Democrats hope road back to power runs through Austin
Members of progressive wing of party descend on town to talk shop.
About 900 Democrats from across the country and other nations came to Austin for the three-day DemocracyFest training conference at Huston-Tillotson University. Liane Allen, left, and Charlie Thompson exchanged information Friday, while Gina Starr-Hill hung up her group's results.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, June 18, 2005
The long road back to political power may start beneath a live oak tree beside the chapel on the Huston-Tillotson University campus. Friday morning, groups of Democratic activists gathered in its shade to plan the national turf wars still years away.
"We've got to establish the message of the Democratic party: that we're not against America, that we're not immoral people," Sandra Brown, a committed Democrat from Galveston County, said. "We've been relying on Republicans to define us."
The activists, more than 900 of them all told from 36 states as well as the District of Columbia, Japan and France, have descended on Austin for DemocracyFest 2005, a three-day convention of progressive politics that is one part kvetch and two parts prep.
They have brought their donkey shirts, their American flag koozies and their buttons with "DeLay" in strike- through.
If November's losses make them seem a bit like a rebel guerilla force putting together forest tactics, the event also marks their willingness to go on the attack again, the wounds from their previous battle finally healing.
Tonight, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and in many ways a near-religious figure for these pilgrims, headlines a celebration at Stubb's Bar-B-Q.
The festival aims to engage the grass roots in a nonelection year and to improve the electability — to borrow a commonly heard word in 2004 — of the progressive wing of the party.
In policy discussions such as "How the left can reclaim a moral foundation," organizers are hoping to prompt discussion that translates into platform changes.
And in meetings like "Candidate Development," "Turning Red States Blue," and "Projecting Turnout for Your Race," they will discuss how to win back blocs of the Hispanic vote, how to shorten their message and even how to talk to Republicans.
"We've got to quit having such good manners," said Carolyn Moon, a precinct chairwoman in Nueces County who actually owns a yellow dog. "If it wasn't for those damn Yankees, this state is Democratic."
Anybody north of the Nueces River, Moon explained, is a Yankee.
Dean founded Democracy for America last year after he lost his bid for the Democratic nomination for president. Its base is "socially progressive and fiscally responsible," said Fran Vincent, director of the Texas chapter.
Some of these delegates, the self-described Deaniacs, found themselves in the position of being at odds with a centrist streak in their own party and scorned by the Republicans who paint them as radicals.
"They think we're the outcasts of the party," is how Sal Liccione, a Democratic political operative from Westport, Conn., summed up the relationship between progressives and the party old guard in his state.
Meshing the viewpoints is one of the challenges Democrats face in coming years.
"We're regrouping," Liccione said.
The state Republican chairwoman, for her part, has called DemocracyFest part of the "Howard Dean Insult and Alienate America Tour."
"In Texas, Dean will find what everyone else already knows: that under a decade of Republican leadership, we are one of the most diverse and prosperous states in the country," the chairwoman, Tina Benkiser, said in a statement.
"I recommend that Howard Dean enjoy our Southern hospitality for a short time while taking note of the fact that Texans have rejected his liberal Democrat ideas and that Democrats don't win elections in Texas."
Some of the discussion Friday indeed revealed just how much Democrats' fortunes have dwindled across a state that once sent a Hill Country boy to the White House.
In a session about "How to be a state leader," DeeJay Johannessen of Tarrant County urged Democrats to open booths at local festivals, just to let rural Democrats know that other Democrats still exist.
