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You should be registering voters, you should be engaging on topics that are important. I know a lot of the work that we did when I got elected to the Lafayette Democratic Parish Executive Committee back in, I think, it was 1492, right after the Columbus came. One of the things that we really leaned in on a lot was putting out policy positions on critical things like library millages, and making sure that we advocated for those things, making sure that you hold endorsement meetings, and showcase, and lead because after all, you're being elected by your local Democrats to lead them and give them advice. So the Democratic Parish Executive Committees are set up multiple different ways throughout the state because there seems to be carve outs for almost every single parish as it is. Largely speaking, you have two different types of seats, you have at large seats, you have district seats. There's no difference. There's literally no difference. You still have the same voting authority. You're not outranked if you're a district member versus an at large member. Some people kind of got caught up in that before, and it was like, "No, you can't carry that motion because my vote carries more weight because I'm at large than you." No, that's all hogwash. If you are a member, you are a member. You are a voting member, just like anyone else. Majority always rules on these committees, always. So it is a simple majority, too. And it's a simple majority of the members who have shown up either in person or by proxy. So you have to kind of remember that as you're trying to accomplish things, you're going to have to work the group, you're going to have to make sure that you build consensus of the members. So back to what you could and should be doing, according to the charter. It says a lot about registering voters, it says a lot about engaging with the community. It says a lot about setting up and establishing yourselves as the go to people for the Democratic Party locally. Frequently, what you could and should be doing on the publicity side, holding press conferences, coming up with policy positions, coming out against when someone does something really boneheaded. Coming out against what they did, and calling them out on it, that can be as much as a national topic, or it can be down to a local topic. You have that right. Just because you're a parish committee, you don't get big footed by anyone else that wants to come and step on you. You are your own body, your own entity you cannot be... So for example, if the state party came out with a policy position, or they did something that you didn't like, your parish committee should weigh in on that. You can and should weigh in on that. If the party's not living up to what your standards are for what a state party should be doing, maybe that's helping fund your operations for get-out-the-vote efforts, maybe that is any of the other work that you're doing, you should be calling them out on that. So from the publicity side, that is one of the things that you should really engage in, get to know your local media reporters. There's typically a local government and politics reporter. And so that's important and critical. Finances, you could and should be raising money. Yes, there are rules around that. But you could and should be raising money. A lot of the parish executive committees used to do this, don't know how many are doing it now, but throwing an annual gala, throwing an annual dinner.
Doesn't have to be crazy. But you could and should be recognizing good Democrats in your area, you could and should be talking about the key things that are important. You should be engaging with your candidates, inviting your endorsed candidates to come and speak at those dinners. You can raise that money and then what can you spend it on? Well, there's some rules. And I have some old documents that we put together, I think even Drew, back in the day, helped me write some of those documents on campaign finance for DPECs. There are rules around it, but they're not hard rules to comply with. So as long as you're not getting involved heavily in paying money to candidates like giving money to candidates, that's what your DPEC shouldn't do, unless you're registered as a state PAC.
A DPEC would have separate funds and PAC funds, if they if they registered a PAC, correct?
That is exactly right. The issue there is is that you have to maintain segregated funds. The funds that you get from your local clerk as qualifying fees, those are segregated funds that must remain segregated. So It's one of those things that $1 from the wrong account goes into the wrong account and you can get in trouble for that. So you have to make sure that you maintain that. Qualifying fees can only be used for general party development, for party building. That's what qualifying fees can be used for, they can be used for registering voters, maybe you want to send a postcard to all the newly registered Democrats in your parish and invite them to your next get-together, your next event, invite them to an endorsement meeting. You can do that, you can communicate that way with your members to build party funds. So that's what you can use your qualifying fees. If you raise other funds, like at a gala dinner, you can be a little bit more aggressive with what you want to use those funds on, you don't have such a microscope put on you. But you still are going to have to register with the IRS and get your own tax ID number in order to be a legitimate organization to open up a bank account. Then if you register as a PAC, you'll need to have three separate bank accounts, the PAC money then can and should be used to endorse candidates, to back candidates up, to maybe do mailers with your candidates. That sort of direct sort of advocacy. If you're advocating and spending money on a position, like a constitutional amendment or a local ballot measure, then that has to be PAC money. If you're giving money to a candidate, let's say you want to help do a candidate get to know you event where you're going to raise money and split the money up amongst your candidates, that we used to do, you still have to use your PAC for that. And happy to dig into that once you guys are all on your committees and you're running things, happy to do a follow up to do a deeper dive into the campaign finance rules around that I might even know a friend or two that we might invite on to talk about that as well.
