Former Senator Daryl Jones' address to the Democratic Club of Sarasota at the October 2004 dinner entitled "Committed to Victory in 2004."

We’re going to win on November 2nd. I’ve taken my own informal poll of Republicans and most of the ones I talk to are supporting Kerry. It probably does not escape anyone that America is a very complex country, and that world issues are tremendously complex. A lot of Republicans represent big business, and some of them are very sophisticated people. They have come to realize that the President is not a very sophisticated person, and does not appear to be equipped to deftly handle domestic and international issues. We’re going to win, and I don’t believe it is going to be very close. Who would you rather have running your business, George Bush or John Kerry?

Last Monday, the U. S. Senate voted to implement a $137 billion tax bill that will give “everybody who is anybody in corporate America a huge tax break.” The President will sign the bill shortly. NBC News called it “a lesson in power politics.” In the opinions of several pundits, “It was nothing more than the Bush Administration giving every well-heeled campaign donor reward for their contributions.” NBC claimed that “The legislation which began as a targeted effort to help certain industries against foreign competition, became a feeding frenzy for every business that could afford a lobbyist.” So what happened to the regular people like you and me? Hey folks, the lobbyists for the regular everyday people are the elected senators and congressmen. A majority of them simply forgot who they were elected to represent.

Does it matter who we elect to . . . . President, Governor, Congress, State Senator, State Representative, or any other job? Ohhhh Yesss! So, ladies and gentlemen, we must be committed to victory in two weeks. We are going win! But it’s about more than just winning. It’s about where we’re taking this country, and our lives. There is a difference between the way Republicans get elected and the way Democrats get elected.

In 1986 Democrats in Florida had a 1.2 million advantage in registered voters. By 2002 that advantage shrunk to only 400,000. We have gone in that time from a state dominated by Democrats to Republican domination. What happened? Basically, Republican leadership engaged in strategic thinking, developed a plan of attack, and then tactically executed that plan with discipline. Tonight I want to give you two points to think about regarding elections. First, the Power Strategies used by political parties to win elections. Most recently, these have successfully been used by Republicans. And Second, how the opposing party (Democrats) can reverse these strategies.

Daryl’s Seven Theorems of Politics.

Theorem #1: The best candidates you can elect, whether Democrat, Republican, or Independent, are those who truly believe that they represent ALL of the people in their districts. These elected officials operate relatively free from political influence and primarily seek to do what they believe is the right thing. They have integrity and are well-informed.

Theorem #2: Who you elect determines who gets the money. Florida generates more than $150 billion per year in collected taxes at the local, state, and federal levels. And that money does make a difference in the livelihoods of literally millions of people in this state. Including you! Just ask the special interests who benefited from the $136 billion federal tax break passed this week.

Theorem #3: Nearly every piece of legislation creates financial winners and losers. That’s why we pass bills. Even bills that claim to have no fiscal impact affect which agency, or which business gets the money, or can dictate how they get to spend it.

Theorem #4: Today, most Democrats enter office thinking that they are going to help everyone. Today, most Republicans enter office thinking that they are going to help their friends. If we are not careful, when the power pendulum swings, the roles may be reversed.

Theorem #5: Not every Republican is a bad person, nor every Democrat a good person.

Theorem #6: To remain the strongest economic and military power in the world, America needs a strong and vibrant middle class. If you have ever visited a second or third world country you will see the very rich and very poor, and very little in between. When you have great disparities in wealth and no middle class, you will have over 90% living in poverty. This 90+% is angry with the rich, they participate in riots and civil unrest, and they are unwilling to fight for their country. They have little or no education, live in despair, and have little or no hope of ever improving their lives. More and more Americans are feeling this way.

Theorem #7: In the current political environment, the stronger the middle class, the more likely we are to elect Democrats who currently are focused on helping everyone. Destruction of the middle class, or the more the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the more likely we are to elect Republicans who are currently focused on helping their friends.

Daryl’s Seven Theorems of Politics.

Now, back to my two main points.

