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Gail Stoltz

Gail Stoltz, a Democratic consultant, has worked for the Montana Democratic Party, the Service Employees International Union, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. A former Montana state representative, she is currently president of Stoltz Consulting, a political strategic planning firm.

Sara Fritz interviewed Stoltz on September 11, 2007.

Usually I begin these interviews by asking people about their experience in politics. And you have had, from what I understand, a very interesting career. I would like you to sort of outline it for the people who will be reading this interview.

Well, let’s see. I started out — I don’t want to say how long ago — in Montana as an activist and I was a state legislator when I was in college.

You were in college when you were in the legislature?

I ran for the legislature in college. Then I graduated in the spring and was elected in the fall.

You were pretty young when you served there?

Yes. First time I ever voted, I voted for myself. I have always said it’s a good way to create voters if the first time you ever get to vote, [you can] vote for yourself. You go, “Oh, I like this; this is good.” I served several terms. Then I did political organizing in the region and in the state for many years and started a variety of organizations and coalitions, the usual advocacy, all designed around politics and elections. Then I was the state party executive director.

Then I went to work for the DNC as the western political director with Ron Brown in [’89] and Political Director Paul Tully. I was the western political director through ’92. At that time, I went to work as the political director for the DSCC through ’96. In ’97 and ’98, I did congressional relations for the DNC. Then I went to work for the Service Employees, SEIU, as government affairs director through the 2000 election and into 2001. In 2001, that spring, I went back to the DNC to be the political director through 2002. And then since 2003 I have been a political consultant.

And what kind of firm are you running?

It’s very small. I do a few clients every year.

What kind of stuff do you do for them?

Strategic planning: advise some initiative campaigns, GOTV [get out the vote], field organizing, organizational strategic planning and design. Not much candidate consulting anymore, but larger picture and some structural change around whether it’s redistricting or whether it’s turnout or specific strategies and new constituencies, mostly all driven toward a political agenda and toward an electoral agenda.

Have you had experience in a presidential election? You, obviously, have not worked for a presidential campaign.

I have not worked for a presidential election.

But you have been in the party structure during a presidential?

Party organizational structures, whether it’s the party, or it’s working outside the party, or whether it’s with the unions, or in 2004 and 2008, it’s in the [501](c)(3), [501](c)(4) kinds of activity, coalitions of groups who are operating with strategies.

You have great and interesting experience that a lot of the people we have interviewed don’t have. So I am anxious to ask you a few questions. But I am going to start with a general one. From your perspective, having served in these party and independent groups, what are the things that disturb you about the way we elect our presidents?

Well, I don’t think this is going to be a big surprise to most people. I think it, at one time, was certainly changed with the early contest, particularly in the primary session. There are two pieces, of course, of how each party picks its nominee: the nomination process and the actual political process. Part of me, intellectually, says this is a great country. And I love politics. I love the act of voters all going out en masse, getting excited about issues. And candidates, but candidates are a vehicle for voters to move their issues and move their lives. I always tell candidates that you are really a vehicle. You are what they want to see something better in their lives and in their government and in their world. Now it’s always hard for politicians, where so much attention is on individuals, it’s hard for them to remember that . . .

These people aren’t really there for you.

Yeah. [It’s] not as much [about] charisma, as I want my kids to go to school. And I need to make a pickup payment in the lot. And we’d like to take a vacation. And I am worried about old age. My mom is not going to be able to stay in her home. All of those things come into everyday lives. All of those things get affected by government.

Now sometimes we — I mean all of us in the political world and candidates — don’t do a very good job of connecting those things to their lives. Not just us; members of the press sometimes are way more interested in strategies than the actual issues. But the nominating process, I think — everyone’s probably told you this — obviously, this year’s nominating process is chaotic. It is just so frontloaded that how much thoughtful willowing is going on with the nominees. The process is going to be done right after Christmas. And I don’t know how many voters will be paying attention. There needs to be a reform in the nominating process.

I think at one time it drug out for several months, which was probably a very good thing. A lot of people get to look over the potential nominees. A lot less buyers’ remorse, which at times parties have had. A lot of it is driven by the press. I think not driven by, but it certainly has made Iowa and New Hampshire such a big deal, because they want to watch the horse race. Every other state says: “Are these the only two states in America that have a kitchen table? There must be kitchen tables around other states.” And, yeah, we probably should start off with Florida or Texas or New York or California. The cost is so overwhelming. But there are other states besides those two that are small, have retail politics. All of the states have voters who could be engaged and interested. Those are the only two states in America that get to pick our nominees in our party? It’s happening in both parties. So that’s a given.