But the nuts and bolts... Nuts and bolts wise, there are 64 DPECS, one for each parish in the state. From your experience, when you were executive director, how many of those were actually up and running? I don't even just mean functional because there's a wide range of what function might be happening, but were there some that were actually vacant and didn't have anyone seated at all?
Yeah, there was, sadly. We sometimes thought was situations where there were only three members who went out and qualified and those three member or even two members. And what those individuals ended up doing was they would refuse to appoint anyone to the committee, and then they would take the qualifying fees, and Lord knows what with those qualifying fees. So there were other situations where you had committees, and full committees, people who actually ran for the seats, who spent money to get elected to the seats. And then what would happen is oh, they would convene their first meeting and elect officers, and then guess what would happen? They would meet again for six months to a year. So that's the other problem.
So you mentioned that you could counter message the state party if you don't like what they're saying, but are DPECS bylaw subservient to the state party bylaws?
I would use they are subordinate. Just like the state party is subordinate to the DNC. And so that is one of those things that keep out. But just because you're subordinate to does not mean you cannot take a disagreement. There are multiple different parts of the state up in Shreveport, you guys may have different concerns than down in New Orleans, right? And is that okay? Of course, it's okay! You should be talking about those things. The other part of this that's really important is, according to the current bylaws, as I understand them, and there's been some changes to them that confound me, and I'm hoping that the new committee will actually clear up some of that. But that being said, my understanding is right now that the state party basically reserves the right for any endorsements for congressional, Supreme Court, and that. They do allow you guys, and you can still weigh in, you can still endorse locally, there is nothing stopping you from that. That being said, the state party could trump you. Oh, God, I hate using that term... They could come in and say, "Well, I realize that your committee joined with the neighboring parish to endorse a certain member for the State House, however, the House Caucus and the state party go a different way." Now the state party shouldn't be getting into those races. But they toy, we saw that in this last administration that they did a lot of that. So we might want to... you guys should be very clear and be aggressive on that in getting out there and working with those candidates.
Do you have more? I'm gonna have people ask questions. But do you have anything else you want to share? Before we open it up for questions?
Yeah, look, this is one of the things that I highly recommend, because you guys are our committee, you should engage with folks, don't make this a members only club, you should be inviting members who are not even elected to your DPEC, right? But you should invite them and put them on committees, put them on a voter registration committee, put them on a digital committee to help you guys do outreach, put them on your GOTV committee in order to help get votes out. Just because they don't hold a seat doesn't mean that they can't be on a subcommittee of the DPEC that you guys empower. And they can have voting rights on those as well, right? So you can really engage with as deep and as broad as you want to taking on as much as you possibly can. Now, my strong recommendation is start slow, build up, don't commit to doing things that you're not going to be able to follow through with because then that then makes people upset with you. But you could literally dig in and start building those, build really good meeting rules, make sure that you're working towards consensus, because you can get so much more done with a consensus-building organization. If you have obstinates, if you have people that you're constantly fighting with? Fighting and disagreeing is always healthy. Get in there, don't just give up, don't throw up your hands and say, "Well, since I didn't get my way on one vote, I'm out, I'm not doing this anymore." If we did that, I would never have been Executive Director for nine years, we never would have raised multiple millions of dollars or elected John Bel Edwards twice. I can guarantee you that. And I'm sure Lynda Woolard probably wouldn't have come and worked with us either at that case. So anyhow, those were the main topics that I had articulated, I'm happy to dig into any of the other nuts and bolts.
Well, I definitely... I know there are at least a couple people here that had specific questions they wanted to ask. Alana, I see that you had a question. Can you unmute and ask your question?
You know, my question is what are the obligations for financial transparency for the DPECs but also the DSCC? And also, like, not only financial transparency, but, like, meeting minutes and this information being transparent to voters, to Democrats, you know. We find it veryhard to get this information from the current party.
