This system is needlessly archane and the signature-gathering process can be daunting, but it can be done if the activist base wakes up early and focuses on the fact that the outcome in November is often determined by what people are willing to do in February, March and April. This February however found many of us discouraged, demoralized and depressed, not ready to think about the next campaign and in need of a break.
I can tell you that I have never seen the public more willing and ready to sign to put a statewide candidate on the ballot than they were for Grace Ross. All you had to do was tell the ones who would stop to listen that she was running for Governor as a Democrat on a program of Jobs, Health Care and Housing – against Deval Patrick – and most eligible blue-collar voters – white, black or brown, native-born or immigrant – would sign immediately.
“Against Patrick” was often the kicker that got the signature! People would call their friends and relatives over and tell them to sign. The working people are so, so done with Patrick! If you don’t understand this you need to get down onto the streets of your nearest city or mill town and talk to us. You need to know what we’re dealing with.
On the other hand, I have never seen the activist base – Democratic, issue group, community and labor alike – more full of excuses. Over a hundred promised to help Grace Ross collect signatures, but then couldn’t somehow make themselves get out and do it, or they only turned in a few. Hundreds of others simply begged off.
We had just come out of a non-stop cycle of city elections, the Special Election primary and the very discouraging Coakley/Brown defeat. Winter had gone on too long already, and on top of that the economy is in a depression (not, as some would like to spin it, a “great recession” or a “recovery”.) One of the things that depressions do is – they depress people. (Ask your favorite 80-year-old to tell you about this!) Activists, like lots of people, are finding ourselves depressed, overwhelmed and on the defensive. It’s a mass-scale phenomenon, but we experience it personally.
Town and city budgets are being trashed, municipal and teachers unions are fighting for their lives. City services are collapsing and schools are being closed. Neighborhood groups have suffered one budget cut after another and are running on fumes, and private donations have dried up. Construction unions are looking at disaster, with members who have been out of work for a year or two and unemployment benefits running out. Like everyone else, activists are scrambling to salvage our personal lives – to earn or find enough money to save our homes, feed their families and keep a roof over our heads. And our inboxes are flooded with urgent appeals from issue groups, unions, politicians, national and international organizations for help or money. It all starts to feel too overwhelming.
And always our despicable corporate media keeps amplifying the drum-beat of the haters, making them look like an invincible conquering army on the march, while giving what we do the silent treatment so that we end up wondering whether it really happened!
Most of us know what that feels like – a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, a kind of paralysis, your mind racing in circles from excuse to disaster scenario, from self-pity to self-blame, from flashes of anger to stories about who’s to blame and back to the beginning of the loop, until the need to shut it down and escape becomes irresistible. Latching onto a commitment and acting seems impossible, and promises become just more reasons for failing. It’s called “depression”. Defeats and economic depressions bring it on. And it’s all around us now.
And we really need to shake ourselves out of it, because the people of Massachusetts have never needed us more.
Hopefully when the counts are in we will have a choice, and a great debate this summer on Democratic issues and values. But if Grace isn’t on the ballot, that would leave the working people – who are getting steadily more angry and desperate – with no place to go in this race, and no one to speak for us. That’s a formula for disaster, for the Democratic Party and for Massachusetts. We should all be praying she makes it through the signature count.
But if Grace doesn’t make it, we need to be looking at how we can find a way to use her voice and her message – and our own – to rally the people against the approaching Republican/racist onslaught anyway – in spite of Deval Patrick.
Any candidate with enough willing volunteers can get 10,000 signatures without having to pay for them. I’m not aware of any statewide campaign this year paying specifically for signature gatherers although paid field staff are certainly doing their part. The procedure isn’t that difficult either. You just need to not make stray marks and make sure that all signatures on the same page are from the same town (and preferably otherwise qualified to sign, though sometimes I find it easier to just collect and let the clerks reject inapporpriate signatures). Keep in mind that signature-gathering is not a measure of support, though it is a great excuse to talk about your campaign. After all, I signed Grace Ross’ papers even though the Governor will get both my convention and primary vote. I’ve collected several score signatures for Steve Grossman just at political events (I’m not comfortable accosting random people at the supermarket.) and in many cases have taken it upon myself to get them certified with local clerks. I object to the implication of gatekeepers, since it is the PEOPLE deciding through their signatures who gets on. If you can’t get 10,000 to sign a paper then how well do you think you would do in the actual election anyway?
If you can’t get a grassroots campaign of people to get you signatures, then you won’t have much success at a grassroots campaign in the primary, either.
