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MISHA S5:B1 - Demystifying the DSCC

Lynda Woolard39min

Lynda Woolard

00:07

Welcome to Louisiana Lefty, a podcast about politics and community in Louisiana, where we make the case that the health of the state requires a strong progressive movement fueled by the critical work of organizing on the ground. Our goal is to democratize information, demystify party politics, and empower you to join the mission, because victory for Louisiana really does require you. I'm your host, Lynda Woolard. We've just completed season five, and will return with Season Six in August. We're now on summer break. And that's when we tend to turn out mini pods, rather than full episodes. However, many would be a misrepresentation here, since this is essentially a full length podcast. So we'll just call it a bonus episode. Louisiana has our big state elections coming up this fall. So this is a huge year for state politics. Qualifying for elected offices occurs in August, and we'll talk about those races this Fall. But I want to continue to call your attention to the Democratic State Central Committee, the governing body of the Louisiana Democratic Party, for which qualifying happens in December. We're going to spend our entire summer break focusing on this. And why do we keep doing podcasts about the state party? Well, that'll become clearer with each episode we release on it. I've invited Stephen Handwerk back or, as we call him, the professor, to come share his expertise. We'll try to answer some of the questions I've received as I've talked to folks across the state. My firm belief is that without a robust Democratic Party, that's doing the work of electing more Democrats and sometimes better Democrats, there will be no real protections for workers rights, civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, student rights, voting rights, disability rights, and so on. Not to mention protections for our citizens from climate change, environmental toxins, and insurance companies leaving the state. At this moment in history, I believe who leads the Louisiana Democratic Party, how the party conducts its business, and which issues the party champions are every bit as important as the elections we'll have for statewide offices this Fall. Because long term, it's gonna determine who we elect in four years. And if you weren't encouraged by our most recent round of redistricting fights, you should be preparing for the next round now because you can believe the LA GOP is. I think the question that must be asked is how does this state remain viable without a Democratic Party that provides seats at the table for all our various constituencies rather than one that just protects a handful of chosen insiders. The Democratic Party is meant to represent all of us. The time for rank and file Democrats to impact how they want the party to represent them is fast approaching. And as the great Shirley Chisholm tried to tell us, "If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair." Stephen Handwerk, welcome back to Louisiana Lefty.

Stephen Handwerk

03:35

Lynda Woolard, it is a pleasure.

Lynda Woolard

03:37

Well, we've just finished up season five of the podcast. And so we're in summer break. And as regular listeners will know, we do these mini pods during our winter and summer break. So that's what we're doing right now. And I'm going to have you on all three of my mini pods this summer because I want to talk about stuff that should be happening with the state party.

Stephen Handwerk

04:03

Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be a busy time. If done right. That's what we're hoping for at least, right?

Lynda Woolard

04:09

So right before season five, you and I did an extra episode, a bonus episode about how we get a state party chair. And I talked a lot about the DSCC members, Democratic State Central Committee members, who elect that chair, and how we get those members. So as I've talked to folks who are considering this as maybe wanting to engage themselves and be more involved in the Democratic Party in Louisiana, the question I get over and over again, is, "Well, what do these Democratic State Central Committee members do? What are the requirements? what's expected of them? What do they do?" You answer that question, and I asked you specifically because you worked for the state party for so many years, but you also have served as a DSCC member so you have firsthand experience as well as this institutional knowledge.

Stephen Handwerk

05:04

I think you bring up a really good question. You know, as the a 20 second refresher, you know, there are 105 seats in the State House, which means that there are 210 seats in the State Central Committee because we have a male and a female representative from every state House District.

Lynda Woolard

05:21

And I would just like to point out that that system was set up when the Democratic Party was trying to achieve some equity, to make sure that women were also included in the politics of the state party. What we have now, is a system that has not evolved to include non-gender conforming, or gender fluid, people. And so folks have actually asked me about that too. And what I'll say is, if you care about that, you do need to become more involved with the party because there's no changing that prior to the next election. The system is set up how it's gonna be. For now. So if you'd like that to be changed in some way, and I don't know what the answer to changing that is to make it remain equitable, but there are better people than me that will come up with those solutions. And I would suggest to them that they should be involved so they can make those changes for future elections. So I just wanted to add that, so I'm sorry that I interrupted you.