Is there a consensus forming as to how it might be performed in the future?

I don’t have a sense that there is a consensus forming.

Probably nothing for this cycle?

Well, this one is out of the barn door. No, I think there are a couple of things. There is the thought of having regional [primaries] that move around every four years. I don’t think that works. It’s all in the Northeast or all in the South regions. I think you need some selection — not unlike what they tried to do, which is Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada — some sort of scattering of various states, small to medium starting out.

But I think it’s got to rotate beyond those states. I think you have to pick other states every four years, to some degree, to start this process. I don’t know that it’s going to happen, as long as Iowa and New Hampshire are first, every presidential nominee promises they will do Iowa and New Hampshire first. The other 48 states [are] saying “how come?” But it all boils down to politics; you get an incumbent president. And sure, he says, “Well, of course I’ll keep Iowa and New Hampshire first.”

This discussion has been going on for 25 years.

Yeah. I think, in earnest, since the ’70s, the first time that the nomination process was followed so closely in the press, because with it comes where the candidates go. They don’t go to other states, except to export money. Some states don’t see the nominees ever. Then they say: “How do you expect us to become Republican or become Democrat if the leaders or potential leaders or party never come here and campaign? We never get to see them.” The amount of money and the political structure of those two states, the rest of us say: “We never get built like that. We never get that infrastructure built, because nobody ever comes here. We are never part of this.” The Iowa party can charge whatever it chooses for its caucus list.

I think it’s not the money as much as the excitement. People get to see our nominees. And we are some other state, and we haven’t seen a presidential nominee here in gosh knows how long, right? How do they become politically active in their state or their region with nobody ever coming and talking? America likes to know its politicians. Well, how do you know someone who never shows up there? There are all kinds of stuff. It obviously, needs reform. I don’t have any great ideas about how that should be done.

How about the general [election]?

There are all kinds of people and all kinds of versions. When you’re at the party, there are folks looking at it from different places, and an awful lot of the people who want to reform the system have never really worked in the system. Maybe I am wrong. That could be wrong. But I think of someone who has ran a presidential or ran either one of the parties, and I look at a lot of the reform folks.

Granted there is too much money in politics. Well, I am not sure I don’t disagree with that. Some of the reforms have been good. I mean people thought there would be absolutely no money if you got rid of the parties raising soft money. Well, there is more money in politics than we have ever had before; that’s come in [through] small donors off the Internet. I am sure — maybe to the abhorrence of the people who didn’t want to see money in politics — to some degree, the parties and the advocacy groups, because of the Internet, are healthier than ever with thousands of Americans contributing, which I think is a good thing.

Do you see the ballooning of small-donor gifts as something that’s going to continue to occur in the future?

Well, who knows? It basically went into effect in 2003. We have gone through one presidential, one congressional. We’re going into another presidential. I don’t know. You have to continue to engage people, which is why the rhetoric on the Internet’s pretty hot to engage people.

Everybody, just like they used to, knows their direct-mail base or what their donors want to hear as far as political enthusiasm and the future of the country and spinning your vision, and what is going on, as well as here are all of the terrible things that are going to happen if we don’t win or have this money. Direct mail appeals are hot as well.

We haven’t figured out a way to have long, scholarly discourses with folks to explain very complicated [issues], whether it’s health care, whether it’s energy, whatever it is. Explaining how we fix the health care system, how we make ourselves energy independent, all of those things — we haven’t figured out how to have long discourses with the people, to keep people’s attention, or get the information to them in a reliable way and from a reliable source that they trust, that allows voters to discern where they want to come down on those issues, and who they think best represents them.

We’ll have our nominees chosen very early next year. Will there be more time for that kind of discussion? And at the same time, do you think the voters are going to get sick of these nominees?

A lot of the voters won’t tune in until Labor Day of 2008, no matter what, because of the way the system is. Only the voters in certain primary states really see them. If you read front to back The New York Times and The Washington Post and other major papers, or watch CNN or MSNBC 24 hours a day like most of the junkies like us do, you see a lot of them.