What are the strategies employed by Republicans and Democrats to win elections? There are basically two. The first is to increase your party’s voter turnout. And the second is to reduce voter turnout of the other party.

There are five fundamental ways to increase voter turnout. They 1) raise money, 2) develop and implement a credible message, 3) eliminate voting impediments, 4) register new voters, and 5) build hope for their voters.

Raise a lot of money and you can advertise. But money by itself does not determine who wins an election. If it did, there would be no Democrats in office. Which party raises the most money from large donors? The D’s. The R’s raise far more money from their rank and file. John Kerry and Howard Dean taught us that D’s can raise money from the rank and file too. Many Democrats seem to think that it’s enough to volunteer and vote. That’s not enough. The $136 billion tax break is further proof that certain Republican leadership will award government contracts and benefits in exchange for a percentage coming back as campaign contributions. That’s a new form of public financing that few people know about.

The second method of increasing voter turnout is to develop and implement a credible message. Republicans tend to use sound bite sensationalism; Contract With America, less government, lower taxes. Sound bite sensationalism doesn’t address the real problems or how to solve them. And it works, as long as there is no competent articulation of a clear and motivating VISION on the other side. Republican leadership recognized that Dems didn’t have a clear message during the 1991 and 2001 Reapportionment sessions. Their strategy – Dems are lazy. . . . With the exception of Bill Clinton, over the past two decades, few Democrats have articulated a clear and motivating vision. John Kerry’s message is a combination of sound bites and a limited articulation of a vision, but given the competition, I believe it is good enough to win.

The third method of increasing voter turnout is to eliminate anything that keeps your voters from voting. For example, in my building both Jeb and G. W. had campaign offices. Bumper stickers in the parking lot. . . . Completing flawed absentee ballot applications.

The fourth method of increasing voter turnout is to register new voters. R’s are doing a great job in Florida recruiting Hispanic immigrants who become citizens. This year Democrats won the competition. We greatly increased registration with the minimum wage initiative. Explain.

Finally, you can increase voter turnout by building hope. The R’s have successfully developed a culture that says, “We will help you get ahead financially and politically, if you are Republican.” This is the primary reason some blacks become Republican. They are promised that they can become millionaires in a matter of months. Building hope in the R context means appealing to personal greed, “I’m gonna make money.”

There are five fundamental techniques Republicans use to reduce Democratic voter turnout. They do it through the use of 1) psychological discord, 2) legislation, 3) education, 4) economics, and 5) the judiciary.

First, there are six forms of Psychological discord:

1. Dirty politics/character assassination.

2. Keep telling our candidates “you can’t win.” Many times this keeps our candidates from even trying to run a winning campaign.

3. Get the democratic candidate’s supporters to believe, “the Republicans to just too big and too powerful, so we can’t possibly win.” This reduces the resolve of the team, creates infighting, and ultimately a loss. Today’s Republicans strategists live by the philosophy, “If you say it often enough, then it must be true.”

4. Get voters to believe that their vote doesn’t really make a difference, or won’t be counted. For example, 27,000 votes that were not counted in Jacksonville.

5. We let them define the playing field. When it’s a strident D v. R election, it’s hard for us to win. All things being equal, their voters are more hardened and indoctrinated. You see, some Rs, most Ds and Is just want us to just get along and work together for the common good. After the Contract With America, less than 1500 votes per district swung Congress from D to R. When it’s D v. R, voters are isolated into camps, there are fewer undecideds, and you can more easily target this smaller grouping, just like this election. When Ds advocate everyone (not political parties) working together, we win more votes, and elections. We should strive to express differences in our opinions, not through dirty politics. When the public is disenchanted with the D v. R fight and becomes apathetic, it’s our voters who don’t vote.

6. Remove HOPE. Statements like, “it doesn’t matter who gets elected, nothing’s going to change.” This apathy affects OUR voters. This is how psychological discord affects our voter turnout.

The second method of reducing Democratic voter turnout is through legislation; passing laws or creating policies that reduce Democratic votes.