Stephen Handwerk

06:24

No, that's perfectly fine. And that's a very valid point. And, you know... so looking at those districts currently, as you point out, that is a male and a female role. If you are gender nonconforming, if you are gender fluid, if you are trans, you can certainly run for whatever seat you want. We do not have a provision right now, that would kick you out of that seat. And of course, there's many of us that would fight something like that incredibly hard. And the DNC also is trying to modernize its policies. And I'm very happy to see what they're doing, especially with the delegates election plans this year, coming in from states all across the country, but that probably, as Lynda Woolard would say, that's another podcast. But the great thing is, the time to... if you're frustrated with a party, if you are concerned about the party's direction, the time to qualify and throw your name in and run for one of these seats, is coming up really soon. So digging into Lynda's question, what is the job? Like, if you run these seats, what is it? Well, it can be really anything you want it to be. If you can think of yourself as a legislator, as a state legislator for the Louisiana Democratic Party, you can be involved as much as you possibly want. And here's what I mean by that. There are certain charges, right in the front article one of the state party constitution and the state party bylaws, that literally tell you what the party is responsible for. Its conducting a national convention every four years to nominate a president. It is being the local franchise, if you will, of the Democratic Party and upholding those principles that we all should hold dear. It is going out and registering voters, being active in your community, setting up community projects, making sure that elections are being held fair and consistently, making sure candidates are not only recruited, but they're trained, they're ready to go. So that they can truly compete for these races. So...

Lynda Woolard

08:39

So you're talking about what the state party does, but what are the...

Stephen Handwerk

08:41

State central committees. I'm saying it is the state central committee members responsibility to do those things. And you will see about 10% to 15% of those members throughout the state are incredibly involved. And that is what they're doing. We have some great leaders.

Lynda Woolard

08:42

What are the bare minimum responsibilities that a DSCC member is required to do? My understanding, and what I've told people, so you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that there are four meetings that are held in Baton Rouge at the Capitol, most likely, there are four meetings every year, one every quarter. And they should show up for those, they can send a proxy, but they are really supposed to show up for those meetings. Is that correct?

Stephen Handwerk

09:26

Absolutely. And show up does not just mean to be present. It should mean you're actively participating. But yeah, that is the minimum requirement, you are going to have those four meetings per year. There may be more, especially now with telecommunications with Zooms, there may be more to discuss certain matters, to give briefings, to talk about big things that are happening. And I'm hoping that there are more of those to be able to bring more people into the fold. But at the very bare minimum? Yeah, you got to go to those meetings

Lynda Woolard

09:58

At the very first one of those is where you would elect party leadership, right? All the... the chair, first vice chair, all the way down to DNC committee members and clerk...

Stephen Handwerk

10:10

That's exactly right. Yep, that's exactly right. There's about 21, If I count correctly, there's about 21 seats that are, in the Constitution or bylaws, that the members will then elect at that first meeting, which will typically take place. So the election is going to take place in March, right, where people get elected, and you'll be on the ballot, as long as you're running against someone, you'll actually get to go and vote for yourself. At the same time, 30 days after that election, there will be an organizing meeting. So that's going to be, if you think about, it's going to be sometime in April of 2024, it will be that organization meeting, where folks will come and you'll get a chance to vote on every single one of those positions.

Stephen Handwerk

10:14

There's 21 that make up the executive committee.

Stephen Handwerk

10:48

That's right. And that's chair, vice chairs, all of those. And those will be the individuals that run the party on a day-to-day basis, though large speaking of the bylaws says that, in the day-to-day operations, it's the executive committee because it's smaller, it's assumed to be more nimble. Those individuals can get together a lot quicker in order to be able to make decisions about the party. So again, that's another opportunity for you to then consider running for those positions as well.

Lynda Woolard

11:25

Right, so you can run for the DSCC. If you want to be more involved than just the DSCC member, you can run for one of these leadership positions. But there are other opportunities you can serve on committees also.

