Unpacking the Power of Grassroots Politics: A Conversation with Joy Silver
In this episode of Richie & John, John McMullen and Richie Roy welcome Joy Silver, chairperson of the Riverside County Democratic Party, to discuss the intricacies of political engagement, voter education, and the challenges faced by the Democratic Party. Joy shares her experiences in field operations, emphasizing the importance of direct voter contact through door-knocking and phone banking. The conversation delves into the misconceptions surrounding political affiliations, particularly the American Independent Party, and highlights the critical need for civics education and media literacy in fostering informed voters. The discussion also touches on the erosion of trust in government and media, and the implications for democracy. In this conversation, Joy Silver and Richie Roy discuss the impact of media on mental health, emphasizing the importance of local news over national coverage. They explore grassroots engagement in politics, the significance of field strategies in campaigns, and the role of community organizing, particularly in school board politics. The discussion also highlights the need for civic education and candidate development to empower individuals in their communities.
Takeaways:
- Joy Silver shares insights on the importance of local engagement in politics through grassroots efforts.
- The American Independent Party often misleads voters who think they are registering as independents.
- Data-driven strategies are essential for targeting voters effectively in upcoming elections.
- Civics education has diminished, leading to a lack of understanding of voting processes.
- Grassroots organizing and neighborhood leader programs are key to winning local elections.
- Understanding the history and implications of political party affiliations can empower informed voting.
Transcript
Getting ready to name this Richie and John on the neutral wave where we're cheering on trying to fight for rights where our voices belong LGBTQ and allies are born this song the feelings we truly together we stand for justice and freedom across this great land Educate and activate Hear our call in these crucial days we rise for all.
Richie:The Mutual Broadcasting System presents Richie and John, the podcast that connects you with the people, events, headlines, and lifestyle interests of the global LGBTQ community.
Richie:Here's Richie Roy and John McMullen, and welcome to another edition of the Richie and John Show.
Richie:We're glad to have you with us on this podcast, and I am so happy to invite back to our program.
Richie:Actually, it's the first time she's been on while it's been Richie and John, but she is a past guest.
Richie:She joined us when we were doing the GBC Happy Hour.
Richie:Let's welcome back Joy Silver, who is very active in the political scene here in the state of California and has been all across the country, I think, most of her life.
Richie:Joy, in full disclosure, is a good friend of mine, and I do have the opportunity to work with her in her current role, which is as the chairperson of the Riverside County Democratic Party.
Richie:And why would we talk to some county Democratic Party chairperson?
Richie:Well, it happens to be the 10th largest county in America, and as things go in her organization, I'm sure that they happen in a lot of places around the United States, big and small.
Richie:So, Joy, welcome, and we're glad to have you back with Richie and I here on the show.
Joy Silver:Well, thank you so very much.
Joy Silver:It's always a pleasure to work with you, John.
Joy Silver:And I'm sure, Richie, that if you're working with John, you must be the same level of Joy.
Joy Silver:Ha ha ha.
Joy Silver:And that we can all have together.
Joy Silver:Since there's such little joy in the political scene these days and so much anxiety, I'm really happy to talk to the two of you tonight.
Richie:Well, thank you.
Richie:I appreciate you being along with us.
Richie:And what I'd like to start off with is to share with our audience that you and I had a telephone conversation actually, earlier today, and in the process of that, you told me a couple of things that I found that were very interesting, because your job in large part is to get Democrats elected up and down the ticket in your region of the state of California.
Richie:And I've always, you know, kind of wondered how the field operations work in terms of the things that are not happening nationally at the DNC and so on.
Richie:And you told me a couple of things Today, that really stunned me.
Richie:One was to do with that process of how you scientifically know where to go, especially as we narrow in and get very close to an election date, as we are right now.
Richie:And the other was some information that you learned in the process of your own doorbelling activity that when I heard you tell me this story, it absolutely stunned me, and I'm sure it will a lot of people.
Richie:Because if I were to say to you, Joy, I'm an independent voter, I don't necessarily vote up and down a party line because I like to think of myself as going for whoever has the right message and their priorities are in the right place.
Richie:Well, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Richie:But sometimes in the world we live in today, things are not exactly as they seem.
Richie:And that was the case with somebody whose door you knocked on.
Richie:Would you mind sharing with Richie and myself in our audience that experience and what happened?
Joy Silver:Well, I certainly will do that.
Joy Silver:And this is a.
Joy Silver:And it's a national issue.
Joy Silver:So let's start with the actual idea of what is a field when they say it, leaving it all out on the field.
Joy Silver:What does it mean?
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:So when people talk about that and you hear a lot about that, what's the field strategy?
Joy Silver:Do you have a team of people that are out knocking on doors?
Joy Silver:This is the best way to have that moment of persuadability.
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:So that's like number one, number.
Joy Silver:Number one is knocking on doors.
Joy Silver:Number two is phone banking.
Joy Silver:Number three is texting, and then people write postcards.