We create new laws to create new felons. 600,000 former felons can’t vote in Florida. That’s more than any other nation in the world except Russia. Only a handful of states permanently remove the right to vote, and Florida has more than a third of the nation’s population of nonvoting former felons. Some think it is a racial policy, because 49% of former felons are African-American males. I think it is a political policy because 95% of them are likely Democratic voters.

During my 12 years in the legislature I watched more than 40, 1st and 2nd degree misdemeanors get changed into felonies. The worst was welfare moms. . . . These are OUR votes.

Federally, the Patriot Act could be used to target opposing candidates and rising stars. They can invade the privacy of Americans, tap phones, monitor emails, jail suspects, and hold them without regard for their constitutional rights, and without the authorization of a judge. Locally, in 2000 we saw other forms of voter intimidation. Only 2,000 of the 8,000 former felons removed from voter roles during the 2000 election were actually former felons. The other 6,000 were upstanding citizens who were simply not permitted to vote. More than 98% of them Democrats. One Republican Senator half jokingly told me that heads will roll for that 2% Republican error.

This year the Secretary of State attempted to remove former felons from the voting roles again until a court order made the list public and reporters found that most were likely democratic voters and only 1% were R Hispanics.

This year we lost the battle to mandate a paper trail with computer touch screen voting machines. I predict they will be in place for 2006. These machines can be programmed for any desired result regardless of the voters’ intentions. This is the greatest threat to democracy America has faced. The third method of reducing Democratic voter turnout is through the lack of education. Nothing destroys the middle class quicker. A poorly educated constituency creates a population who feels they have nothing at stake in society.

In the last six years, Florida has fallen from 26th to 40th in per capita funding for K-12 education. The Manhattan Institute says we also have the highest high school dropout rate in the nation.

Over the same period, Florida has fallen from 36th to 50th in per capita funding for higher education. Less than 20% of our adult population has any kind of college degree, placing us among the five least educated work forces in America. Not because they chose not to go to school, but because college is less accessible in Florida than nearly every other state. Poor schools produce more dropouts who become apathetic, and don’t vote. These are OUR votes.

The fourth method of reducing Democratic voter turnout is through economics. Republican strategists seek to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. When the rich get richer, the rich give more money to campaigns, usually Republican campaigns. In turn, the Republican leadership lowers taxes for the wealthy which means there will be less money for services, and less money for educating the poor and middle class. This means there will be a smaller middle class and a larger gap between the rich and poor. When I was in my 9th grade Civics class, I was amazed by my teacher’s explanation of the tax system. . . .

The rich get richer and the poor, poorer when Republican leadership creates policies that encourage businesses to export jobs to foreign countries, when they create policies that fail to encourage innovation, especially in the manufacturing sector, so we can grow new opportunities for higher wage jobs with a well-educated workforce. You make the rich richer and poor poorer with the absence of adequate health care, inept nursing homes, and other problems that theoretically “can’t be solved”. All of these problems create citizens, largely democrats, who are apathetic, and therefore, don’t vote. Reducing HOPE for the poor, and reserving HOPE for “those who join the Republican Party Club” is the key to Republicans staying in power in America and in Florida.

The fifth method of reducing our voter turnout is through the judiciary – the Supreme Court determined the outcome of the 2000 election. A president can make hundreds of judicial appointments. Judge Charles Pickering. . .

While all of this was going on, Democrats stood idly by and watched as it was being done to us. We only thought tactically, not strategically. What the heck is the difference?

Simply put, strategic thinking is the development of the plan. It is not just the GOTV plan. It’s more than that. Strategic thinking requires vision, understanding of the long and short term goals, not getting caught up in “business as usual,” and not being bound by “what’s worked in the past.” So if you are a strategic thinker in politics, you are thinking about your vision, message, and innovative ways to get it out (like Kerry taking a dig at Bush on the NYT web page). You are thinking about innovative ways to encourage more of your voters to vote, and if you play hardball, how to keep their voters from voting. I believe in the democratic process and would never inhibit anyone’s vote.