I know that there is perception and then there's also reality. So here's what I want to challenge everyone with. First off, every single penny that comes into or out of the Louisiana Democratic Party, State party, has to be reported somewhere, every single penny. There is no hide any of that. So when it comes to transparency, it's there, you may just have to dig for it. Now that was, if I'm not overstepping the bounds here, my good friend, Katherine Hurst, who is on the line, she led the effort and passed a resolution that was unanimous calling for clearer monthly reports being given to the committee. Well, they just ignored that resolution. And that's kind of... that's kind of what the problem was, is that they weren't providing those documentations. When it comes down to minutes? Your state party, your local party, your DPEC has to operate just like a corporation does. When the board comes together, and you make any certain decisions, those must be recorded in the form of minutes. those minutes must then be voted on at the next meeting to approve those minutes. And those minutes must be archived and available to any Democrat who asked for them. Okay? Period, end of sentence. That is a rule that comes from. we talked about subordination, that is a rule that comes from the DNC. That's all subordination all the way down to any of our local committees, just like our meetings have to be open to the public. All of them have to be. Now, you can go into executive session if you want to talk about employment, which unless you're employing people, you really can't do that, or you can talk about endorsements solely to the point that you want to talk about the strategics of an endorsement, not the actual endorsement itself. And remember, if you go into Executive Session, you can't vote on anything, you can only take votes when you're in public and on the record.
Our DPEC in Iberia parish has opened a second checking account, specifically to offset qualifying fees, because the qualifying fees are becoming so high that a regular person can't pay those fees. So... and we haven't had much activity in it. But hopefully, in the very near future, if we reelect a new administration in our DPEC, then we can start really getting some funds in that account and offset these things and actually get some people to run. Our biggest issue here is that I can never find candidates to run. For example, I could not find a candidate to run against Marcus Bryant because the party infrastructure does not want him challenged whatsoever. And now we're stuck with him again for four more years, when he specifically presents legislation that hurts our constituency, like oil severance tax exemptions, and a refusal to study the effects of sugarcane smoke in our district. So we have big problems finding candidates and supporting those candidates with money, or even just offsetting the cost of the ridiculously, ever increasing qualifying feet. So that's all I've got to say.
I got a few things on that. And I know you and I have spoken multiple times about this and kind of shared our frustrations with each other. Let me say a couple of things. One of the things I'm going to say that's not going to be popular, and David feel free to shoot flames my way. But if you can't afford qualifying fees, you can't afford to run for office, period. There, I said it. The bottom line is, it costs money to run for office. It does. It's the situation that we have right now. Until that situation changes, it is what it is. Qualifying fees, at the end of the day, here in our state, are much lower than they are in almost every other state that I know of. I work in all 57 state parties throughout the world, including Democrats abroad, and we do in Louisiana have much more easy situations there. Secondarily, I do want to say something about this, David, you know, you bring up a really good point about local elected officials and them doing things that you don't like. That is where that DPEC should be heavily involved, you should be holding a press conference to grill his ass for doing those things, call him out, bring in local experts to talk about how he's hurting the district, make it so damn uncomfortable, pardon my French, okay, that you guilt him, you shame them into doing it. And just because he's a Democrat, that does not mean you can't do that. You should be holding people accountable when they are in office, right? And the other part of this is and the Democratic establishment this is where we get into, and Lynda and I did a really, I think a really good. because I'm biased, but a really good podcast, that actually broke down the alphabet soup as to all of these different entities. And one of the things is when it comes down to state representatives, that is an incumbent protection program that is run through the State House Democratic Party caucus. That is money that they raise at the donkey romp and all of those things to protect incumbents. That doesn't do anything else. So for example, many of us were involved in our good friend Mandie Landry's race, okay, and wanted her to be reelected. She was actually endorsed by the House caucus, but at the end of the day, that did work in our direction. The problem is it also works against us when we have a bad Democrat that's in office that's actually working against the district. But that is where the DPEC holds a lot of power. You guys can be calling them out! Make it so uncomfortable that when they go to the grocery store, they get those questions as to why in the world did you do this to us? I think that that's really good. So sorry for going off on a tangent there.
And I do want to ask you, and this is more nuts and bolts-y stuff, but for DPECs that have a couple of members that get either elected or go in unopposed so they don't have a whole lot of infrastructure, how do they get more members? How do they get how do they go out and find a way to create a functioning DPEC?
Yeah, that's a really good question, too. So any of the vacancies that exist, that committee, so long as the committee has been made whole, meaning that it's a functioning committee, and in order to define that you must have three members. One of them must be of the opposite gender of the other two. And you must elect officers, meaning that you must elect a chair, a vice chair, and a secretary treasurer. Of those three members. Once you do that, you now have the power to hold community meetings, have people submit themselves for consideration for the different districts, the different seats that are open, you can then conduct elections amongst yourselves, okay, to figure out who you want to fill those seats. At the end of the day, those seats can then be filled by a majority vote of that local committee. Now, every committee does it a little bit different. Some committees have extra bylaws concerning this, where the chair has to nominate, and then the members vote in the members. That's how the state party does it. Other folks, at the end of the day, as long as there's a majority vote of the sitting members, those seats can be filled.
