DNC Chair Discusses His Party's Future

With the event of the past month, 2000's election may feel like it took place decades ago. College Democrats, who gathered Monday morning to hear Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe speak, learned that the party's technological infrastructure seems decades old as well. McAuliffe spoke about the need to upgrade its systems in order to compete with the Republicans.

Since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, many have noticed a lack of partisanship and a greater sense of unity between the parties. While McAuliffe told the group that there was "not one inch of room" between the party and President Bush on the president's military policy in fighting terrorism, the chairman did not hesitate to criticize the Republicans, at one point terming their message one of "hatred."

Recent polls put the president's approval rating above 90 percent, a figure once thought statistically impossible and one which seems to indicate that in this time of crisis the American public has accepted Bush as its commander in chief. McAuliffe, however, has not forgotten the contested 2000 presidential election, especially what occurred in Florida.

"If you were a person of color and tried to vote in certain districts in Florida in 2000, you were required to have three or four forms of identification," McAuliffe said. "I could have walked in with a library card. Folks, that is voter suppression. That is voter intimidation."

According to McAuliffe, identification checks were not the only way Republicans attempted to prevent minorities from voting in the state that gave Bush the presidency by an official margin of 537 votes.

"It is not a coincidence that the Leon County Police were doing headlight checks, roadblocks, on the only road leading to the ballot box in minority districts," he said. "It's not a coincidence that these machines don't work only in minority districts."

McAuliffe attributed the reason for this occurrence to the Democratic party getting "two out of every three Hispanic votes and 9.2 out of every 10 African-American votes."

"People have fought and died for the right to vote in this country," he said, "and I'll be darned if we're going to let the Republican National Committee take that right away from them."

McAuliffe began the hour-long event in the Satow Room on the fifth floor of Lerner Hall by speaking of the success he felt his party is on the verge of achieving in next month's elections, proclaiming that Democrats are ahead in the polls in the New Jersey and Virginia governors' races and that the party has won 10 out of 10 mayoral elections so far this year.

New York's mayoral election is what brought McAuliffe to town, and he expected to spend Monday campaigning with the Democratic nominee. Because Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer cast the results of the election in doubt by rescinding his Oct. 11 concession to Public Advocate Mark Green, McAuliffe said his role would be to attempt to serve as a mediator between the two campaigns.

McAuliffe compared this election cycle with the one eight years ago, when the Republicans won the mayor's races in New York and Los Angeles and governorships of New Jersey and Virginia.

"This time around we're going to win all four of them back," he said. "Folks, we are doing great."

Part of the reason for this success, McAuliffe said, is because "the national party has fundamentally changed the way it does business." McAuliffe, who assumed his position in February, said he had "eliminated half the staff" and had "got[ten] rid of every consulting contract in the place."

One of the most significant problems McAuliffe said the party faces is getting its message out to its base. "We get our clocks cleaned every day by the Republican National Committee," he said. "So I ordered a whole overview of our technological background to see how we communicate."

"I found some startling facts," McAuliffe told the group. "The Republican National Committee has 150 million names in their national voter file. If you want to pull off an African-American voter in St. Louis who is pro-choice, pro-gun, and buys Wheaties every third Tuesday, they can do it."

McAuliffe contrasted that to the DNC's voter file, which he said is nonexistent. He compared the Democrats' four hundred thousand direct mail donors to the Republicans' 14.8 million and added that the average age of a Democratic donor is 60, while that of a Republican donor is 48. By June of next year, McAuliffe said, the Democratic party will have 200 million names in its database.

Converting the "sea of red" states in the middle of the country that voted for President Bush to vote Democratic in 2004 is another major goal of the party, McAuliffe said, noting that Al Gore targeted only 17 states. For the party to be in contention next time, he said its efforts to attract voters in rural areas would be stepped up.

A major reason why Al Gore was not able to win in the Electoral College, according to McAuliffe, is that his campaign pulled out of states it could have won. "We're not going to concede one state in the next presidential election," he said.

The few dozen College Democrats in attendance received the chairman's words positively. "I thought he was truly an inspirational speaker, very energetic, and really brought out the importance of our generation and of civic duty in general," said Ilana Golant, CC '04.

Brian Platzer, CC '04, shared that sentiment but had a different take on McAuliffe's presentation.

"I now realize how powerful the salesmen who work for these parties are. It's very impressive to see their pitches," he said.

"It's an interesting side to the macrocosmic perspective of this, and how hard people work to make their message fit with the people whom they want to be their constituents. It's an impressive thing," he said.