February 22, 2006

Interview by CYDNEY GILLIS
Staff Reporter

After 11 years as the state chair of the Democratic Party, Paul Berendt is having a hard time packing up the mementos that fill his office.

On the wall, Howard Dean, once the Democrat to beat for president, beams out from framed, autographed covers of Time and Newsweek. A “No Attack on Iraq” sign is strewn on the floor with other posters, and Berendt’s desk is stacked with thank-you notes and photographs that nearly bury a little bobbleheaded John Kerry.

Berendt, 49, says he stepped down Jan. 27 simply because he felt it was time. The commute from Olympia was getting old, and he’s had about as much fun and heartache as one man can stand. That includes breaking into tears on KIRO Radio when the party won the crucial court case that put Christine Gregoire in the governor’s mansion.

KIRO’s Dori Monson has replayed the moment over and over as an example of whining.

Berendt leaves a party that is much larger and stronger than when he started. Though there is still debt from the Gregoire court battle, Washington remains a Democratic stronghold that Berendt says won’t be budged by changing demographics or maverick progressives — a position that, sooner or later, can only spell trouble for Berendt’s chosen sucessor, Dwight Pelz.

Real Change: What were the darkest days in the past 11 years for you? What were the brightest?

Paul Berendt: I was elected in ’95 immediately following the ’94 election, which was just a horrible election. We lost six members of Congress and 35 legislators in the state alone.

RC: That was the Republican Revolution?

Berendt: Yeah, Newt Gingrich and all of that. But interestingly at that point, I saw nothing but blue skies. I thought, “Oh, I should run for party chair, because we have nowhere to go but up.” I really believed this. I thought, “We’re not as conservative a state as the election we’ve just been through.” I just knew that. I think my darkest day was when we didn’t come back in ’96 from that. We captured one of the six seats that we lost.

My other dark day was the bitter disappointment that we went through with the war in Iraq. It’s something I feel very passionate about. We’ve lost [more than] 2,000 soldiers over there for no good reason.

I have to say that Dec. 21, 2004, was one of the most wonderful days, because that’s the day we demanded that every vote be counted in the governor’s race — Christine Gregoire winning it by 10 votes out of three million cast. We won the court case the next day that resulted in ballots that for no good reason weren’t counted and were recounted, and she went up to 129. There was a real principle involved: why are we doing this if we can’t count everyone’s vote?

RC: Why is the Democratic Party so weak on Iraq when millions of people marched against the war so early and it was clear there was a huge base of anti-war sentiment?

Berendt: People have the right to be frustrated. We just had a meeting in December in Phoenix with the [party] chairs from all across the country, the executive committee chairs, and the war came up. It wouldn’t have been pressed except I said, “We need to talk about this.” This was the time Murtha had just come out —

RC: Calling for the immediate withdrawal.

Berendt: And the discussion was: Why didn’t anyone back him up? Howard Dean did, but why didn’t Pelosi or Harry Reid? I said, “We [in Washington state] want to know why they didn’t do it!” And there was kind of a shudder that went through the room. [There’s] this unique role that we have [in a Democrat-controlled state]. We can press issues that other people won’t because they’re afraid they’ll offend somebody and they won’t get re-elected. The only way you can kind of build a movement around issues is if somebody’s willing to fight and be heard. This is a frustration that I hear about.

RC: Everyone in the Democratic Party seems to be saying, “Once we get a positive agenda, then we’ll move forward.” When does that positive agenda emerge, and where does it come from? When do the Democrats get away from the negative and start saying,“Abortion protects women. Education and health care make us strong. Saving the environment and building transit is good for business”?

Berendt: There’s just a strong feeling in our party that if we were to start talking about these things in January, by the time the election rolls around, the Republican polling machine would dissect all of these issues and say that they were a conspiracy by John Kerry and the swiftboat captains. (Laughter.) I hate to say this, but the bottom line is this: There will be a progressive message, and it will roll out in due course, closer to the election. It shouldn’t be rolled out too soon because if it were, it would be dissected by the Republican Party.