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p>Remember, Patrick was a total unknown in 2005/06. He had less name recog and money raising potential at the time than even Grace Ross does, who has run for this office and others in the past. He and his staff built a sound strategy and started early to gather those folks they’d need to win the caucuses and get the sigs. It’s called “planning ahead” and if you can’t do it, I don’t want you as my Gov anyway.
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p>Now, whether or not the situation is a bit onerous for the statewide races, or the convention process is a little too hard, I guess that can be debated, but if Patrick could do it in 2006, then anyone can, they just need to be able to attract supporters enough to do it.
“On the other hand, I have never seen the activist base – Democratic, issue group, community and labor alike – more full of excuses. Over a hundred promised to help Grace Ross collect signatures, but then couldn’t somehow make themselves get out and do it, or they only turned in a few. Hundreds of others simply begged off.”
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p>Sorry, EVERYone is full of excuses when it comes to doing these jobs. Do you have any idea how many teeth I had to pull in 2006 as a city coordinator for Patrick, just to get sign holders, nevermind phone bankers, sig collectors, and
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p>On a list of 50 devoted supporters, 5-10 maybe will show up to some important activist activity. Unless you are Kate Donoghue who has an uncanny ability to guilt trip your butt into the activist seat. But the rest of us mere mortals, we encounter this every single time we pitch our tent for a candidate. This post sounds an awful lot like setting up the excuses why Ross doesn’t on the ballot from lack of sigs or convention delegate votes.
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p>You know what? Instead of whining about ballot access on a blog, just get the job done. Go out and do an extra sig session. I did mine several times for my candidate and we got what we needed.
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p>I say all this as someone who likes competitive primaries and even, likes Grace Ross to a point. I think a debate between them would be fascinating and fun. However, I won’t be doing your job for you, sorry! I picked my candidate already.
“nevermind phone bankers, sig collectors, and door knockers.”
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p>I compose posts the same way I talk…ask Mr. Lynne…
I thought the blank “and” was illustrative, because getting people to show up to anything is pulling teeth. It’s tough to take time away from what you want to be doing to something you think is important, even if you actually think it’s important.
…to Kate Donaghue’s guilt trips, having been on the receiving end of that myself:) Kind of reminiscent of LBJ’s “treatment”, but I mean that in a nice way.
And start blaming yourselves. I’ve run signature campaigns before, and you know what they take? Thick skin, patience and good planning. If you want to run for Governor and you can’t organize enough activists to go out and collect 15,000 signatures, especially during town election cycles, you should not be on the ballot. All this proves to me is that the campaign didn’t work hard enough, didn’t plan their activist resources well and fell short. Not that powered elites and “gatekeepers” held you back from getting on the ballot.
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p>Hell, Ed O’Reilly got on the ballot, who the heck had ever heard of him?
They started very late. I really think had she had key staff and a few key volunteers in place by Sept/Oct 2009 like Patrick did in 2006, there would be no need to post a preemptive blame the process post at all. She’d be figuring out how much over 15% at the convention she’d be looking to get.
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p>At this time in the process, half or more of the progressive blogs had endorsed Patrick, and the other half was buzzing. All us town coordinators were in place. I endorsed him in early Dec 2006 and promptly found myself recruited to wade into the muddy Lowell caucuses by early Jan 2007 (how’d THAT happen I still wonder??). While I think Ross lacks some of the charisma of Patrick in a room full of people, she certainly doesn’t lack his intelligence, and most progressive activists look for that in a candidate. There could have been some persuadin’ going on much further ahead of time.
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p>Not that I consider myself important in any way, and it’s obvious I remained a strong supporter for Patrick all this time, but I host a pretty well read local blog in the Merrimack Valley…I never so much as heard a peep or even got on a press release list (which I abhor, but at least it’s something!). ~shrug~
The signatures became a problem because Ross declared her interest so late into the process. Her campaign has been rather moribund, which doesn’t help. Furthermore, complaining about the signature process is an unimpressive second impression for Ross to make, and only encourages those trying to dismiss her as a serious candidate.
just how early would it be appropriate for a Democrat to begin the process of challenging the just-elected Democratic governor?
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p>I mean, you’ve got to sit back and see how he performs before you start planning on beating him. So, how long should you wait? I’d think 2 years, min. So its Jan 2008 and you decide the gov has had his chance and needs to be replaced. Now you’ve got to line up supporters right away, and not everybody is ready to abandon the incumbent after two years on the job.
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p>Methinks the process is particularly hard when you’re trying to unseat a sitting incumbent in the primary. Methinks also that may be a good thing.
Remember she ran for Governor in 2006. Is all of her campaign infrastructure from that run off limits now that she’s changed to a Democrat?
She ran as a G-R, so some of her infrastructure didn’t come with her. It’s not altogether different from Tim Cahill’s situation.
