By Steve Ramirez 1st Vice Chair, GCDP

As the 1st vice chair of the Greenville County Democratic Party (GCDP), one of my primary responsibilities is Precinct Development. Precinct leadership is an important focus area for the GCDP. We need volunteers to win the ground game.

Some of what I share here is a standard South Carolina Democratic Party/Greenville County Democratic Party procedure, but I will also share more of a near-term goal considering the current state of the GCDP Precinct Leadership, and the outcome of the recent elections.

A precinct is just a geographic area which is the smallest political subdivision defined by our state legislators. It’s supposed to be a bit bigger than a neighborhood. Each unique precinct’s needs and representatives may be entirely different. The SCDP objectives of the precinct leadership structure are to help win elections by having developed neighbor-to-neighbor relationships which are used to inform, persuade and motivate people to vote for the Democratic candidates. Per the SCDP, “There is no more persuasive voice than the voice of a neighbor.” This changes the election campaign messaging dynamic from shotgun blast or even targeted digital, to actual one-on-one contact. It effectively enables a coordinated and direct link between the Dem party and the individual.

The formal, idealistic view of this structure is to have a president, first vice president, second vice president, an executive committee member, a secretary and treasurer. 

Now the reality: There are 151 individual precincts in Greenville County.

As this new GCDP leadership began its term on March 1, we had only 5 percent of all the precinct leadership roles filled. For the key precinct president role, we had only 17 people committed. It is tough to rally the troops if there is a significant lack of leadership doing the rallying. If precinct leadership is really how we will begin winning elections, then we clearly have a lot of upside potential for growth and improvement.

We must create an operational network of contacts between people down at the precinct level, so we know:

• Who is on our side.
• Who might be persuadable to our side.
• Who is not persuadable, (don’t waste candidate’s time with these.
• Who is willing to volunteer time.
• Who can donate.
• Who can lead.
• Who may be interested in running for an elected position.
• Who can help spread the word for upcoming events, and more.

When we’ve built this network, we can then be sure our team is engaged and ready to turn out for elections. Because the Greenville City Council election is nearest, we’ll focus first on those precincts.

But because of the Trump administration’s incredibly chaotic actions and their rapid dismantling of the pillars of our democratic republic, we need this network built NOT just for elections, but also for the “resistance” until we can shift the balance during elections for the City, the State House, the US Congress, and eventually the presidency.

It would be grand to have the full slate of positions filled for every precinct. But for now, we need to immediately fill the primary role, that I am simply calling:

Precinct Leader: For the near term, this will be the person who builds the network connections within the precinct bounds. (If you’d like to jointly tackle this with a friend, I’m open to that.) They identify and confirm all of those people in their precinct who are on our team and those other categories listed above.

I plan to provide resources to these leaders, so they can readily identify targets, and then efficiently and effectively communicate to their precinct network. This includes providing the high confidence “starting target lists” of likely Democrat people in the precinct. 

I can also work with leaders on different approaches to making first contacts. Downstream, there will be communication of events upcoming, demonstrations, protests, town halls, council meetings, library board meetings, allied group efforts to support, and very critically, urgent advocacy needs for people to call their representatives about specific bills or issues. When elections approach, the effort will shift to helping campaigns arrange for canvassing and calling, which should be a much more efficient effort with these relationships already in place.

If you are interested in learning more about this role please contact me, Steve Ramirez at 1stViceChair@GreenvilleDemocrats.com or you can reach me directly at (727) 218-3023. If you choose to text, please include your name. If you are interested in other learning about other volunteer opportunities, contact Evelyn Nocella, volunteer coordinator.