Patti O’Neil Wants to Embark on a Listening Tour and Build Up the Infrastructure of the Maricopa County Democratic Party

2024 was not a good year for the Maricopa County Democratic Party. 

Despite many victories at the school board level, Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton winning their House races, and the re-election of Kate Gallego as Phoenix Mayor, County Democratic candidates all went down to defeat in this cycle.

Several battleground Legislative District candidates, including well regarded Judy Schwiebert and Christine Marsh lost their contests. 

David Schweikert managed to prevail again in his Congressional District. 

Finally, Donald Trump, in a campaign filled with misinformation and lies, won Maricopa County over Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Patti O’Neil, in winning re-election to her position as Maricopa County Democratic Party Chairperson, told gatherers at the County Party’s Winter Convention that some Democratic leaders had misread the mood of the voters in not focusing on kitchen table issues like being able to pay the bills. 

In moving forward, O’Neil stressed the need to register, listen to, and engage with voters between now and the next elections. 

She also said it was vital to build up the outreach and personnel infrastructure of the Maricopa County Democratic infrastructure so they can compete better for swing voters in the next election cycles. 

Chairperson O’Neil graciously took the time to respond to questions about 2024 and moving forward for the Maricopa County Democratic Party. 

The questions and her responses are below. 

What are at least three lessons you and the Maricopa County Democratic Party have learned from the 2024 election results? Please explain. 

“Well, I mentioned this at our Winter Convention on Saturday, December 21. I started off with ‘Hey listen, we read the tea leaves wrong, completely wrong! It was about the price of eggs. Even though, we as a country, came out of the pandemic and the recession better than other nations.’ That message wasn’t translating very well with the average voter. What they see is when they go to the grocery store prices are high. Rents are high. It’s hard to buy a house. These are everyday people that are seeing this affecting their daily lives. While I was out knocking on doors on the west side of town, and I had a conversation with a gentleman, and he was voting for Trump even though he was clearly Latino. I was speaking to him, half in English and half in Spanish, and I thought to myself, ‘oh my goodness you’re voting against your own interests’. Yet, all he wanted was to just put food on his table and Trump and was the one listening to them. Everyday Americans are having a hard time putting food on the table. I couldn’t argue with the fact that groceries are expensive. I feel it myself. The only thing I said to him was ‘you know, you’re right? Groceries are expensive. Someone’s making a lot of money and it’s not the President of the United States’. So, I just left it at that. In the end we did not listen to how the economy was impacting Americans.”

“The second thing is, Democrats have a messaging problem. We talk to the constituents instead of listening to them. We always seem to go into long explanation for everything. What we really need to do is listen and that’s what the Republicans did. They did that very effectively specifically when it came to the economy.”

“And the other thing we have, particular to Maricopa, we have a registration disadvantage here in this County. It’s a numbers game and they out number us.”

“These are all things that should be easy to address.”

President Biden won Maricopa County four years ago. Trump won the county in 2024. You and Matt Grodsky, who you know, have both taken stock of the registration game. What are you and the County, Democrats going to do to improve the registration numbers of Maricopa County?

“We are going to have an aggressive field program to register voters.”

“But not only register them. We are also going to engage them. It’s one thing to have them sign a piece of paper but it’s also following up, engaging them, and directing them to their legislative district where they can get involved and be a part of the process. Also, we will engage them so they can learn from Democrats that have been elected. This includes from the bottom of the ticket to the top. The president is not going to fix your pothole. It’s your city council person. Even though that’s nonpartisan, they need to meet those Democrats that are fighting for them.”

Following up on engagement, some analysts said that Democrats erred by not going on non-traditional media. Will the county party be adopting an engagement strategy with non-traditional media sources to convey its message. 

“Yes. I think it goes back to messaging and communication. The Republicans are very effective in this area, and we’ve got to learn from their playbook. Once being in sales back in the day, you always looked at your market shares and why you are losing market shares.  For us, in the political world, the question would be, why did we lose voters? What is your opponent doing and learn from them. So, yes, we need to be communicating in traditional and non-traditional spaces and be more effective that way.”

Going back to the interaction you had with people like the gentleman in the West Valley, and I’ve been asking everyone this. Given the Trump record from his first Administration. Given the Biden/Harris record and more generally, given Democratic presidential performance compared to Republican Presidential performance, why are people still buying the Republican line even though their track record is far inferior to the Democratic performance?

“I really think we have low information voter problem. They forget what happened in the past. We have to constantly remind them.  Honestly, the Republicans do a good job of lying. I mean, they’ll tell you one thing, and they then do another. Let’s just take the H-1B Visas that’s getting a lot of attention.  I’m watching that closely and thinking, ‘oh my goodness, they’re eating their own over there’. It’s a perfect example of Trump saying one thing and doing another. I can’t remember which year he said, No to H-1B Visas. But his Tech Bro’s benefited from the H-1B visas. Now, these guys are donating a lot of money for his inauguration, right? With Trump, it’s all transactional. So now he is all in for the H-1B Visas. So, who is really running this whole thing?”

“So, people forget. People don’t want to do the research. We look at social media and we have the attention span of a Nat and that’s it. But nobody does the research to look back and ask what Trump said about H-1B Visa years ago?”

Based on your response to number one, what are at least three actions you and the Maricopa County Democratic Party will take to rebuild towards success in 2026 and 2028? Please explain.

“I already spoke about having a robust registration program and following up with these voters. I spoke about better messaging and better ways to communicate that message. Then there is listening to your voters. We plan to do listening sessions in targeted districts, with Democratic elected officials up and down the ballot. These are sort of like town halls but they’re going to be even more specific in scope. We’re going to include Democrats that are on or running for school boards. We will also include Democrats that are on or running for city council. We want our voters to see that by voting for Democrats, these same individuals are doing x y and z for them in their community. And we can’t build the message if we don’t understand what the problem is.”

What sort of candidates will you be looking at the county level and at the LD level or is it too early to determine what kind of candidates you are going to be recruiting? 

“Well, most all our county wide election won’t be until 2028. In 2026, we’re looking at supporting State races. We do have a couple of county positions that we always support, like at Maricopa Community College. We need to re-elect the Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State. We’re also actively in discussions with several people, for Superintendent of Public instruction and Treasurer.”

What about the LD level? In Maricopa County, there were some surprising losses like Judy Schwiebert and Christine Marsh among them. What will the county do to help out the LD races?

“We will be working closely with the ADLCC for legislative district candidates and supporting any Democrats for re-elections. Our vision and our mission are to build up each legislative district, so they are working at capacity.  This includes candidate recruitment, fundraising, and volunteer recruitment. We want them to be high functioning in all those areas. And that’s how they’re able to support all their candidates from school board to city council, to legislative district candidates.”

Is there a particular policy profile that you are looking for?

“We want candidates that represents our values. Simple, as that.”

is there anything not covered in the first questions that you would like to tell the readers about how you and the rest of the Maricopa County Democrat Leaders are going to rebuild the county party for success.

“We’re very excited. I think a lot of the readers know that I became county chair midcycle. I came in needing to rebuild the county party. Today we have people trusting the county party again.  We had record fundraising, although it was towards the end of the cycle, it certainly helped us with our GOTV. We raised more money than our record year in 2020. This has left us with a nice amount of money to be able to retain our staff so we can continue our field program. This is the time to build up. This isn’t the time to cut back.”