In addition to overlooking state and local government generally, it had also come to feel that the Democratic Party was neglecting the industrial Midwest in particular. Every restored house, improved street, and good job we helped deliver in South Bend had shown me that practical leadership guided by progressive values could deliver results in a part of the country that had simply been written off. In political terms, there was great opportunity to present a hopeful economic message to blue-collar workers experiencing major economic disruption, as an alternative to the litany of resentments being offered by the other side. Beyond South Bend, many of the smartest and most original politicians I had met were state and local elected officials, quietly doing impressive work in the American heartland. But as a party, we had become less likely to put forward leaders from the region, and less likely to compete at all in some parts of the country once known as bellwethers. If a place like northern Indiana was proving steadily less likely to vote Democratic, that called for more, not less, engagement by the party.
We had come to look at the politics of different American regions—the Republican “red” states and liberal “blue” states—as immutable. But I had seen from close up how important it was that Democrats continue to compete in tougher territory. Joe Donnelly had proven this in Indiana, getting elected to the Senate in 2012 as a Democrat even as the state went decisively “red” in the presidential race that same year. Joe carried fewer than thirty of our state’s ninety-two counties. But he prevailed, because he won the most populous areas and made sure not to ignore the others. He took pride in the hole that a reporter once noticed in the sole of his shoe as he worked his way through countless parades, county fairs, and dinner speeches in conservative counties. This strategy served him well, even—or especially—in those counties he couldn’t actually win, because losing them 60–40 instead of 80–20 helped make it possible for the bluer counties to put him over the top.
Yet national Democrats seemed increasingly to write off red states—or red areas within blue and purple states—completely. The result was that many parts of our country had heard so little from Democrats and progressives that anyone living there who sympathized with our party might assume they were totally alone. If that loneliness prompted them to keep quiet about their values at coffee after church or on the local radio call-in shows, then the sense of a Republican monopoly on opinion in these communities would become self-fulfilling.
Yet this conservative dominance was relatively new. As late as 2005, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle, was from South Dakota—the same state that had produced Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern a generation earlier. Go back even further in history, and figures like Eugene Debs of Indiana and Bob La Follette of Wisconsin show that a century ago the American political left was arguably being led from the Midwest. Treating the middle of the country like unshakably Republican territory would serve us poorly in the long run.
Worse, a culture had begun to take hold in some Democratic circles that addressed our part of the country with condescension, bordering on contempt. A party once built on looking after ordinary Americans was now beginning to feel like the preserve of comfortable, educated, upper-middle-class city dwellers. Often I would hear a well-heeled fellow Democrat shake his head at how a low-income conservative voter could be so foolish as to “vote against his self-interest,” oblivious to the easy retort that would be available to such a voter: “So are you!”
I knew that bedrock Democratic values around economic fairness and racial inclusion could resonate very well in the industrial Midwest, but not if they were being presented by messengers who looked down on working- and lower-middle-class Americans.
TO ME THESE IDEAS SEEMED CLEAR, almost to the point of being obvious. But few others in the national conversation seemed to be making that case. So, as a second-term urban mayor just a few days shy of my thirty-fifth birthday, I did something that would not have crossed my mind two months earlier: began organizing a national campaign.
You might think such a small number of voters is easy to approach, but in some ways it’s harder, because each of them expects to hear from you personally. The election was in late February, which meant I had about two months to reach them all. Mathematically, this is certainly possible . . . if you assume half-hour calls at a rate of ten or fifteen calls a day. But that also assumes they actually pick up.
What happens, instead, is an enormous, nationwide game of phone tag. Of course, a few really do pick up, and you can have a straightforward conversation and ask for their support. But more likely you leave a message, or several. Or you try to schedule a call. Or they call you back, but you miss it because you’re on another call or they’re calling from Hawaii and it’s three in the morning.
Late to the game and racing against the deadline, I put together a staff to help bring order to the phone-call operation—not to mention logistics, press, volunteer management, and finance. On January 5, 2017, two weeks before the inauguration of President Trump, I officially became a candidate. Since this was a party post and not a public office, there was no big speech to give, or even a county clerk’s office where I could ritually go file papers. Instead, unglamorously, I just printed out a statement of interest in running, signed it, scanned it, and emailed it to someone at the DNC.
The dining room of our house on North Shore Drive became the initial headquarters. With Chasten and a couple soon-to-be campaign staff members around the table tracking social media and filling my call schedule, I spent my first day as a candidate on the phone with reporters, party figures, and potential supporters. Looking through the window at the sidewalk in the early January gloom, I told CNN that “not being afraid to talk about our values will resonate in places where we as a party have been struggling.” Pacing around the living room on rugs I’d brought back from Afghanistan, I told Tom Perez that I was getting in and why, and listened as he responded graciously and welcomed me to the race (as did each of the other candidates I would be competing with). Between bites of a Chipotle burrito, I tried to stay lucid through call after call, all the way through to a trip to the nearest satellite studio for a 10:40 p.m. appearance on MSNBC.
