Democratic National Committee member pledges help for local Democrats

Democratic National Committee Hispanic Caucus Vice Chair Jorge Quintana of Helena spoke with the Hill County Democratic Central Committee Tuesday about the work the DNC has done since 2016 and what resources the DNC has available to help Democrats win in 2020.

"I would say that the wind's at our back, but it's a little uphill," he said.

Quintana said that after losing the presidential race and other races across the country in 2016, the DNC implemented a number of new programs and strategies to better promote candidates and strengthen Democratic central committees across the country. The power of the Democrats is persuasion, he said, and although 2016 was "horrible," the midterm election in 2018 showed Democrats across the country are gaining momentum again. 

"We saw results in 2018, the biggest, by terms of voters, voting for a party," he said. "It was the biggest landslide ever."

He said that in 2018 Democrats were able to swing 40 seats and flipped seven governors from Republican to Democrat across the country. They also flipped more than 400 state legislator seats, creating seven new state legislative Democratic majorities and broke four Republican supermajorities.

Also during the midterm, the DNC's "I Will Vote" program registered more than 50 million new voters across the country as part of the efforts to get 94 million cell phones in the voter access file, he said.

In Montana, the volunteer efforts, with campaigns and doors knocked on, were those of a presidential-race level, although it was only a midterm election, he added.

Same with the Native American vote on the reservations, people voting at a higher level than what is usual for a midterm election. He said that because of those efforts, Montana got the closest it has been since the 1990s to flipping the states U.S. House seat, with Democratic candidate Kathleen Williams losing to incumbent U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., by only a handful of votes.

Gianforte defeated Williams by 5 percent, 256,661 votes to 233,284.

2018 should be a starting point for the Democratic party, he said, and if the party carries the momentum from 2018 forward into the 2020 elections the Democrats may be able to win.

Quintana said President Donald Trump's trade war is a self-inflicted wound which has hurt a large majority of people across Montana. He added that Trump's approval rating in the state is only 50 percent approval to 43 percent disapproval, and given Trump won the state in 2016 by more than 30 points, his approval rating shows he has lost favor with many of his former supporters in the past four years.

Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton with 56.6 percent of the votes to her 36 percent.

With Trump, the country has seen one incident after another, one insult after another and people are tired of the way the current political climate is going, Quintana said. But Montanans still need to focus on the local races, such as the governor's seat and the U.S. Senate and U.S. House seats.

"Home is where the heart is. Put that effort in local races," he said. "... If it's fair, we will win."

In 2016, Quintana said, the DNC elected Tom Perez as chair of the committee.

"I will say, of all the DNC chairs we've had, he's the first one we've had who's really made us work," Quintana said.

Perez has stressed people raising money, having a social media presence and a number of other things to gain support for the party, Quintana said. One thing the DNC has implemented is each state's parties will receive $10,000 from the DNC each month, which is a one-third increase compared to 2016. He added that $10,000 may not mean a lot for states such as California, but for states such as Montana a gauranteed $120,000 a year will go a long way.

The DNC has also started sending out a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats - SWOT - evaluations to each party across the country, including the U.S. territories, he said.

He added that it will also be the second election cycle for the DNC's and the Montana Democratic Party's Blue Bench Program, which is a program that provides resources to local candidates. He said that the program was a success in 2018, flipping Bozeman from a traditionally Republican area to Democrat.

After 2016, one thing everyone knew in the DNC is it needed to rebuild, he said, and implementing new programs has proven to be effective.

"It's definitely a help," he said.

Starting in 2017, interns at the DNC are now paid, so people are able to be politically active and not worry about going into debt, he said.

DNC also has organized a program called Corps 2020, which will seek out college graduates, hire and train them to be door knockers and basic canvassing for campaigns. He said for the first time the national party will be paying people to get trained and learn how to work campaigns. 

He added that the DNC has also established a program for cyber security in light of questions raised about the security of the 2016 election and campaign.

"Every day there's more and more reason to be less and less confident in our elections," Quintana said.

He added that after the conflict within the party between supporters and delegates of presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the DNC created a Unity Commission, which was made of delegates for Sanders and Clinton, who proposed some rules for some changes. The most notable one is the DNC will no longer have superdelegates - unpledged delegates - so whoever wins in the primary is who they will be voting for.

One thing Perez has also done as chair of the DNC, Quintana said, is appointed a large number of millenials and Native Americans to the DNC, the Native Americans having enough members to establish a Native American Caucus. He added that having more millennials and Native Americans involved is good and having a Native American Caucus allows the chair of the caucus to sit on the executive committee, guaranteeing they are represented.

"I want to go to bed at night knowing that the right person, the person who got the most votes, won the election," Quintana said. "I don't think I could say that about Georgia this past election. I don't think I could say that about Florida this past election."