But if you are not in Iowa or New Hampshire or Nevada or South Carolina right now, or in one of the other frontloaded states, you never see these guys. You never see the ads. You don’t get any mail. If you are in Washington state, or pick another state that’s late in the system, or not in the first up through Tsunami Tuesday, even at that, some folks will [never get] to them, because everybody can’t play everywhere. You really won’t see these presidential candidates unless you are a battleground state for the elections.

We in Washington may be tired of them, but people out there will still be learning about them.

Well, if you are in Iowa, and eventually if you are in one of the battleground states — Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, New Mexico, and probably Nevada this time around, and that other same select group of battleground states — you’ll start seeing attacks and organizing probably close to after the nominees are chosen. The third-party groups and whatever’s allowable — the issue advocacy, or whatever is allowable — you will start seeing that, to some degree, in the spring.

What about the opportunity to talk about the complex issues? Does this afford that opportunity?

Well, there is certainly time. [There are] several issues. Voters are busy. And there are a multitude of informational sources coming at them every day. I am not sure they are going to have the time to sit down and read a 12-part series in their newspaper or anything else about any one of the issues. I guess if everyone did, most of us who do politics — try and explain issues and say our person is best at this, and going to provide health care with these parameters, and do it in 30 seconds in mail, e-mail, text messaging and all the ways we are going to try and do it — we’d be out of a job.

I think at least some of us think that would be good someday, if the American public read long, dense-packed, well-written articles and/or studies and came out on the other side, and went: “I got it. This is what I’m going to do. I am going to go vote for this person.” It just hasn’t proven to be our history. I think most of the candidates’ advisers tell them not to do anything in detail, because when you do anything in detail it gets attacked. That’s a way to pull anything apart. And you start pulling the little pieces and the threads and unravel everything. And you get the outrageous statements that someone’s going to do this or take that away from you or take away your gun and your Bible, which, of course, is just not true.

And your doctor.

Yeah. Then another group, health, who has a great investment in this cumbersome, poor delivery system, overly expensive system of health care, who has nothing to do with doctors, is the pharmaceuticals or the hospitals. Or somebody sees an advantage of killing health care reform and says we are going to take away your doctor. But why would they take away the doctors? So reforms can be tough.

What’s going to happen, these guys are going to try to define each other in those early months. And we all teach them, define yourself before they define you. And if you are defined, then start defining the other person. That means negatively: what’s bad about them, what’s good about you. That’s going to start off in the spring in the states that are battleground states.

If you are California, New York, Montana, or probably Alabama and Nebraska, you aren’t going to see any ads. You are never going to see ads. You are not going to see any candidates. What you learn about the potential president, you are going to pick up from someplace else, because the campaigns will go directly to the battleground states. So you have the primary states and the battleground states, and that’s it.

Is that not a problem for Democrats in that if your candidate concentrates on the battleground states, you have members of Congress who are newly elected in some of these other states?

Well, I guess it’s a problem, but it’s a good problem to have, because the majority elected candidates in nontraditional places, because they had pretty much taken a lot of the seats in congressional districts that a Democratic president had won over “x” amount of time until the next redistricting. There is some of that problem for the Republicans. There are Republicans sitting in states that Democrats carried, and in some districts that [Al] Gore or [John] Kerry carried, fewer than Republicans.

But there is lots of other business going on out there right now. Independents are running from the Republican Party. They have a brand name problem. They have incumbents in places that Democrats have a real shot at. So for the Democrats, it’s a good thing. If I am a candidate in a 4 percent potentially Republican district, I am saying, “What’s good about this?” But you are a congressman or woman; if you didn’t have that problem, you wouldn’t be in Congress.

So yeah, that’s a problem. In some states, the committees and others will concentrate on protection. I also admit, in some of the states where you are a nominee of the other party running in the state against the tide, frankly, not having the nominee come, and there not being a great, big presidential fight over the top of you with both sides doing the negative campaigning and tons of mail coming in, to some degree, you are better off.

Yeah. It could work either way.

They don’t come in and have a big fight. Or we’re a 15-20 point Democrat state, so the Republicans think, great, whatever, it’s New York. And they don’t really like the nominee. It’s not [Rudy] Giuliani; maybe they’d like him, since he was the mayor of New York, but [he’d have his] own set of problems. But I am better off just running here away from the top of the ticket. So if they don’t show up here, I am fine.

Which often happens these days.