What followed was an eight-week sprint that took us to every corner of the country, with major candidate forums at a Phoenix hotel ballroom, a Houston college campus, a Detroit auditorium, and a Baltimore convention center. I held fundraisers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington and made appearances in Miami and Chicago in the run-up to the big final DNC meeting in Atlanta where the vote would take place—all while continuing to go to my office on non-travel days to perform all the functions of mayor.
Every couple days we took on a new hire until the team grew to about a dozen. We attracted more and more attention as we went, and it became impossible to stay on top of all the incoming communication. My email in-box became impenetrable. If the phone rang and the caller ID said “Unknown,” I knew it was either a telemarketer or someone very important. At one point I picked up a call from an unfamiliar Vermont number, thinking it was Howard Dean (who had been encouraging me to run), and instead heard the voice of Bernie Sanders (who was calling to suggest I drop out and make room for Ellison). National figures I had never even met took an interest, as word reached me daily of new endorsements from figures ranging from North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp to Cher—neither of whom, unfortunately, turned out to be voting members of the DNC.
As I went with my fellow candidates through debate after debate, TV appearance after TV appearance, it became clear that my approach was hitting a nerve. People responded to the idea of a values-led message. They wanted us to compete in red and purple states, and to pay attention to local races. Most understood that a healthy strategy would involve emphasis both on racial justice and an economic message, not choosing one over the other. And to the extent that a candidacy from someone my age was itself a kind of message, the idea of mobilizing a new generation of voters and organizers, through fresh leader
ship and tactics, resonated strongly. As we engaged party faithful far from Washington, I could see in the faces of the audiences that a fifty-state strategy and a willingness to compete everywhere was already important to those on the ground.
IT WAS ALSO EVIDENT that the party itself was at a moment of truth, its future role unclear. In the suddenly antiquated twentieth century model, political parties had had a near-monopoly on information, access, and money. A volunteer list, a campaign finance account, or even just a way to get the word out about an event was difficult to build on your own. I thought of Butch Morgan back in South Bend, and the influence that he had once wielded from that landline phone on his desk at the party headquarters. But now online organizing and outside spending had eclipsed many of the functions of a traditional party organization—local and national alike. To be useful in the digital age, the DNC would have to figure out a new division of labor across party operations, campaigns, and causes.
An episode in Houston, during the heat of the race for chair, dramatized this humbling new reality for the party. We had come to Texas for one of four regional gatherings of DNC members, and the competitors for chair were at a reception after completing a forum (effectively a debate) before an audience of committee members and party activists. Earlier that day we had learned of President Trump’s travel ban on residents of certain Muslim countries, and word had begun to spread of a grassroots movement to protest the policy at airports around the country.
As appetizers and drinks circulated among candidates and party leaders in a hotel ballroom, my campaign staff learned that Texas was not immune to the grassroots pushback: a protest was getting under way at Houston Airport. Having spent the better part of the day advocating for a party leadership that could better engage with the grassroots, it now felt like I belonged there, with activists at the airport, not here at a reception with party functionaries, donors, and hors d’oeuvres.
A few minutes later, I was in a rented minivan with Chasten and several staff, racing to George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Terminal E. We were going as fast as we could—which, owing to pre–Super Bowl traffic, was not fast at all. I kept refreshing Facebook and Twitter to see how the protest was going, while also monitoring the news as accounts spread of an ACLU effort to stay the ban in court. After twenty minutes or so, we learned that Tom Perez had had the same idea, possibly after I tweeted my whereabouts, and soon another candidate, South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Jaime Harrison, was en route as well. All of us were literally racing to join those standing up for our values. But nothing was moving quickly on these logjammed roads.
As I looked out at the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway, it hit me that we were enacting a highly metaphorical version of what was going on with the party at large. Here was a young mayor, a former Cabinet secretary, and a state party chairman, with their respective campaign entourages, all in hot pursuit—rushing into a comically slow-motion car chase, trying to catch up to a group of activists and citizens organized just hours earlier by a twenty-six-year-old restaurant server using social media.
When we finally arrived, over a hundred people had gathered, chanting, cheering, and singing. Joining with them—and with my competitors—was a heartening moment after days of despondently watching news coverage of the first few days of the Trump administration, wondering with each new outrage if it would soon be accepted as normal.
But the moment also demonstrated how much had changed from a few years ago, when it would have taken weeks, not hours, to stage simultaneous demonstrations at dozens of locations in cities across America. To be relevant and useful to those who shared our values, the party would have to figure out a way to be part of a new flying formation.
