Doorstep Democracy

"This is a wonderful, wise account of what a grass roots election is all about. Young idealist people need to read this thoughtful book. I wish he would have won, but I am so glad he ran and wrote about it." —Myron Orfield, executive director, Institute on Race & Poverty and former Minnesota State Representative

"In Doorstep Democracy, James Read taps into a growing trend in progressive campaigns—real conversations between candidates and voters as a strategy that wins elections while engaging people in social and political change." —Jeff Blodgett, executive director, Wellstone Action!

The famous Tip O’Neill axiom “all politics is local” comes alive in this chronicle of Democrat James H. Read’s hard-fought but unsuccessful—by 98 votes—bid for state legislature in the socially conservative communities of Stearns and Morrison Counties, Minnesota. Read door-knocked 7,500 households during his campaign, visiting with voters and engaging in genuine dialogue on doorsteps from St. Anthony to St. Joseph.

At once a memoir of a hard-fought contest and a meditation on the state of American democracy, Read’s work contrasts the modern media-driven political campaign, where candidates glean their knowledge of voters from pollsters and communication only flows one way, with the kind of true understanding of constituents and issues that can only grow from individual encounters. Face-to-face doorstep conversations, he claims, give a candidate (or volunteer) and voter an opportunity to truly persuade and learn from one another. In a district where the pro-life movement dominated politics, Read’s invitation to honestly discuss abortion and reject single-issue politics resonated with many voters.

Refusing the “red state” versus “blue state” view of American voters, Doorstep Democracy shows the power and importance of kitchen-table politics—people sitting down together to tackle the issues that affect us—and proves that voters and candidates can be convinced to change their minds. Read ultimately demonstrates how conversations between citizens concerned about their communities can get us beyond the television ads, mass mailings, and sound bites to rejuvenate American democracy.

from the introduction

We thrill once again to the all-absorbing leap-year spectacle of the presidential campaign. We ask ourselves, which candidate is the most charismatic orator? Which candidate was captured on camera making a face or refusing to shake hands? Or we fancy ourselves elite strategists ensconced in campaign war rooms, crunching poll numbers and manipulating delegate blocs like chess pieces.

Thus we imagine ourselves protagonists in the national democratic drama when in truth most of us are mere spectators. If democracy were only this glittering pageant, we would not have democracy at all; we would merely have elected kings and queens.

But there is another kind of democracy that takes place not in war rooms but outside front doors and around kitchen tables, a democracy not of focus-group-tested attack ads but of genuine face-to-face conversation between candidate and voter, a form of democracy so ancient and ordinary we risk overlooking it altogether.