Right. But at the same time, they get linked. If the top of the ticket isn’t popular, someone thinks in your district, you are going to get linked to that nominee by mail. Like John Kerry, if you are in West Virginia — well, that was somewhat of a competitive state. But they are going to link the nominee in some state to the top of the ticket with all of these outrageous things, anyway. That just drives the folks in those kinds of districts; that I get linked, anyway, and I get none of the money, none of the support, none of the work that goes on in the battleground stops over the top of me. So it’s sort of a two-edged sword coming at you from both ways.

Now if you are an incumbent, and you have been there a while, and your profile is up, and you are outside of that, voters go, “oh, we know so-and-so very well.” You just don’t believe it. The freshmen, they are definitely a little more vulnerable to that. Their work is to get yourself out there, profiled, so that voters go: “I don’t really think she’s like that. She’s been here. She’s done a good job for the last few years of Congress.” You try and inoculate yourself against that when you know it’s coming.

I want to shift the subject just a little bit, or maybe quite a bit. I have been doing a lot of reading. And I am kind of confused about the current state of the Democratic Party. I don’t know whether you’ve read The Argument. Have you read this new book about the creation of the 527 high-donor groups?

What’s the new book?

It’s a book [The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics] by a guy named Matt Bai. He generally writes for The New York Times Magazine. It’s a very interesting book. If you haven’t read it, then I won’t ask you about it.

No, I haven’t read the book.

It has a couple of premises, which I want to ask you about. One is that when the big donors like [George] Soros decided they wanted to set up their own operation, Democracy Alliance or whatever that’s called, and all of these other 527s that do ads and get out the vote, is that they did it because they thought the Party was too centrist. These were ideologically-driven rich people. My question is, what has it done to the party? Has that hurt the party? How has it changed the Democratic Party to have all of that going on outside of the control of the organization?

Well, first of all, they didn’t just decide to go do this. A lot of people played in the party for years. This changed with the law. Remember, this was created after the law changed in 2002. And there was a great concern. I think the party would have said they were all concerned. I can’t speak for the Republicans, although the Democrats had utilized the ability to use soft money to support the whole ticket from top to bottom — senators and governors and state legislatures and whatever was on the ballot — by using that money, mostly for field operations and GOTV. And that was removed.

I think most folks would say in 2004 that creation of an entity to go out and do grassroots, door-to-door, on-the-ground activities, whether it’s organizing through America Votes [or] through ACT [America Coming Together]. What ACT did is put thousands of door knockers and people on the streets talking to each other. I don’t think the party, nor that candidate, would have thought that was a good thing.

There was some 527 phone and mail and television. The Media Fund did a lot of that. But a tremendous amount went on the ground, which was trying to reach voters and excite voters and talk to them multiple times at the doors about Democratic issues or the issues that are important to them in their lives, and to get them engaged in the conversation about voters. I don’t think anyone would say that hurt the party. The party raised more money than ever before. It continues to raise more money.

But it wasn’t under the control of the party.

Well, no. It couldn’t be. Is the money still there? Yeah. What did it do? It severed the coordination of the party with a lot of these institutional and organizational supporters and issue supporters and their resources. It severed that coordination on purpose. If you read the law, [John] McCain wanted to stop the coordination. And he did. So it wasn’t under the control of the party. It couldn’t be. That’s the law now. So would any party say we rather those people didn’t organize their money independently? Or wish they didn’t go out and talk about health care, the problems with this war, how this administration has screwed up the environment, health care, everything else along the way, the corruption, the bad decisions? Why would the party say we don’t want that to go on?

Right. But there might be a preference.

They can participate in the party. And some of them do. Some of them are not partisans. They have an ideology. Some of them were horrified at this war and horrified at what was going on. And yeah, they wanted to participate in something.

Well actually, it did produce more money, total, than the old soft-money system.

Yes.

So that in itself would be a very good thing [from their standpoint]. The question I have in my mind is whether it sort of created two camps in the party: the organization, the establishment, and then this other little more free-flowing . . .

Well, I don’t know what you mean by camps apart. I can’t speak for the Republican Party. The Democratic Party has always had multiple camps and multiple-issue agendas and multiple philosophies in it. I see it continues to have it. I grew up in the party. I was in Chicago in ’68. We had the anti-war folks. We had the establishment. We have gone through that. We have had issues that we have gone through. Our party had gone through issues on choice. We are a pro-choice party, but we have candidates who are not [pro]-choice; they consider themselves pro-life Democrats.

