Elbow Grease And Winning In A Red District-- Meet Jess King

It's not easy getting Jess King on the phone. It's not easy getting her campaign manager on the phone either. Every time I try-- morning, midday, evening-- they're out working their sprawling Pennsylvania district. The newly created 11th district, which no longer has Adams County or the nice blue parts of Harrisburg and Reading it once had is going to take the kind of work that few campaigns want to undertake. The district moved east and is now basically York and Lancaster counties. When Vox tried explaining the changes to Pennsylvania's congressional map, it was mostly good news... mostly. "All in all, Andrew Prokop wrote, "that makes six Republican-held seats that suddenly have a more Democratic electorate-- with the open seats held by Meehan and Dent, and the seats currently held by Costello and Rothfus, suddenly growing much more likely to flip. However, there’s also one notable change the other way, as Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R) moves from a lean Trump district to a solidly Republican one (the new 11th District)." Some of the blue parts of the district were merged with Mike Kelly's old 3rd district (very red) to former the new 10th (still red, but kind of purple). It left Jess with an even redder district. The first result was that the corporate Democrat the DCCC and EMILY's List were backing jumped ship as soon as she saw the new boundaries and left Jess without a primary opponent. The second result was that Jess and her team, already working hard, realized they had to work even harder-- hard to imagine when they were already working harder than anyone else in the country.

Yesterday, The Intercept published a piece by Ryan Grim on Jess' campaign, Real Resistance, which he introduces as "one of the most innovative Democratic House campaigns in the country."

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is what might be called Trump Country. The region, rural and deeply religious, went solidly for Republicans in 2016, as it had consistently in years past.

...The King campaign is playing to win, but along the way, it’s making a broader impact-- advancing progressive issues and aiding like-minded local candidates.

Last November, Democrats picked up seats all across the state, but the party did particularly well near King’s district. In Lancaster City, Democrats swept the council, winning all four seats with a historically diverse slate of relatively progressive candidates. The city, which is 30 percent Puerto Rican and host to many displaced by Hurricane Maria, also elected its first Puerto Rican member of the school board, Salina Almanzar. (The King campaign has a paid staffer specifically dedicated to organizing, registering, and turning out low-propensity voters in Lancaster City, many of whom are Latinos and African-Americans in the majority-minority city.)

...“The way the Democratic Party has tended to run races is show up at reliable voters’ doors, and that means that the south end of the city has historically gotten neglected, and we want to be part of changing that,” Jonathan Smucker said. (In classic Lancaster fashion, yes, Jonathan and GOP Rep. Lloyd Smucker are related.)

“We’re making sure that we’re elevating issues that don’t just matter to people in more affluent parts of town,” Smucker said. “And I think that any time a group does that, there’s some initial skepticism, which I think is deserved. But I think when you are not afraid of walking on eggshells … when you have some humility, and when you stick with it and you keep showing up, people take notice after a while. And I think that’s part of what happened with these two fights.”

While most campaigns outsource their policy, communications, digital, and even field programs to Washington-based consultants, King is doing it in-house with local staff.

Becca Rast, King’s campaign manager, organized her high school to march against the Iraq War with help from Smucker, who at the time was the national field organizer for the War Resistedrs League. Rast’s teenage co-organizer, Nick Martin, is now the King campaign’s field director.

Smucker has been politically active since he was a high school student in the 1990s. He was one of the leading forces behind the anti-globalization protest known as A16 in 2000. He’s been an organizer ever since, and authored the book Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals

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...Leaders of both the campaign and LSU [Lancaster Stands Up] separately argued that the way to break through in a place like Lancaster was to lead with strong, progressive values, but not get bogged down in lefty jargon. “There’s a lot of people out there across the political spectrum that are saying they’re going to vote for us that might not agree with us on every single issue, but are willing to make the commitment to do it because they believe that Jess is an honest person, or they like that she doesn’t take any corporate money, or they like that she holds town halls-- just agree with her values. And sometimes they agree on her policy, too-- like on ‘Medicare for All,’ that’s [supported] across the spectrum,” said Martin.

Jess chats with volunteers before heading out to help canvass door-to-door 

Both in Washington and around Pennsylvania, said Rast, party operatives are starting to notice. “We’re really running the best field operation in the state, and the most robust kind of community outreach program in general, and that’s acknowledged. People do see the work that we’re doing. I think there’s a lot of people who question if it’s the right investment. And I think just from day one, Jess and I have been clear that if we’re not going to be out there talking to people then why are we running this campaign?”

