Rep. DuBose Porter: "We must learn from our past & rebuild for the future. We cannot keep repeating the same behavior & expecting a different result."
This post concerns one of our Party's most important and highest profile members, state House Minority Leader-elect DuBose Porter.
Part I: Rep. Porter's name first appeared in this blog back in an August post when, talking about my having known Zell for a long time, I wrote:
"Liking Zell personally as I do, do I think he should switch parties? Heck, who am I to say. If he told me what to do and I did not agree with it, you can imagine what I would tell him in a respectful manner. I expect he would tell me likewise.
"Liking Zell personally as I do, do I think he should be giving the keynote address at the Republican National Convention?
"No, but Zell will be Zell. Always has been, always will be.
"Do I have anything else to add? Yes, folks in the other Georgia sometimes have good ideas, believe it or not.
"A case in point. My neighbor in Laurens County (yes, the county that had the messed up ballots in the Court of Appeals' election) Rep. DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) has some thoughts that in fairness to the Democratic Party ought to have gone through Sen. Miller's mind.
"Rep. Porter questions why Miller didn't work within our Party to move it closer to the political middle. As Rep. Porter so eloquently puts it:
"'I wish he was working more on ways to correct the Democratic Party rather than going and giving a speech at the Republican Convention,' said Porter, House speaker pro tempore. 'I wish he was giving that speech at the Democratic Convention.'"
I don't know of a soul, either within or without the state of Georgia -- and I mean a Democratic soul who has the Party's interest at heart -- who has more accurately described how Zell let his Party down. It was not what Zell said about the Party moving too far to the left (and we do have room within the Party for divergent opinions); it was how, where and when he said it.
Part II: Shortly after his fellow Democrats elected Rep. Porter to be their Minority Leader in the House, Rep. Porter and twelve other rural white House Democrats read about their upcoming political demise in the ajc. The obituary was written by ajc's associate editorial page editor Jim Wooten, and was the subject of a 12-04-04 post entitled:
"I accept the challenge to a duel. Swords or pistols you ask. Neither. Hard work, a message & votes will be our weapons. (And don't kill the messenger.)".
That post provided in part:
"This weekend ajc associate editorial page editor Jim Wooten has a powerful message for our Party. Those wishing to kill the messenger can do so in their own medium as they remain in a state of denial.
"I hereby accept Mr. Wooten's implicit challenge, and hereby pledge to do all I can and then some to assure that every person whose name appears below in bold is reelected in Nov. 2006, along with also electing and reelecting other good Democrats not named, whether in the Georgia House and Senate.
"We have our work cut out for us, and in accepting Mr. Wooten's challenge, I invite you to join me.
"And we must realize -- as noted in Mr. Wooten's column -- that in meeting the challenge, the challenge is indeed twofold. First, we have the challenge from without -- the GOP -- and second, and just as important, is the challenge from within, that being to go to great lengths to avoid not all singing the same song."
Mr. Wooten's 12-03-04 ajc column was entitled:
"Dems need rural whites"
In pertinent part it noted:
"For Democrats, and more specifically for the black and urban caucuses, a window exists. The window is no more than a year. The task is to make themselves presentable to whites outside the Perimeter. They're getting killed there.
"Rural white Democrats are an endangered species under the Gold Dome.
"Democrats have 13 rural whites whose successors are likely to be Republican. They include the current House speaker, Terry Coleman of Eastman, and the speaker pro tem, DuBose Porter of Dublin. Others are Paul Smith of Rome, Bill Cummings of Rockmart, Charles Jenkins of Blairsville, Barbara Massey Reece of Menlo, Jeanette Jamison of Toccoa, Alan Powell of Hartwell, Robert Ray of Fort Valley, Greg Morris of Vidalia, Butch Parrish of Swainsboro, Ellis Black of Valdosta and Jay Shaw of Lakeland."
I concluded that post by saying:
"In issuing his challenge, I truly believe Mr. Wooten has given our Party an early Christmas present. From one South Georgian to another, I say to Jim Wooten: 'Thanks, we needed that.'"
Part III: As an active Party member and leader, Rep. Porter recently gave the troops their marching orders for now until Nov. 2006:
Stay the course. Stay focused. And keep the faith. There is much work to be done, but our Party has a long, proud history, and is up to the charge.
This important message was discussed in my 12-20-04 post write-up of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party of Georgia's first get together post-Nov. 2. In that post I noted:
"As noted in my 11-07-04 post entitled 'As we regroup, let's get off to the right start. - Here's to hoping Rep. DuBose Porter will assume the reins tomorrow,' I am a big DuBose Porter fan, my neighbor several counties over.
"[At the Executive Committee meeting on Dec. 18 in Atlanta the] Minority Leader-elect exuded confidence and demonstrated a 'take charge,' 'I've got a plan,' and 'I am interested in what you think' posture in his remarks at our meeting.