Joy Silver:It's like number four.
Joy Silver:So those are the ways.
Joy Silver:And even though people may not be home and people may not answer anybody you get to talk to, you can then have these discussions, and you figure they're then going to talk to other people, saying, I met so and so or so and so came to my door.
Joy Silver:So in my experience, and.
Joy Silver:And this is just.
Joy Silver:I would say just last week, I was out in the field in Palm Desert, and I had experienced this earlier when I'd been in other states, including California and in Nevada and other places, but I couldn't believe that it was still happening.
Joy Silver:And I think that's where John and I had our conversation.
Joy Silver:I knock at the door and I'm with one of the candidates, and the woman comes to the door, and she's clearly in her conversation, clearly in her conversation, she has progressive ideas.
Joy Silver:And what's considered progressive today is really kind of moderate democracy.
Joy Silver:I mean, it doesn't really go for what we would have thought progressive meant, because just like respecting people and want everybody to be included, has now become some sort of progressive, you know, progressive idea.
Joy Silver:In any case, this was very clear that she was all on board, but her affiliation was American Independent, an American Independent.
Joy Silver:I'll give you a little history about that in a second because I want to make another case where somebody came to the county party and wanted an endorsement.
Joy Silver:Okay?
Joy Silver:To get an endorsement with the county party, you have to be a Democrat.
Joy Silver:All right?
Joy Silver:So this particular candidate, when he looked up his registration, he was an American Independent, which is AI knowing that AI has the.
Joy Silver:And I experienced this in Nevada so many times when I was registering people and they would go to hit American Independent.
Joy Silver:And I'd say, do you know what that means?
Joy Silver:Because I was starting to get, you know, my understanding.
Joy Silver:And that's where I first.
Joy Silver: This is in: Joy Silver:I said, I'm not sure that's.
Joy Silver:Are you saying that you're independent of any party?
Joy Silver:And they would say, well, yeah, I'm an independent person and I don't have a party affiliation.
Joy Silver:I'd say, do you know that that's John Birch, George Wallace.
Joy Silver:In other words, it's basically the American Nazi party who believes in white supremacy.
Joy Silver:That is the tenant of what it's about.
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:And they would be shocked about this because in California we call it npp, a non party preference.
Joy Silver:And in some places they call it decline to state.
Joy Silver:So those are kind of the two tags for this.
Joy Silver:But people actually thought that they were signing up as an independent when they hit the American Independent.
Joy Silver:Only one time a woman said to me in the field when I was registering someone, yes, I know what it means.
Joy Silver:Like, I hear you.
Joy Silver:So that one time.
Joy Silver:And I should have known it because after a while, when you're out there, you know exactly people's preferences when they come up to you, because if they're very pinched and angry looking, you already know not going to be a Democrat.
Joy Silver:I mean, it really gets to that.
Joy Silver:I hate to make stereotypes, but you have to also keep yourself safe.
Joy Silver:So you kind of learn to recognize certain feels and looks about who's going to give you a problem, who might hurt you.
Richie:Right, right.
Joy Silver:Some of, some of that was going on, but I don't know if you know the history about the American Independent Party, but this was invented and came to fruition when George Wallace was running and he was running against Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic candidate at the time and Richard Nixon was the other one.
Joy Silver:And George Wallace created this party.
Joy Silver:In some states they called it the George Wallace Party.
Joy Silver:In others it became the Constitution Party.
Joy Silver:But overall, American Independent became the name for basically and John Birchers and you know, the very far right people who, who were trying to get candidates on the ballot.
Joy Silver:And one last piece before you guys weigh in on this, the point of being so devious, because they know what they were doing, first of all, it's a.
Joy Silver:So you get top billing, right?
Joy Silver:You're an A American.
Joy Silver:Like that's always the trick in marketing to try to be a.
Joy Silver:And second of all, independent so that you can kind of fool people into thinking you want to grow that party because you have to have a certain number in your party in order to get your candidates on the ballot.
Joy Silver:And the rules for this really vary from state to state.
Joy Silver:But so that's really why they want more people to join up, so that they can show that they have this, that their party numbers are bigger just from the registration.
Richie:Wow.
Richie:Yeah.
Richie:So American Independent doesn't sound like it's very much independent thought, just independent of any common sense.
Joy Silver:Well, they think they're, they think they're full.
Joy Silver: Trump was, Trump and Pence in: Joy Silver:They were the candidates for the American Independent Party besides the Republicans, but they were also the American Independent Party.
Joy Silver:This shouldn't really, it shouldn't take a lot for people to understand what the platform was in the particular time period.
Joy Silver:The reason this party never really got a lot of strength though, has a lot to do with leadership problems and fights within the party where they had split as to who was going to lead it and then what was the name going to be.
Joy Silver:And so they never really grab.
Joy Silver:Grabbed onto real numbers in order to make a difference in that way.
Richie:So when you encountered this person that you were out doorbelling with a candidate and came upon them, the one who you say had fairly progressive by today's standards, points of view.
