MARIN’S DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Status Report as of June 2007

By Greg Brockbank, Chair

Pursuant to state law, every county has a Central Committee for each political party, and these are in fact the local governing bodies which work with the state parties to some degree, but mainly operate semi-autonomously to run the local campaigns for partisan offices.  The Central Committee members are publicly elected, but in fact rarely appear on the ballot because there are rarely more people running than there are seats available. 

Marin’s Democratic Central Committee meets on the first Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. in the Community Room (#201) of the Corte Madera Town Center.  Our activities since our organizational meeting in July of 2006 include:

• Annual Fundraiser.  In September of each year, we hold our major fundraiser, primarily to fund the operation of a campaign headquarters in even-numbered years.  This year, our fundraiser will be held on September 15^th, and more details may be obtained on our website at marindemocrats.org.

• Running the Local Campaign.  Although the number of our volunteers may vary from several dozen to over a thousand, depending on the intensity of gubernatorial or presidential race, we can be counted on to do phone banking, and usually precinct walking, tabling, voter registration, and all manner of campaign activities on behalf of the major Democratic candidates.  In addition, we have increasingly been exporting volunteers to more competitive districts and states through campaigns such as Take Back Red California, which originated in Marin.

• Endorsements in Local Races.  Each year we send questionnaires to Democratic candidates in major local races, and invite some to be heard before us in candidates’ forums, in order to endorse the ones we feel our best.

• Holiday Party.  Each December, we bring together volunteers and activists from various campaigns and Democratic Clubs to celebrate our recent victories, and to present awards to key people.

• February Retreat.  This past February, we revived our tradition of annual retreats to restructure ourselves and plan for the coming year.  This year, in addition to continuing our Bylaws & Rules, Resolutions, and Budget/Finance committees, we broke our Campaigns Services and Candidate Recruitment into two committees, and added Database, Outreach/Communications, and Development Committees.

• Elected Officials Reception.  In May, we revived another old tradition and held a reception for our Democratic local elected officials and state legislators, in order to allow us to get to know them better, and they us, and to begin to form the networks which can be so valuable for all of us to succeed.

We hope you can join us and become active as a DCCM member, alternate, associate member, or even as a guest or campaign volunteer.  For more information, go to marindemcorats.org.