I can’t speak for the other party. They say they contain dissent, but they don’t, not in comparison to the Democrats. So most of these folks contribute, participate, do something in the Democratic Party. But they have a stronger voice outside. But you will find all that dissent in the party as well — whether it’s California is a place that has a very different view on things in the world than Democrats from Nebraska — and they are all in the party.

Whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent, is this a substantial difference just from now as opposed to 2000?

Well, the main difference is there would have been a mechanism for the party to approach these folks and say: “If you are going to have all of these resources, align them and coordinate them with us. Put them in these places, and help coordinate where that goes.” So people could have said, “No, I won’t.” And there has always been that opportunity for them to go off and put their money in third party, (c)(3)s, (c)(4)s.

Well, in fact 527s are . . .

The 527, frankly, was a growth that came to us by the Republican Party creating 527s to do attack ads. So the fact that someone else picked up the strategy and said, “Well, we can use it to defend our candidates, or we can use it to push issues, or we can use it as a way to attack them.” Now it’s just another vehicle.

Probably, if the law hadn’t changed, 527s may or may not — I mean if more money could have flowed to the parties, state parties, and message. But there is always some group, somebody who says, “The parties aren’t doing it right; we have to do it our way.” Sometimes it’s driven by a small group of individuals. Sometimes they say things that the parties really don’t want them to say. 

Candidates have something to say about it. They think, “I don’t want my name on that crap.” First of all, I am not sure we can substantiate it. It takes me off message. Then we are going to answer that for weeks, because I think that’s a bad ad. So Club for Growth does it or Swift Boat Veterans do it or someone else. That’s definitely a problem. All of the money went through the parties.

To some degree, you get a little less of that, because candidates have to be associated with it. That’s what the law chose to do. Candidates aren’t associated with it. They can’t have anything to do with it. Anybody can say anything. As we all know, where is the fact-checking? The fact-checking all has to come in on the press. But does the press then have $66 million to put behind the ad? No, they do a little fact check. They do a little watch in the corner. And they say, oh, this isn’t right. This is probably wrong on this or that.

It doesn’t work.

So I am not sure what [Bai] was trying to get at. To say that these guys went off and did this on their own, the law stopped them from coordinating with parties, beyond their basic gift to a party or to a candidate, the law said that’s it. And for large institutions, whether they be unions or corporations or issue advocacy, [they] went to court recently and changed that. They also were told that’s all you can do. You can’t go give the party any more money and have the state party. You can’t do any of that. They always played in the party. So now they are doing independent expenditures.

The other impact of this law change on the party structure is that now the state parties don’t have the advantage of all the soft money to spend. I gather the national party then has to help them out. Are there any real implications from that?

Well, a lot of the soft money, where allowable before the law change, went to state parties, because they could expend it depending on all the other stuff.

Well, in fact, that’s what soft money was.

Right. You were a state, like Missouri, that had a governor, had state legislatures, had county commissioners, had maybe ballot initiatives. You could spend money on turning out your votes, telling folks to vote Democratic, doing the grassroots work, turning people out, because you had a lot of other stuff on the ballot. And you could organize the money — state allowable money and federally allowable money — based on what the average voter was going to look at in the polling place in a Missouri election.

So now they say you can’t even say “Vote Democratic,” because you would help a federal candidate with soft money, even if it were 25 percent – 75 percent, and you paid for that with the 25 percent federal money, because the 75 percent would help the top ticket. So therefore, it has to be all paid for with hard dollars. It has seriously impacted that kind of activity.

Now state parties can still, if they just cut off the federal races, go talk about their governor’s race or their state legislature races, all of that, as long as they don’t say “Vote Democratic.” They say, “Vote for Sara Fritz for state legislature.” They can spend whatever state allowable money they choose. It basically breaks the party apart in that respect. To that degree, since the national party can’t raise the soft money, they cannot raise soft money for state parties. State parties have to do it on their own. So they don’t get any help from the national parties. The national party has tried to help them build their hard-money structure, which a lot of state parties had not done that, because they had lived on state allowable money.

Nonfederal money.

Because that’s what they could run on. It has changed that structure. But also, with the growth of the hard-money dollars, both parties have more hard money, and some of that goes to state parties.

