Democrats: Stay Home

Getting out of our own way...

I am no politico. I am not a Democratic operative. I don’t work for the party in any capacity. I ran for office as a rural Democrat and have the stripes and scars to prove it, but I know a thing or two about relationships. I know how to build community. I know how to make friends.

If I could tell our battered and bruised party anything, it would be to go back to your roots. Talk to your neighbors. Make friends in your community. Stay home and do the work in front of you.

Grow where you are planted.

I am not asking you to make friends with folks who voted for a traitor. A rapist. A conman with 34 felonies.

I am asking you to visit with folks at the city council meeting. The library board. The school board. The Betterment Club. The Lion’s Club. Kiwanis. Rotary. American Legion. The Eagle’s Club. Church.

Wherever your community gathers.

Democrats, do the work at home. Start at the beginning. Organically. Do it from a place of neighborly love rather than a place of winner-takes-all, cut-throat, well-paid operatives playing god with their strategies and data.

That’s what I’d like to address for a minute — the Democratic consultants and the operatives and the folks who are playing politics at fancy dinners and conventions and retreats rather that fighting in spaces that need someone willing to stand up for them. The folks who don’t seem to care if Democratic candidates win…the people who seem to only care about getting another consulting job in the next cycle.

Politics as usual.

I have held my tongue for years about the things I’ve noticed as a rural organizer and I’m not sure I should have. I didn’t want to offend while others at the top sure didn’t care to offend me.

From a Missouri journalist and former Missouri Democratic Senator Jeff Smith in the last weeks of my campaign in 2022:

Others might argue that Jess Piper’s energetic state House campaign in northwest Missouri, which has already raised over a quarter million dollars this cycle, is another counterexample showing Democrats’ commitment to branching out beyond the two major metros. 

That’s an extraordinary fundraising haul for any rural House candidate, especially a Democrat in an un-winnable district. Piper has leveraged all available social media tools by tweeting, Tik Tok-ing and Instagramming her way to raise more than any other Democratic House candidate.

In fact, the last two fundraising reports show Piper with more cash on hand than the entire House Democratic Campaign Committee. 

But, I suspect, instead of deploying a significant portion of her financial haul in large chunks to 4 or 5 swing districts where she could have a decisive impact and help her party gain seats — perhaps even helping position herself to chair the party next cycle — she’ll instead spend it  to close her margin from 30 to perhaps 20 points.

I can’t tell you how angry that piece made me. I worked my ass off to raise money for my race because the party doesn’t support many races at all and specifically not races like mine. Jeff Smith meant me to feel small for the way I was able to raise money — to make me feel less than. Like a joke.

Tik Tok-ing…

I ran in a district that hadn’t elected a Dem in three decades and never a woman. A district that was rarely contested. I knew what I was up against and I did it anyway without one ounce of help from the state party. Without a red cent. Without a “screw you” or “kiss my ass.”

I ran my campaign and raised more money than any State Leg candidate with a three-person team and hundreds of volunteers. I did it the only way I knew how — brutal honesty. I pulled back the curtain and showed folks what was happening in my state.

And what did the state Dems tell me to do? Donate my donor’s money to the state party or to other candidates more likely to flip a seat. *By the way, I can’t just donate donor money to another candidate. That is against Missouri Ethics rules.

The former Missouri Democratic Chair chastised me for keeping the money my donors sent to me to win my race. When I didn’t send the money to the party, some in the party said that I must have ulterior motives. I must be actually running for the Chair position because why would anyone bother to run a real race in NWMO?

Me. That’s who. Me.

A photo from a rural Missouri main street. The buildings have since been razed.

A person like so many other rural Dems. A person who gives a shit about her neighbor. A former teacher who gave up her career to try to fund every school and pave every road and fund every library and stave off the extremism coming from the supermajority.

I have been vocal about the awful strategy of leaving rural and red spaces. Ceding massive swaths of America because “why even try?” It’s too red. Walk away.

I can’t tell you how many times I have said that only giving resources to “flippable” states and seats is the worst sort of strategy I can imagine. The Republicans couldn’t have devised a better losing strategy for Democrats if they tried.

If supporting only flippable races led to wins, Missouri would be bright blue. Instead that strategy has led to a Missouri GOP supermajority trifecta without even one Democrat elected to a statewide position. Not one.

As a former coach, as the wife and mother of a coach, let me give the National Democrats a piece of real-time advice: use the off-season. Use this time to get stronger and better. Find your team captains and support their work in their communities. Send them out with resources.

The infrastructure for Missouri Democrats does not even exist in many rural spaces. The folks who have the institutional knowledge of running county parties are literally dying…we have a problem with recruiting the young folks. We have a problem with limited resources. We have a problem with letting rural spaces fall off the map for Democratic policies.

Missouri is 1/3 rural. We can’t win statewide without the rural vote. We have to re-engage with rural organizers. Organizers who will stay home and do the work in front of them. Organizers in their communities.

Find them. Utilize them. Fund them.

If we hope to have another fair election in two years, we have to be working now. At home. In our communities. In front of our neighbors.

In my most humble opinion, I think we have given too much runway to consultants looking at politics as a game and something to bet on rather than folks who look at politics as something as serious as life or death. I know many of these consultants don’t come from a red state or really understand the harm of a GOP trifecta — maybe they don’t understand the urgency or the seriousness of GOP rule.

Unfortunately, they are about to find out.

If we plan to do anything productive in two years, we have to start now. Talk to our neighbors. Make friends in our communities. Stay home and do the work in front of us.

We have to get out of our own way.

~Jess