State Dems re-elect Johnson as chair -- but why?

Rookie Democratic Party Chairman Lon Johnson somehow re-captured the crown over the weekend at the state convention in Detroit even as the grumbling among the party faithful that spilled out on election night in November continued right into the Dems’ biennial confab.

Johnson was the unanimous choice of the convention delegates only because no one stepped up to run against the first-term chair.

Last fall, the Democrats lost the elections for governor, attorney general and secretary of state. They failed to chip away at the GOP edge on the state Supreme Court. And the races for the state Legislature were Dem disasters.

In contests for the state House, where the Democrats already trailed 59-51, the new tally gave the Republicans a 63-47 edge.
In the Senate, a wasteland for the Democrats where the GOP held a 26-12 supermajority, the assumptions heading into November were that the party could clearly do no worse. But they did, losing another seat, which put the margin in favor of the Republicans at an embarrassing 27-11.

Yet, the man shouldering most of the blame for those sour notes, the newcomer, Johnson, was returned by the party big-wigs as the leader of the band.

Beyond the disappointing numbers, Johnson’s pre-convention enthusiasm apparently irked some delegates who thought the party boss should demonstrate some contrition, a bit of humility.
“We are not going to be just the party of 'We don't like Snyder, we don't like the Republicans,’” Johnson, 43, said at the convention.




That remark was in response to questions about the strategy and tone of the Democratic gubernatorial campaign, with Mark Schauer in the lead role. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder had been viewed as very beatable and he seemed to be handing the Dems a victory in August and September when his GOP campaign sputtered badly.
The party veterans, particularly those in labor, wanted to win that one badly. Some blame Johnson for downplaying proven, old-school ways of getting the vote out.
"I don't think (Johnson) had a clue what he was getting into," Deborah Thomas, a Democratic candidate for the Michigan Supreme Court last fall and a longtime judge in Wayne County, told The Detroit News. "It reflected that he was a novice. He had never held that position before, he had never been connected to the (state) party."

In fact, Johnson’s background included a key position in the 2000 Al Gore presidential run and a stint as the 2002 manager of the re-election campaign for former congressman John Dingell. Still, the on-again, off-again resident of Kalkaska came into the job as a political vagabond without roots.

Another factor that makes Johnson’s lack of convention opposition on Saturday rather remarkable is that he failed to deliver on his basic platform. Johnson took over the helm two years ago promising that he would turn the party into a tech-savvy operation relying upon modern methods for winning elections.
His wife, Julianna Smoot, a fundraiser extraordinaire within the national party who served as President Obama’s 2012 deputy campaign manager, also presented a big advantage for Johnson in 2013. The clear implication was that the new guy had all the right connections and he would raise wheelbarrows full of campaign cash compared to past fundraising efforts.

As a result, he emerged just weeks before the 2013 convention and pulled off a coup at a time when he was nearly a complete unknown. Labor leaders and key Democrats turned on the incumbent chairman, Macomb County’s own Mark Brewer, who had become the longest-serving state party chair in the nation with 18 years under his belt.

Since that upheaval, the 2014-15 reality is that Johnson’s one high-tech innovation – a web-based effort to boost Democratic absentee voting and turnout, especially in Detroit – was a flop.
In the early days, the project suffered from technical glitches and by the end the turnout in Detroit was just 166,338, some 10,000 voters less than in the last off-year election of 2010, the state GOP’s breakout year.
What’s more, the Dems’ use of social media, online tools such as Facebook, remains rather mundane. And the party’s presence on Twitter is barely noticeable.

As for the money, that’s another shortfall in the Johnson ledger. The chairman is quick to point out that the state party raised $1.5 million more than in the prior election cycle. But, by 2014 standards, that was not particularly impressive.

Shortly after he became chair in February 2013, Smoot, his wife, landed two key positions within the national party apparatus: with the Organizing for Action nonprofit group led by former top Obama aides, and with the Senate Majority PAC, the Democratic super PAC tied to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid.
An ascension to those heights by the spouse certainly raised expectations. But the husband’s first two years would have to labeled, “Great Expectations – Unrealized.”

Meanwhile, the state Dems still appear unified and they could capitalize on the internal feuds within the Michigan GOP as the tea party creates dissension and brings a cast of kooks and crooks to the table. But, overall, the GOP harbors one distinct advantage over the Dems.

They know how to win elections.