Stephen Handwerk

11:39

Absolutely. There are several standing committees, and I would have to refresh myself with the bylaws changes that just happened last year with the Louisiana Democratic Party to find out exactly which committees there are, but my understanding is that we at least have a Rules and Bylaws Committee. So if you are a rules expert, if you have some experience in how to conduct meetings, and all of that, I think that's a great place for you to be if you would like to help steer the party. We do not have a convention where we come up with a platform for the Louisiana Democratic Party. At least we haven't in the past. And I'm hoping we don't in the future... again, probably could be another podcast. But the reason why I mentioned that is the resolutions are really what steer the day-to-day focus of the party. So for example, when we got get ready to go into a legislative session, the party usually passes a package of resolutions, calling on legislators and the governor to actually enact certain new laws. In order to protect folks, in order to stand up for our values, in order to argue for money for the budget on important things. So it's really a very active committee that should be leaning in and coming up with those resolutions in order to be able to take a firmer stance.

Lynda Woolard

13:00

And the resolutions committee will take their recommendations of resolutions to the full body of the DSCC. So those quarterly meetings you go to, that's another thing you do, you vote on the resolutions that shape what the so-called platform of the party would be.

Stephen Handwerk

13:17

Yeah, the direction. I mean, largely those resolutions, the way I treated a while I was executive director, those were my marching orders until the next meeting. Those were the hills that I was to fight on. Whether it's endorsing candidates via resolution, whether it is endorsing legislation, whether it's calling out certain legislators... But yes, it will be up to those members to vote those, to consider those. And when you get that package in your email with all those different resolutions, you should plan to spend some time with it. So prepping for that meeting is incredibly important as well. So those are two of the probably most focused committees. There's also Budget and Finance, if you're going to be on that, hopefully they might have a fundraising committee as well. I don't know exactly how engaged they are. But certainly if you have a background in fundraising, if you have a lot of wealthy friends, or if you yourself are there, you should certainly serve on that committee. There are multiple different onramps to play larger roles for these positions, especially once you get elected to be a member of the body. Those individuals need to be considered first in placement on any of the standing committees. And so, if you want to do any of that, you should run.

Lynda Woolard

14:36

How do you get on a Standing Committee? You have to be appointed or elected? How does that work?

Stephen Handwerk

14:41

Typically, what happens is at the reorganization meeting, once we elect all of the officers, there will be a follow up meeting, usually within 90 days, of that new chair being elected. At that meeting is where the chair will announce who is on each of the committees. How we did it was, as soon as that meeting gaveled out, I usually sent out some sort of either a Google survey or an email saying, "If you are interested in serving in any of these committees, and I gave a great big definition of each one of those committees so that they knew what they were getting into, if you're interested in serving on any of these, please let us know." And then those were the individuals that we first considered to put on those committees. Now, what ends up happening, and you and I've talked about this, sometimes lamented about it, the power invested in the chair of the party is great when it comes to these things. The chair can pick and choose who actually gets on those committees. So you know, if you've been known to stand up for your values, and not always be a go-along-to-get-along person, but are actually there to fight for causes and issues that you hold dear, those positions might be a little bit harder to get for you. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't show up, that doesn't mean you shouldn't fight like hell to be a part of them. And again, when you go back to the rules of the party, every single time one of those committees meet, you have to... they have to let you come. Even if you're not a member of the committee. Now, they don't have to recognize you. But you can certainly pay witness to anything that those committees are doing in your name, after all, because they are acting on behalf of the entire party.

Lynda Woolard

16:19

And I think sunlight is important. So even if you are not placed on a committee, being able to report back to the public and to the rank and file Democrats, what's happening with the state party is still really important. And there probably should be a better mechanism for doing that than we currently have. I don't, again, better people than me can come up with what that is. But there should be some sort of, you know... once upon a time, maybe we'd call them blogs, maybe it would now be called a substack, right? But it would be great to have a substack of folks who monitor these committees and these meetings and just report back what's happening so that's made available to the public. So... for somebody out there who might want to..

