Speeches

“Growing the Grassroots in America”
Remarks of Ambassador Patricia L. Herbold
American Women’s Association
November 14, 2006

Thank you, Kris, for the kind introduction.

The first event I attended when I arrived in Singapore almost a year ago was AWA's Christmas luncheon.  I've been happy to welcome AWA members to the Embassy several times and we have another group coming in tomorrow morning.  I try to support your wonderful and important organization in any way I can and am delighted to be here with you tonight.

You asked me to make a few remarks this evening about grassroots politics in the United States, a subject that has been an important part of my life for a very long time.  I’m sure there are others here with their own personal experiences relating to grassroots politics.  So I’ll offer some thoughts and then we can open up the floor to discussion, which I predict will be lively so soon after the mid-term elections.

Grassroots politics is advocacy generated by a network of citizens working its way up the political pyramid -- in other words, bottom-up demand from voters and community members.  For some, grassroots politics is a personal, hands-on effort to deal with an issue very important to that individual.  My involvement began innocently enough twenty-five years ago concerning the issue of boats and recreational vehicles (RVs) parked in neighborhood driveways – but more on that later.

Although the grassroots are by definition at the base of the political pyramid, they are not necessarily the opposite of the ‘establishment’ at the top of the pyramid.  Grassroots efforts are defined more by attitude than by title.  Many individuals who serve in political office are strong supporters of one or more grassroots causes.  Examples of this in last week’s mid-term elections are immigration and property rights issues.  In fact, some grassroots activists become so well known because of their advocacy on a particular issue that they run for office, and – when elected – are able to champion the grassroots cause or causes that they feel so strongly about.

Let’s start with an example of the impact of grassroots politics on the founding of the United States, and then illustrate elements of grassroots politics in America from my own experience.  I’ll conclude with a look ahead at how technology is changing the tools of grassroots politics with amazing speed.

Grassroots Politics in American History

Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana usually gets the credit for coining the term “grassroots" in connection with politics when he said at the 1912 Bull Moose Party convention, "this party has come from the grass roots. It has grown from the soil of peoples' hard necessities."

Our grassroots politics themselves predate the good Senator's words by more than a century.  They date back at least to our revolution against the British crown, when many of our citizens rose up in opposition to an overbearing government.  The Boston Tea Party in 1773 was a great example of early American grassroots activism, when colonists protesting taxation without representation dumped forty-five tons of tea into Boston Harbor.

You might say their actions caused quite a ripple….  And got the revolution brewing…

Needless to say, the British were not amused, and the British parliament promptly passed several laws, including one that closed Boston Harbor until the tea had been paid for.  The colonists dubbed these laws the "Intolerable Acts" and their enactment united the colonies against Britain.  Committees of colonials convened the First Continental Congress in 1774 to discuss how to assert their rights with the British government.

You know the rest of the story as well as I do.  That’s the power of the people – the strength of grassroots activism.

My Introduction to Grassroots Politics

As I mentioned, boats and RVs got me interested in politics.  Our family lived in Montgomery, Ohio, and all of the deeds for the property in our subdivision contained a restrictive covenant that prohibited parking boats and RVs in driveways.  The purpose of such a covenant is to maintain the aesthetics of the neighborhood and keep the property values high.  A number of residents were in violation of the covenant.

As a real estate attorney, I felt strongly that the residents should honor the agreements they had made when they bought their property.  I began attending our homeowners’ association meetings to offer advice on enforcing the covenant, and soon was asked to stand for election as an officer of the association.  I became treasurer of the association and each officer was also expected to chair a committee.  I volunteered for the Community Affairs committee.  My responsibility was to attend Montgomery City Council meetings to monitor actions the Council was considering that might affect our neighborhood.

It was a very educational experience.  I learned about the process of enacting legislation at the local level and the use of parliamentary procedure to maintain order in the proceedings.  I also learned that, unless there was an NIMBY issue being considered (NIMBY being an acronym for “Not In My Back Yard”), very few citizens attend city council meetings.  In light of that, I soon came to the attention of the Mayor and several council members who asked why I kept showing up.

