Stated Podcast: Tom Perez, DNC Chair
Season 2, Episode 1 of Stated, a podcast by the DLCC
Jessica Post kicks off Season 2 of Stated by interviewing DNC Chair Tom Perez about Democrats’ successes in 2018 and what’s at stake in 2020.
The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Tom grew up in Buffalo where he learned the values of a union town: hard work, integrity, service, and perseverance. Tom had the privilege of serving in President Obama’s administration for eight years. First as head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, where he led the charge against police misconduct, voter suppression, anti-LGBT discrimination, and immigrant-bashing sheriffs’ departments. Then as Secretary of Labor, fighting to protect and expand opportunities for America’s working people — from better wages and overtime pay, to retirement security and collective bargaining rights.
This interview was first published on April 17, 2019 and has been edited for length and clarity.
We are excited for the presidential election — and especially excited for Donald Trump to no longer be president. But at the DLCC, we have our sights set on the 4,000+ state legislative races in 2019 and 2020 that will control redistricting for the next decade. How do we keep voters focused on critical local races when it seems that there’s wall to wall coverage of the nuances of the presidential campaigns and even the candidates lives?
Tom Perez: Well, we have to get local. And what we learned in a lot of our work in the most recent cycle was that when you produce local content, that’s how you do well. And when you focus on those local issues, that’s how you do well.
Jessica and Tom also discussed how Democrats can build power and even flip Republican majorities in traditionally red states.
So none of these states are easy, to state the obvious. But I know it might come as a surprise to some of the listeners to say, “Really, we can compete there.”
Hey, we’ve got a governor of Kansas, we have legislators and members of Congress from red states. We can compete everywhere. We can win everywhere. We have won everywhere. But only when we organize and focus locally on those issues that matter most in those communities. And in Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, and in Virginia, healthcare is, is the top issue. And Democrats who go to the polls in November in Virginia understand that the Democratic Party is trying to save the affordable care act and the Republican Party is trying to do away with it plainly and simply healthcare.
And last, Tom reinforced what’s at stake with redistricting after this election.
Our democracy, plainly and simply. We picked a lousy year, Jessica, to get our butts kicked back in 2010. Absolutely. It had a residual effect that we still feel to this day. If you look at Wisconsin in 2018 and we ran the table on the statewide elections there, we won them all. And we didn’t win a thing in the U.S. House… Our democracy as we know it and all the laws you care about because how we draw the districts will determine how we resolve issues.
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