Richie:When she found out that she was basically in kinship with the Nazis in America, what was her reaction?
Joy Silver:She was in shock.
Joy Silver:And most people, including that candidate who wanted to get the Democratic endorsement, they're in shock that that's what the amendment.
Joy Silver:Immediately they go and they say, I have to change that.
Joy Silver:Because most people are in shock and they want to go in and they want to change their registration after that.
Joy Silver:And the problem with that too, and I think this also becomes an issue if you're registered as a declined estate or non party preference or any other party at all besides the major parties.
Joy Silver:You can't vote in those primaries.
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:So you kind of, you lose a lot of footing if you want to have a say in what's really going to happen.
Joy Silver:And I think that's why we really don't see what is it less than 3%.
Joy Silver:I think of other parties, everything else, you know, I think they call it everything else because even added up together, it really makes no sense at all.
Richie:Richie?
John:Yeah, it's, I mean, it's an interesting thing.
John:And one of the things that I would be curious to hear your experience with is I think a lot of times, just given the reality of American politics, that people who are kind of call themselves quote, independents are either actually kind of want lean right and want cover for not saying they're a Republican or they're a low information voter because, you know, they oftentimes find, you know, when they find out that they can't vote in a primary because they're, quote, independent, they get very annoyed by that because they're like, well, wait a second, I want to have my voice in the primary.
John:And it's like, well, if you paid any attention to how your civics work in your state, you should know that it's a closed primary state.
Joy Silver:Well, then I think that's asking a lot because that's one of the missing things.
Joy Silver:You know, Richie, I was just, I wanted to just let you know how many people make the mistake that we're talking about and they're not, they're not like dumb people.
Joy Silver:Like, I wouldn't call them like, even low information.
Joy Silver:I mean, Jennifer Sebel, who was the fiance of Gavin Newsom when he was a Democratic mayor, she, she and the American Independent box, Demi Moore also.
Joy Silver:I mean, you have like, I mean, these are, they're, they just were fooled by that, you know, and so, but, but to your point, if you don't know that you can't vote in the primary and so many people really don't know, they don't understand how the entire voting process works, which is always an interesting thing to me.
Joy Silver:And I think the, it's not like you can't look it up.
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:You know what I mean?
Joy Silver:He'll always say, well, you know, the party hasn't given us enough information.
Joy Silver:It's just like when people are saying right now about Kamala, well, I don't have enough, I'm undecided, I don't have enough information.
Joy Silver:I want to know more.
Joy Silver:Well, she just repeats the same thing because they haven't heard it enough from her.
Joy Silver:Maybe, I don't know.
Joy Silver:You couldn't people are not really interested in policies.
Joy Silver:They claim that they want more policies and you should say a lot.
Joy Silver:But if they wanted more policies, then they really wouldn't love Trump, would they?
Richie:No.
John:Right.
John:Well, I mean, that's the thing is I saw a meme going around and it was like something like, well, I know that he, that he basically wants to create a fascist state in the United States of America, but she can't find her pay stubs from McDonald's, so it's kind of a wash.
John:Like the positioning people.
John:Kamala Harris is.
John:So I think that they're, they're running a really smart campaign.
John:I think that there is a lot of meat to what they're saying, but they're not bogging down in white papers, which you see this happen sometime.
John:The just releasing 7 point plans and 13 point plans on every single thing under the sun and it can become kind of numbing.
John: his time because with Project: John:It was really a bad idea because it shows exactly what they want to do.
John:And what they wanted to do is actually pretty horrifying.
Joy Silver:Yeah.
Joy Silver:Yeah, I think you're right.
Joy Silver:I mean, I do a lot of speaking, a lot of events, and I think that for the most part, people have absolutely no idea.
Joy Silver:Like they don't remember what I said, but they know how they feel.
Richie:Joy.
Richie:This brings to mind the fact that Richie especially.
Richie:But the two of us have spent a number of our conversations on this program talking over the months about the fact that one of the things that is really missing in our society anymore is civics education.
Richie:And I wonder how much of this is the erosion of civics from high school by not having some sort of early indoctrination into how our system works and how people should and why they should want to be involved.
Richie:It really makes me wonder if, if this was all part of the grand plan by the other side to eliminate people's focus and to make them sick of politics so that they would not participate, so that they could control what happens in our society, especially when so many people seem so dumb who are not necessarily thought of as being dumb about political things.
Joy Silver:I think you're right.
Joy Silver:I mean, if you and Richie are talking about that, I think you're talking about the right thing, because the real Battles.
Joy Silver:First of all, I would say in a certain sense, as Democrats, we're late to the party.
Joy Silver:And what do I mean by the party?
Joy Silver:I mean that the battlegrounds have been taking place at the school board levels for a long time and all the way back at the pta.
Joy Silver:And what about the children?
Joy Silver:You know, like this was a big thing back in the Villa Schlafly and all of that.