"I perceived a strong consensus among those in attendance that we are in good hands with Rep. Porter. Encourage your legislators to line up behind him and support him and our other Party leaders in the upcoming legislative session."
(I understand that those who write news stories and columns do not get to write their own title. This is the job of the newspaper's editor. As the writer of this blog, it did my heart good to see other writers who used or reprinted my write-up use the caption "Strong Consensus" as a headline. For me, this was descriptive of both where we know we need to go, as well as the feeling of confidence in our leadership with respect to Rep. Porter.)
Part IV: As we know, the General Assembly convenes next Monday. In anticipation of this, Bill Shipp's Georgia, a division of InsiderAdvantage.com, sat down for a face-to-face with our Minority Leader-elect about our Party's Nov. 2 loses nationally and in Georgia.
In that part of my 12-27-04 post "Sid's response to the Dean" noting that
"the leadership of the state Party, official or otherwise, recognizes that the Democratic Party in Georgia has lost some its luster and former glory as evidenced by the results of the November results in 2004 for a reason, I noted:
"I do not buy into the current thinking that such reason is the same that caused our first disaster on Nov. 5, 2002. I attribute the latter loss to arrogance."
From his interview it is apparent that Rep. Porter agrees with my assessment that that the reason for our loss in 2002 was not the same as that for 2004.
Being more diplomatic, he did not give a reason for our Party's loss in 2002.
While not giving his opinion for our Party's loss in Nov. 2002, nonetheless Rep. Porter did say that Roy Barnes' loss "was not a symptom of the problem we now face" as a Party, but that his defeat, along with that of longtime House Speaker Tom Murphy, "started the problem."
In his interview Rep. Porter says the Democratic National Party "must take the Democratic Party back to its core if it wishes to help Democrats in Georgia."
His interview reflects his sense that -- as bad as things are on the federal level where we have lost the center and had a presidential campaign that wrote off the South -- we have even bigger problems on our state level.
What kind of problems?
How about our Party's infrastructure is broken and is in desperate need of repair. In his even stronger words, there is a "lack of infrastructure."
He notes that "it was not until this [2004] election year that the symptoms of [this] larger problem of lack of infrastructure began to surface."
As evidence of our breakdown or lack of infrastructure, Rep. Porter notes the following:
-- "In the 2004 elections, in the House alone, Republicans ran unopposed by Democratic challengers in 57 out of 180 districts."
-- "We must re-establish our grassroots effort. While there are some groups that work very well, there is no overall plan to unite their efforts."
-- "Our communications network needs a complete overhaul" (such as, an e-mail networks)."
-- "We lack visibility on the Internet."
-- "We also need to learn to delegate more responsibility and how to work with the media."
-- "I believe our defeat was not caused by some vague political ideology as the pundits would have you believe, but by our refusal to adapt to a new way of doing business."
Rep. DuBose also shared his ideas about things that "can be changed to aid in our victory." These include:
-- Presently Democrats number 81 in the state House. Noting that the Republicans won 96 seats in the House, he said he 41 of these could be Democratic seats, and of these 41, definitely "24 could be won back if the party starts to reorganize the way it does business. Twenty-four plus the 81 we now have is 105. We only need 91 to have a majority. With the right vision and leadership it is possible that the House can be won back in 2006."
-- "The Democratic Party of Georgia and the Democratic Caucus have not worked as a team. I am not pointing fingers; that is just always the way it has been. It has worked that way fine for decades. In the past the Democratic Party of Georgia did their thing and we did ours and we would meet at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. We must merge these two groups into one or we will continue to slide."
-- Responding to a question whether a rural caucus and an urban caucus could split rather than unit the Party, Rep. Porter indicated that "the Democratic Party represent[ing] all of the people of Georgia is a good thing. This enables us to have a wide variety of solutions to our state's problems and to make sure that all voices are heard. However, when there is work to be done, everyone must come together with common goals. Tangent politics loses every time.
"We have met on this issue and we as a party have decided on an agenda which all of our members can support. We as Democrats overlap on more than enough issues to keep Georgia strong. Health care, job training, natural resources, education and how they relate to the economy and the pocketbook of the average Georgian is what our party will be concentrating on in the upcoming session and beyond. We as a party have found our strengths and because of this we are only getting stronger."
Our Minority Leader concluded his interview with words of encouragement and of advice:
"Recently Democrats have taken back the majority in Montana, Colorado and North Carolina. Democrats in Georgia have the opportunity to do the same.
"[But we] must be willing to admit our mistakes. We must learn from our past and rebuild for the future. We cannot keep repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result."
(End of interview.)
_______________
Do I have anything else to add? Only two.