Like the DNC is putting its own representatives, people on its own payroll, in some of the states?

Well, they put organizers in the state to help the state. That’s part of the contribution. I doubt you’ll find a single state party that wasn’t excited and applauded the additional help for organizing and that kind of activity.

Are there any 527s popping up on a statewide basis?

There have been 527s in states, sure. You have this mirror image going on in the states, which is what’s allowable in the state, if the state has decided to enact a very McCain-Feingold like structure, where all kinds of law, activity, or kinds of money are disallowed. Then based under what’s allowable under their law, 527s work in the state for governors or state legislatures or something. They are going to create a 527 to move their money through to get their issue heard.

North Carolina is a case in point. Wisconsin is a case where Greater Wisconsin was created, which is an entity outside. It happens in a variety of places. And you say, well, you can only give the governor $100 a year. Somebody is going to create a vehicle that says, OK, then what can I do? Then there will be some ability for political speech, and that entity will be created. It will probably be something that’s nontaxable under the IRS rules. So it will probably be under the 500 section of the law. How it’s constructed in the state to do its work will be based on the state law.

All of the things we have been talking about in the last 10 minutes were enacted under the name of reform. Is this reform, in your view?

Well, it’s change. I am not sure it’s reform. Reform is, I guess, in the eye of the beholder. What is reform? I think it’s a good thing for candidates to have control over their message and the parties have control over their message. But until we have publicly-funded elections, and we have equalized how the money is spent on political speech, we are going to keep going through these waves of reform. Because someone sees the 527 as John McCain’s, or the 527s as the tag-team in the primary with no accountability, and didn’t know who the voters were.

I think some of this has been good. You can’t have a 527 without telling the voters who you are and what the money is behind. I think voters and candidates have a right to know who is spending money in the electoral system. You can gauge, partly, what the message is by who pays for it. If a candidate pays for it, you have a pretty good idea what the message is about. A 527 is created by a bunch of entities, the corporations or the oil companies or one or two individuals, whether it’s the [Richard Mellon] Sciafes or the Soroses, whatever. You can make your decisions based on why that ad was put on.

So, yeah, I think disclosure is reform. Whether or not [it] chopped off all the coordination between all of the issue groups and the political money with parties and candidates, it did create this Internet, and without the Internet, we would have a different kind of thing. The reform came down at a time with this magical new ability to reach individuals. And you are right. There is more money than ever before. But those who want to take money out of the system were probably disappointed with this reform.

I think they are. What about the influence of bloggers in the party?

It’s pretty amazing. It’s a whole kind of new world to me.

Does it concern you?

Oh, I don’t think so. Lots of people talk about politics and tune into politics. We all know there are problems, things that concern us. I am concerned that there is not much fact-checking. And I am worried about the long-term demise of true journalism where people go out and interview both sides and write a pretty evenhanded article that does support the facts as closely as possible. Someone checks those facts and says, “Actually, this number is way off; it can’t be true,” or spends weeks investigating something and saying there is a lot of talk, but there is no fire. I am worried about that whole good journalistic process.

I get e-mails from all kinds of my family and friends — mostly my family members — [about] who, where, what e-mail traffic they are on. I am always a little worried about all of this outrageous stuff. I heard this. This is like, who are you talking to? I have to remind them, no one checks the Internet. It’s a lot like gossip in small towns. Until you get to the bottom of it, you never really know, is there a little kernel of truth that was distorted.

There is a lot more of that stuff going on.

That’s not just the bloggers anymore. That’s a system with no facts in it or limited facts. And I think there are better bloggers than others.

Talk radio, too. I recently was on a road trip in which I had Sirius Radio and had the option of listening to all of these various channels with talk radio. And man, the information that gets traded at that level is pretty specious, too.

Right. And talk radio has been going on for how long? It’s been going on for a long, long time.

Although there is more liberal talk on the radio. And it’s just as specious.

There is more liberal talk radio on now than there used to be. But now, to some degree — I don’t know if you’ve ever seen sort of a schematic or a drawing of the Internet — most of the stuff on the Internet is not politics. Most of the Internet is pornography and commerce. Then there is this very little, small portion over here that is news and politics of the total traffic on the Internet. Then of that, the Democrats, say the blue, the liberals, the progressives, and those folks, right now have way more of this small portion of the Internet devoted to that.

