Dem state party blues

Tedski has written an excellent post at R-Cubed about the Arizona State Democratic Party hiring a head hunter to help find a new Executive Director to replace Maria Weeg. I'm going to approach the topic from a somewhat different angle than his. He mainly discussed whether it was a good decision to hire a head hunter. I think the process used to make the decision was as important or more important than the decision itself. And the process stunk.

I won't go into elaborate detail about the situation, since Tedski saved me the effort by covering it so well. But here's a thumbnail sketch.

A group of powerful state Democratic leaders decided the best way to hire a first rate Executive Director (and many of us think the previous Director was not first rate) would be to hire a company to conduct a nationwide talent search. They chose DHR International, with David Bruno doing the actual head hunting. Bruno won't do the hiring. He'll put together a list that the state party will choose from.

Bruno is a registered Republican. Whether that's important or not, I can't say, but it is definitely a red flag.

The problem with this whole decision is, the Executive Board, the people were elected to lead the state party, were left out of the loop. They meet every few weeks, and this decision was made between meetings, even though this wasn't a time-sensitive decision that had to be made immediately. The decision makers didn't even bother to send a group email to the statewide officers before the decision was made. Many officers heard about it around the time I did, after it was a done deal.

Anyone who has been following the party recently knows activists statewide are angry at the way the party has been run. When Republicans come up to losing Democratic candidates after the election and thank them for the awful job the State Democratic Party did in the campaign, you know things were pretty bad. That's why Paul Eckerstrom was elected as party chair over the incumbent Don Bivens by a wide margin. Basically, the 500 plus voting members wanted to throw the bums out. They wanted a party that listens, that responds, that gives both respect and authority to local activists — a party as vibrant and daring and resourceful as the one we saw sweep to victory in the nation and in lots of states.

Eckerstrom withdrew as Chair for a variety of reasons, and Bivens is actively campaigning for the job. Most likely he'll be elected at Saturday's state meeting.

Bivens has said he understands why people were upset with the party, and he will make it more inclusive, bringing more people into the decision making process. This, however, is not an auspicious beginning.

Bivens told me in an email that, since he currently does not hold office, he was left out of the loop. Sorry, that excuse doesn't work for me. The fact that the very people who have endorsed him as state chair ignored him when they made the decision to hire a head hunter is troubling. The fact that he didn't get in their face when he found out the officers weren't included in the decision making is equally troubling. He basically rolled over and said, OK. If it was the intent of the power brokers to test Bivens' backbone, he revealed he has a very pliable spine.

So why should Democrats assume he will stand up for a more open decision making process if he's elected chair?

I find this very, very troubling.