Patricia Campos-Medina, a longtime labor organizer and progressive Democrat in New Jersey, lost the Democratic primary for the state's open U.S. Senate seat last June to then-Rep. Andy Kim. In unsuccessfully campaigning, then canvassing for Vice President Kamala Harris' losing bid and now watching as President-elect Donald Trump readies to return to the Oval Office, she said she's learned a few lessons, among them: Democrats' vaunted ground game failed them.
Volunteering for the Harris campaign in the month leading up to the November vote made that much clear, Campos-Medina told Salon. She said that as she knocked on doors in working-class neighborhoods of Reading, Pennsylvania, which boasts a majority Latino population, a slew of residents informed her that she was the first Democratic canvasser to come to their doors. Republicans mobilized for Trump had visited their homes two or three times by then, they told her.
"To me, that was a failure of implementation of a ground plan for the Harris campaign," she said in a phone interview. "People didn't know what President Biden had done for them, and we failed to communicate it at that grassroots level," she added, pointing to the economy as a key issue.
Hahrie Han, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, agrees. She told Salon that, from the resources and data she's seen, the Democratic Party's biggest mistakes in the 2024 election were neglecting to interface with local organizations that had already established long-term, ongoing relationships with communities and failing to leverage the spring and summer ground game tactic of "cleaning their lists." Those cleanings, Han said, would have allowed the campaign to index its strongest and weakest backers alongside the nature of their support to understand where the campaign stands.
"The fact that the Harris campaign was so surprised by [the decrease in Democratic voters in 2024], to me, is an indication that they hadn't done as much work as they should have, cleaning their lists and doing that work in the summer that would have given them a better sense of where they would and should be in the fall," Han said in a phone interview.
Election data largely suggests that the 2024 contest was defined by who didn't show up: a critical mass of Democratic voters who had previously turned out for President Joe Biden in 2020. Experts have also posited that the election outcome was a result of voters punishing the Democratic Party over the perceived state of the economy, rather than an endorsement of MAGA policies.
Campos-Medina said that discrepancy was particularly relevant for the working-class and Latino voters she spoke to while campaigning and canvassing.
"The number one priority for the Latino community was the economy, was rent affordability, was issues of investment in their businesses, in their jobs," Campos-Medina said, echoing Han's emphasis on year-round voter outreach. "That message of what President Biden was doing didn't trickle down to them."
But Han said the issue is more complex. Instead of failing in messaging, Han argued that the Democratic Party had failed to close the burgeoning gap between those in control of the campaign and the voters they're trying to reach.
"It's much more about do ordinary people feel like the Democratic Party and the Democratic candidates care about them and are aware of and sympathetic to their concerns, and do the people who are controlling the system embrace them as humans," Han said.
That tension was clear to Campos-Medina by the time she returned from volunteering in Pennsylvania. She recalled telling her husband then that Harris' fate had already been sealed in Pennsylvania — and that Democrats were not going to win the battleground.
She had her own experience trying to win a campaign as a woman of color in 2024's political environment.
Campos-Medina lost to then-Rep. Kim in the Senate contest over the seat former Sen. Bob Menendez resigned from in August after being convicted on federal bribery charges, garnering just 16% of the vote in the June primary to his 74%. She was also unsuccessful in an effort to be appointed to fill the seat in the interim before the winning candidate was sworn in.
Challenges she faced on the campaign trail in fundraising and battles with local Democratic committees left Campos-Medina with a second lesson, she said: The Democratic party inadequately supports female candidates of color in elections.
"One of the difficulties for women running for office — and this is what I experienced — is that we are good messengers, we are good organizers, we know how to dig in and build power structures, but yet, the donor class doesn't see women, they don't invest in women early on in races as they should," said Campos-Medina, who is also the president of Latina Civic, a nonpartisan political action committee backing Latina candidates.
While Harris blew campaign fundraising out of the water, raising $100 million in the first 48 hours of her campaign, she had also spent the weeks leading up to her candidacy being underestimated. As pressure mounted on President Joe Biden to exit the race following his blunder in the first presidential debate, Democrats looked for any other potential replacement rather than the obvious choice: Harris, his vice president. Some donors reportedly pushed for an open convention before accepting her as the likely nominee, and pundits questioned whether she was capable of rising to the occasion at all, much less leading the nation.
But Campos-Medina said that witnessing a woman of color suddenly become the face of the Democratic Party inspired her to throw her political energy behind Harris' fledgling campaign. She joined organizing Zoom calls aimed at fundraising and mobilizing voters of different demographics and volunteered to get out the vote.
Seeing Harris' fast-tracked ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket — and the fundraising records she was able to set in the early aughts of her campaign — Campos-Medina said, made her feel hopeful that the Democratic Party could turn the tide in the future. Of most importance, she argued, should be making the right investments into their coalition now — especially in women of color running for office.
"They need to invest more in women and women of color running for office. In the end, they need us in the party," she said, arguing that if Democrats wish to rebuild a winning coalition, they have to include working-class people, women and people of color in "the leadership and the planning of how we run this campaign from the ground."
"They cannot continue not investing in us, and I hope that we get that message coming out of this election," she added.
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