San Diego is a Center-Right County
Consider this: Five of the seven Republican candidates for statewide offices earned a majority of the San Diego County vote in this past election. That’s good news for the Republican Party of San Diego County — it means that County voters are still of center-right ideology. But consider this comment, from Rostra awhile back:
“As for San Diego County 2014, its largest city still has a Democratic majority on the City Council, its second largest city now has a Democratic supermajority on the City Council, including a Democratic Mayor and the largest school district has a Board comprised entirely of Democrats as does the largest Community College District Board.
“The second largest school district just elected five new members and four are Democrats and the third largest school district has a Democratic majority on its Board for the first time in history.
“The only ‘charter city’ proposition on the ballot was decisively defeated, the majority of school bonds were passed and the only tax increase (extension) on the ballot passed overwhelmingly.”
That’s bad news…VERY bad news in a national election which the media describe as the “Republican wave.”
Carl DeMaio lost his election with those voting at the polls. At the beginning of the night, when he led Peters with a 3 percent margin, many of us grimaced that the margin might not hold. We know that the Democrats have a much better Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) effort than we do. In the Imperial Beach Mayor’s race, popular, incumbent Republican Jim Janney lost his lead, as the poll votes were counted, ultimately losing. Finally, John McCann, a respected Chula Vista Republican, won by a margin which was two votes away from a coin flip.
Proposition 14 Changed The Way We Do Business
Our local party morphed in recent years to become a top-down, City of San Diego-centric organization. Prop 14 shifted influence from the grass-roots volunteers to big donors. As such, what used to be a robust, local volunteer GOTV effort has been replaced by a paid effort aimed at targeted races. That model worked extremely well in the City of San Diego Mayoral special election but cedes bits of San Diego County, over time, to the more grass roots-inspired Democratic party.
We Need to Get Back To “The San Diego Model” in San Diego
We spend a lot of time talking about “The San Diego Model” across the State of California. It can be described best this way:
The first, widely promulgated in powerpoint presentations, blog entries, YouTube videos and media interviews by the established party leadership, is often referred to as the “San Diego Model”. This model focuses on functional mechanics: organizational structure, fundraising, voter registration and “Get Out The Vote” (GOTV). In the San Diego Model, political messaging is strictly the responsibility of candidates. The party focuses on turning out Republicans at the polls and the candidate focuses on winning over No Party Preference and edge Democrats.
My friend, Steven Vincent of Los Angeles, wondered about the efficacy of the “San Diego Model” in that 2012 article. He suggested that the Party needed to focus on messaging rather than leaving it up to the candidates. In reality though, the decline of the Republican Party of San Diego’s efficacy, which Vincent proved with data, is because we have NOT been implementing the very model we espouse. The basic building block of a party organization, the volunteer neighborhood precinct captain, has been abandoned by RPSDC. We measure our efficacy on dollars raised rather than elections won and it’s going to progressively hurt us until we turn this around and build out a grassroots network of neighborhood volunteers.
We’ve lost our most important asset
We’re losing neighborhood precinct captains because they’ve lost interest in elections. We’re losing precinct captains because our endorsement process alienates a good chunk of them them early. We’re losing precinct captains because they don’t feel engaged in the decisions the County Committee makes. The precinct captains don’t care because they don’t think we care about them.
This is a problem because we’re losing registered Republican voters and thereby losing elections. We are doing an a amazing job with fundraising at the RPSDC but we’ve destroyed our volunteer network. That has to change if we expect to win future elections. I’ll share some ideas with you, about how fix this problem, later this week.
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Read Part Two of “A Case For Changing the Republican Party of San Diego County” — The Neighborhood Volunteer Precinct Captain
See the entire series one one page.
Comments 4
We love you Alphonse DeMaio, but it’s time to move on.
I really agree with your second to last paragraph. If you completely alienate precinct captains/volunteers early on you can’t expect them to come back and help you later on. Also, if the Party is endorsing candidates in open races, it can only serve to alienate voters with different views. Those primary voters are more likely to be engaged and are exactly the types that are more likely to volunteer.
I don’t know if I completely agree that Dems have a much better GOTV. I think GOTV encompasses more than just day of turnout. GOTV starts months before Election Day. Republicans had a large absentee advantage. I agree GOTV needs to be better, but I don’t know the gap is that huge.
From personal experience it was especially difficult to recruit precinct captains in 2014. This was in large part due to the perception among some Jorgensen and Simon supporters that their candidate did not receive a fair shot at the county endorsement.
Every committee member knows the 52nd congressional endorsement process was conducted openly and fairly according to the bylaws but I think that is the point Brian is getting at…..if we continue with the same endorsement process we will continue to lose grassroot supporters bc they have such little influence in the county party’s endorsement.
I’m not saying the current endorsement process is “wrong” but by concentrating it in the hands of just committee members, the party has a tougher ask of grassroot precinct captains to show up for the election.
You’re right Richard, it was very difficult to get people to walk precincts in 2014. Most of my precinct captains don’t show up to the monthly Republican meetings and are not engaged with the Republican Party except at election time. I have heard from many of them before that they don’t feel like their opinions matter to the Republican Party so they don’t participate. In my opinion, a grassroots endorsement process where their opinions are heard, would go a long way to engaging these people.
As a recent election side note, the vast majority of my precinct captains that have walked for me many times commented that they were worn out from the many political dramas and elections since 2012. The Filner drama and the hotly-contested San Diego Mayoral Race in early 2014 that elected Kevin was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This was a big factor in the difficulty in getting people to walk precincts in the recent election.