As in Singapore, most Americans who go into politics don’t just wake up one day and decide to run for office.  A bit of recruitment is often involved, not necessarily over tea – in the Singaporean style.    One day, the Mayor, who was not running for re-election, and the city prosecutor, who attended all council meetings, approached me and asked whether I would consider running for a council seat.   With the Mayor’s offer to be my campaign manager and the support of her many friends who were well-connected in the community, I decided that I would indeed throw my hat in the ring for public service.

This is when I first learned the basics of grassroots politics: organizing a campaign, developing a public identity, and mobilizing support.  The Mayor, as promised, organized my campaign and enlisted the help of her friends.

You’ve heard of campaign techniques such as kissing babies and doing the rubber chicken circuit.  Well, we worked together to we raise money and develope my public identity through a ‘feet and eat’ strategy.   The ‘feet’ part was walking through a neighborhood accompanied by well-known residents.  We knocked on doors and I was introduced to their friends and neighbors.  The ‘eat’ part of the campaign plan was attending countless neighborhood get-togethers in the evenings after work, where we ate cookies and brownies, drank coffee and talked about local issues such as improving parks and controlling zoning to preserve our residential areas.

By the time of the election, I didn’t think I could ever look at another cup of coffee.  I eventually got over that, especially when we moved to Seattle, home of Starbucks and Seattle’s Best.

We increased name recognition by putting “Vote for Herbold” signs in supporters’ front yards.  I also distributed emery boards with my name on them on the theory that keeping my name at voters’ fingertips would be an effective marketing strategy.

After winning my election and serving on the council for two years, my fellow council members elected me as Mayor of Montgomery, a position I held for two years until our family moved out of the city limits, which disqualified me from running again.  It was many years later, when my husband and I moved to the Seattle area, that I learned a lot more about the synergies between grassroots and the more formal political establishment.

Transition from Montgomery City Council to King County, WA

In 1995, after Bob and I moved to Bellevue, near Seattle, I began to get involved in community and political activities.  A registered Republican since I first voted at age 18, I became acquainted with others in the Republican Party in WA through several community activities.  I got to know many elected officials and their supporters and became actively involved in political campaigns and fund-raising activities.

In April, 1999, my district’s U.S. Congresswoman, with whom I had become friends, suggested to then-Governor George Bush that he include me among fifteen women from around the country invited to have lunch with him in Austin, Texas.  Once Governor Bush announced that he was running for President, I joined the Washington State finance committee in support of his candidacy.

After President Bush was elected in 2000, I set out to work with others in King County, the county in Washington in which we lived, to rejuvenate the County Republican Party.

By way of background, King County is the largest county in the state of Washington, and home to one third of the state’s population as well as companies like Microsoft, Boeing, Costco and Starbucks.  And yet, it had become painfully obvious to those of us who were working hard to get candidates elected that the County Republican Party of the wealthiest county in the state wasn’t doing all that we hoped it could to help our candidates, financially or in the ability to mobilize grassroots support.

A little more background:  In all states, the county parties are the recruiters and motivators of the grassroots armies that fight for their party’s candidates and principles.  King County has 17 legislative districts.  Each one is further divided into precincts and there are more than 2,000 precincts in King County alone.   In a perfect world, each precinct would have a precinct committee officer (PCO) who is elected every two years during regularly scheduled elections.

In King County, the Chairman of the county party is elected by the PCO’s at a reorganization meeting held every two years, several months after the PCO’s themselves are elected.

Our efforts to work with the then-current Chairman of the County Republican Party failed.  Many of us in the party were dissatisfied with the direction he was providing and his inability to raise money.  A group of us, all activists within the party, decided it was time to challenge the leadership.  In the spring of 2002, one of those activists was a woman who had managed a former U.S. Senator’s Washington state operations and who had the reputation of being the best grassroots organizer in the state.  She set up a group of other Republican political activists representing all 17 districts in King County.  I was invited to join the group.

