Open Letter to the El Paso Democratic Party Leadership

If you’re expecting something witty, snarky, or humorous, in this letter you will be disappointed. David K does that much better than I. There is a reason I am not the most popular guy in the party; its because of letters like this one. But then again, I’m not going anywhere, have no intention of leaving the party, and am not really concerned with being popular. Someone has to speak truth to power. I guess I always have to be the asshole.

Dear Danny Anchondo, Don Williams, and Yolanda Clay:

Recently at the Black El Paso Democrats annual dinner, the key note speaker, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr, gave a moving speech that was partially a warning. It was a warning for the Democratic Party to not sleep through a revolution. Two of the three of you were in attendance. Actually, more accurately put, two of the three of you sat at the head table during that speech.

Simply put, we are in the middle of a long, deep sleep. There is a revolution happening in our town and its happening right under our noses. And frankly, the people in the position to do the most about it, are the three of you.

The job of the El Paso County Democratic Party leadership is, at least in my opinion, to raise money, expand the base, and recruit/train liberal candidates.

We are always broke, we are contracting, and there is no effort to recruit/train liberal candidates. Frankly, you are failing us.

Before I continue, let me support what I am saying. Come election time, the party never seems to have money to give out to candidates. The Unity fund doesn’t go very far and the party appears to expect the Congressman to bear the lion’s share of the financial burden.

Finance

I think this happens because we have a wrong focus on fundraising. We appear to put the fundraising burden on the backs of the rank and file membership rather than tapping people and groups that have the financial means to be a bigger contributor. Time to tap the legal community, business people, unions etc.

They want our vote and support, which is fine, but it shouldn’t be for free. We need money to get them the results they want.

Contraction

There was a time when we proudly called El Paso the Democratic Stronghold of Texas. Well guess what, we are no longer the Democratic Stronghold of Texas. The South Texas Valley is. We are not expanding our base, we are losing our base. You saw the same election numbers from November that I did. I know some of you don’t spend much time around the GOP in this town, but I try to as much as possible. Do you know what I see?

I see something we don’t have.

Organization, energy, passion, and cohesion.

Sure they have their differences, but they appear to understand that they should all be paddling in the same direction.

We don’t even want to be in the same boat with one another. The various wings don’t help each other out, except in very rare exceptions. The environmentalists don’t help the immigration reformers, the immigration reformers don’t help the unions, and so on and so on…

This is a leadership issue.

Every day the Republicans become more organized and increase their numbers. If they had funding and a candidate that wasn’t a freaking joke, our Congressman might have found himself in the same position as many of his colleagues! Let’s face it, we were lucky that they had a bunch of bumbling idiots running in the countywide races or things would look at lot different around here.

Do you want that to happen under your watch?

The reason we are losing ground is for a lot of reasons. Number one, we aren’t doing anything (from the top anyway) to recruit new people to the party. That should be an easy sell in a place like El Paso given the posture of the Republican lawmakers at the state and federal level. Every day they make decisions that will have an impact on our community and we aren’t articulating the ramifications of their decisions to our community. If we did, we would be expanding, not contracting.

Our party fights for the poor and marginalized. Is there a more fertile environment for expanding our base than El Paso County? We are losing the working class. That has long been our base!

When we do have the occasional new person in the fold, they are quickly chased off by the crazies in our party that have been allowed to fester for years. They chase people away instead of expanding our base. The intimidation tactics, the threats, the pettiness, the rivalry, etc; this is stuff that chases people away! Whats worse, is often it is other minority groups like African-Americans and the gay community that get turned off by the antics of a few, but well-positioned (and tolerated) individuals.

That is counterproductive. Those people represent the past and no successful organization is built on yesterday, its built for tomorrow.

This is another leadership issue because you have seen it, allowed it to continue, and done nothing to stop it. At times it seems the only thing we are reliably good at is fighting with each other or plotting how to ruin someone (or a group).

It’s okay to have differences of opinion in our party. If we wanted to be told how to think and everyone have the exact same mindset about everything, we’d join the Republican Party.

There should be visible, regular, and funded recruiting initiatives. This is NOT happening.

My question is simple…Why not?!?!?!?!

Recruiting / Training Candidates

The sad reality is that most of the powerful elected officials in this town don’t run for office depending on the Democratic Party for help. In fact, that mere notion is almost a punch line.

What a sad reality.

But they don’t have to run within the party. The party isn’t strong enough for people to NEED the party to win. They can, and often do, win without the party.

In the city elections, nearly every single candidate is a conservative Republican. This is very dangerous and the party appears to be doing nothing about it. Perhaps you don’t understand, but they are running in city elections so that they don’t have to run as Republicans.

That doesn’t mean they can’t change the complexion of El Paso politics. They are anti-union. If they end up with a majority on council there is nothing preventing them from doing what was done in Wisconsin here in El Paso and using budget issues as their starting point.

They will likely win at least two of the four seats that are up, possible three of them. That means they will have a base of support to build upon. That could have implications in countywide elections.

We need more than lip service as recruitment/training efforts. We should be cranking out candidates that will advocate for our values. We should be providing them with the tools and support they need to win.

And we need to be doing it in a measurable way. This isn’t being done.

But the Republicans are doing it on their side. The Republicans are putting their resources behind the conservative candidates.

The time to act is now, not later.

Danny, Don, Yolanda, its your job. For God sakes, do it! We are depending on you. If need be, we will hold you accountable if it doesn’t get done.

I’ve had my differences with most of you, but I don’t want you to fail. We are on the same team. Let’s act like it and get in the game. The goal is to win, not come finish second.

Jaime Abeytia
El Paso Liberal Democrat