Joy Silver:What about the children?
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:I mean, this was like the big CR then because the infiltration into the PTAs and into the school board, I think that education and why would they not want public education?
Joy Silver:Why would the opposition party not want public education?
Joy Silver:Because education teaches you to think and teaches you history.
Joy Silver:So only those people who could pay should have the education because that keeps that class educated and therefore that, that gives them the power.
Joy Silver:And I think that that is absolutely true.
Joy Silver:What you guys are, what you guys have been discussing, it's certainly from my point of view, the fact of the matter is I look at Riverside county and I look at the battles at the school boards and I put more, as much attention as I can into that.
Joy Silver:Because if kids and schools have to face issues in their education process, then we're losing generations forward.
Joy Silver:And what you're saying right now is we have lost already those generations who didn't get to learn about how does voting and why it's important and what it means to freedom and the attachment voting and freedom actually have to each other.
Joy Silver:So I think you're both right about that.
John: ld civics education look like: John:And I think a huge part of it is really also about media literacy.
John:And I mean media, not just mass media, but broadly.
John:Because, you know, one of the things that I think is diff.
John:I mean, it's always been an undercurrent, especially on the right, but now the sort of impunity, the level of impunity, you know, in terms of making up facts, making up false statistics and saying them very full throatedly, you know, you'll see someone like, you know, a Marjorie Taylor Greene will just make up a statistic out of thin air, you know, and say, you know, 75% of rapes in the country are caused by illegal immigrants.
John:It's just like made up, you know, it's just, there's no, there's no basis there.
John:But it's a clip that can play on you on TikTok and you know, on social media and if you're not paying attention, you're not sort of media literate and sort of fact checking that might sound very salient and important to you.
John:Even though it's a complete lie.
Joy Silver:Yes.
Joy Silver:However, we have to look at why that happens.
Joy Silver:Okay?
Joy Silver:It isn't really about having people believe lies.
Joy Silver:You mean, it looks like that's it and it isn't a new phenomenon.
Joy Silver:Okay?
Joy Silver:I mean, when there was newspapers only, they flooded the newspapers.
Joy Silver:They owned all the newspapers and they flooded it with false polls.
Joy Silver:I mean, in other words, the point is to create a chaos and mistrust into any information that you hear so you can possibly identify any truth.
Joy Silver:That's the point of it.
Joy Silver:It's a strategy, you know, it's the strategy that, that they've been using since ever the gossip.
Joy Silver:I mean, the politics has always been about disrupting the trust factor.
Joy Silver:If you have no credible format for finding out the truth, even to create doubt, even if you hear a total lie, some of it might be true.
Joy Silver:I mean, what is, what would be the root of the division in this country?
Joy Silver:Right?
Joy Silver:There has been, and I have to say there has been government participation that makes it difficult to trust where the truth could possibly come from.
Joy Silver:I was just listening to some people talk yesterday and they were sort of saying that this big divide and, you know, happened from Trump.
Joy Silver:But if you look at it, what brought to my mind, you remember the Vietnam War and these poor guys came back from that war and all the hippies, you know, everybody was peace in love and nobody loved the soldiers, that's for sure.
Joy Silver:I mean, but the issue became, when these guys came back, they had, they had all kinds of diseases and cancers and problems because they came back with, as a result of Agent Orange being used as a defoliant.
Joy Silver:It's the same thing they did to create the Long Island Railroad.
Joy Silver:If you follow the trail of the Long Island Railroad out into Long island and you look at the breast cancer statistics, the greatest number of breast cancer episodes and happened along the, along the line of where the Long Island Railroad was built.
Joy Silver:So.
Joy Silver:But the government never said, yeah, you guys got Agent Orange, Because, I mean, they had to fight for that recognition.
Joy Silver:No, it really didn't happen.
Joy Silver:Or back with, of course, the Airmen and you know, the whole syphilis thing.
Joy Silver:I mean, there have been so many times where the government became untrustable and haven't we been part of like down on the government for these mistruths as well?
Joy Silver:I mean, I know I have, I have to say, but when you look at undermining institutions, it's just another.
Joy Silver:They can take that and then turn it into.
Joy Silver:There's truth is subjective.
John:Yeah.
Joy Silver:Rather than objective.
Joy Silver:And that, that becomes the issue.
John:And I think it especially becomes the issue when we have, you know, and I don't know how you feel about this.
John:I think at this moment a fairly moribund press.
John:I even papers, you know, previously august papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post, I think are pretty bad now.
John:I mean, they don' they don't.
John:Their reporting staffs are shells of what they used to be.
John:And it's really a lot of opinion and sort of spin.
John:The Pentagon Papers came out in the, you know, in the newspaper.
John:And that was an act of, you know, bravery, but it was an act of, you know, it had an imprimatur of, you know, of some importance that it came out of this paper.
John:But when we don't have really, you know, TV media, you know, the nightly news and stuff, the demographics are, you know, very aging.
John:They don't have national importance in the way they used to.
John:So when we don't have, you know, that countervailing force because like you said, the government isn't always truth telling.
John:But when you don't have a really robust media doing that kind of work to kind of check that should.
John:Where, where does good information come from?
Joy Silver:I think that's really the biggest question.
Joy Silver:What is a trustable source?
Joy Silver:You know, what becomes a trustable source?
Joy Silver:I mean, Daniel Ellsberg, that whole group that the Camden 28, I mean, they really went through hell over those Pentagon Papers.
Joy Silver:You're absolutely right.
Joy Silver:But you know, I guess where my mind went when you said that was these guys who have all this information, including Bob Woodward and he puts out the book and everybody's like, wow, this and well, that.
Joy Silver:And I am so freaking mad at him.
Richie:Me too.
Joy Silver:Right?
Joy Silver:I mean, are you guys mad at him too because.
Richie:Yeah, absolutely.
Richie:Because I held on to this information just for his own personal financial gain.
John:It was absolutely.
Joy Silver:And he's not the only one.
Richie:No.
Joy Silver:You know, I mean, even John Kelly, I mean, all these people, that General Miley, I mean, they all know this stuff.
Joy Silver:Where was it?
Joy Silver:You know, I mean, they could have.
Joy Silver:He could have just as well written to the Washington Post and got the stories in there.
Joy Silver:I mean, I sort of like the Washington Post better than New York Times, I have to say.
Joy Silver:Yeah, but what is the most trustable source?
Joy Silver:And these guys are the guys that we kind of dependent on me.
Joy Silver:There's no Walter Concrete There, you know, and we don't all.
Joy Silver:And here's the bigger issue, right.
Joy Silver:First of all, we never had channels, I guess.
Joy Silver:Okay, I'm going to call them channels.
Joy Silver:You guys probably have better terms for this.
Joy Silver:But are just strictly and only political news, nothing else.
Richie:Yeah.
Joy Silver:And now we have like 247 blasting only political loops, so.
Joy Silver:So the separation from local is really a problem there.
Richie:Yeah.
Joy Silver:Because things that happen at this level, you're not really hearing how we're seeing this sort of overpowering and then feeling powerless.
Joy Silver:See, this is why I go back to Nobody remembers what I said, but they know how they felt.
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:The first thing that I usually say in a group that's really like anxious and scared and carrying on and hopeless and blah, blah, blah, I say, here's the first thing I want you to do.
Joy Silver:I want you to turn off the damn tv.
Joy Silver:And if you're going to watch news, watch your local news.
Joy Silver:Because the separation from what's happening in my everyday life, when I look at that, I'm like, powerless.
Joy Silver:How can I Change this?
Joy Silver:The 24 7.
Joy Silver:Relentless.
Joy Silver:Relentless.
Joy Silver:You know, so how does it make me feel or how do I feel when I watch it often?
Joy Silver:And, boy, they can tell you everything that's wrong, I'll tell you that.
Richie:Well, Joy, I hate to burst anybody's bubble here, but we may be looking at one person in America who has this game worked out pretty well because it's hard to believe, especially since he is such a Internet sensation and he has been in the media in various forms over the past couple of decades.
Richie:And Richie has actually.
Richie:Well, I'm going to ask him the question this way.
Richie:When was the last time you turned on a TV set, Richie?
John:I mean, so the last time I.
Richie:Turned watch a movie, a TV set.
John:To watch TV is, I would say, over three years ago.
John:I don't have cable, I don't have sling, I don't have, you know, any of the.
John:I don't have over the air.
John:And I used to.
John:And kind of to your point, I used to be very much a politics news junkie.
John:I loved watching CNN for the horse race and msnbc.
John:But it became sort of, to your point, this miasma of energy that I had no purchase over.
John:And it just made me feel anxious and stressed.
John:And like you said, now the paper I read every day is the Daily Freeman, which is the local Hudson Valley newspaper, because at the end of the day, they're talking about things like zoning decisions that you can actually go to a meeting and have a voice that Might change something at your local level in a way that hearing about what the, you know, the Department of Transportation is doing while important work, you're not affecting policy at a national level, but you can at the local level.
John:And it does kind of.
John:It trickles up in a way, because like you said, when you start with school boards and work things up, you build that bench, you build the institutions that we need to kind of keep the engine running.
Joy Silver:Absolutely.
Joy Silver:Talking.
Joy Silver:You're talking to a person who's totally aligned with this, because in having that experience that you just talked about, having the experience of having a voice of potentially changing something in your locale, then gives you that the benches is the bench of experience to have a power at a higher level.
Joy Silver:Because the federal government doesn't just operate in a vacuum.
Joy Silver:Anything that gets up there comes from the bottom up.
Joy Silver:But you wouldn't know it if you're watching msnbc.
Joy Silver:You think everything is down here, and then we just have to suffer whatever those guys decide.
Joy Silver:Well, how do they get elected?
Joy Silver:You know, and this is a real issue in seeking to coordinate all of these nonpartisan races that are.
Joy Silver:And there's no such thing as a nonpartisan race, okay?
Joy Silver:But in order to bring people together with values and issues and kind of find the candidate voice that speaks to those things that you can becomes that reliable, credible truth teller, at least to the majority, so that they're elected based on the values and issues of those micro areas.
Joy Silver:And that's sort of my strategic thinking on building Riverside into a functioning.
Richie:Joy.
Richie:When we started the conversation, I mentioned that there were a couple of things that we wanted to try and get to, and we've talked about a lot of interesting stuff, and I think a lot of food for thought for our listeners and viewers.
Richie:I'd like to move into that area where you were starting to talk about the field and the field work that gets done.
Richie:And from my standpoint as an observer, I kind of wonder because I'm always thinking, what did we do right?
Richie:What did we not do so well at when we see the final results in an election?
Richie:And how do they know what they're doing?
Richie:I mean, I have zero faith in the polls at this point.
Richie:I've never been called for one.
Richie:I don't know anybody who has ever been called for a legitimate poll.
Richie:So when people start telling me, oh, but the God of the polls are doing this and that, I don't freak out over that because I just think it's such a random sample that who knows if they're accurate?
Richie:Or not.
Richie:And for the last, I don't know, 12, 15 years, it seems like they haven't been all that often that honest to line up with what the reality has been after the votes are all counted.
Richie:So let me ask you, as somebody who runs a major Democratic Party operation for a large county in the United States, in Riverside County, Southern California, let me ask you, how do you know who you should be talking to when you're just like we are now a week or so away from voting day.
Richie:And especially when you're talking about all the people who now vote by mail, especially in a place like California, but in more and more places around the country where people are able to do early voting.
Richie:How do you, how does the science work?
Richie:What tools do you have that are available to you and to your colleagues behind the scenes that we don't necessarily know about that help you go, here's where we need to get to get the word out and to make sure that people are doing what we need to do.
Joy Silver:There's a couple of things that happen and this is, and it's an, it's a national thing.
Joy Silver:It's not just Riverside county, but I can speak to about how it is here in Riverside county.
Joy Silver:There are software, it's not just one software right there.
Joy Silver:There are software that's used for field, which means knocking on doors particularly.
Joy Silver:And that software pulls the information from different counties all over the United States.
Joy Silver:And that data that the votes are in from the secretaries of states, which then comes down to the counties can get pulled into the software.
Joy Silver:Okay.
Joy Silver:And when you look at this software, even before you go out, there's if, if that software is operating correctly, they, it will like it will the addresses and names and numbers.
Joy Silver:And you, you do what they call cutting turf.
Joy Silver:Okay.
Joy Silver:And cutting turf means the person who's in charge of the data in your particular campaign, which is usually your field director, that's what they call them.
Joy Silver:Whether no matter what your party is that they call it that.
Joy Silver:And they'll pick the neighborhood for your candidate.
Joy Silver:And then you can see who's a Democrat, who's a Republican, who's an American independent, who's a declined estate or a non party preference or green or whatever buying the signal that by the code that's on the record, it's, it's kind of like a, like us, like a sales software would work the same way.
Joy Silver:When's the last time you spoke to them?
Joy Silver:I mean they're not dissimilar from what sales point of purchase and sales records look like, it's kind of similar.
Richie:Looks kind of like a contact database.
Joy Silver:It's a contact database.
Joy Silver:Yeah, it's very much like that.
Joy Silver:So you can see, given that everybody does their job right at the counties and then in the national.
Joy Silver:And considering that all of that happens in a timely fashion, which is always the.
Joy Silver:The other fear, both parties have an investment in that happening because.
Joy Silver:And I'm only talking the two major parties, both parties have some kind of software that does this right now, to the side of that Elon Musk went and purchased software that DeSantis used.
Joy Silver:I'm so happy he did that because.
Joy Silver:Yeah.
Joy Silver:Does it really work that well?
Joy Silver:If it did, it sure didn't work for DeSantis, but.
Joy Silver:And it came in late in the game.
Joy Silver:And basically, one of the main things that people were talking about is that there is no real field strategy that the Republicans were using for this.
Joy Silver:And so the Dems were out there with their.
Joy Silver:There's something called minivan, which you use on your phone, or PDI is what they use in California, you probably.
Joy Silver:Richie's shaking his head.
Joy Silver:He knows about van and minivan.
Joy Silver:So you can.
Joy Silver:And they're all.
Joy Silver:Now, they're apps.
Joy Silver:So it makes it really easy.
Joy Silver: , which I've been using since: Joy Silver:It's the same thing that's used for phone banks.
Joy Silver:They can tell how many times that person.
Joy Silver:If you input correctly, which is always another thing.
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:You can see who you called, who you didn't call.
Joy Silver:Did they answer?
Joy Silver:Were they giving your candidate strong support?
Joy Silver:You know, there's a whole little list.
Joy Silver:Strong support, already voted, interested in volunteering.
Joy Silver:They'll have certain questions that each campaign can customize for their particular race.
Joy Silver:And the best thing is when there's what they call flagged and shared data, which means all of the candidates are allowing their data to be shared.
Joy Silver:In minivan, it happens, but in California, it has to be arranged because there's a light.
Joy Silver:There are licensing issues, but basically, you can see that the door has been knocked and that the person has already voted or hasn't voted.
Joy Silver:So what you do is you look after a certain amount of time, closer to the end of the race, you say, okay, let's look back at our data.
Joy Silver:And this is why it's so important at the micro level, right?
Joy Silver:And you can say, these people, all of these ballots are in.
Joy Silver:Don't bother knocking on their door.
Joy Silver:This person has their ballot.
Joy Silver:They haven't turned it in yet.
Joy Silver:So you may then say, okay, let's go out to that neighborhood and just knock on the doors of the people whose ballots they haven't turned in yet.
Joy Silver:This is a tremendous amount of effort and the bigger the campaign, the harder that part of it becomes because there's so many people.
Joy Silver:So to the point, Richie, that you're talking about what, you're talking about the micro level, the granular level, the local level, you can see how important that becomes because if you're backing a candidate at that granular level, you're getting that information in all of these little places that a large campaign really cannot hit, right?
Joy Silver:They cannot hit.
Joy Silver:I mean, the president can only hit so much.
Joy Silver:So if it's not tied to some of those down ballot races, they can't really get to all the doors that they're going to need to knock or make all the calls they're going to need to make.
Joy Silver:So this becomes an intensive momentum there.
Joy Silver:What we're doing in Riverside county, which we did not have before, we're organizing a precinct is larger than a neighborhood, right?
Joy Silver:A precinct may include a number of neighborhoods, but we've gone really granular and done a neighborhood leader program.
Joy Silver:And so like, let's say you live in a particular development in a gated community, which is usually the most difficult place to get into if you're knocking on doors, right?
Joy Silver:But if you have a neighborhood leader that lives in there and has now organized everybody, their personal friends circle in there, you now have a chance to get into some of those neighborhoods.
Joy Silver:I hope there's no opposition.
Joy Silver:People listening to all of this, they hate us.
Joy Silver:But even so, it's such a huge project that you really have to.
Joy Silver:Now they've done a really good job at their way of doing this, I would say, where we lost ground.
Joy Silver:I have to say this is sort of our defense in a sense.
Joy Silver:It's not even an offense.
Joy Silver:It's really a defense because they've done this with the schools, because that's really community oriented schools.
Joy Silver:And so, and that's, and they've been, that is the long game they've been playing since the 70s.
Joy Silver:Wow.
Joy Silver: We're at, you know,: Joy Silver:They've been playing it just since the Nixon time, you know, so they had the big edge on us with this whole school board thing.
Joy Silver:And, and, and we've seen a lot of damage done.
Richie:They have done a lot of damage and we've spent a lot of time talking about it on this program, especially with, with groups that have, you know, raised their ugly heads in the last year, year and a half or so.
Richie:And I know that we've talked about those before, too.
Richie:You've had your own dalliances with those, especially in communities like down in south western Riverside county, where they had a school board in Temecula that made national headlines, as I recall, for doing things that were not much in the interest of the LGBTQ community.
Joy Silver:You're absolutely right.
Joy Silver:I mean, they were, they went against the governor's, signed his agreement, his edict that you could not make trans children come out to their parents.
Joy Silver:That was a big thing.
Joy Silver:And then banning the books.
Joy Silver:So.
Joy Silver:And Temecula is really important to me.
Joy Silver:In fact, I'm going to be going down there this, this weekend to do some door knocking for those candidates who have got the bravery to stand up and they're incumbents.
Joy Silver:But we need more and more people who are really want to see schools move forward rather than backwards and want to eviscerate public education in any way.
Joy Silver:So it's a big fight.
Joy Silver:But anyway, that's their way of doing what I'm talking about on the neighborhood leader program because.
Joy Silver:And they've had great success at it.
Joy Silver:This is our response to moving forward.
Richie:In non election cycles.
Richie:Is there a program, do you think anybody has thought about starting a program where people who, when they're not in the heat of an election, can go and can learn the things that you're not learning in any sort of civics program because they just don't really exist anymore, but where you can actually learn the science of doing these kinds of things without having to go and invest four years getting a college education?
Richie:Although I've never seen a program that is directly related to that in a university, but where you can learn how to be on the front line of making change in your community and doing these important things that need to get done?
Richie:I know with you that you had a very clear idea before you became the chairperson for the Riverside County Democratic Party about the things that were not working, had not been working, had not been carried over from previous years when they've done them and had to be basically having to rebuild the wheel every time.
Richie:So where do we go to get schooled on how to be a good civic minded citizen?
Joy Silver:Well, that's a partisan answer that I have to give to that.
