Amid the Democrats’ celebration over their success in turning out a huge number of black voters in the Senate election in Alabama, party leaders, activists and operatives are seeing a vivid message to increase outreach, mobilization and investment in minority communities.
In the wake of Doug Jones’s victory Tuesday over Roy S. Moore, some Democrats are making the case that the party erred in recent years by failing to put enough of its resources into engaging with black communities, who helped produce the stunning upset in Alabama on Tuesday — and who turned out heavily in Virginia last month as well.
The discussion comes in a year in which the party has debated its mission: Should it focus on luring the white working-class voters who found appeal in President Trump? Or should it look to solidify the diverse crop of voters who have been most loyal?
For now, it seems, the message that has made its way up the party ladder is that the path to victory is through energizing minority communities.
“It’s undeniable that over the course of a number of years, the Democratic Party fell short in our outreach and engagement in communities of color,” said Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “We, frankly, all too frequently took them for granted. We’ve really worked hard to make sure we’re mobilizing with people who know the various communities. That is a really important part of what we’re doing.”
Continue reading the main storyMany people have long felt that Democrats come around during election time asking for their votes, but then do not fight for the issues that matter most to them, several political operatives said. They have also expressed concern that Democratic spending on minority communities was not commensurate with the loyalty that they show to the party. An analysis three years ago found that 98 percent of the money the major Democratic committees spent on consultants went to those who were white.
The eight Democratic organizations with budgets of at least $30 million last year all had white leaders, according to Steve Phillips, an activist and fund-raiser. Mr. Phillips also found that of the first $200 million that independent Democratic groups allocated during last year’s presidential election, none of it went to mobilizing black voters.
Some say they are seeing the beginnings of a shift, after black voter surges in Virginia and Alabama.
About 30 percent of the electorate in the Alabama Senate race was black, according to CNN exit polls, making the black share of the vote in that election higher than it was in both of Barack Obama’s presidential victories. Mr. Jones won 98 percent of the votes among black women and 93 percent among black men.
“I think the writing is on the wall about what the path forward is for progressive politics in this country, and the path forward is through communities of color and women,” said Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, which engages black communities politically.
Ms. Shropshire’s organization received about $600,000 for the Alabama race from Senate Majority PAC, which aims to elect Democrats to the Senate. What it did with that money was very targeted engagement with black voters, Ms. Shropshire said.
BlackPAC representatives, as well as other black-led political organizations and community groups deeply rooted in the state, knocked on more than half a million doors and made tens of thousands of phone calls. They talked to potential voters about issues like health care, criminal justice reform and access to quality education.
They stressed that they were building an infrastructure that would continue to work in communities after the election. They tapped into black churches and historically black colleges and universities. And the efforts extended statewide — from the bustling cities to struggling rural communities.
All this organizing occurred as many on the left bitterly denounced the hurdles that they say Alabama put in place that make it more difficult for minorities to vote, including a voter ID law and the closing of driver’s license offices in predominantly black parts of the state.
All told, the Senate Majority PAC spent $6 million on the Alabama race, $2 million of it on turnout, said Chris Hayden, the organization’s communications director. It was a departure from the traditional role of “super PACs,” which spend primarily on advertising, Mr. Hayden said.
“I think we continually need to look at better strategies about how to reach voters,” Mr. Hayden said, adding that working with community groups was crucial. “This definitely has to be more a part of it than it was in the past.”
Mr. Jones campaigned with several prominent black leaders in the state and funded some turnout operations.
The D.N.C. spent about $1 million on engaging black and millennial voters, Mr. Perez said. That included hiring black consultants who mobilized voting efforts through churches and colleges, he said. The committee also sent dozens of volunteers to help in Alabama and sent text messages to almost every eligible black voter in the state who had a cellphone, he said.
Still, several black political operatives who worked in Alabama independent of the Jones campaign and the party said the establishment failed to fully tap into the power of grass-roots organizing.
LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, said the party and the campaign did not understand the power of existing community and political organizations, and as a result, did not seem to engage groups that were the most deeply embedded in Alabama’s black communities.
That led to some questionable messaging, said Ms. Brown, whose organization spent about $200,000 to help organize on-the-ground mobilization efforts.
In one instance, the Jones campaign mailed out a flyer that featured a picture of a black man twisting his face into a skeptical, somewhat comical expression, beneath a provocative headline: “Think if a black man went after high school girls. Anyone would try to make him a senator?”
On the back, it detailed sexual assault allegations against Mr. Moore and implored voters to “stand up against these kinds of double standards.”
“It did not recognize that in the context of the South, that when black men were accused of those kinds of things, not only would you not win office, in some circumstances they were lynched,” Ms. Brown said. “I don’t know a single black person in my circle that was not offended by that piece.”
The elections in Virginia and Alabama have proven that it is possible for Democrats to focus on white and minority voters without alienating either, said Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster based in Alabama. Technology, for one, makes it possible to target specific populations with particular messages through email, text messages and phone calls. The party can also speak to universal issues, he said.
“I would suggest that jobs, health care, education are at the top of the list for any subgroup,” Mr. McCrary said.
Democrats will also have a lot of success if they help bolster local organizations that work daily on some of those issues in their statehouses and city halls, Ms. Brown said.
“You help build up state power in those communities so that when we’re doing fights on behalf of the party in state elections, or the gubernatorial races, you’ve got these infrastructures that have been strengthened,” she said.
But much of this starts with breaking down old stereotypes of what minority-led political organizations can do, Ms. Shropshire said. People often assume that such organizations are only good for knocking on doors and turning out black voters, but not for strategic advice on winning elections, she said.
“I think that there’s a reality in the progressive political ecosystem where minorities aren’t always trusted to actually lead the work,” Ms. Shropshire said. “There’s a way in which progressive politics needs to see itself in a very different way. It actually needs to change quite quickly.”
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