I just like to push back a little bit on the cost of running a candidate. Stephen, I think what you're missing here is that in the very local elections, for example, the city of New Iberia, we've got the parish council races coming up, the wind vote count for a district might be 400 votes. And so if I have an entrenched incumbent, a Democratic incumbent, that's entrenched, that's not doing the work for the people, I just need to get a purse, that person cannot come up with $200-$300 for the qualifying fee. These are very, very poor districts that need people to represent them. And so the amount of money becomes much, much lower to fill these lower seats, but they're vastly important. This is where we're making big mistakes. We're not putting in little bits of money and little bits of efforts across the board at the low end to try and get these people in. So I will agree that I don't think anybody else has an account that does that. But these grassroots contributions, hopefully will wake this party up and we can get some sort of base. We are fighting an entrenched incumbent Democratic system, where the people who need representation are not getting any whatsoever. So thanks.
Quick question for you, Stephen. Bylaws, do DEPCs have their own bylaws or do they have generic statewide bylaws? Or is it a combination of both?
It is definitely a combination of both. One of the things that you might want to research even before you go and take your seat and officially take on the role. Whether you've been elected or even whether you're just a candidate right now and you're running a race, you might want to go in and and check with the local clerk of court and ask them to pull any bylaws that have been filed with them. Because one of the things that haunted my butt down in Lafayette parish was they had bylaws that were 150 years old. Well, it was from the creation. So they were filed in like 1992, which required all members to be noticed of meetings, by mail. And because it had that in there, the only meetings that they would ever hold is ones that they actually notified by mail. And nobody wanted to spend the postage to notify people for mail. So it was a constant fight that I would have. And whenever there was a meeting that folks didn't like the way the vote outcome happened, we would have one of the lawyers threatened to sue us all on the committee because we didn't follow the notification rules of that meeting. So yes, don't be surprised, go and find out. Better find out now. Most parish executive committees do not have additional bylaws that have been appropriately filed. That being said almost, well, most of the committees that I know of would also at the beginning of their term adopt basically rules of the road. One of the great things that we were able to pass in Lafayette was the first meeting of every year, they would elect officers. Not necessarily new. If your folks were doing a good job, they should get reelected. But if they're not, you have your opportunity to go ahead and weigh that in and make folks weigh in. So hopefully that answers your question, but if you need to find them, you can look at the local clerk of courts office to find them. And there are some guidance in the state law as well as the state party bylaws, but not much.
L.T., can you unmute and ask your question?
Yes. First and foremost, thank you so much for the insight that you've given. One of the things that I am definitely concerned with with our DPEC it's not that we can't get people. I mean, right now I think we're pretty much are bursting at the seams with candidates who are either running. We do got positions that have already filled, there's only one district that didn't have somebody and everything. But the biggest issue we have is there are people that are utilizing the DPEC to be their own springboard for running for office. They're, you know, more concerned about getting that connection, that endorsement or so forth. What is your advice on how we start to weed that out or try to make it more clear about, you know, what are your intentions if you're a part of the DPEC? Because it messed us up so bad and a lot of our races that we lost was due to not having that support system from our actual DPEC members.
Completely agree. And that has been a problem that Caddo has been dealing with for quite some time. I know I've gotten involved several times and gotten deep into the weeds on it, here's the best advice I can give you. Your committee has multiple people on it. You got to do the work, to get people to see your side of things, when you see someone who is peacocking, as I call it, who's only using the committee to support themselves or their own issues that are not as popular, figuring out your coalition to get their votes voted down, figure out who your votes are, and work that committee, okay? At the end of the day, you need a majority. You need a majority of votes to be able to carry these meetings. So I would really engage on that. I know that it's frustrating. I know that there's a lot of work to be done there, but that would be my biggest piece of advice. I know that that's the only way that I was able to get stuff done in Lafayette.
Drew, can you ask your question?
Yeah, so there's a lot of people obviously running for DPEC who aren't able to be on here today, but will, you know, be able to listen to this later. Um, for those, you know, keeping all the parameters of the DPECs and the duties of the DPECs in mind, what do you suggest are the most effective things for DPEC candidates to campaign on that would engage Democratic voters to care about these committees?