First, now you see why I am a big DuBose Porter fan.
And second, I told you that folks in the Other Georgia sometimes have good ideas.
Part I: Rep. Porter's name first appeared in this blog back in an August post when, talking about my having known Zell for a long time, I wrote:
"Liking Zell personally as I do, do I think he should switch parties? Heck, who am I to say. If he told me what to do and I did not agree with it, you can imagine what I would tell him in a respectful manner. I expect he would tell me likewise.
"Liking Zell personally as I do, do I think he should be giving the keynote address at the Republican National Convention?
"No, but Zell will be Zell. Always has been, always will be.
"Do I have anything else to add? Yes, folks in the other Georgia sometimes have good ideas, believe it or not.
"A case in point. My neighbor in Laurens County (yes, the county that had the messed up ballots in the Court of Appeals' election) Rep. DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) has some thoughts that in fairness to the Democratic Party ought to have gone through Sen. Miller's mind.
"Rep. Porter questions why Miller didn't work within our Party to move it closer to the political middle. As Rep. Porter so eloquently puts it:
"'I wish he was working more on ways to correct the Democratic Party rather than going and giving a speech at the Republican Convention,' said Porter, House speaker pro tempore. 'I wish he was giving that speech at the Democratic Convention.'"
I don't know of a soul, either within or without the state of Georgia -- and I mean a Democratic soul who has the Party's interest at heart -- who has more accurately described how Zell let his Party down. It was not what Zell said about the Party moving too far to the left (and we do have room within the Party for divergent opinions); it was how, where and when he said it.
Part II: Shortly after his fellow Democrats elected Rep. Porter to be their Minority Leader in the House, Rep. Porter and twelve other rural white House Democrats read about their upcoming political demise in the ajc. The obituary was written by ajc's associate editorial page editor Jim Wooten, and was the subject of a 12-04-04 post entitled:
"I accept the challenge to a duel. Swords or pistols you ask. Neither. Hard work, a message & votes will be our weapons. (And don't kill the messenger.)".
That post provided in part:
"This weekend ajc associate editorial page editor Jim Wooten has a powerful message for our Party. Those wishing to kill the messenger can do so in their own medium as they remain in a state of denial.
"I hereby accept Mr. Wooten's implicit challenge, and hereby pledge to do all I can and then some to assure that every person whose name appears below in bold is reelected in Nov. 2006, along with also electing and reelecting other good Democrats not named, whether in the Georgia House and Senate.
"We have our work cut out for us, and in accepting Mr. Wooten's challenge, I invite you to join me.
"And we must realize -- as noted in Mr. Wooten's column -- that in meeting the challenge, the challenge is indeed twofold. First, we have the challenge from without -- the GOP -- and second, and just as important, is the challenge from within, that being to go to great lengths to avoid not all singing the same song."
Mr. Wooten's 12-03-04 ajc column was entitled:
"Dems need rural whites"
In pertinent part it noted:
"For Democrats, and more specifically for the black and urban caucuses, a window exists. The window is no more than a year. The task is to make themselves presentable to whites outside the Perimeter. They're getting killed there.
"Rural white Democrats are an endangered species under the Gold Dome.
"Democrats have 13 rural whites whose successors are likely to be Republican. They include the current House speaker, Terry Coleman of Eastman, and the speaker pro tem, DuBose Porter of Dublin. Others are Paul Smith of Rome, Bill Cummings of Rockmart, Charles Jenkins of Blairsville, Barbara Massey Reece of Menlo, Jeanette Jamison of Toccoa, Alan Powell of Hartwell, Robert Ray of Fort Valley, Greg Morris of Vidalia, Butch Parrish of Swainsboro, Ellis Black of Valdosta and Jay Shaw of Lakeland."
I concluded that post by saying:
"In issuing his challenge, I truly believe Mr. Wooten has given our Party an early Christmas present. From one South Georgian to another, I say to Jim Wooten: 'Thanks, we needed that.'"
Part III: As an active Party member and leader, Rep. Porter recently gave the troops their marching orders for now until Nov. 2006:
Stay the course. Stay focused. And keep the faith. There is much work to be done, but our Party has a long, proud history, and is up to the charge.
This important message was discussed in my 12-20-04 post write-up of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party of Georgia's first get together post-Nov. 2. In that post I noted:
"As noted in my 11-07-04 post entitled 'As we regroup, let's get off to the right start. - Here's to hoping Rep. DuBose Porter will assume the reins tomorrow,' I am a big DuBose Porter fan, my neighbor several counties over.
"[At the Executive Committee meeting on Dec. 18 in Atlanta the] Minority Leader-elect exuded confidence and demonstrated a 'take charge,' 'I've got a plan,' and 'I am interested in what you think' posture in his remarks at our meeting.