Tactical thinking is the detailed day-to-day execution of the strategic plan. This is all most Democrats do, i.e., polling, door to door, email, GOTV, and phone banks. I don’t want to think, just tell me what to do. It’s not enough.

We can reverse this trend. Old Chinese proverb: “Victory comes to the one who brings superior forces at the point of contact.” (repeat) We can engage in strategic thinking by building HOPE for our future. There are four ways to build this hope.

Raise money. Follow Howard Dean’s example of raising money from our grassroots so we have the ability to communicate our message. So #1 for every voting Democrat is to simply give $25 to our candidates and our visionary organizations. Put some skin in the game. Put something at stake for you personally; something that demonstrates and produces a stronger commitment. Just making a contribution makes our percentage of wins goes up dramatically.

Believe in what we stand for. Resist the psychological warfare. Don’t let them tell you that we’re going to lose. Stop them and tell them they’re wrong and why. “You are just for your friends, you don’t care about the well being of everyone, just a few. We elect officials who will look out for ALL the people.”

Candidates must talk about and elected official must focus on the issues that matter. Most people vote for us to deal with 5 issues: education, crime, health and human services, business development/jobs, and the environment. These 5 issues are about 5% of what we do in the legislature. Give people a reason to get excited about voting for Democrats. Let them see that it’s not just about getting elected, but what you do after you’re elected.

Finally, have a clear, well-articulated message. If we are the party that puts forth candidates who are for everyone’s well being, then our candidates must have a vision that appeals to a base broader than just the Democrats. And I don’t mean becoming a watered down Republican.

The FCAT is a failure strategy. We didn’t need the FCAT to tell us that education is under-funded. Holding back 28,000 3rd graders, or one third of all third graders in Florida, for failing a test that none of us had to take when we were growing up is wrong. Angus King, Governor of Maine – laptop for every 7th grader. . . .

Family/Religion – They say they’re pro-family and pro-God, implying we’re not. Well, they’re wrong. By my way of thinking God fearing people are tolerant, unbiased and forgiving. All I see from them is intolerance, bias, and unforgiving.

They say they are for marriage – that welfare women should marry. That’s ignorant! Let’s get rid of laws that cut income when married. Let’s provide access to education and training, quality child care, health care, housing and food. What people need is a chance to make it. MN did this. What happened? More marriages, more stable marriages, less domestic violence, and increases in the well being of children. We must address poverty first.

Crime – They say the D’s are soft on crime. They have scared us into strangling our own voter base. Tens of thousands are felons because they personally used drugs with no other accompanying crime. If you are rich and a likely Republican, you get rehab. If you are poor and a likely Democrat, you become a felon and permanently lose your right to vote. Even though most of people later become productive citizens and pay their taxes, they can’t vote for the person who spends their tax dollars. Isn’t that what the Boston Tea Party was all about?

Health care. When seniors have to decide between prescription medicine and food, these are our voters, not theirs. A governor who sends back to Washington all the federal dollars needed to erase a 100,000 person waiting list for KidCare, health care for poor children, isn’t affecting a single republican voter. The public must know that this is what you get when you elect Republicans. Their record is clear. We can build a record that says Democrats are the ones who will represent ALL of you.

What can you do right now to make a difference? 2 things:

Raise turnout for Democratic candidates. Help us think strategically and tactically. Make an absolute commitment over the next two weeks to participate in this election. Find your own level, but participate!

Contribute to the candidate of your choice. If the direction of this country or this state isn’t important enough for you to give at least $25, then let’s get together and talk about what this world would be like if America never existed.

Join the fight! If you want everyone to have access to a quality education, and to get rid of policies that hold our children back; If you want to have adequate health care; If you think it’s wrong to permanently take away the right to vote for people who have become working, tax paying citizens; If you want to keep the middle class and America strong; Then you’ve got to at least elect someone who benefits politically for making these things happen. Elect a democrat. Remember, if you’re not willing to fight for what you want, then you deserve exactly what you get.