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p>That’s actually a very charitable way of putting it. It was on Jan. 23 of this year that Ross wrote this post and at that time hadn’t even decided if she’d run as a Democrat or an independent. That was with caucuses a couple of weeks away. In 2006, we had our slates and supporters for Patrick lined up in December (I’m referring to my town, not the whole state, but similar work was going on elsewhere).
It’s true. We started at the very last possible moment. Most of us had been involved in to try to save the Coakley campaign. We came out of that race convinced that Patrick can’t win, that Brown’s win was not a fluke and that the working people, including union families, are walking away from the Democratic Party. However, on the evening of Jan. 19, all we heard from Democratic officeholders and insiders was “bad campaign”, “bad candidate”, “we’ll be better organized/get the message out better next time.” But that’s not what we were hearing from our neighbors and co-workers. We were shaking our heads and saying “Holy Canolli, what do we do about this?”
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p>So there we were two weeks before the filing deadline for governor, time was running out, apparently no one else was willing to challenge Patrick, and the question was, should we?
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p>The stakes as we saw it were huge. The Democratic Party was going into the 2010 election season headed by an ineffective out-of-touch corporate multi-millionaire who had lost the confidence of the people and had utterly alienated the union workers – whose households make up over a million voters in Mass. Patrick was leading us into battle with a National Republican Party flush with right-wing cash and limbering up Carl Rove’s play book of dirty tricks. But Patrick wasn’t even talking about the issues and problems that concern regular people.
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p>It looked to us like a formula for a disaster of historic proportions.
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p>It still does.
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p>After an intense week of exploration we decided to give it a shot, and we hit the ground running, organizing the campaign as we went along. That’s a hard way to go, but our choices were – try it, or don’t try it. And we felt we had an obligation to the people of Massachusetts to try.
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p>Under normal circumstances what we’re doing would have been crazy. But these are not normal circumstances.
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p>If we get our signatures, we think that the campaign is right on the edge of catching fire. And as more and more regular people get interested and excited about it, it is becoming less and less about what’s wrong and more about what becomes possible when the people of Massachusetts come together and work together to solve our problems.
“The first people to believe GOP talking points are Democrats”:( Would you have cowered on health care following the Brown election too?
You mean the police officers who make fewer bucks off details? You mean the Turnpike Authority workers, whose bloated contracts bankrupted the Turnpike? You mean the Boston Teachers Union leadership, which is tone deaf to the public’s concerns about education? And I’m sure you’re including the MBTA workers with their 23-and-out retirement boondoggle that the Governor ended.
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p>’Cuz I’m sure you’re not talking about his speech to the Mass. Building Trades Conference on March 11th, where he was repeatedly interrupted by standing ovations. And I’m equally sure you’re not talking about his speech to SEIU 1199 today, where he was also repeatedly interrupted by standing ovations.
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p>Yes, Deval Patrick can’t count on the suppport of police unions, who always support the Republican candidate anyway. Nor can he count on the support of the Carmen’s union – who most famously deserted their union brothers and sisters to support Paul Cellucci in 1998. Nor can he count on the BTU’s support — and see how much the BTU hurt Mayor Menino in last year’s Boston election. Most union members across the state recognize the tough times that Deval Patrick had nothing to do with, the difficult decisions that Deval Patrick has made — including keeping local aid in tact and using ARRA funding to keep police officers, fire fighters, and teachers in their jobs — and will stay on the side of the best Governor in the country for working people.
I received that bumper aticker from a very nice Worcester police officer.
Were rank and file union members invited to the SEIU meeting? You know, the folks who Deval just eliminated their jobs?
Grace Ross had no problem getting 10,000 signatures four years ago. Why is this specifically our problem as activists now?
…the deadline is the last day of August.
Grace was Green-Rainbow in ’06. I’m 99.999999% sure Green-Rainbows have to obey the same deadlines.
…the Green-Rainbow Party was not a legally recognized party party in 2006 and had until Aug 1 to submit signatures in 2006…which was also a “down to the wire” affair.
thanks for the correction. I hadn’t realized they were downgraded to a political designation at the time. Ouch. I think Stein dragged them out of the gutter since then, though, when she ran for SoS and got roughly 15% of the vote, if memory serves.
I was just part of the effort to get Mac D’Alessandro onto the primary against Rep. Stephen Lynch.
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p>We had three weeks to get a minimum of 2000 signatures from the district. The campaign was aiming for 4000 signatures, just to be safe.
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p>The D’Alessandro campaign got 5000 signatures in those three weeks. From just the one congressional district.
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p>Given those results, getting 15,000 signatures from the whole state seems doable.
