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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/story/620000.html
Miami Herald
Party vote: Bar scene used to get younger voters involved
By Daniel Chang
July 28, 2008
The Hollywood nightclub is dark and the music so loud that conversation means leaning into an ear and shouting.
But the drinks are free until midnight, and anyway most in the upstairs room of Passion nightclub are dancing, not talking.
Still, Chris Chiari, a Democratic candidate for the Florida House of Representatives, mingles in the crowd, drink in hand, campaigning.
He shouts, by way of conversation: "This is real political action.''
This, to be exact, is Party Politics Inc. -- the latest, but not the first or only effort to engage 20-somethings in politics by appealing to their inner party animal.
The idea is simple: host parties with a two-hour open bar about once a month at South Florida nightclubs. Post fliers at local colleges and send messages to friends on Facebook and MySpace.
The target audience: Generation Y, or Echo Boomers, or Millenials. Really, anyone born between 1980 and 1994.
Sometimes, partygoers are asked to register to vote, or to fill out an absentee ballot request form. But mostly they're left alone to mingle with each other or with elected officials and candidates working the room for votes and campaign volunteers.
''We don't have long, boring speeches,'' says Alexander Lewy, 27, of Hallandale Beach, who co-founded Party Politics in fall 2007 with Matthew Baratz and Anthony Joyce, two 22-year-olds from Pembroke Pines.
Though Party Politics is registered as a Florida corporation and not a political entity -- and despite the protestations of its founders that they're a nonpartisan group -- the Democratic leanings are obvious and deep:
Baratz, Joyce and Lewy are officers of the Broward Young Democrats, which helps sponsor some of their events.
Joyce, who made a failed but well-publicized run for Pembroke Pines mayor in 2004, is an assistant to State Rep. Ari Porth (D-Coral Springs). Lewy, a congressional aide to U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Miami), just launched his first run for public office, on the Hallandale Beach City Council.
Even the visual cues are Democratic: the Party Politics logo is a donkey -- ''It's actually a piñata . . . seriously,'' Lewy says -- and a flier for the recent nightclub party featured an image of the presumed Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, and a riff on his campaign slogan: "Yes We Can Party.''
Yet the group will organize events for candidates of any affiliation, Lewy insists. ''We don't force politics on anybody,'' he says.
REACHING OUT
Political affiliations aside, Party Politics's six events since November have drawn about 1,000 people, Lewy says. Baratz estimates those same events have led 150 people to register to vote or to fill out an absentee ballot request, says Baratz, an accountant and the only Party Politics founder not employed by an elected official. He also credits Party Politics for an estimated 20 percent increase in attendance at Broward Young Democrats' monthly meetings, which draw about 70 people.
Those are modest numbers, to be sure. And that's OK by Lewy. The idea isn't to just get voters psyched about the presidential election, he says, it's to motivate young Americans to engage in politics over the long term.
''It's not for the next four months,'' he says.
No matter whether Party Politics lives up to that test, the group is following a tried-and-true method for reaching young voters: personal, repeated contact, preferably in a friendly environment.
They're also doing it at a time when young voters are turning out to vote in larger numbers than in past elections.
Among voters 29 and younger, the Florida primaries in January drew 285,000, or 13 percent of the eligible population, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. The state's 2000 primaries drew 80,000 young voters, or 4 percent.
To be sure, a lot has happened since 2000 that would motivate voters of all ages to become more engaged in politics. But young voters are particularly aware of the times in which they've come of age.
''Eighteen- to 29-year-olds right now have grown up and were introduced to public life in a time when we had contested elections, ideological polarization, and terrorist attacks and wars,'' says Abby Kiesa, an outreach coordinator and researcher at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.
Add the spread of the 24-hour news cycle across TVs, computers and cellphones, and there's even more reason for young people to become politically engaged, Kiesa says.
Another development affecting young voters is that political campaigns are targeting them once again.
Elizabeth Matto, a political scientist who heads the Youth Political Participation Program for the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, says that for a time political campaigns assumed young voters just weren't interested.
''There was such a long period of decline in youth voter turnout that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy,'' Matto said. "So the less youth turned out, the less candidates would reach out to them.''
That attitude began to change after the 2000 election, Matto says, when only 42 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds in America voted, compared to the high point of 55 percent in the 1972 presidential race.
Young voter apathy in 2000 also led to the emergence of groups such as Generation Engage, which brings political leaders to meet young voters in cafés, pool halls, and through video conferences; and Headcount, an effort to register young voters at rock concerts.
