Opposition Training

This past weekend, the Democratic National Committee held the Hispanic Leadership Conference to train Latino Democrats in grassroots strategies and organization. The San Antonio Express-News had an article about the event, which hosted about 400 Hispanics in downtown San Antonio.

They shared a few lessons with the attendees from which conservatives can learn. First of all, Democrat leaders are looking to gain favor from local election officials, "Anna Martinez of the DNC's National Lawyers Council urged participants to connect with election officials. . . Local involvement is critical, she said, because there are few national election laws and most of them are interpreted by state or local governments."

Trying to influence local election officials definitely seems shady. However, there are ways to counter this. Most counties try to get a balance of Democrat and Republican poll workers. My mother was recruited to help in Minnesota, which has a complicated same-day registration process. She found her Democrat colleague registering out-of-state college students with their out-of-state drivers' licenses. Poll workers should fairly enforce the law, not seek to give their party an upper hand.

The other piece of advice conservatives should emulate. These Democrat precinct leaders were told, "Find a story about a family that has suffered because of a policy. Then tell people about that family." Republicans should also seek to connect with people. Connecting does not happen through sound logic or sweeping statistics. People identify with stories about real people. However, because we have a Republican president, Republicans would want to use positive policy stories.