At the first meeting I attended, one of the agenda items was to find a candidate to run for Chairman.  You’ve probably guessed where this story goes.  As if on cue, everyone looked at me and asked if I would consider running for the chairmanship.  After several days of soul searching, I agreed – on the condition that everyone in that room would work as hard as I would have to in order to defeat an 8-year incumbent and continue to help me if I were elected.  And they all promised they would and they kept that promise.

My supporters and I formed the “Grassroots Committee for a strong King County Republican Party,” the mechanism we used to raise money and to recruit supporters to run for the PCO positions.  Most of the current PCO’s were supporters of the incumbent, so our strategy was to run opponents against them as well as find new candidates for the many precincts that had no PCO.

With any grassroots effort, it is critical to provide motivated supporters with the tools they need to accomplish the task at hand.  In this case, the task was my election and our tools were both emotional and tangible.  Our first effort was to show the current PCO’s that, unlike the incumbent, we were there to help them.  They had never been given the lists of their constituents, the registered Republican voters in their precincts, so we bought lists from the County Elections office and mailed them to the PCO’s.  We mailed letters on a regular basis to achieve the name recognition that is so important.  I delivered my stump campaign speech at numerous Republican events and at every district meeting, sometimes two or three of them in one night.  The incumbent was invited to the same events and meetings and the district chairmen, who were appointed by him, and his supporters in the audience, were often less than courteous.  It was a physically and emotionally exhausting time.

A good grassroots campaign is heavy on logistics, and I was fortunate to have lots of volunteers who were willing to help.  Supporters drove me to events so I didn’t have to find parking, a problem in Seattle just like in Singapore.  They made phone calls and sent emails, organized their friends and relatives, helped raise money, attended district meetings with me, and did whatever they could to ease the burden of the campaign for me.

Leaders of a grassroots campaign have to do a bit of a balancing act.  Being organized and having a good "back office" organization are important – but micro-management will kill the very spirit of volunteerism that makes grassroots politicking what it is.  Most grassroots volunteers are motivated by the sense of making a difference on an issue that matters personally to them, so grassroots efforts are most successful if they nurture creativity and initiative.  Volunteers treated as extensions of the will of the leadership will soon lose their enthusiasm for the effort.  I think that’s what happened to the incumbent Chairman in King County.

As I mentioned earlier, support and encouragement from the establishment can give a real boost to a grassroots campaign.  A couple of days before the election for the chairmanship, my husband and I attended a party at the White House.  I told President Bush and Karl Rove, his senior advisor, that I was running for Chair of the King County Republican Party because we needed to do more in King County to help our candidates, including the President’s re-election in 2004.  They both promised to provide their support, and Karl Rove reiterated that promise when he called after the election to congratulate me on my 72-percent victory.

The new Chairman takes over immediately after the election, which meant I instantly inherited no staff, an unsuitable office location, and the county party's $9,000 debt.  So, it was back to mobilizing support for our operations, both financial contributions and volunteers.  I made numerous phone calls and met people for coffee, breakfasts, and luncheons, individually and in groups, appealing for contributions.  After several weeks, I paid off the debts, found a better office location at a better rental rate, lined up volunteers to answer the phone, and hired an executive director to manage the day-to-day operations.  In the first year, we raised close to $250,000.

I also held Karl Rove to his promise.  In April 2004, he came to Seattle to speak to a sell-out crowd at our Lincoln Day Dinner, an event that contributed $115,000 to the county party’s coffers.

I also had to create the infrastructure that would allow the organization to thrive.  My position as Chairman was as a non-salaried volunteer, as are the district chairmen and the PCO’s.

We needed to raise money to support our office operation and our efforts to register voters, pay for automated phone calls to remind people to vote, contribute to candidates’ campaigns, and pay for voters’ pamphlets and mailers in support of candidates and issues.   I also needed to mobilize a larger grassroots army if we were to be effective in the 2004 campaign in a county of more than 1.5 million people.