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:And that's part of the issue, by the way, because the only people I can reach are Democrats.
Joy Silver:So if I can reach Democrats and invite them to things that we're doing, but I can't reach non Party preference people, you know what I'm saying?
Joy Silver:Like, I can't do that because the job is to move, you know, is to get people to join Democratic activities so that we have enough power and force and resources to get something done.
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:So that's part of the issue right there.
Joy Silver:But I can.
Joy Silver:One of the things, and I think what you're kind of referring to is my, my, the first thing that I could see is that every time a candidate would run they had to start at ground zero and build their name recognition and start all over.
Joy Silver:And you know, and so what I'm, what I was seeking to put forward was to build an infrastructure.
Joy Silver:And that meant committees that were part of the central committee.
Joy Silver:And one of them is we have something called the candidate Development Committee.
Joy Silver:And I want to expand that to not just talk to people who may want to be candidates, which would be teaching a lot of some, you know, what you're talking about, not necessarily all the civics, but at least have an understanding of the job before you get it.
Joy Silver:That would be helpful, you know, but also to develop people who work on campaigns.
Joy Silver:Because one of the biggest issues that happens for people when they decide to run is they can't find a campaign manager or somebody understands field like we just talked about or somebody who knows how to look at data, you know, now we have a data analysis committee so that decisions that the county party makes are also researched through the data analysis.
Joy Silver:So I have a whole team of, they call themselves data nerds and they just love this and like analyzing and like telling a story based on numbers and you know, so it's great because I could just ask any question and they'll come back with, you know, a couple of scenarios and have evidence, data based evidence to back it up.
Joy Silver:This is wonderful.
Joy Silver:I mean I could, and I think I had this conversation with you, I could guess myself just looking at Democratic and Republican, just looking at registration numbers, I could see it.
Joy Silver:But to really be able to pinpoint what block, you know, and now as these neighborhood leaders, to keep them moving forward and to have engaged people, we're engaging and engaging more people all the time.
Joy Silver:And I think that's part of the mission that you've outlined, John.
Joy Silver:So that if I live next door to a bunch of people and maybe some of them are declined to state or non party preference, but they're my neighbor, I'm going to invite them into a neighborhood leader kind of a discussion.
Richie:Yeah, I think that's really important and especially I really am grateful for you spending some time talking with us about these things as we get within days and hours actually of whether or not democracy gets to live in the United States.
Richie:November 5th is a, is a big day in world history.
Richie:And I, I personally feel much better than I have in a long time about our chances up and down tickets.
Richie:But you know, maybe I'm going to be coming back here in a few weeks and going, what the hell happened?
Richie:I hope that's not the case, and I'm sure you do too.
Richie:But I appreciate you kind of peeling back the icing from all of this and letting us see what's going on behind the scenes.
Joy Silver:One of the things I just want to say to both of you if the God forbid should happen.
Richie:Yeah.
Joy Silver:Okay.
Joy Silver:The thing is in this county, we have enough information to fight back now.
Joy Silver:You know, we know where we will know like January will be a big deal because we're going to spend a lot of time reviewing all the information that we were able to garner and able to redeploy certain neighborhoods and see what happened with the leaders program.
Joy Silver:And these are all first time things that I've instituted.
Joy Silver:Right.
Joy Silver:So we'll be able to strengthen that in the next two years.
Joy Silver:So there will be a good, we will have really good grounds for a good game plan based on evidence.
Joy Silver:And no matter what happens, we will have that information and we will know where our strengths are and we will know where our weaknesses are and we'll know where our threats are and our opportunities.
Richie:Well, I look forward in the next quarter to getting back together with you and having kind of a post mortem on this to talk about how successful you were with the efforts that you instituted since joining the organization there as the chair of the Riverside County Demo Democratic Party.
Richie:And thank you very much for taking time to be with us on this week's Richie and John Show.
Richie:I really appreciate it, Joy, and we hope that we'll see you again soon.
Joy Silver:You will, Richie, I'm glad to hear you're not watching any of those stations and you're still getting your news.
Joy Silver:So that, that was gratifying to me.
Richie:And as we like to always declare here, and Joy, I know you sing this loudly and proudly.
Richie:When we fight, we win.
Joy Silver:When we fight, we win.
Richie:And when we vote, we win.
Richie:So get out there and do your civic duty.
Joy Silver:Thank you.
Richie:Thanks so much.
Joy Silver:Thank you both.
Joy Silver:Thank you everyone.
Richie:Richie, we'll see you again on our next edition when we get together for News Day Tuesday.
Richie:Until then, if folks want to send us communication, they can write to us at info at richie and john.com and our telephone number?
John:That telephone number is 8.
Richie:Well, have a great week and I'll talk to you soon.
John:Talk to you later.
Richie:Thank you for joining us on Richie and John.
Richie:This podcast is a production of the Mutual Broadcasting System and is available@richyandjohn.com as well as most major podcast portals, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify.
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