| For some months I've felt that The Albany Project needs to do more to bring better Democrats to Albany. It's not enough for us to just post here and point to the problems of our state. We need to act as a progressive conduit supporting like-minded, reform based candidates. We need to challenge status quo Democrats in entrenched seats. We need to stand up for our values.
With all the anger that we're feeling after the Democratic sell-out of our principles, there's no better time than now to organize. If we pooled our collective knowledge and resources, we could form an entity that stands for reform, recruits better candidates that support our values, and empowers those candidates to challenge entrenched interests in our state.
What's I'm suggesting is the mix of a political action committee, an internal caucus, and a fundraising apparatus.
Specifically, we would do the following:
1) Identify politicians that need primary challengers- There are some obvious targets that come to mind here, including multiple individuals from the NYC delegation. Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate clearly need to go. I would argue that any Democrat that opposes marriage equality also needs the boot. Regardless, we would set the parameters for "bad" Democrats and identify them. If this was solely a better Democrats campaign, then we would need to focus on seats where primaries are basically the general election, while letting the state campaign target seats likely to flip, like Senator Padavan or other swing districts.
2) Identify criteria that a candidate must support to gain our support- We would need to set the standards for better Democrats. I think a few issues are highly obvious; campaign finance, rules reform, and fair re-districting. As I said early, I would also support marriage equality on that list. Essentially we'd be setting the progressive agenda and supporting candidates that support it in full.
3) Recruit candidates that support our agenda- New York is a big state, and we have a plethora of people to chose from in terms of political candidacy. Other elected officials, business, union, and civic leaders, and even standard private citizens could all become better Democrats. Variables such as the nature of the district and the incumbent would need to be taken into consideration, but we'd be able to find and recruit candidates who support our values and who are willing and ready to challenge the status quo.
4) Empower our candidates- We can't literally run these campaigns, but we can certainly empower them. We'd offer social networking and blog support, a financial base, and a grassroots support structure to get these campaigns off the ground. We'd be offering seed support, in a sense, to entice candidates that might not normally run to do so. This is about lowering the threshold to where a primary challenge is less cumbersome to progressive challengers than it normally would be.
I consider this a meta topic in many ways, so I open this subject up to the community. We can't do this alone. Only through our collective action can this succeed. I'm certainly not a campaign expert (I've only formally worked on two campaigns). But I'm willing to contribute time and effort to this campaign. How about you? |