THE SECOND MONTH OF THE CAMPAIGN for DNC was even more fast-paced. Routinely, Chasten and I would wake up in a hotel room and each ask the other if he could remember which state we were in. James Mueller, now my chief of staff, made sure the city team made the most of the time I could put in at the office in South Bend, while the campaign staff ensured that whatever time remained was spent as effectively as possible on the road, on TV, or on the phone. Each day brought encouraging press coverage and more followers online. But as the last days approached, the phone calls yielded little but noncommittal members, saying they liked what they heard but hadn’t decided yet, or indicating they had already promised to vote otherwise but would consider me on a second ballot.
I did secure a handful of supporters among the DNC membership—along with the endorsements of Dean and four other former DNC chairs—but as we entered the last week of the campaign, I still didn’t have the number of hard commitments it would take to survive a first round of voting and make it to a viable position on the second ballot. My last chance was to move large numbers of members in the final seventy-two hours of the race, as all of the voting members converged for the run-up to the vote at a meeting in Atlanta.
We arrived in Georgia with tremendous energy. About a hundred volunteers in blue PETE FOR DNC shirts crisscrossed the halls of the big Westin Hotel, affixing campaign placards and putting stickers on people. But the front-runners had their supporters out in force as well, and Perez was getting extremely close to the magic number needed to win. I had expected that becoming more viable in the wake of the endorsements would help me add to my vote count, but in fact the opposite was true. Wavering members who were expected by their friends or employers to vote for Perez or Ellison reported increased pressure to commit, and rumors spread that President Obama himself was making phone calls on behalf of Perez.
We kept working to gather support until the morning of the vote itself, but by the time I huddled with the team after a predawn Today Show appearance from a plaza across the street from the hotel, it had become clear that I couldn’t win. While many DNC members signaled agreement with my platform and appreciation for South Bend’s story with its broader implications for our party, it wasn’t enough to override years-long friendships, institutional commitments, favors called in, and countless other reasons to support one of the more recognizable and established candidates. It just wasn’t going to happen.
EVERY CANDIDATE HAD A FEW MINUTES to address the full voting body, gathered for the vote in a big room at the convention center downtown. Standing at the podium, I looked out at the faces of the Democratic National Committee, from famous elected officials to obscure party activists, cleared my throat, and explained that I was standing down. But before leaving the stage, there was one last chance to press for the ideas that had motivated me to run in the first place. I urged the next chair to lead a party that would look beyond Washington, engage a newer generation, and compete in regions like my Indiana home. I asserted one more time that politics was ultimately about impact on everyday life. Invoking my military reserve status, I sought, even in this process-heavy and insider-oriented environment, to call for renewed focus on the concrete impacts of political decisions rather than on horse races and palace intrigue. “My life depends on the decisions that are made by elected officials,” I reminded the hushed committee members. “So does yours.”
Reflecting on the experience of running, I also had something to say about the moral basis for leadership. It had been on my mind ever since allowing myself to call President Trump a “draft-dodging chickenhawk” during one of the DNC forums. While true, that statement was not in keeping with how I publicly speak about political figures, or anyone else, and afterward I reflected that this president was inspiring a loss of decency not just in his supporters, but also in those of us who opposed him. It was another way of looking at the moral stakes of politics as it filters through to millions of lives: that we might all be growing into harder and perhaps worse people, as a consequence of political leadership that failed to call us to our highest values.
After the speeches came the voting, the counting, and then the revoting. Tom Perez won on the second ballot, and I lingered backstage long enough to congratulate him on his victory. Then Chasten and I found our way to a room w
here my staff and volunteers had gathered—over a hundred people in blue T-shirts whom I had taken to calling the “Happy Warriors” of our campaign. Emotionally drained but also gratified that we had made an impact on the debate over our party’s future, I slept well that night in Atlanta. But other than the last day of the deployment, I can’t think of a time I looked forward more eagerly to going home.
I WASN’T SURE HOW PEOPLE would respond back home in South Bend, passing by in the aisle at Martin’s or spotting me on Jefferson Boulevard on my way into work, after the campaign had ended. From the very outset of my first run for mayor, some had doubted my commitment to local government in South Bend, suggesting that I wouldn’t even finish one term before seeking another office. At one house-party appearance after another in the 2011 campaign, I had fielded questions from residents that included, in one context or another, the word “stepping-stone.”
In fact, I had always intended to serve a full term, and hopefully then earn and serve another one. Actually doing the work reinforced my belief that I belonged in the mayor’s office, and over the years I had learned to quickly deflect the occasional phone call from a party recruiter in Washington or a local journalist about running for Congress. By 2016, as I came off reelection and showed little interest in the chatter about me as a potential lieutenant governor nominee, the “stepping-stone” talk had at last quieted. But now, in early 2017, at the outset of my sixth year in office, I had unexpectedly sought a new job. The whirlwind of the DNC race had only deepened my love for South Bend and for my day-to-day work guiding its recovery, but I knew that returning now, I would be the equivalent of an employee meeting his boss after applying for another job. What would people say?
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