By Laura Haight
DWGC, President

“Democratic messaging sucks,” “Democrats are too divided,” “What ARE Democrats doing?”, “Why aren’t Democrats doing anything??”.

These are among the common refrains we’ve been hearing since January.

They’re not wrong. And we knew it in November when we experienced what was the most crushing loss of my lifetime nationally, and the worst electoral outcome I can remember locally in the decade since I got involved in local politics. We knew we would have to make tough decisions and big changes.

So, Dem Women started talking about organizing a “summit” meeting to bring all our diverse groups together to focus on these issues and come up with new solutions and directions. 

On April 5, we took the first step. We called it Solidarity Greenville ‘26, to bring focus to the idea that our efforts must be more agnostic and issue-focused in order to reach county voters who are not dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. Personally, I wish that were not the case. I am a Democrat and have been since my first vote. I want to elect Democrats, but we need to wrap those Democrats up in the issues where people most share our values, rather than in a blue flag.

Participants from Dem Women, the GCDP, the Spartanburg County Democratic Party, Young Dems, Black Dems, Furman Dems, High School Dems, North Greenville, South Greenville, and Eastside Dems, Hope Huddle, Greenville Huddle, Tell Them Tuesday, Together Greenville, We the People Greenville, 50501, and Indivisible Upstate., some current elected officials, recent and current candidates attended.

Pulling all these groups together was a huge step forward for Democrats in Greenville County. 

What emerged from our three-hour session was a solid analysis of our Party – and by that I don’t mean the GCDP but the Democratic community that all our groups together comprise. What’s working, what isn’t; what needs to be strengthened, what attitudes need to be jettisoned. Five working groups began the process of applying that information to key areas: Communications and Messaging, Community and Coalition building, Voter Mobilization, Issue Advocacy, and Candidate Development and Support. 

The working groups are crucial because they go deeper into the fabric of our lives. We are committed to finding the common threads in our communities and among our citizens; the places where a majority can agree on the issue or policy, not the politics.

These groups will continue to refine and expand the work we started, to develop actionable plans that can be implemented by our entire Democratic coalition. And I can’t stress this enough. If our current situation has shown us anything, it’s that while we have many unique elements and ideologies, our foundation is the same belief system. We have to learn to harness that power, not diffuse it. 

Our next step is to reach out to issue aligned non profits and community organizations to try to develop areas where we can work together to educate, inform, and mobilize voters for 2025’s City Council elections and the significant local, state, and federal elections in 2026. We have reason to believe that some major groups in Greenville with significant constituencies may be willing to work with our Democratic community. That would significantly increase our reach and our potential to engage different voters.

A lot will likely happen over the next two years. We will do a lot of work. We will no doubt be inundated daily with new rounds of madness from DC. We have to remain steadfast, keep doing the work, stay on our message, and embrace new ways of working together and thinking about how we reach voters. How well we – and everyone like us in cities and towns across the country – do our jobs in the next two years will determine the fate of our democracy.

Does that sound too lofty? I’m afraid it’s not. It was farmers, blacksmiths, and armies of regular citizens who sacrificed for our newborn democracy. Two hundred and forty nine years later, it is on all of us to save it. I’m so proud of our community and especially Dem Women.

The challenge of selling the issues

In recent years, surveys have shown that we have a significant policy edge on some critical issues here in SC. 

• A survey commissioned by Planned Parenthood found 70 percent of SC voters believe abortion should be a decision left to a woman and her doctor. 
• Another survey taken by a Republican pollster found 86 percent of the state’s voters supported background checks before a gun sale, and 79 percent were in favor of red flag laws.
• Conservation Voters of South Carolina found 64 percent of SC voters think climate change is a serious problem; and by a 2-1 margin support moving to 100 percent clean energy by 2050. 
• And finally, in a AARP South Carolina found 73 percent of South Carolinans said expanding Medicaid is “extremely or very important.” That result includes 69 percent of Republicans.

Why then have we been unable to capitalize on this? My opinion? We’re not getting the truth in front of voters who are not dyed-in-the wool Dems. Too many people check out of politics. They watch Bravo instead of MSNBC, leaf through People instead of reading The Atlantic, and if they do watch the news, it’s Fox. 

In communications, being on the right side isn’t enough; people have to know. That’s the challenge for our Democratic efforts: To find non-traditional ways of exposing people who hate us to the views that actually bind us together.