Lynda Woolard

17:09

This also, Stephen, though, underscores the importance of electing a chair that represents your values, and what you believe the values of the Democratic Party should be because of that great power. Let me just say, you know, we're in a situation right now, where there is some confusion about endorsements. That's another one of those things that these DSCC members do. The Executive Committee currently, is set up to make recommendations of who they think should be endorsed, but the DSCC, the full body, votes on who gets endorsed as Democratic candidates in our elections. And there's a situation right now, where there were some new bylaws passed, to my understanding, that changed up a little bit how those endorsements go. And now because it's not going the way the current chair would like, you're trying to bypass the bylaws, to do some endorsements. And while I understand members are on board with actually making these endorsements, I also hear they would like to do it in the way the bylaws specify they should be done.

Stephen Handwerk

18:22

Right. And that's a very difficult thing. I mean, this is why all of these things matter. This is why it matters to actually be smart and actually open up the process for new bylaws. There were many of us who have been around for a while, who have a lot of experience with bylaws and actually conducting the affairs of the party. Every single past executive director of the party that I work with and I'm in communication with, all argued against the passage of these current bylaws because you never want to put yourself into handcuffs. I mean, imagine if we were not able to organize behind John Bel Edwards when we did, as early as we did. The bylaws used to say that, you know, once qualifying happens, the chair of the party in consultation with the executive committee can call a meeting to consider endorsements for any of the positions. Notice it didn't say that you can't do it until qualifying is closed. Now, the bylaws say that. And so let's just think about this logically for a second. You're not going to know who your candidates are, until the late August, early September for an October election? How in the world is that enough runway in order to be able to build a momentum and a team behind? I mean, you and I were both both working John Bel's election. Imagine if we would have been that far behind and only had that little bit of time. We wouldn't have had people in place to work the phones or to make calls or to knock doors or we wouldn't have had a mail program ready, we wouldn't have had any of that stuff done, right? And so that's a real huge obstacle that they're currently trying to deal with. And that's why these committees are so important,

Lynda Woolard

20:10

Significantly. And this was what I keep telling people, because there are folks who will push back on me when I say, "You know, really important to get engaged with the party... would rather not really be engaged because I can do A, B and C through this 501(c)(3) or this 501(c)(4.)" Like, yes, but there are funding mechanisms that the Louisiana Democratic Party has that no other community group or nonprofit in the state is capable of having. So that is a significant asset that progressives and liberals and Democrats are allowing to go unused or insufficiently used or incorrectly used over and over again, if they're not saying, "I will take an active role in the party and make sure that it's the party I want to represent me." So that's the same thing that the funding mechanism that that party has, if you're not endorsing a candidate early enough in the cycle, you're not able to trigger that funding mechanism early

Stephen Handwerk

21:16

That's 100% true. And let me explain it this way because this is something that really resonates with me as I speak across the country to different parties as they're setting up their new leadership and we're helping train up their staff. I just did a national training where I was training all of the executive directors across the country. One of the best ways to describe this is... your state party is the only legal entity that can coordinate with virtually unrestricted ways, with every single candidate or cause that would be on a ballot anywhere in your state. That means unlimited coordination with the presidentials, unlimited coordinations with your US Senate, unlimited coordination with your State House races with your gubernatorial candidates, it's the only legal entity that can do that. If you're a (c)(4), you cannot coordinate on expenditures. If you're a PAC, you cannot coordinate on expenditures. That means that yeah, you might be able to raise money because you're supporting that candidate. A lot of people gravitate now towards these sexy Super PACs or these 527s. Well, at the end of the day that they're great and Lord knows that they're useful in some regards, but at the end of the day, they can't coordinate. So you, who have run multiple campaigns in your experience, can literally tell everyone that, "Look, I love the PACs that come in and help, but at the end of the day, I can't legally tell them, you go after this community, I'm gonna go after that community, then we'll meet together with these talking points." That's illegal. It's called coordination. And because of that, the only way that you can have that sort of coordination is through the state party. And the problem is, as you just pointed out, you can only do that in a five or six week window with the way their current bylaws is set up.

