Democrats Should Listen to What Chuck Rocha’s Saying About Their Party

Chuck Rocha, the outspoken political strategist who helped Bernie Sanders win strong support from Latino voters for Sanders’ 2020 presidential bid, and who most recently became an important voice in the debate about how Democrats should deal with the 2024 election failure, will not participate in the crowded race for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Blunt, as always, Rocha announced this week that “I am not running for DNC chair because after meeting with the former chairs (to discuss what the focus of the committee’s work is). I am not interested in being a full-time fundraiser for the party. I’m still trying to fix and rebuild our party, but I’ll do it without being chairman.”

This was an accurate and completely valid observation about the DNC, which many critics argued that it spends too much time chasing big money and too little time building a party that appeals to working-class voters. That criticism intensified after the Nov. 5 election, when Democrats across the country wrestled with how to rebuild a party that had lost the presidency and control of the U.S. Senate, failed to take back the U.S. House of Representatives, and made inroads in incumbent races. governors.

The DNC’s concerns have even been voiced by its own members, including the former president of the Communications Workers of America Larry Cohen, a longtime critic of the DNC’s approach, who argued after the election that “the number one reform is to get rid of dirty money. It must be said that the Democratic Party will direct its money – 100 million dollars a year – not to television, not to operational activities and not to consultants, but to the organization.”

A number of candidates have entered the race to replace outgoing DNC Chair Jamie Harrison and for other top DNC positions. Among them are progressives like the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party Ben Wickler and Minnesota Democratic-Farm-Labor Party Chairman Ken Martin. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, an unsuccessful 2016 presidential candidate, is also running, along with New York State Sen. James Skoufis and former Maryland Senate candidate Robert Houghton. Many other names have been floated, including former Chicago mayor and current ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, insider favorite gun control advocate David Hogg, and Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow, who gained national notoriety for Speech 2022 about the “empty hateful scheme” of Republicans attacking public educators for teaching about systemic racism and supporting LGBTQ+ youth.

Roha, description “redneck farm boy from east texas” who started out as a union activist and became a highly respected political strategist for Sanders and others, has been in the mix for weeks after the election. His extensive experience in organizing and getting the Latino vote out has drawn interest from Democrats struggling to a sharp and politically troublesome decline in Latin American support for the party in many parts of the country.

But just because Rocha isn’t running for the seat doesn’t mean he’ll sit on the sidelines. He said this on Wednesday on CNN that “I hope someone is running who really wants to reform the party.” Then published important ap in The Boston Globewhere he remarked, “If you listen to the way Republicans describe Democrats, you’d never imagine I could be one.”

“I didn’t go to college, I worked in a tire factory, and I ended up being a union man. I have a criminal record and I was a single parent for 35 years,” Roja recalled in his Globe article. “But I joined the Democratic Party because it actually represents the principles that President-elect Donald Trump claims to stand for, but clearly does not. I wanted to fight against exporting US jobs overseas, drain the Washington, D.C. swamp of rich, powerful people who think they are better than the rest of us, and stop spending tax dollars on foreign wars when there are so many problems at home. And I stayed a Democrat to protect my mother, who relies on Social Security, and my son, a union installer and single father who needs help taking care of his twin children. I want to make sure that my grandchildren inherit a planet without war or a planet that burns from climate change.”

A party cannot do this without winning elections, and to do this, Roja explained, he must “return to the working-class values ​​that made me join him in the first place.” For this, according to his opinion, lessons should be learned from the victory in the campaign of the candidate for the US Senate from Arizona Ruben Gallego, to whom Roja was a senior adviser. It was important, Rocha writes, that Gallego “meet voters where they were: a Canelo Alvarez viewing party at a boxing gym, Spanish-language town halls and carne asada social events and beer. It’s not a normal policy — but, believe me, it worked.”

Rocha offered plenty of other advice — about the need for “a true 50-state campaign plan that doesn’t ignore flyover states,” about the importance of devoting additional resources to rural and Latino regions of the country, “starting with the Southwest” so we can win back Nevada and Arizona. “. He wants to see more permanent organizers and more work with black and Latino-led consulting firms. “If party resources continue to go to the same professional class of consultants who can’t handle it even if we lose, the Democratic Party will continue to sputter,” warned Rocha, who added, “The DNC should also create a new messaging commission to help rebranding yourself. on the eve of the 2028 elections. I’m not talking about hiring an agency in New York to come up with a fancy new logo, I’m talking about completely rethinking how Democrats should get their message across.”

Some Democrats may bristle at the arguments for major change, but Rocha wrote“If we don’t get this job done, Democrats should be prepared to watch where J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio take the country after Trump slips back into Mar-a-Lago.”