Democratic activists, citing weak fundraising, call for shakeup of state Senate caucus leadership

Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012 | 8:27 p.m.

A Democratic club from North Las Vegas, expressing in a missive what others are feeling, has called for a change in state Senate leadership after disclosures showed the GOP senators far ahead in fundraising.

I'm told others will soon follow the lead of the North Valley Democratic Club, which sent a letter to senators expressing their concerns in advance of a campaign that many observers believe could throw the upper house into GOP hands. The letter is below and seems to extend to caucus boss Mo Denis and staffers, too.

----

Dear Senators:

We are writing to you today to express our concern with the direction and leadership of the Senate Democratic Caucus, especially in light of the end-of-year fund raising numbers where the Democratic Caucus was slaughtered by the GOP – they raised nearly $500K versus our $15K, as was reported by today's Las Vegas Sun. The members of the North Valley Democratic Club care deeply about state issues, and are committed to not only maintaining a majority, but building a veto-proof majority in the State Senate. Unfortunately, since the end of the 2011 legislative session, Democrats have appeared to be on constant defense, rather than presenting a strong offense as befitting the party in the majority. This needs to stop – we are in the majority in a state where Democrats are the majority of registered voters.

The disparity in fund-raising is but the final item in a list of issues demonstrating the dysfunction of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

We have serious concerns regarding candidate recruitment. The other side clearly did their homework recruiting good, strong candidates to run in competitive districts. Our Party has some good candidates in seats where we had incumbents, but we still don't have strong candidates recruited in two winnable swing districts. In fact, we have heard rumblings that because the Caucus leadership doesn’t view our new Senate District 18 (where many of our members live) as winnable, it has decided not to make it a priority for recruitment or funding. To telegraph the message that a district won by the South in the redistricting process is being abandoned by the Senate Caucus as irrelevant is alarming. The lack of candidate recruitment in this and other districts is even more so.

Additionally, media relations have been abysmal. Republicans have controlled the messaging and have convinced everyone they are going to take back the majority. They are not only playing strong offense, we don't even appear interested in defending. The roll out of the Caucus' endorsements of Joyce Woodhouse, Benny Yerushalmi and Aaron Ford were timed poorly. In particular, the timing of the Woodhouse and Yerushalmi announcements gave the appearance that we were scrambling because the GOP chased our incumbents out of office.

The Caucus currently has no web presence, which is killing us. The Party’s loyal followers use social media and websites to keep abreast of what’s going on and generate “buzz” within their own networks.

All of the foregoing issues could have been forgiven if fund-raising numbers were stronger. However, the 30 to 1 fund-raising disparity highlights what we believe to be a larger, more deeply rooted problem. There was no strong fund-raising push at the end of the year. The Caucus made no attempt to reach out to its grassroots supporters for even small donations. Traditional Democratic donors are simply tapped out and those that have money now, are being forced to give to both sides so they aren't shut out in 2013. The comment in the Sun’s January 20th article that we “met our fund-raising goals,” is laughable.

We need to change course now. It is clear that there needs to be an organizational shakeup to show that there will be strong leadership of the Senate Democrats heading into the 2012 Election and through the 2013 Legislative Session. We need to go on offense and not take anything for granted. We appear scared. This needs to change and fast or we will be having this same conversation in the summer.

Our club members are here to help. However, we need to know that a plan is in place, and that the funds will be there so we can get our message out and win in November. As a token of our good faith, we will be sending a check made out to the Senate Democratic Caucus for $23, the proceeds of the 50/50 raffle at our club’s last meeting.

We look forward to a response outlining the steps being taken to right the ship, and change it’s course, prior to our February 17th meeting, so we can report back to our members.

Thank you,

The Members of the North Valley Democratic Club