Lynda Woolard

22:35

So once again, we've reiterated the importance of people engaging with their party and becoming more active and becoming members. We did a deeper dive on why run and how to run in a different episode before Season Five started, and I'll link to that in the Episode Notes in case people want a refresher, in case they missed it. But let's go back to what the expectations of DSCC members are. Just to recap, the bare minimum, you're elected, you show up to that first organizational meeting, you vote on the state party chair and all the leadership roles. That's job wise. You could theoretically only show up for these four meetings that happen a year. If you really just wanted bare minimum involvement, you could even send a proxy to some of those meetings. And my recommendation would always be to choose who you send your proxy with. Make sure you're sending your proxy with someone who aligns with your values, don't just give it to whoever the chair is because then the chair is gonna give it to somebody that aligns with their values, and that may or may not be yours. So that's number one. So that's the bare minimum. But there's a range, there's a whole range of involvement between that bare minimum and being chair or being involved on a day-to-day basis, everyday basis. There's congressional caucuses where you can be more involved in your region of the state, doing some of the things you were talking about, which are voter registration or party building efforts where you're just trying to get more people engaged with the party, which I think needs to happen. I know when I was there with you at the party, the directive we had... the three things we asked DSCC members to do and, at the time, not too many of them were interested in doing this, was to either engage in fundraising for the party, to engage as a surrogate for the party, which means that you learned the talking points and you learned how to go out and speak in your community on behalf of the party, go speak to radio stations, TV stations, you become a contact for journalists. And then the third thing was become a grassroots activist. At the time, that was housed under the Team Blue Dat moniker that I ran, and we had a nice group of grassroots activists, very few of them were actually DSCC members. And that's part of the reason why we set Team Blue Dat up the way that we did so that you did not have to get elected to the party to be engaged on a daily basis. But that is still something folks who get elected to these DSCC seats could could do, be a grassroots activist for the party. And that was engaging on social media, again, registering voters turning out voters, getting on the phones and turning out voters for John Bel Edwards, or whoever we were working for, knocking doors, all the things. So those were the things we offered as things that DSCC members could do. And there's no reason that folks could not do that and be engaged in those ways as aggressively and consistently as they'd like, if they were elected to the seats.

Stephen Handwerk

26:42

Just as a reminder, qualifying is going to be happening before we even know it. It's going to be happening in December, and folks are going to need to go to their local clerk of court in order to fill out paperwork. And it's going to be $112.50 in order for you to pay your qualifying fee to run.

Lynda Woolard

27:01

To run for the DSCC seat in your House district.

Stephen Handwerk

27:06

Correct, in your House district. Absolutely right. Absolutely right.

Lynda Woolard

27:11

And I remind people that while this election is run through the Secretary of State and shows up, you qualify, and you show up on the ballot in March, when we do our presidential preference primary...

Stephen Handwerk

27:25

It's March 23.

Lynda Woolard

27:26

Oh, it is okay. So it'll be March 23. So your name will be on the ballot. And, again, we talked about running a mini election on that previous podcast. So people will need to run their mini election. It is however, not an official election for the state. So there is no campaign finance law governing it, you do not have to file those kinds of compliance records or any of that, whatever money you spend on it, that's on you.

Stephen Handwerk

27:54

Basically, the arrangement is the secretary of state, out of the goodness of his heart or her heart, as the elections will dictate in the future, conducts these elections for us. But not... doesn't call the balls on the strikes, they don't get to choose who is truly qualified or not to qualify for the seats. That's actually the party. And so, you know, remember qualifications, according to our bylaws now, is that you have to live in the district, you have to assign yourself by your own choice, either to the male or the female seat, okay? So there is that hoop that we still have, and that is in state law, sadly. So it is going to be, to your earlier point, it's going to take a little bit of work to change that, but we're going to do it. And that I think is the important part of this to remember... and you have to be a registered Democrat. And so those are the qualifications that you have to have, reside in the district and that you're 18 years or older at the time of the election.

Lynda Woolard

28:58

And the other piece that we like to remind people is there's no runoff, whoever wins the race on the day is the big...