"I perceived a strong consensus among those in attendance that we are in good hands with Rep. Porter. Encourage your legislators to line up behind him and support him and our other Party leaders in the upcoming legislative session."
(I understand that those who write news stories and columns do not get to write their own title. This is the job of the newspaper's editor. As the writer of this blog, it did my heart good to see other writers who used or reprinted my write-up use the caption "Strong Consensus" as a headline. For me, this was descriptive of both where we know we need to go, as well as the feeling of confidence in our leadership with respect to Rep. Porter.)
Part IV: As we know, the General Assembly convenes next Monday. In anticipation of this, Bill Shipp's Georgia, a division of InsiderAdvantage.com, sat down for a face-to-face with our Minority Leader-elect about our Party's Nov. 2 loses nationally and in Georgia.
In that part of my 12-27-04 post "Sid's response to the Dean" noting that
"the leadership of the state Party, official or otherwise, recognizes that the Democratic Party in Georgia has lost some its luster and former glory as evidenced by the results of the November results in 2004 for a reason, I noted:
"I do not buy into the current thinking that such reason is the same that caused our first disaster on Nov. 5, 2002. I attribute the latter loss to arrogance."
From his interview it is apparent that Rep. Porter agrees with my assessment that that the reason for our loss in 2002 was not the same as that for 2004.
Being more diplomatic, he did not give a reason for our Party's loss in 2002.
While not giving his opinion for our Party's loss in Nov. 2002, nonetheless Rep. Porter did say that Roy Barnes' loss "was not a symptom of the problem we now face" as a Party, but that his defeat, along with that of longtime House Speaker Tom Murphy, "started the problem."
In his interview Rep. Porter says the Democratic National Party "must take the Democratic Party back to its core if it wishes to help Democrats in Georgia."
His interview reflects his sense that -- as bad as things are on the federal level where we have lost the center and had a presidential campaign that wrote off the South -- we have even bigger problems on our state level.
What kind of problems?
How about our Party's infrastructure is broken and is in desperate need of repair. In his even stronger words, there is a "lack of infrastructure."
He notes that "it was not until this [2004] election year that the symptoms of [this] larger problem of lack of infrastructure began to surface."
As evidence of our breakdown or lack of infrastructure, Rep. Porter notes the following:
-- "In the 2004 elections, in the House alone, Republicans ran unopposed by Democratic challengers in 57 out of 180 districts."
-- "We must re-establish our grassroots effort. While there are some groups that work very well, there is no overall plan to unite their efforts."
-- "Our communications network needs a complete overhaul" (such as, an e-mail networks)."
-- "We lack visibility on the Internet."
-- "We also need to learn to delegate more responsibility and how to work with the media."
-- "I believe our defeat was not caused by some vague political ideology as the pundits would have you believe, but by our refusal to adapt to a new way of doing business."
Rep. DuBose also shared his ideas about things that "can be changed to aid in our victory." These include:
-- Presently Democrats number 81 in the state House. Noting that the Republicans won 96 seats in the House, he said he 41 of these could be Democratic seats, and of these 41, definitely "24 could be won back if the party starts to reorganize the way it does business. Twenty-four plus the 81 we now have is 105. We only need 91 to have a majority. With the right vision and leadership it is possible that the House can be won back in 2006."
-- "The Democratic Party of Georgia and the Democratic Caucus have not worked as a team. I am not pointing fingers; that is just always the way it has been. It has worked that way fine for decades. In the past the Democratic Party of Georgia did their thing and we did ours and we would meet at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. We must merge these two groups into one or we will continue to slide."
-- Responding to a question whether a rural caucus and an urban caucus could split rather than unit the Party, Rep. Porter indicated that "the Democratic Party represent[ing] all of the people of Georgia is a good thing. This enables us to have a wide variety of solutions to our state's problems and to make sure that all voices are heard. However, when there is work to be done, everyone must come together with common goals. Tangent politics loses every time.
"We have met on this issue and we as a party have decided on an agenda which all of our members can support. We as Democrats overlap on more than enough issues to keep Georgia strong. Health care, job training, natural resources, education and how they relate to the economy and the pocketbook of the average Georgian is what our party will be concentrating on in the upcoming session and beyond. We as a party have found our strengths and because of this we are only getting stronger."
Our Minority Leader concluded his interview with words of encouragement and of advice:
"Recently Democrats have taken back the majority in Montana, Colorado and North Carolina. Democrats in Georgia have the opportunity to do the same.
"[But we] must be willing to admit our mistakes. We must learn from our past and rebuild for the future. We cannot keep repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result."
(End of interview.)
_______________
Do I have anything else to add? Only two.
First, now you see why I am a big DuBose Porter fan.
And second, I told you that folks in the Other Georgia sometimes have good ideas.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 6:15 AM
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