaUpdated December 5, 2024, 11:17 a.m.

 

If you listen to how Republicans describe Democrats, you might never imagine I could be one.

I come from Tyler, Texas. My papaw, my grandfather, had a small working farm where we grew big sweet onions and corn. I didn’t go to college, worked in a tire factory, and eventually became a union man. I have a criminal record, and I have been a single father for 35 years.

But I joined the Democratic Party because it actually represents the principles President-elect Donald Trump claims he stands for but that he clearly does not. I wanted to fight against exporting US jobs overseas, to drain the Washington, D.C., swamp of rich, powerful people who think they are better than the rest of us, and to stop spending taxes on foreign wars when there are plenty of problems at home.

And I have remained a Democrat to protect my mother, who relies on Social Security, and my son, a union steamfitter and single father who needs child-care assistance for his twin boys. I want to ensure my grandchildren inherit a planet without war, or one burning up from climate change.

But to do those things, the party must regain power in Washington — and that will require that it return to the working-class values that made me join it in the first place. I know we can do this from personal experience — as an adviser to the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders; as the founder of a political action committee to turn out Latino voters; and this year, as a senior adviser to Ruben Gallego, who won his race for US Senate in Arizona even though Trump won the state handily.

I had considered running to be chair of the Democratic National Committee, but I have withdrawn my name from consideration because I want to work at the grass-roots level to fix the party — and not spend all my time fund-raising. But here are the things I think the DNC must do to take back Congress in 2026 and the White House in 2028.

Our extensive polling and focus groups showed voters connected with Gallego’s authentic narrative of being a US Marine and combat veteran who was raised by a single mother. He also met voters where they were: a Canelo Alvarez prize fight watch party at a boxing gym, town halls in Spanish, and community events featuring carne asada and beers. That’s not politics as usual — but believe me, it worked.

That tells me that the Democratic Party would benefit from dropping all college requirements for staffing jobs inside the DNC and encouraging state parties to do the same. Why? Because diversity is not just the color of your skin but also your lived experience.

If you only have a room full of folks with master’s degrees, they’re all going to go back to the same research they learned in their political science classes. I would rather have someone working for the party who never went to college but has interesting life experiences and a couple of campaigns under their belt than someone who relies too heavily on polling because they’ve lost touch with real Americans.

As a starting point, the party should choose a leader who supports a true 50-state campaign plan that doesn’t ignore “flyover” states. That leader should be willing to devote extra resources to rural and Latino parts of the country, starting in the southwest so we can win back Nevada and Arizona.

It will also be important to allocate resources for state parties to hire full-time, year-round organizing staff. They should be open to hiring new consulting firms that bring a fresh approach to campaigns. This could also result in more firms led by Black and Latino strategists. Need I remind the party that Black and Latino men voted for Trump in higher numbers this year than in 2016 or 2020? If party resources keep going to the same professional consultant class who fail up, even when we lose, the Democratic Party will continue to sputter.

The DNC should also create a new messaging commission to help rebrand itself leading up to the 2028 elections. I’m not talking about hiring an agency in New York City to come up with a snazzy new logo but a full-on reinvention of how Democrats should communicate their message.

Lastly, we need to make the Democratic Party cool again.

We need to be fun and not so damn preachy and judgmental of everyone and everything. When we had the big, rollicking, open tent under Barack Obama, we won big. But in recent years, Republicans have done a better job of recruiting popular college students to promote their message and talk about why people should be proud to be Americans.

Appealing to working-class men might make some progressives in the party uncomfortable. But this is necessary work that will enable Democrats to curtail Trump’s power in the 2026 midterms and take back the White House in 2028.

If we don’t do that work, Democrats should be prepared to watch where JD Vance or Marco Rubio take the country after Trump slinks back to Mar-a-Lago.

Chuck Rocha served as a senior adviser to Senator-elect Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona.