Howard Dean tells Salon how he remade the DNC

[UrbScotty]

On the 50-state strategy:

This was the hard part for me. My experience as a governor was that the state party was weak. They were also kind of a pain in the neck. I was a centrist governor, and they were always complaining about things that I was doing, and I was very annoyed by it. So I didn’t have a good experience with the state Democratic parties. But I also knew that one of the reasons they were weak was nobody would fund them. So nobody would fund them because they were weak, and they were weak because nobody would fund them. So it was a hard decision for me, do you take the leap of faith, and understand that you’re going to get burned on some of these parties, but you’re going to have to do it? The problem was that people in Washington are always moving people in and out of races and telling them who can and can’t run. And they don’t do as good a job, they’re not as in touch with what’s happening on the ground.

So we decided we would guarantee every state, the goal was four staffers, some got three, some got five, depending on the size of the state. We would guarantee staffers paid for by the DNC. They get to choose the staffers, but we get to train them three or four times a year. And then we put a tech capacity in these states so they could do what Iowa always did, maintaining a voter file. The model was the same, Iowa had been doing it for a long time. I actually wanted to buy the VAN. I made a mistake. It was a little pricey at the time, but looking back now, it would have been great. Buy the VAN and run the company. And then Catalist came along, which was a big pain in the neck. Only because to have the voter file controlled by some people who were outside the DNC, I thought was a bad thing. If you want a Democratic Party, you have to have a Democratic Party.

So anyway, we did it. We put money into the states. And lo and behold, the difference between not taking the House and taking the House in 2006 was 17 candidates that people like Kathleen Sebelius found in Kansas. We didn’t know much about them, it was the people in the states. They found them, they nurtured them, they trained them, they now had the capacity in their states to get out the vote and identify voters. And it worked. And in the Senate, I have to say, we did really well in the Senate because we were a little lucky, Jim Webb came along and Macaca happened. But we picked up seats too because of people like Mark Begich in Alaska. We found they had great people there but they had no money, but suddenly they had a computer capacity, they could get some votes out.

We also had some rules, we would give you the technology capacity, but you would be obligated to allow candidates to use it for free. See, in order to raise money, states would sell their lists to their own candidates. So we said OK, we’re going to do this, but you’re going to give these people lists, on the condition that they give it back to you after the campaign with all their markings. There was a lot of resistance to that too. Illinois was problematic, because the House Speaker is the chair of the party and also personally owns the list. So for Illinois we had to do it through Durbin. We couldn’t use the state party. So really it was a 49-state strategy.

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/25/people_yelled_and_carried_on_howard_dean_on_how_he_remade_the_dnc_and_dems_new_path_forward/

[merrily]

1. He was a centrist Governor. I bet that surprises some.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Now the real story is told.

From my experience dealing with the DFL Central Committee,Mr. Dean speaks truth to power. Seemed like there was someone who basically would not allow new blood into our party. Always the worn out Seniority garbage. Dean brought new thinking processes to the table as well as reminding us of what our Party stood for and amplify our message.

[CTyankee]

3. We need this very much. I'm hoping...