The PCO’s recruited friends and neighbors to be volunteers to knock on more doors, call more voters, persuade more voters who would not be able to get to the polls on election day to sign up for – and cast – absentee ballots, and even offer to drive voters to the polling places on the day of the election.  In 2004, for the first time in eight years, our county party organization generated enough funds, close to $500,000, and grassroots activists to support candidates at the local, district, state, and national level the way they deserved.

Growing Grassroots Politics and Emerging Technologies

I’ve given you a sense of grassroots politics in the United States from my personal experience.  In some ways, my examples already need updating.  The increasing use of the Internet, text messages, and podcasting is transforming grassroots politics in America at staggering speed.

Though the tools of grassroots politics have evolved dramatically – especially since the days of the Boston Tea Party – the passion and purpose of grassroots activists haven’t changed.  Citizens’ political advocacy remains at the heart of grassroots efforts, and communication remains critical to success.

With the Internet available to more than 70 percent of Americans, grassroots activists are harnessing technology to identify and mobilize voters.  Yesterday's campaign signs on front lawns will probably survive, but the digital revolution is transforming message delivery in American politics.

Ten years ago, only a handful of legislators had their own interactive web sites.  Today, nearly all politicians consider the web a vital outreach platform.  Similarly, most grassroots groups have advocacy web sites.  Howard Dean’s use of the Internet for fundraising, organizing, and building community among his supporters in the last Presidential campaign was considered pioneering at the time, but is now commonplace in campaigns, just two years later.

As communication becomes faster and less structured, the Internet, text messaging, weblogs, and podcasting are expanding the geographical base from which volunteers and donors can participate in an “e-coalition” grassroots campaign.  It is also easier to manage individuals' involvement with the grassroots organization during the ‘off-season’ between campaigns by sending electronic newsletters and tailoring alerts to individual interests.

However, just as technology can help spread a grassroots message, it can also override the message.  The relative influence of television advertising is declining as voters tune out, or use TIVO to skip altogether, the flood of political ads.

For politicians and grassroots movements alike, the Internet and social software tools require users to surrender some control over the message, and facilitate the dissemination of their opponents' messages as well as their own.  This is a healthy phenomenon, but it does require advocates to remain alert to what is being said in cyberspace about their candidates or their issues.

Sometimes there is more than monitoring involved:  the online encyclopedia “Wikipedia” reports that Congressional staffers made so many changes to legislators’ entries – for example, rapidly deleting unfavorable information, accurate or otherwise – that the site now limits edits from Capital Hill email addresses.

Looking ahead, the 2008 Presidential campaign may feature techno-political applications beyond our reach today.  Perhaps television and internet advertising will be supplanted by video advertisements beamed to our cell phones and MP3 players.

As Americans are bombarded with text messages, emails, and podcasts, the challenge for grassroots politics in America will be figuring out how to use the Internet to entice multi-tasked potential voters to linger on their message long enough to be persuaded.  After all, it’s a lot easier to click the delete button than it is to pass up a cookie or cup of coffee at a get-together in a neighbor’s house to meet-and-greet the candidate.

Conclusion

I hope that I’ve given you a sense of grassroots politics in the United States, based on my personal experience.  Grassroots politics in the United States represents democracy in action.

However one likes or dislikes last week’s election results, it is a perfect example of how ordinary citizens can express their dissatisfaction and vote in hopes of effecting a change.  You can be certain that there was a strong grassroots campaign in every county in every state, encouraging voters to support change or to support the status quo.

Grassroots activism has long been a distinctive feature of our democracy.  For example, Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 said:

“The political activity that pervades the United States
must be seen to be understood.  No sooner do you set
foot upon American ground than you are stunned by a
kind of tumult….here the people of one quarter of a town
are meeting to decide upon the building of a church;
there the election of a representative is going on;
a little farther, the delegates of a district are hastening
to the town in order to consult upon some local improvements;
in another place, the laborers of a village quit their plows
to deliberate upon a project of a road or a public school…
To take a hand in the regulation of society and to discuss it
is (the) biggest concern and, so to speak, the only pleasure
an American knows.”

Perhaps times aren’t changing so fast, after all.

Thank you for your time and for your attention this evening.  I look forward to the discussion.