The Big Sort
Page 28
Contrary to what the Democrats thought, the Republicans didn't convince preachers to organize parishioners and march them to the polls in 2004. Four years earlier, the Bush campaign had tried to recruit preachers, and the effort had flopped.* "What we learned in 2000 is that if you want something to happen on the ground, you have to have people on the ground," Bush's Portland, Oregon, campaign leader Patrick Donaldson told me. "The pastor is not on the ground in most cases. They are spiritual leaders, and they are reluctant to use the pulpit" in political campaigns.† So in 2004, the Bush campaign went after something more powerful than the minister. The campaign recruited churches' social networks. Bush workers collected rosters of church members, just as they collected the membership lists of organizations such as Ducks Unlimited (a hunters' group), the names of people who had signed petitions seeking to outlaw gay marriage, and the names of conservative homeschoolers. (Republicans were exact: they asked Donaldson to retrieve membership lists from precisely 149 congregations in the Portland area.) As the Bush campaign compiled names, it was simultaneously discovering the social networks that would become the campaign's delivery system—how the Republicans would build a local organization of volunteers and spread the word about Bush.
The Bush reelection campaign ideal would have neighbors contacting neighbors. This was the Applebee's model, the megachurch model. The campaign couldn't hire canvassers, as ACT and the Democrats were doing. The Republicans couldn't bus in campaign workers from other communities. People would notice right away if the person going door-to-door came from a strange tribe, a different hive. Patrick Donaldson in Portland said that the young ACT and Moveon.org canvassers coming to his door would talk about the future of "Or-e-gone," a pronunciation that grates on natives. ("It's Or-e-gun," Donaldson emphasized.) Oregon pollster Tim Hibbitts watched the waves of ACT and MoveOn.org canvassers crash over the state's neighborhoods and concluded that they were "absolutely worthless. At best they did nothing."*
The Republican campaign also recruited what it called "navigators," people trusted in particular communities who could be the personal representatives of George W. Bush. This was a strategy taken straight from the marketing world that, again, worked best within homogeneous communities. Elmo Roper first proposed in the 1940s that 10 to 12 percent of the population consisted of opinion leaders, influencing others in their choice of goods, services, and, perhaps, presidents.† Companies have tried to identify these "influentials" and convince them to use their products in the belief that they would bring many other customers along. Procter & Gamble, for example, began its Tremor advertising unit in 2001. Tremor identified influential teens who, on average, had 170 friends. Companies would give these young people free stuff and ask for their thoughts about, say, a new shampoo or a movie trailer. The strategy was to get these teens talking, to generate a buzz. By 2004, Tremor had 280,000 teens in its network and a client list that included Sony, Valvoline, DreamWorks, and Coca-Cola.22
The Bush campaign identified its navigators with Applebee's in mind. One was Wes Mader, the rail-thin former mayor of Prior Lake, in Scott County, Minnesota. Mader had grown up in a thin-soil Wisconsin farming community. His mother had been orphaned at age five; his father had lived to be ninety and would never accept a senior citizen discount. Mader had made his own way, becoming president of an aerospace firm and raising a family that still lived nearby. "There's a sense in Prior Lake and in Scott County that families are the fundamental building block of society," Mader told me as we sat in his lakeside house. "That's the attitude that's here, and it's an identifiable value of the Republican Party." The former mayor, successful businessman, and utterly trustworthy neighbor was, according to the GOP strategy, the Scott County incarnation of George W. Bush. He was one of thousands.
The campaign was particularly interested in how its canvassers approached people identified as likely Republicans. Those going door-to-door were asked simply to tell why they backed Bush—to, in effect, witness their support for the president. Patrick Donaldson, who led the Bush campaign in Multnomah County in Oregon, said that his organizers urged canvassers not to argue with voters. He told his volunteers, "You aren't trying to change the world. You aren't trying to convince anybody of anything. [You] are trying to talk to friends and neighbors and family, saying, 'Here's who I support and here are the reasons why.' If they don't support who you support and they give you the reasons why, that's wonderful. The discipline was we're not here to engage in any sort of disagreement at all. It's not going to happen." In Scott County, canvassers were given the same orders. The strategy wasn't to convince people to vote for Bush, but to build a Bush community. "We made it all social events, and that's why we were more successful," said Robert Thibodeaux. "As opposed to going to somebody's door and saying, 'Hi, will you support the president because of this, this, and this?' We said, 'Hey, we're having a party at somebody's house to watch a video about the president, have some drinks, and just talk about things in the nation and Scott County.' If they come to a party and they're in a room with thirty other people, they realize it's okay to talk."