Perhaps the best known organization connecting youth interests and political activism is Rock the Vote, which was formed in 1990.
WILL IT LAST?
Even as these and other organizations work to engage young voters, though, no one assumes that 20-somethings will vote consistently in future elections or step up their political activism.
At the recent Party Politics event at Passion nightclub, Ruben Calixte, 25, of Lauderdale Lakes, said he was there more for the social networking than the politics.
It was Calixte's first time at a Party Politics event, but he said he intended to attend a meeting of the Broward Young Democrats and look into possibly joining.
He liked the idea of a political gathering in a nightclub and said the atmosphere did not dumb down the idea of activism.
''This is what people my age are doing,'' he said. "We like to go out to clubs. In order to get our attention, you have to go to where we are.''
A few days after the event, Baratz, one of the co-founders, reflected on the future political participation of the partygoers.
''Of course, yeah, on the one hand they're going for free booze,'' he says. "But on the other hand they're meeting new people and they know that, I would say, politics is in the air and it's just giving them an opportunity.''
Indeed, Chiari, the Democratic candidate for the Florida House of Representatives, sensed a recruitment opportunity in the crowd of more than 150.
''Even if 10 to 15 people become core activists, one person can knock on 100 doors a day,'' Chiari shouted above the noise. "There are people here tonight who will end up walking my precinct for me.''
Until then, they were just drinking and dancing. And maybe next time, they'll come back for more.
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You really have to see the somewhat bizarre photo accompanying the article on the Herald's URL, before the Herald moves it to archives in another six days, where the photos are never to be seen again. It looks like it could've been for a Girls Gone Wild Internet banner ad.
Someone pulling down their shirt to show off their cleavage.
Except it's a dude!
That cracked me up, though I don't know whether or not that was the intent.
For what a possible precursor of that group would've been like, in Washington, see http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=12957&utm_source=inform&utm_medium=lobox&utm_campaign=InformBox
What follows are a few comments on my own involvement in the early Nineties with some DC-area groups not totally dis-similar to the one described above.
Okay, they were completely different.
After a couple of rather uneventful years as a member of the Texas State Society, owing to my having been born in San Antonio and my family having lived continuously in Texas since 1855, due largely to the 'much-older and married' vibe of the organization at the time, I looked around for greener social pastures, unsure of what I was looking for exactly.The third group I got involved with was Democrats of a New Generation, in 1993, which was the Under-35 vanguard of the National Democratic Club, http://www.natdemclub.org/ , back when they had a very nice three-story building of their own on Ivy Street, S.E., just east of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) HQ, http://www.democrats.org/ at 430 S. Capitol St. S.E.
Back before the Gingrich Revolution came to fruition in November of 1994, which saw many of my friends lose their Capitol Hill jobs and move away for new jobs, careers or grad school -and which
led to literally dozens of gorgeous young college grads passing thru the doors of the Heritage Foundation on Capitol Hill, a rare bi-partisan success story!- the NDC was a very popular site for political fundraisers, as well as a gathering spot for Young Dems of liberal, conservative or, like me,
moderate stripes.
Oh, Democratic unity, thy elusive elixir of success!
Did I mention there was a bar???
Trivia wise, it's also where I was first offered the opportunity to be the congressional campaign manager for a popular northeast Dem mayor running in an open seat.
(As it happens, I've always liked Newt Gingrich personally, http://newt.org/ and have always found that his natural curiosity, love for history and zest for ideas a nice contrast with many well-known Dems I'd always admired from afar. http://www.americansolutions.com/default.aspx
That changed once I got to Washington and actually saw them for what they really were -all too human and too often, sadly, too hypocritical for words. In many cases, they were caricatures of themself, folks who, sadly, often seemed to only consult history books written between 1933 and 1963.
This open-minded attitude towards Newt has almost always put me at odds with almost everyone I knew within the party, save a few fellow DLC Dems like me, who could see why his early proposals had so much natural appeal, even as libs whined and fumed about Newt's personality or
tactics, caught up in their eternal blood feuds that always put personality over results for citizens.
Perhaps that's why over the past few years, I've looked for practical public policy solutions more from people with some connection to The New America Foundation than the Brookings Institution. Though I should hasten to add that I'm always keeping my eyes peeled for something from Brookings that isn't 'typical' Brookings work product, in the zillions of emails I get from them a month. See http://www.newamerica.net/ and http://www.brookings.edu/)
These activities were before the creation of a practical vehicle like the DC Society of Young Professionals website, http://www.dcyoungpro.com/index.cfm , which can tap into an always interested young adult market in DC thru the use of new technology and reach folks interested in volunteering and philanthropy that my groups could never have hoped to reach during the Bush 41
years and early days of Clinton.
