Greetings, Democrats!

I’m Jarrod Wiggins and I am running to be your next Chair of the Greenville County Democratic Party.

I come to the table with experience managing political campaigns; working for both the Party and campaigns; hosting a liberal-leaning podcast with an audience across the state; and serving on several non-profit boards that allow me to interact with pockets of our community that politics wouldn’t otherwise allow — and that’s in addition to my day job overseeing Operations and Strategy.

We, as a liberal coalition, have come together to make strides over the past few years. We’ve seen an increase in attendance at GCDP meetings and in the number of Democratic candidates running for office; and the party has flipped one seat from red to blue. But, I strongly feel as if we have so much more work to do and that a generational change, and structural shift, in how we organize is needed to push our party forward.

That doesn’t mean it’s ‘out with the old’ and ‘in with the new’; it’s going to take old-school tactics as well as new-school tactics to grow our coalition and flip more seats across Greenville County.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 34% of the vote in Greenville County. In 2018, James Smith won 42% of the vote in Greenville County. Yet, our Party only holds 14% of our State Senate seats; 13% of our State House seats; and 16% of our County County seats across Greenville County. Some of this is due to partisan, gerrymandered lines that favor the GOP but some of this is due to the honest fact that we, as a party, are not organizing across Greenville County and putting more seats into play.

I believe if we re-invigorate our precinct reorganization efforts, offer strategic guidance in a clear and concise manner, and create an online “toolbox” of organizing tools for our precinct leaders that we can build the foundation needed to truly make change. The structure we can create in every precinct will allow us to be competitive in our urban, suburban, and rural communities — a geographical challenge few other South Carolina counties face.

Strong precincts will allow us to organize within our neighborhoods vs. just mobilizing our existing base every election cycle; they will allow us to build a strong bench of trained, knowledgeable, and inspirational candidates who are prepared to win elections; to build a network capable of registering voters that our party has yet to reach – especially our vastly under-registered black, brown, and young voters; and it will allow our party leadership to focus on the fundraising, strategic planning, and media relations efforts so needed to win more elections. 

I believe that leading this party is about inspiring and empowering every member of our coalition — all 74,000 that voted for Democrats in 2018 — to do whatever they’re able to do to help us grow this party and leave stronger communities behind for the next generation.

I’m ready to work hard and fight. So, let’s go elect more Democrats – together.

Jarrod Wiggins,
320-292-0504
Jarrod.K.Wiggins@gmail.com