"Friendship Evangelism" Finds a Campaign
The technique of seeking connection as a means to conversion is familiar to anyone involved with an Evangelical church. The generation of ministers who opened churches in the new suburbs realized that people couldn't be bludgeoned into the pews. People came to faith most often through a network of friends and family. Friendship came first and then conversion. These ministers practiced what became known as "friendship evangelism" or "lifestyle evangelism," which is based on the biblical command that Christians be "witnesses" (Acts 1:8).23 Much of this church practice originated outside America, specifically with Pastor David Yonggi Cho, the Korean inventor of the cell system. Pastor Cho has said that his cells attract new members through friendship and service. These groups "select someone who's not a Christian, whom they can pray for, love, and serve." Pastor Cho said, "They bring meals, help sweep out the person's store—whatever it takes to show they really care for them ... After three or four months of such love, the hardest soul softens up and surrenders to Christ." Instead of a preacher trying to hook one convert at a time, Cho cast the neighborhood cells as nets—a technique that has grown his Yoido Full Gospel Church by more than 140 new members a day.24 Cho's practice transferred to the United States (Chicago-area megachurch preacher Bill Hybels writes about "contagious" Christianity) and eventually, in 2004, to the Bush campaign.
I asked campaign organizers if this had been a conscious application of religious proselytizing to political campaigning. "A lot of us are very active in Evangelical churches, the witnessing churches," Thibodeaux answered. "So it was kind of in our DNA anyway to talk about what you want to do and bring people together to a party. I go back and forth. A lot of this stuff used for evangelism and churches I use in politics, and [I use] stuff I learned in politics in churches." Patrick Donaldson said, "We weren't there to convince anybody. We were there to give testimony of why we were for George Bush. And that's very religious."
As the Savage Mafia followed the strategy prepared by Dowd and Karl Rove, it probably didn't hurt that the Democratic Party nominee in a state representative race in Scott County was also the co-chair of the Queer Student Cultural Center at the University of Minnesota. "Ashley Sierra was just the perfect thing from a political standpoint," Robert Thibodeaux said of the student who won the nomination from clueless Scott County Democrats. But the Savage Republicans didn't need the help. The Big Sort had made Scott County overwhelmingly Republican. The Bush campaign's organizing strategy was aimed at affirming the homogeneous community's sense of itself. The navigators linked the president directly to Scott County; the ability to micro-target individuals allowed the campaign to deliver messages tailored to individual concerns.25' The campaign held parties and tapped into the existing networks of schools, kids' sports teams, and churches that threaded through the county. The vote in November wasn't so much the reelection of a president as an affirm
ation of a way of life.
The Democrats "Achieve" Edina
One of the older suburbs in Minneapolis, and certainly one of the richest, is Edina. Edina gave Barry Goldwater a landslide victory in 1964, favored Richard Nixon by 9,000 votes over former Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and gave Ronald Reagan an 11,000-vote victory over Minnesota senator Walter Mondale in 1984. There's a locally famous Richard Guindon cartoon of a very proper mother telling her child, "Daddy and I weren't born in Edina, dear. We achieved Edina." That's the kind of place it was—rich, satisfied, and Republican—until 2004. That year, Edina voted for John Kerry. The headline in the Minneapolis Star Tribune the day after the election pretty much told the story: KERRY CARRIES EDINA—AND PIGS FLY, RIGHT?
Despite the presumption that Republicans ruled the suburbs, places like Edina had been turning away from the Republicans since 1992, and not just in the blue-leaning upper Midwest. Older suburbs in the South were becoming more Democratic, as were those in the North and the rest of the Midwest.26 The shift surprised Republicans and Democrats alike in 2004. The Bush campaign was certain it would win Washington County, in suburban Portland, a community filled with executives at Intel and Nike—platinum-card-carrying members of Bush's investor class. But Kerry won there instead, by 6 percentage points, and a local Republican campaign official said that the results "flummoxed" the Washington, D.C., party headquarters. If Rove, Dowd, and Mehlman were bewildered by the vote in Washington County, Edina must have blown their minds.
Morningside, the eastern section of Edina, looks like my Democratic neighborhood in Austin. The houses are older and close together, and France Avenue, which runs along the edge of Morningside, has that lived-in city look. There's a bagel shop next door to a coffee joint, and near the corner of France and Sunnyside, the Convention Grill specializes in fudge banana malts and burgers. "I love to talk about my neighborhood," said Joni Bennett as she spread out precinct lists and maps that documented Kerry's victory. Bennett was forty-nine the year of the election and a forever Democrat—her first campaign was for George McGovern when she was in high school. She's also a Columbia law school graduate, a mom, and one of those bright-eyed, short-haired women who can carry a neighborhood on her back.
All of Edina didn't vote for Kerry, she explained. The neighborhood west of Morningside, where the houses are larger and farther apart, still supported Bush, though barely. The precincts in Morningside had changed in recent years, Bennett said. There were "urban pioneers" moving in because the neighborhood, next door to downtown Minneapolis, had a city feel. People who "support the vitality of urban life" were coming here, she said. There was a lot of "self-selection" taking place. The people attracted to Morningside were of a different tribe from those settling in Scott County. Two gay couples had moved to her block in the past few years. "If you have gay couples moving in, then it's different than what it used to be," she said.
Back in Austin, Dowd explained to me, "As people make lifestyle choices about where they live, it means whole neighborhoods adjust." It's not a single issue that changes a community. Politics today isn't about issues. It's about a place, a way of life, a species. So a community doesn't shift three or four people at a time. When Dowd looked at the suburban counties that switched from Republican to Democratic in the 2005 Virginia governor's election, neighborhoods tipped wholesale. Entire communities "shifted in groups"—or, in Donald McGavran's language, as "peoples." That's exactly what happened in Edina.