The news organizations maintain a good size chunk of that, which is good. And then the sort of liberal blogging sites have over 50 percent compared to the more conservative folks. But for how many of them there are, I hope they are responsible. I would like to see some more responsibility. But the Internet’s going to be just like direct mail or gossip or whatever went on before, and it’s just going to be as hot as it can be.

I am going to ask you another question, which will show what an old person I am. I have been marveling at the activities of the unions, particularly in the 527s, and big money they have been putting into these groups. I covered labor many, many years ago when AFL-CIO COPE had control of every cent that was spent by organized labor. So you can tell that I am a little behind the times. But what’s happening there, in your view? You worked for the SEIU, so you know what their involvement in politics is.

Well, I’d say it’s changed substantially. Because when I was there, they were still AFL-CIO, and they were just changing with reforming itself and making lots of changes as it grew from a union of sort of more independent individual affiliates. It’s become much more cohesive. They have done all kinds of things and increased their amount of money they spent on politics, which has increased many, many times over, and have taken a different track. They believe that they need to go on organizing from the AFL. Although in a lot of places, they have reached agreements to work together. I don’t know all of the intricacies of that.

But the thing I wonder is, have these changes improved the political powers of the unions or not?

What kind of changes are you talking about?

The idea that they have broken up, and some of these unions are offering up some pretty big money and getting involved with the big donors.

Well, the breaking up of the union movement, overall, was that a good thing? I think most of us would like to see [those] on the outside but closely allied work with both sides. We would like to not have that split. But the increased expenditure of unions in the movement and in politics, how do we see that? From my vantage point, I think it’s great. The basic organizing structure in this country, without unions, there really is no other entity that looks and has the organizing machinery on the left on the progressive side that talks about everyday Americans needing health care. Who else out there is doing that and has any real power and heft versus the other side. The company is just driven by how much money they make. That’s their sole goal in life. So they say, “We don’t want to pay people’s health care; it costs us too much money.”

Many years ago, there was criticism of labor spending money on politics when the issue was that they should spend it on organizing their unions. Now they are spending even more money on politics.

I think some would say they are spending more money on [politics]. SEIU is spending more money on politics and more money on organizing, because they have gone through dues changes and all kinds of stuff. People will say, “Look, we are spending money on organizing.” But until we change the politics in this country — if you are not a public employer, or you are a private employer union that’s organizing the private sector — until we change the labor relations board, we organize new locals all the time.

We never get to the first contract. We have a vote. They will say if someone wants to write that story, we have all kinds of workers out there voting to have a union. We never get the first contract, because they take it to the National Labor Relations Board, and these corporations and the businesses never have to come to the table to negotiate a first contract. Well after a couple years, when you have voted for a union, you never get the first contract. Of course the employees say, well, what did they get out of that, except now I am harassed by my employer?

The time I am talking about was a time when they could still win organizing drives. So now their political involvement is a survival tactic, is what you are saying? Not that the SEIU is about to collapse. But they feel that it’s more important for their economic power to be . . .

Well, many policy changes that were made affected their ability as unions to survive — globalization, free trade agreements. A lot of things have happened that were policy changes that happened in the political world that affected the fact that they even have anybody here to organize. I can’t necessarily speak to that. I think they’ll always [be] with sort of the yin and yang. Yeah, we have to organize. We need more workers. And we had more workers. I see people look back to a time when they had a lot of workers. Did they miss the boat? Did they not do whatever they should have done, because they had a lot of sectors organized? Should they have been organizing new sectors? I think that’s a historical debate that goes on for a long time.

Now you have a group of folks who probably weren’t making those decisions, or they are both at the AFL and the SEIU and other places, saying, OK, what are we going to do? And you have policy changes at the political level. Is politics a way to help organizing? Yes. And is organizing helping politics? Yes. Isn’t the overall movement to make working people’s lives better? Yes. So I think they are trying to use both tools, and obviously, public sector or SEIU and a lot of public sector organizing is going on at a pretty good clip. Where is the private sector organizing? Well, that’s another set of rules. Private sector organizing has a different set of rules.

Those old industrial unions aren’t involved much in politics either. They are still way back in the pack.

Well, actually, a lot of them are losing members. They are in survival level. They are fighting every day. And some of them are extremely involved in politics. Do they have SEIU or AFSCME money? I mean those guys are huge. At least AFSCME, they are big. They are a million members plus, each of them. SEIU is a 1.7 million now. That’s a lot of money.