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p>So I’m not sure that the process is the problem.
but then again, it isn’t supposed to be.
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p>I like Grace Ross. I wouldn’t vote for her in a primary with Deval Patrick on the ballot, because he’s done a very solid job in a tough economic time, but I did sign Grace Ross’s nomination papers. So, when I write my critique below, it’s not because I don’t like her or don’t think she would add something to the primary campaign — because I think she would.
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p>Here’s the deal: the fact that relatively few people signed her nominations indicates she just doesn’t have the base of support to win a statewide election — whether or not she has enough signatures in the end. When you speak with people about Grace they may become very willing to vote for her instead of Patrick, or think she’d make a great Governor, but that in and of itself doesn’t make one worthy of being Governor. I could point out a dozen or so friends and acquaintances who I think could be a good governor, but none of them have a base of support to run that election. It takes convincing a large bulk of volunteers to actually get out there and do regular work in order to form that kind of grasroots campaign, which means potential candidates have to prove themselves to hundreds of volunteers over the course of a year or more.
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p>You’re right — it takes a lot of effort to get on the ballot, but you’re wrong in suggesting that’s a bad thing. The purpose of the signatures is to ensure that only people with at least a shred of a shot get on the ballot. It’s bad enough when we have four or five candidates in a competitive election, with the winner getting maybe 30% of the vote. Imagine if there were 50 candidates, or 500? If all it took was, say, a few hundred signatures to get on the ballot, it could actually make the election less democratic, not more. This isn’t to say that there aren’t tweaks that could be made to ballot signatures — but the principal that it should be at least somewhat difficult to get on the ballot should absolutely remain in place.
You just have to remember how many got on the ballot in the CA recall that elected Arnold Schwarzeneggar because access was so easy.
Where do I sign?! I heard it so many times. Makes me wonder about November…
…and the race for the Democratic nomination won’t be close.
Is it conceivable that Grace Ross has had enough exposure that the voting public simply does not find her to be a credible or compelling candidate? I think she’s a thoughtful and intelligent person, but she comes off very flat in public discussions. I hear a lot of good discussion, but I don’t feel the passion. I don’t feel the push to get things done. I don’t see the less-than-academic ability to compromise while making the sausage. IMHO, she should work on campaigns (and in the resulting administrations), but she shouldn’t be the candidate or the governor.
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p>I asked 10 adults in the Boston metro area, all with 4 year degrees and stable lives if they knew who Grace Ross was.
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p>Three said her name was familiar. Two of them knew her to be a politician. One knew she was running in the Democratic primary.
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p>A very weak survey: n = 10, not geographically, politically, or demographically diverse. But, a group who I believe is more likely to know about Grace Ross than the MA general public, and this group didn’t know much about her at all.
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p>So now, it’s not conceivable that Grace Ross has had sufficient exposure for the voting public to have any opinion on her whatsoever.
and thank you for having a “feel” for what’s happening on the streets. Your post is an accurate summary of the sentiments of many middle/working class Americans, whether they live in Massachusetts or not.
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p>I think it’s not likely that you will get support here for Grace Ross. I would say our best bet for Grace is to get the delegate list and start making direct phone calls asking for support at the convention. Since it’s so close to the convention, we should probably start before the signatures are certified, as soon as this weekend.
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p>Don’t give up!
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p>
I feel like voters think Grace Ross has had her chance. They don’t see her as a credible candidate (after all, she got under 2% in ’06), and they don’t like her ideas. Supporting her isn’t like supporting a long shot candidate like Alan Khazei, who was a perfectly legitimate candidate with low name recognition, but good ideas; supporting her is supporting a perpetual candidate whose ideas are somewhat frightening.
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p>For a lot of Democratic voters, her far-left ideas are upsetting. Even among liberals, she has caused some alarm with her position. Another thing to be considered is the importance of Jews in Democratic politics, and how no Jew with half a brain would do anything at all (even sign papers) to help get someone like Grace Ross who supports Israel divestment (even though she opposes divestment from Sudan, since she thinks it’s racist) on the ballot. Grace Ross seems to many to be an anti-Semite, which is harmful among Democrats. I think that she won’t get on the ballot because of many legitimate concerns voters have about her.
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p>I honestly don’t believe Grace Ross deserves to be on the ballot. I’m not sure why she’s running. She won’t get anywhere, and knows it. She doesn’t seem to be passionate about any good issues, except for ones that Deval is passionate about, too. She is a fringe candidate, and is the equivalent of a tea partier of the left. She seems to lack an understanding of Massachusetts politics and what it means to be governor. For these reasons, if she doesn’t get on the ballot, it is her fault alone.