Shortly before I joined DNG, I'd been on the Board of Directors for the American Cancer Society's Washington D.C. Young Professionals organization, CIAO., which lasted a few years before everyone moved on as a result of career, age and family considerations.
Frankly, organizing events for our ACS group often proved frustrating, because compared to many similar-situated Young Professionals groups in the national capital area, esp. those of either an artistic or cultural bent, who already had a facility where they could host events, while we were trying to generate positive public awareness, new members and funds for the ACS, we also had to stay under very strict fundraising limits, which severely limited how much money we could spend on rent, food, invitations and incidentals for an event.
Back before everyone was emailing, texting, twittering and blogging like crazy, and printed invitations had to be done a certain way.
Not that we weren't already scrimping like crazy to begin with, because of our sense of purpose and dedication to making it successful, but our good intentions often ran head-first into local DC area caterers' confiscatory price structure, and their exclusive contracts at certain venues, which made them cost prohibitive even if we were given some slack on production costs, which we never were.
Because of my friendship and connections with some great folks over at the German Embassy on swanky Reservoir Road, one of my big pet projects was forever trying to organize a Breakfast with Wimbledon affair at the Embassy the morning of the Mens Finals, back when Boris Becker was always in the mix to win it. http://www.germany.info/relaunch/info/missions/embassy/embassy.html 4645 Reservoir Road NW
The NDC was the place where in the summer of 1988, along with hundreds of other politically active Dems, I watched the Lloyd Bentsen-Dan Quayle Vice Presidential debate.(Months earlier, in March of 1988, I'd predicted that Dukakis would pick Bentsen as his VP choice to some Bentsen LAs living in a very nice group house on Capitol Hill that I was very keen on moving into.
Naturally, none of them shared my level of confidence that he'd be chosen, despite the after-the-fact logic, but I had the last laugh, because I not only was proven right by his eventual selection, but also
found a great place ten times better over in Tenleytown, near American University, living next to the Japanese Ambassador's residence on Nebraska Avenue, N.W.
For obvious reasons, I was suddenly living along one of THE safest streets in all of the Greater Washington area.
In stark contrast to Capitol Hill and that townhouse I'd considered earlier, with its rampant street crime back then.
Many of my newly-made friends were victims of crime in that summer of '88, including a friend who'd gone to Austin and who had started a job over in Foggy Bottom at the State Dept.
He got robbed at gunpoint and beaten, not far from the front of Sen. and Mrs. Moynihan's then-home, which was across the street and down a few houses from me on E. Capitol Street, N.E., five blocks east of the U.S. Capitol.
The cops wanted him to come by the station because they were "too busy" to send an Officer.)
Because of my speed and my arm, just as had been the case in Little League and Pony League growing-up in North Miami Beach, I played centerfield for the DNG coed softball team in the Congressional softball league, which played twice a week for most of the summer.
We played all of our ballgames on the grassy areas of The Mall, mostly between the Air and Space Museum and the Washington Monument down on 15th Street, N.W., though more often than not we were near the well-known carousel near the Smithsonian Castle.
That often meant having to get used to the idea of un-suspecting tourists or locals walking or jogging in front of me or just behind me as I waited for the next pitch, esp. if I was playing deep, on the gravel pathways that connected the Capitol area with the Monument to the west.
Then it was sort of like playing traffic cop, and having to be concerned that somebody wasn't beaned by a fly ball as they strolled by.
My recollection is that the DNG team only played once, more-or-less directly near the Washington Monument, but it was something to remember for me, since centerfield actually sloped downward towards 15th Street and the tourists and Tour Mobiles.
Of all the many funny or ironic team nicknames I ever heard of while in D.C., the best was the Bank Robbers, the name of the Senate Banking Committee's softball team, back when their chairman was Sen. Donald Riegele of Michigan.
Due to my job responsibilities at the time, I rather quickly got to know many of the hard-working professional staffers there, not only from my frequent attendance at their myriad hearings, but over frequent chats in the hallways and down in the cafeteria over cold Cokes on sweltering mind-numbing days, conversations which were almost always about everything but work.
Yes, there were an awful lot of very smart and good-looking women working there, he said almost
wistfully.
Maybe not the kind of absurd Miami model 'good-looking' standard we're used to running into down here, from time to time, but the sort of bright, confident and attractive Midwestern girl-next-door good looks that never gets old for me, and for which I've always been a sucker for.