One last question; it has to do with the burgeoning of the consultant industry. You worked in the party structure. And now you are a consultant. That has been often criticized I think by people who are more involved with the parties, that the consultants get paid large amounts. There is not much accountability. They tend to give candidates a fair standard wisdom, because they are worried about their own win or loss record. And they don’t encourage candidates to take risks and that sort of thing. You have heard all the criticisms. How do you feel about that? Do you have an opinion in that field?

Well, some consultants make a lot of money. Some make more than others. Wherever the money is expended out of the campaign, that’s where you make your excess amount of money. There is a reason why certain pollsters then take on the role of directing the media as well, because most campaigns spend most of their money on the media. Is media consultants making more somehow their fault, or the fact that television and radio rates just keep going higher and higher and higher? That’s where the money goes. Consultants advise, and candidates use their consultants. I am not sure when the party is complaining. There are people who think maybe they make too much money. But if you win a lot of races, candidates like someone.

A lot of it just comes down to the chemistry. I interviewed all of these people. And I really liked this person. This person has won more races in my state than anybody else. Candidates have some responsibility in this, in that they choose the consultants. If you have somebody who doesn’t want to take a risk, and a consultant who says don’t take a risk, what was first, the chicken or the egg? I don’t want to take a risk, and the consultant says, “don’t take a risk.” Some consultants say, “Well, I told him to take the risk, and he didn’t take it.” Well, he didn’t make you take the risk. He didn’t make her take the risk.

There are a lot of consultants. But there is a lot to be done, whether it’s ballot initiatives, and it’s a big industry. There is a lot of money. There is a lot of money in campaigns. And there are a lot of folks who do a lot of pro bono work and help a lot of emerging groups. Consultants also spend hours with candidates giving them their best ideas and pitching them, and they don’t get the job. I don’t know.

You don’t have an ax to grind in this area.

No. I think we all have disagreements with the consultant community at different times. We see the burgeoning affect of ballot initiatives. But the far right has been using ballot initiatives for years, and our side doesn’t use them in the same way, doesn’t have the thought that looks about and shows one particular thing that I worked on a lot. Certain consultants, it’s just a money dump. Don’t go there. Just give us the money. We’ll do this or that with it. I don’t know. We all have different reasons. You usually go out into the consultant world because you have done all the party stuff. You have learned a lot. You have done that. And then what do you do? The party or someone expects us to all go away? I would say the party also hires a lot of consultants. So I assume it’s just the consultants that aren’t working at the party.

Because you don’t have an ax to grind here.

No, I don’t. I think we missed the boat on stuff. But I don’t know if you make a better case. I mean there are consultants who don’t like ballot initiatives. There are some that don’t like certain groups. And frankly, I think a bit more frustrating for some folks are the talking-head people on television, [who] are going to the same consultant over and over and over and over again.

Well, in fact, some of them are on the payroll of the networks.

Right, and then the networks go to the same ones over and over again. If that particular consultant has a bias, believes you can do it on the media, then that’s a bias you are going to get. It’s just sort of like there are more kitchen tables in Iowa. Well, there are a lot of other people who have done campaigns. Asking one consultant to say, well, why did this happen and why did this lose, it becomes urban legend. No one ever looks at it and says, how can they possibly say that? That issue wasn’t even in the campaign, and yet they want to blame that particular issue or this or that for the loss. It’s like, wait a minute. Those are the things I think drive people crazy.

Instant analysis, really.

Yeah, but everybody uses consultants. It’s really not an ax I have to grind, other than I think how people use consultants. I am not sure everybody really uses consultants well. You use them to do things that you need help with doing and you don’t have the capacity inside to do. It’s a way of doing it without burdening your organization, or you need specialized work on one thing, but you don’t need it on everything else. Or the person doesn’t want to do the institutional work anymore. They want to do specialized work. With consultants, you can go and get multiple ideas. Sometimes an organization or an entity can be pretty insular. And if you reach out and talk to a lot of consultants, a lot of people have done it with a lot of different versions.

You may get some good ideas.

Yeah. When I was at the DNC, lots of people came in with lots of ideas. I didn’t have the money to hire everyone at that point in time or other places. But there was smart thinking going on out there. And I appreciated that.