Hello fellow Boomanites!
I thought I’d provide an update from my last installment of my Turning Frederick Blue series, our grassroots project to turn Frederick County, Maryland from its current purplish-red state back to its traditional blue.
We got a nice writeup in the local daily newspaper (scroll down a bit from the ferrets story). This has gotten us some more local attention, and last night we delivered a presentation to the local Democratic club, the United Democrats of Frederick County. It was a busy night for the United Dems, as we also got a visit from state Attorney General candidate Doug Gansler.
After Mr. Gansler spoke, one of our Frederick Blue folks, Chris Charuhas, delivered our presentation. Many of the United Dems were already familiar with our project (and greeted us with strong, very-much-appreciated expressions of support), but this was our first chance to really describe our project, with specifics, to the local Democratic community.
Chris’ presentation described:
- The Democratic-leaning history of Frederick County
- The long-term Republican effort to develop a mass-propaganda infrastructure in the wake of Barry Goldwater’s pasting in 1964, and examples of how the GOP’s noise machine has been effective, especially over the last decade or so.
- The failure, until recently, of the national Democratic Party to counteract this (or even to come to the realization that it had a problem)
- Our plan to locally reverse this thirty-year trend that has drowned Frederick County (and many other similar locales nationwide) in red dye.
Frederick Blue is optimistic. As George Lakoff has demonstrated, many voters who mark their ballots Republican don’t so so out of issues, but out of branding, identity, and a perception of GOP strength (not necessarily strength itself; it’s all about perception). They vote Republican because their neighbors do, because the Republican Party has managed to convince much of the public that identifying with the elephant makes them cool, in the same way that tobacco companies were able to imbue smoking with an aura of “with-it-ness.”
So while there will always be a hardcore base of Republican voters in Frederick County, that core is smaller than it appears to be at first glance. A significant number of Frederick County voters continue to identify with the GOP strictly out of habit, and are relatively unaware just how extreme their party has become.
Frederick Blue wants to make it cool to be a Democrat again in Frederick County, by working with the Central Committee and other local Democratic organizations to help give voters tangible, positive reasons to vote for Democrats. Reasons that go beyond the “we’re just like them, only nicer” pitch that suffuses too many Democratic campaigns nationwide. When we do this, we’ll bring the moderate Republicans back home — and we don’t need that many of them.
I believe we opened quite a few eyes with our presentation. At some level, most committed Democrats know just how pervasive the Republican noise machine has become, but some of the Dems there still seemed alarmed when it was all laid out before them in black and white (well, cyan and yellow). We’re all that much closer to being on the same page regarding our mission.
Where do we go from here? Well, we will be delivering a variation of our briefing at the upcoming Western Maryland Democratic Summit at Rocky Gap, in conjunction with Adam Schultz, Andrew Duck’s campaign manager. We’re still doing our fundraising for our publicity campaign, and we will be testing layouts for the website and the blog over the next couple of weeks. Still on target for a May rollout!
Best regards,
Tony Soltero
Frederick Blue