Stephen Handwerk

29:07

Whoever gets a plurality. Yeah. And so if you have, again... and I know you guys experienced this even more so than other parts of the state down in New Orleans, you may have six, eight people running for these DSCC seats. And at the end of the day, if we were doing run offs, that probably would then take another month to decide. And so we don't do that. What we do is it's going to be the plurality, whoever gets the most votes wins, and that you could end up winning with 23% of the vote. We've seen that happen time and time again.

Lynda Woolard

29:40

Some seats go empty because nobody runs. And then some seats are elected with no opposition so they never show up on the ballot. So if you are on a district, for instance, where only one person ever qualifies for the DSCC seat, you may may not even know this organization exists because it's never showed up on your ballot.

Stephen Handwerk

30:06

That is so true. And that is just so true. And there are probably, out of the 210 seats, there's probably usually about 30 to 40 of the seats that no one runs for. They're just completely open. And so they won't be on the ballot because there will be nobody on the ballot for them. And then to your point, for the ones where there aren't contested races, where there aren't more than one person running, you won't see those seats. And...

Lynda Woolard

30:35

It automatically goes in...

Stephen Handwerk

30:38

Like, my last race, no one ran against me in my district, my district is kind of conservative, and so no other male ran against me. And so therefore, I didn't really have a race, I didn't have to campaign, I was able to go around and help other people, though, which I thought was nice. And I would hope that if I had a competition, somebody would help me out.

Lynda Woolard

30:57

But folks need to know that the majority of the seats are filled by people who go unopposed. And that is not great, either.

Stephen Handwerk

31:07

No, it's really not. It's certainly not for democracy. And for those of you who want to run this scene, I mean... I think Lynda, you brought up a really salient point earlier that I really think should be teased out a little bit more, you know, you do represent every single one of the Democrats that lives in your State House District. That is literally your job to do. And so reporting back to them, maybe on a sub stack, maybe on a slack channel, maybe on a Facebook page, if that's where you're comfortable, you should be reporting back. And I know that we have some members that do, that frequently report on what's going on. But yeah, that's what you should be doing. But you should take to heart that you are speaking for all of them. And that you should always make sure that you're touching base with your, you know, your core group of individuals. I think that that's a really powerful thing to do. And I think it's the right thing to do because you are representing them.

Lynda Woolard

31:54

Well, and you pointed out the idea of people thinking about themselves as a legislator for their district. And there's nothing to stop you from having little coffee chats with other Democrats in your district, who probably helped grow the Democratic Party, as a party building measure, to be able to say, "I am the representative for this district, I'm going to have a monthly or quarterly coffee chat or..." heck, in Louisiana you might want it to be held in a bar somewhere, whatever You could certainly invite your constituents out and alert them to what's going on with the Louisiana Democratic Party so that they feel more engaged. So there, again, multiple ways to expand the role if your interest is in expanding the party

Stephen Handwerk

32:44

100%. Back before COVID, we used to have a, I think it was like a progressive get-together, I think we called it Blue Mondays, and it was in one of the downtown bars here in Lafayette, where basically all the progresses... the bar loved it because Monday was their slowest night. And so they were looking for people to come in and maybe have a drink, order some appetizers. So they loved having us all come in, they turned all the TVs over to MSNBC or watch debates and that kind of stuff. It was great. It's a wonderful way to be able to start building a community because all too often we feel like we're out here on an island by ourselves, screaming at the TV, all alone.

Lynda Woolard

33:22

And you could do that in conjunction with other DSCC members in your Congressional Caucus. Right? You could get together with a handful of other DSCC members and do stuff like that. And the way that they've done like, you call it blue Mondays, they've had Drinking Liberallys, we used to do, like, the Krewe of Hillary or different things like that, where we basically would just show up somewhere and...

Lynda Woolard

33:49

We used to have those. Yeah, it was great.

Lynda Woolard

33:52

We'd ask in advance for, you know, we're going to come... I mean, look, we did that all the way back to Barack Obama, where we did the debate watch parties or the primary return watch parties. And we just asked a different bar, that would be friendly to us, if we could come and bring people and, like you said, it was often on a Tuesday night or something like that, where they weren't going to get a lot of business anyway, we come in and we eat and we drink and we all pay our own way. But we'd be able to talk politics and watch primary returns or whatever. It's a win-win.

