Grassroots Reboot: Revitalized Democratic Party and Para-Party Organizations

• In Event: State & Local Parties in Transition: New Structures, Technologies, and Coalitions

Abstract

Formal organizations are fundamental to healthy representative democracies, and they have been an integral part of American politics since the early 1800s when party organizations began to solidify. Political organizations provide structured spaces and means through which individuals channel their political values into collective electoral actions. Organizations also provide what James Q. Wilson calls “associational benefits” to individuals; organizations help people build relationships and community with one another while working toward mutual goals. In the U.S., political parties have traditionally been the primary organizations working to shape the electoral landscape. One traditional core function of parties is that they systematically mobilize both voters and volunteers to support their respective candidates. Local party organizations are the units of the party system that are historically the most likely to consistently mobilize volunteers and voters across election cycles, as well as to recruit candidates for local offices. In the modern campaign environment, however, campaigns have become more nationalized, candidate-driven, and technologically centered; these modern features can displace both traditionally party-run campaigns at the local level and the local volunteers engaged in direct voter/grassroots tactics through local party structures. Previous survey studies of local party leaders have reported relative organizational strength at the local level, and this paper does not contradict nor refute these studies. Qualitative evidence presented in this paper, however, reports a more fractal and complex organizational landscape than what aggregated survey evidence alone has conveyed. In urban and rural areas, there is evidence that some local Democratic party organizations have grown latent or ineffective; out of perceived necessity, grassroots-driven, para-party groups have emerged to take their place. By comparison, in many suburban areas, activists in recent years have chosen to go through traditional party channels to reinvigorate their local organizations. This organizational emergence and revitalization has been particularly prevalent since the 2016 election cycle. This paper examines some of the different forms these new and revitalized Democratic organizations have taken across different geographies as a response to ineffective, resource-hoarding, hollowed out, and/or non-representative local party organizations. This paper uses a mixed-methods approach to analyze how and why these organizations have been established, their leadership structures and electoral tactics, and what impacts these groups have on candidates and elections.

Authors

• Joseph Anthony, Oklahoma State University

• Lara Putnam, University of Pittsburgh