Look, I think the single biggest thing, messaging point that I think would carry well, almost in every single freaking district throughout the entire state of Louisiana, in every single parish, is your party should be there. Your party should be present, we should be doing things we should exist. It's called a party for a reason. And that doesn't mean that it should just be something that is the no one can find you. If you are not present, if you're not engaged, then what are you doing? And so I think that that could be your strongest argument is, is that you're going to be engaged, you're going to bring the party to the people, you're going to frequently be in the neighborhoods. You're not going to only go and knock on doors come election day, you're actually going to be engaging with voters earlier, and more frequently and more, what's the word, more quality conversations as well. So that's what I think the biggest thing is that you will turn folks on, because you're going to find out that people care about a lot of stuff. But figuring out once you're talking with them, then you can figure out, "Oh, we should be really leaning in about the libraries. You know, they've been cutting off access in our libraries, and the libraries are now being used as a tool for Jeff Landry to somehow, you know, hurt kids. That's not what libraries are about."
And Stephen, you mentioned that there are others, you work in 57 state parties, the 50 states plus the territories. Are there models that you think that the DPECs could borrow from?
Look, there really are and I'm more than happy. I think that that could be a whole separate Zoom, and then a lot of supporting documentation. But look, there are many states. Let's just talk about Texas since it's next door. We hate Texas for many reasons, and rightfully so. But they have some things going on. For example, Houston and Dallas. They both have up and running county parties there where they raise money. They have full time staff that work for the county party that are responsible for the work of the party. The board actually is responsible for raising that money, they hold fundraisers, they do that work that's so incredibly important. And so, you know, there are many other models that just show what engagement looks like. Where it doesn't have to be to that degree where you're actually talking about staff and human resource law, right? There's a whole myriad of things that can be done in between there. But it's really all comes back down to engagement, and what are the things that are important to your constituents? And that's being involved in weighing in. How many times do you hear from voters, that they don't know who their representative is? Or they don't know about the constitutional amendments until the last moment, when it's time to come out? If your local party is actually holding hearings on those local constitutional amendments, those local ballot initiatives, engaging that, having the community come out and weigh in on that, that is so incredibly powerful. And then even when people are too busy, because they're raising kids, and they're doing their work, they can't come, they at least hear from you because they're following you on social media.
Right. So I think that's the other piece, right, is that you can have hearings, but it's, you know, if a tree falls in a forest, do you hear it, right? So you've got to make sure that you're doing the organizing work of letting your community know those hearings exist, and then making sure they're also public on your social media so that if they don't hear about it before the hearing happened, they can go back and watch video of it when they're ready.
Yeah, those models seem like something that maybe the larger parishes could definitely look at like Orleans, like Caddo, like Lafayette, I mean, specifically, the first thing that comes to mind with. It would be wonderful to have more robust fundraising, you know, efforts that are happening with these committees, specifically, when it comes to like ballot time for, for a lot of these races. You know, a lot of traditionally, it seems like, you know, DPECs or other organizations have relied on the candidates to make sure that they're funding those pro rata shares, right, for those ballots, it would be incredible for the DPECs to be able to raise enough money to be able to fund those ballots, to support those candidate campaigns so that the candidates aren't expected to have to fund that. So I think that would be a killer opportunity for some fundraising efforts for some of those larger parishes that do that.
And to David's earlier point, while we will never agree on the qualifying fee aspect of this, that is one of the things that constantly chaps my behind is that pro rata share crap that's out there. That's not a thing, except for federal candidates, by the way. You don't have to do that for state candidates. That's not legally required for state candidates, by the way. So it is required for federal candidates because of the rules revolving around that. But just so everyone knows, that is not a thing. If the local committee was actually raising that money to put out informational ballots to their members. That is definitely something you guys could be doing.
Okay, Stephen, let's get you back on after people are elected to the DPECs to do sort of an open office hours for folks to ask questions. Well, thank you so much for joining us, we will do this again so that folks can kind of engage on the other side of the elections and learn a little bit more about what they can do with these DPECs. And I feel like the more we promote them to the general public, even though some of this might be very esoteric information, at least people will know that the Democratic parish executive committees exist, and they may seek out their own, they may fill a vacancy on their own, or they may choose to run next time.
Yep. But one thing that I want to kind of just summarize at the end of this is for those of you do have competitive races. There is no such thing as wishing and hoping to get elected, there's only work. And there's organizing work to be done. And at the end of the day, there are many of these races that are going to be decided by a small handful of people. And the difference is going to be, "Have you talked to those to the electorate?" At the end of the day this is not laborious work. But that's work. It is actually work and you will get out of this what you put into it. I promise you that.
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