...The campaign runs something they call Jess Camp, which is consciously patterned after Camp Obama, a training ground for organizers. “I just have this vision, or this picture, of the muscle of civic engagement being exercised and strengthened as they go through that,” King said.

The flexing of that muscle has the potential to redefine what’s possible for Democrats. For years, the party has treated its members as cattle to milk for donations and then herd to the polls come Election Day. Earlier this month, House Majority PAC, a super PAC linked with the DCCC, emailed out a survey to its members. Its money question, after asking if the voter wanted to see Democrats take over the House: “Do you know the best thing you can do is donate to organizations such as House Majority PAC?”

As her nearly million-dollar fundraising haul suggests, King doesn’t overlook the importance of a war chest, but she doesn’t tell supporters that giving is the most important thing they can do. Tapping voters for money is like fracking. Dig enough holes and you can squeeze out what you want. But the toxic approach leaves a desiccated land behind. The DCCC and its super PAC deal with that problem by buying new emails to replace the ones they churn through, until every hole’s been drilled. But that’s not a sustainable approach.

King’s treats supporters like a renewable resource instead, training volunteers in organizing and then giving them genuine responsibility. She said new volunteers have rarely gained that type of experience with other campaigns. “When I do block walks, canvasses with people and ask if anybody’s done this before, the most common answer-- well, most people haven’t done it before-- the people who say yes, the place where they did it was with Obama,” she said. “There are very few people that say, ‘Yeah, I got totally involved in the Clinton campaign,’ because there just wasn’t a field [program]. It was more of the traditional, D-triple-C, establishment campaign-- and I know people canvassed and worked hard, but it wasn’t quite the same, and it definitely wasn’t doing persuasion, wasn’t trying to have more conversations across political registrations.”

King’s campaign is designed to be a vehicle for the stifled ambitions of the both talented, motivated people who haven’t left Lancaster County, and those who have returned after some time away. Nick Martin, the field director, told me they’ve used an “if you build it, they will come” model.

The misery of modern life, paradoxically, is a benefit to King’s campaign. People are finally starting to talk about “bullshit jobs”-- the title of David Graeber’s new book that zeroes in on the soul-crushing monotony that makes up so much of our professional lives.

Rast said that particularly among retirees, who may be adrift after a life in the workforce, the campaign seems like more than just a volunteer opportunity. In a world devoid of meaning, by standing for something, King’s campaign has given supporters a way to find purpose in their lives.

“Every church that I was involved in, I was children’s ministry, I was youth leader, I was praise team,” Annie Weaver said. “Having left the church was really hard on me. And what I guess I’ve kind of discovered through all of this, is that this just kinda has become my new ministry.”

Before interviewing King in her campaign headquarters in August, I sat in on a meeting with the roughly 20 interns who had organized that weekend’s flurry of town halls. They went over what went right, what went wrong, mapped out the next weekend rush, and made plans to follow up with each of the 600 people who had come out.

“Some of them are 14, 15 years old, still in high school,” King told me afterward. “You never know what that’s going to yield, right? So the vision is that a political campaign is the fastest way to change regional politics, because it’s a container, and it’s a moment, and it’s a finite thing that people can wrap their heads around.”

Like I said, Jesse and her team are running a model campaign. The district is blood red but her opponent is a dud and she's fortunate that the DCCC and their cadre of expensive brain-dead consultants are ignoring the race-- it works in Jess' favor. They won't screw it up-- their only talent-- and she can run her own grassroots strategy. It's a campaign worth investing in. Sure, I can't get them on the phone... but that's OK, because I know they're out working everyday, which is the best thing I could hope for. The thermometer on the right goes to a page for progressive candidates who, like Jesse, have won their primaries but who the DCCC has basically abandoned. These are the candidates that need the help the most. None of them are in "impossible" districts, just... challenging ones. Jess King and her crew know how to overcome those challenges and they're worth investing in. Click on that ActBlue thermometer and give what you feel comfortable parting with. It's for the good of the country. What could be sweeter than winning in a red district without owing the DCCC or the party establishment anything at all?When Jess goes to Washington, she'll owe that to the voters in York and Lancaster counties, not to Pelosi, Hoyer, EMILY's List, the DCCC, the DNC or anyone else.