Hillary has a ground game in WV. And it isn’t a lone student intern trying to recruit volunteers to canvass in Ohio, like Obama had here in 2012. This is a serious effort to implement a 50 state strategy.
Talley Sergent, the director of the WV campaign, called me last week to discuss the situation in Morgantown. Talley and I both worked on the local Democratic races in 2006, so we got to know each other a bit. But since then she has gone on to bigger and better things, including working for Hillary at the State Department.
Why would she call me? I am very involved in our local state house races. We have five seats in Monongalia County, and four are currently held by Republicans due to the 2014 rout. This is a Democratic county with a large university and strong union presence. If Democrats are going to take back the state house, we will need to win four or five of those seats.
A major problem is that the five seats are in a shared district where the top five vote-getters are elected. So to take all five seats our worst candidate has to beat their best candidate. This year I helped convince our five candidates to run as a team. That is working well and has eliminated the suspicion that some candidates are urging their supporters to “single-shot”, which has plagued the district in the past.
The Clinton strategy is to focus on down ballot races and try to restore the state party from the bottom up. WV is still mostly Democratic at the local and state level (or was until 2014). Jim Justice has a big lead in the polls for Governor and he may bring along the other state officers with him (all but the Attorney General are currently Democrats). One or two of the three congressional seats may be in play; unfortunately our seat (WV-01) does not look good.
The state legislature races will probably drive the local races. A strong turnout for the house candidates will help in races like sheriff and county commission. Filling those positions with good people will increase our pool of candidates for higher slots on the ticket the next time around.
Bernie talked about a political revolution. This is how it is done. Encourage people to run at the local level. Support them. Elect them. Next time there will be good candidates for the next level up. Keep doing it year after year after year.