Stephen Handwerk

34:26

Yep. And also too, I would say, that not only once you're in the seat, you get to basically treat yourself as a convener to do those sorts of things and build that coalition. You don't have to wait. You can start that now and start building a constituency that will then turn out and vote for you in March. Because turnout will, regretfully, will probably be a little low on the Democratic presidential preference election, solely because, you know, Joe and Kamala are not going to have a race. I mean, it is going to be them. That is who we're backing. That is who will be having a convention over and all of that. So turnout may be a little bit low, use that to your advantage. Get your posse together, get your group together, form your clubs, your groups, start talking to people. You can do all of that work now, and you're going to have a blast doing it.

Lynda Woolard

35:20

I like that,Stephen. And again, we're asking people to run many campaigns. And if folks want to talk about targeting or anything like that, they should reach out to me for info at louisianalefty.rocks because I am happy to help people consider how they can approach those races. Of course, I believe we've shared that information sufficiently over the course of five seasons of the podcast, but I'm also happy to help people hone that for their own personal race if they would like to... DSCC specifically, I'm talking.

Stephen Handwerk

35:59

Yeah, I think that that's so important. I'd love to be able to help in any way I can as well. If it makes sense to maybe host kind of like a q&a or maybe I'll even set up some sort of a thing... I'm more than happy to do that. If you want to do something live.

Lynda Woolard

36:17

Yeah, let's do a Live on that. And see the folks that want to come on and talk about that.

Stephen Handwerk

36:23

I love that a lot. I think that that would be a lot of fun. But certainly shoot a note over to Lynda at Lefty to let her know that you guys want to do a Live. I think that can be a lot of fun to get together and talk strategy for being able to run a large group of folks. I think, new folks, who've never been involved before, it's a perfect opportunity. If not now, when? The next four years... think about all of the decisions that are going to happen in the next four years of the state party. Because we will have to pick who's going to follow this President and his administration, we're going to have to decide how we're going to represent for and fight for control of our legislature and who's in the governor's mansion. There's a lot of work to do. But it starts today. And I'm excited to be part of that in any way you guys want me to.

Lynda Woolard

37:25

Well look, the mission to recruit and train the next set of folks who will run for legislative seats starts in one year. In one year! So if you want to be a part of that, now's the time to start getting engaged and to look at running in December and getting on that DSCC. However, if you're interested in being one of those people that runs for the legislature, your first race may be this DSCC race. And it will give you an idea, if you run a good race for DSCC, it'll give you a good idea of how you're going to run a race for the legislature or school board or whatever.

Stephen Handwerk

38:05

You and I could probably, if we spent five minutes, could probably build a list of near a 100 people that got their start by running for the DSCC seat and now have become state senators, state legislators, mayors. And I think that that's pretty exciting. So whatever your path may be, maybe you never want to be that... That's fine. But we do need folks that can step up and help make those things happen. Because we need better people running for office. And the only way that our people will run is if there is a support structure behind them like DSCC members that are willing to roll up their sleeves and help them out.

Lynda Woolard

38:45

You can be minimally involved, but there's a ladder of engagement that runs right through the Democratic State Central Committee.

Stephen Handwerk

38:55

For those of us who have a certain age, we might call that a choose your own adventure.

Lynda Woolard

39:01

All right Stephen, thank you so much. We have a couple of other things we're going to talk about in the next couple of episodes. So I hope people will tune in but it's all going to be related to state party stuff.

Stephen Handwerk

39:14

I absolutely love it, Lynda. So great to get to chat with you about things that we care so much about.

Lynda Woolard

39:20

Thank you for listening to Louisiana Lefty. Please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you to Ben Collinsworth for producing Louisiana Lefty, Jen Pack of Black Cat Studios for our Super Lefty artwork, and Thousand $ Car for allowing us to use their swamp pop classic "Security Guard" as our Louisiana Lefty theme song.

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