by Kent Minault, HBG Political Committee
The August 6 primary election results gave the Harvey Broome Group (HBG) Political Team a serious reality check. We’d helped elect Courtney Durrett to the County Commission, but our other three endorsees lost. Furthermore, after a lot of discussion and soul-searching, we had endorsed Matthew Park on the Democratic ballot for Tennessee Assembly District 15. This was tough because the district was home to the region’s largest concentration of African American voters. Park, a young White candidate, was running against two experienced Black leaders. Many on our ExCom were opposed to unseating an incumbent Black legislator, even though Park was endorsed by Black Coffee Justice, a nonprofit organization working for social justice, and had strong support in the community. But a scandal emerged involving the incumbent Rick Staples’ misappropriation of campaign funds, resulting in an endorsement for Park from both HBG and the Chapter. And here was our reality check: Park lost the primary to the African American challenger, Sam MacKenzie, by 23 votes. If we’d worked a little harder, could we have swung a few more votes for Park?
But the primary brought another challenge. Some members of the HBG ExCom had hosted a digital meet-and-greet with James Mackler, running to replace Lamar Alexander as Tennessee’s U.S. senator. Mackler was bright, presentable and well-funded, and gave good answers to our questions about climate change and closing TVA’s coal-fired power plants. But we were unsure about endorsing. For one thing, our State Chapter’s Environmental Justice Chair, Marquita Bradshaw, was running for the same seat. We had to be impartial and not endorse her because of her Club position. Marquita was an experienced organizer and environmental justice champion. Should we endorse the strong environmental justice candidate or the more “realistic” one?
Our hesitation left both of them unendorsed for the primary, and when the results came in on August 6, Marquita had won by a substantial margin even though Mackler had some 20 times the money. For the general election, we had to think carefully about whom to endorse and how to mobilize support. Our first move was to get rid of conventional ideas of “electability” – which generally means white, male and well-funded. Maybe money would always be important, but it seemed misguided to dismiss from electoral relevance the powerful movements for youth, women’s rights and Black lives surging nationwide. These movements had obviously made a crucial difference in Marquita’s surprise victory, and we needed to mobilize them for other endorsed candidates as well.
We finally chose seven candidates to endorse - all genuine environmental champions. Rather than career politicians, they were citizens with unique experience and strong qualifications, stepping up to offer leadership. They were Marquita Bradshaw, Blair Walsingham, Renee Hoyos, Jane George, Elizabeth Rowland, Jay Clark, Virginia Couch and Gloria Johnson. The candidates were the electoral manifestation of the Women’s March, the Movement for Black Lives and the Climate Strike Movement. While citizen activists were shutting down pipelines, defending abortion clinics and upending our ideas about policing, our candidates were positioning themselves to forge the movements’ larger intentions into legislation.
We had to turn this phenomenal energy into votes. And we had to do it in the middle of a pandemic where there would be no door-knocking or large rallies. Renee Hoyos, running for Tennessee’s 2nd congressional district and the first candidate we’d connected with, figured out a COVID campaign technique: Knittin’ and Politickin, a series of online video conversations with unique citizens. Other candidates followed suit. Jay Clark videoed a rousing series of front porch conversations which he called Scrappytime. Blair Walsingham spoke with her supporters on a platform called It’s Your Vote. These short exchanges were more engaging than political speeches. People not only got to know how the candidates thought, but met new people in their districts who were already doing fantastic things.
The final component that put it all together was music. Maggie Longmire, who was energizing our political team, is well known to both music lovers and environmentalists, having headlined last year’s Concert for the Climate. And Jay Clark, a popular figure in the music scene, was already using his music to communicate with voters. We all began gathering support from other musical talents to put together a kind of virtual political variety show we called “Tennessee on the Rise.” We wove candidate conversations in with musical performances and put it all together with narration and visuals from regional photographers and videographers. It opened as a Facebook event on Oct. 13, and both parts are still available on YouTube:
(https://bit.ly/HBG-YouTube).
The last thing we had to do was pull Sierra Club members into campaign activity. Here we worked with national Sierra Club staffer Megan Fitzgerald to create a tiered series of Zoom conversations and phone banks to mobilize members into joining our endorsed candidates’ phone and text parties. This proved the most difficult part of our work. Club members vote at very high rates and they contribute generously to campaigns. And though the Political Team phoned and texted extensively and maintained communication with campaign managers, we ultimately failed to sufficiently mobilize our membership to create victory for a range of excellent candidates who admittedly had always been long shots. The only winner of our eight endorsees was Gloria Johnson.
On the national level, however, Sierra Club efforts made a huge difference. In addition to working with our local endorsees, many in HBG participated in the Sierra Club’s Independent Action or Battleground Campaign. This involved participating in phone, text and letter-writing parties nationwide. According to Ariel Hayes, our National Political Director, the Club mobilized more than 35,000 volunteers and reached nearly 2 million voters. We sent 127 million letters, made 5 million phone calls, and sent nearly 20 million text messages to swing states. It’s hard not to believe that all this record-shattering activity made a big difference in moving several states over to Biden and defeating Donald Trump. I’m working on a batch of letters right now to voters in Georgia. The movement is alive and well in America and has plenty of energy to continue the fight into the Biden Administration.
Contact Kent at kminault@gmail.com