Morningside voted heavily for Kerry, but Edina turned Democratic in 2004 because the entire town was tipping. Tim O'Brien was Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair in Edina during the early 1980s. Over the last generation, he's seen "the old inner-ring suburbs going through this metamorphosis, changing from being solidly Republican to, not Democratic, but moderate," he told me. The old Edina residents were largely self-employed businessmen, country club Babbitts. The newer residents are professionals. They read the New York Times, he said, and both husband and wife have been to college. They want a connection to urban Minneapolis. By contrast, voters in Scott County have "no association with the inner metropolitan area whatsoever," O'Brien said. "They read the story in the paper today about four kids arrested for murdering somebody, a horror story, and they are damn glad they are living out in Scott County."
What about the people who have moved into Morningside? I asked. These are people who want a "city lifestyle," he answered. "I think you could say that the people in Morningside wouldn't move to Scott County if you put a gun to their head," O'Brien concluded. "And vice versa."
Panda Democrats
Back in heavily Republican and rural Crook County, Oregon, the local Democratic Party meets monthly at the Panda Chinese restaurant in Prineville. The night I visited, party regulars numbered in the high single digits. They wore their colors—a Prius in the parking lot and a RELIGIOUS LEFT pin on a lapel—and they collected donations for future campaigns in a Folgers coffee can. (The cumulative offering that night was $414.13.) That Democrats gathered at all in Prineville was somewhat new. Regular meetings at the Panda had begun only after the election wars of 2000. The goal of Crook County's underdog party in 2004 was modest. According to county chair Steve Bucknum, the Panda Democrats set out to "make it just okay to be a Democrat, to not be laughed out of town."
The Crook County Democrats fought guerrilla style, and their weapon of choice was the political sign. "The Democratic Party for years here had been afraid to put up signs during campaigns," explained Bucknum. "This last election cycle, we made it our major focus just to get signs up, as many signs as we could." They planted signs, and when those signs were ripped up and left for mulch, the Democrats replaced them. They weren't trying to convince the Republicans of anything. The goal was only to survive.
In the heat of the 2004 race, the Panda Democrats staged a bold daylight attack in downtown Prineville. They festooned cars with Kerry/Edwards signs and PROUD TO BE A RURAL OREGON DEMOCRAT bumper stickers and then parked these IEDs (improvised electoral devices) on the street in front of the Republican headquarters. A Democrat loitering in a nearby store overheard an irate citizen dialing the Prineville police department. The Republican sympathizer expected the local constabulary to come right away and tow the vehicles. Another person stuck his head out a door and yelled that the Democrats should be put in an insane asylum. That was the prevailing attitude in Crook County, Bucknum said. If you were a Democrat, you belonged in either the pokey or a padded room.
Rural America defected en masse from the Democratic Party in 2000. Between the second Clinton election in 1996 and the first Bush election in 2000, 856 counties changed allegiance. Exactly 2 of those 856 counties switched from Republican to Democratic. Both were metro communities: Charles County, Maryland, in suburban Washington, D.C., and Orange County, Florida, otherwise know as Orlando. The 854 counties that switched from Democratic to Republican were mostly tiny places. Half of them had fewer than 8,300 votes. The wholesale shift of rural Americans to the Republican Party wasn't isolated to one region or even two. The entire country broke apart, rural versus urban.
Rural people have always seen things differently from folks in the cities. But with television, the Internet, and increasing levels of education nationwide, it originally seemed that those differences would diminish. Instead, rural and urban Americans have grown further apart, a split that was plain to see in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Among rural young people (ages eighteen to twenty-nine), the Republican vote jumped from 48 percent in 1996 to 69 percent in 2000. Rural voters with some college education were evenly split in 1996; in 2000, 68 percent of them voted Republican.27 Rural America made its own political rules. The stereotype of the rural voter is a white male—undoubtedly toting a weapon.* Although rural white men did vote Republican in 2000 and 2004, the dramatic switch to the right after 1996 was among rural white women. Married white women in rural counties gave Bush a 30-point advantage in 2004. Seventy percent of white women without a college education living i
n rural communities voted for Bush. Democrats had enjoyed a large advantage among all women voters throughout the 1990s, but the steady io-point gap was reduced to only 3 percentage points in 2004. The decline in the gender gap between the parties was due largely to rural women voting Republican.28
John Kerry's response to the cultural division between rural and urban America was to borrow some camouflage clothing one day and sacrifice four ducks to the gods of the Second Amendment. When he traveled to rural America (or the fast-growing exurbs), he was painfully out of place. The Kerry campaign thought that it could drum up votes in rural counties by talking about new roads and the term-paper-sounding Manufacturing Extension Partnership. "That an upper class Bostonian encountered difficulty in connecting at the human level with everyday, largely more conservative, rural voters ought not to surprise," wrote political consultants Anna Greenberg and Bill Greener in 2005. *29 Crook County Democrat Steve Bucknum put it more bluntly: "The problem with the Democratic Party is elitism."