In Iowa, a boot camp trains an army of progressive foot soldiers by alexnazaryan
DES MOINES, Iowa — Da’Quan Love, 26, remembers the moment he decided to run for office. It was December 2017, and Jimmy Dixon, a Republican serving in the North Carolina General Assembly, declared the financial crisis of 2007-08 “a wonderful blessing” because it imposed fiscal responsibility on the state.
“I literally emptied out my life savings into that campaign,” Love says. The realities of financing a campaign were a “slap in the face.” So were the grim realities of partisan redistricting, which in North Carolina had been successfully undertaken by Republicans to boost their share of statehouse seats. Love won the Democratic primary, in which 4,262 people cast their ballots, by 640 votes. But in the general election Dixon got some 13,465 votes, nearly double what Love received.
At the same time, the Republican National Committee was investing in state GOP parties, where much of the real work of political campaigns was done. This was a crucial development because, as the Democratic strategist explained, “the state parties are the ones that are actually on the ground,” the “eyes and ears” of the central Washington apparatus. So while Republican state operations were expanding, grooming operatives across the country, Democrats were doing almost no similar preparation.
Arena began as a series of gatherings in the wake of the 2016 election: “almost like a Woodstock of politics,” Gupta says, though presumably without the acid trips in muddy fields. Former presidential candidate Martin O’Malley attended, as did Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter for Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.” Gupta eventually quit his job as an operator of charter schools and joined forces with Catherall, who was running an agency that offered free support to progressive political candidates.
It is difficult to say just how influential Arena was in the 2018 election, since it was one of many groups, and hardly the most moneyed, to support Democratic candidates. Yet those candidates, like Underwood, say there was a marked contrast in how they were treated by the upstart organization vs. the party’s vital organs. Asked if the Democratic establishment had been helpful, Underwood retorted with a challenge of her own. “You define helpful,” she said.
They also wanted campaign staff to represent the diversity of the progressive movement. The upper reaches of political consultancy are so male — and so white — that last year Politico called it “the hardest glass ceiling in politics.” And without women and people of color rising through the ranks of campaign staff, that ceiling will remain as firm as ever. To that end, Arena Academy attracted an inaugural staff that was majority female and minority white.
Though many of the attendees were young, some were well into middle age. Jean Valencia McCauley is nearing 60; the last time she ran for anything, it was for president of her high school class . She eventually moved from her home in the Santa Barbara, Calif., region to Silicon Valley, where she worked in technology and raised two children. For many years, her most significant political activity was forcing a real estate developer to curb the scale of a luxury-home project.
Much as progressives may need a training model, Gupta says he and Catherall have no interest in replicating the “command and control” structure of conservative activist groups like those funded by the billionaire Koch brothers and others. “They’re ahead of us in infrastructure, but I don’t think re-creating their infrastructure is going to be in our interests,” he says.
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