RC: Isn’t that a position of fear? Don’t you have to repeat a message over and over like a Madison Avenue ad agency?

Berendt: Even on Madison Avenue, they market when they want to sell the cars. They don’t market a year before they want to sell the cars. They market at the time they want to sell the cars. When they’re ready.

RC: Give me an idea of what you think the message is for the Democrats in 2006. If they just point to the Abramoff lobbying scandal and say “culture of corruption,” that’s still relying on the negative.

Berendt: No, no, [it’s] the flip side of that. It’s “together we can do better.” This is how we want to frame that. Together we can do better in protecting the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge; together we can do better at fighting the death penalty; together we can pull together a greater international community, pull together a real plan for Iraq and bring the troops home.

RC: That’s what Kerry said. But there is a lot of disaffection on the part of the labor movement and people who have been lifelong Democrats. The state labor council recently polled its members about the possibility of creating a third party in Washington state called Working Families, like New York did. What happens with that and how does the Democratic Party recapture the disaffected?

Berendt: My understanding is they do want a New York model, which people here don’t understand. It’s not really a third-party model as much as it is a fusion primary, where multiple parties can come together and agree upon a nominee. It’s worked in New York, and it’s been a coalition-building effort between liberals and laborers and the traditional Democratic Party, so I don’t feel threatened by the fusion primary, per se.

There’s tremendous frustration among progressives over the fact that Democrats have been largely powerless to affect a lot of the policies under Republican rule, particularly in Washington D.C., and there’s a huge grassroots movement going on, and frankly I feel like we, the Democratic Party, have benefited a great deal.

RC: From groups such as MoveOn?

Berendt: Well, MoveOn, and just within the Democratic Party our meetings are bursting at the seams with new people coming in because they just can’t stand what’s going on in Washington, D.C. any longer.

RC: We saw that in the election.

Berendt: Yeah, we did, and it has not gone away — this is still going on. There are similar characteristics with these new, energized progressives, and one of the main characteristics is that they’re impatient. They want something to happen now, and until we can beat back the Republican majority in the federal government, there’s going to be frustration among these people. [But] in Olympia, we were able to save health care for 40,000 kids last year. Gregoire is stepping up to the plate to fund the initiatives that were passed to back public education. We seem to have turned a corner on the anti-tax initiatives, and we actually passed a gas tax [that’s] not only going to improve transportation but create a lot of jobs for a lot of people — it’s going to improve the quality of life for the poor and the rich alike.

So what I say to people like this is, “I don’t blame you for being unhappy. I don’t blame you for being frustrated.” But, here, where we’ve been able to elect Democratic majorities, we have been able to effect change that has really helped people. If we can continue that progress by maybe picking off Dave Reichert on the Eastside or electing more Democrats federally, that will result in a change as well.

RC: What about Cantwell’s challenger, Mike McGavick? How big a danger is he?

Berendt: People in this state are not going to want to back someone who’s essentially been an insurance industry lobbyist and flack. One of the things he’s saying is, “Oh, we need civility in politics,” and my response to that is, “Well, then why does the insurance industry put funding into third-party [527] groups that pay for these ads that have torn down civility in our politics?” Whereas Cantwell has proven herself as someone who is effective at working even in the minority.

RC: Who are the stars coming up in the state party?

Berendt: I think Frank Chopp is just a fiery liberal, and he’s somebody who could get things done. I like Bob Ferguson on the King County Council. He bucks the status quo and puts people first. I like that. Derek Kilmer. He’s a legislator from Gig Harbor who I think is a real rising star. He’ll be in Congress someday. There’s a young fella, Steve Stuart, down in Vancouver who I think is going places. Lisa Brown in Spokane is just bright and articulate and hard-working and cares about people. We have a strong bench coming up.

RC: What are the challenges that the new party chair, Dwight Pelz, is facing?

Berendt: The biggest challenge in my view is that there’s this buckin’ bronco grassroots activism right now, and it’s exciting and, oh, it’s going to be such a challenge to keep all these people together and herded and focused and moving in the right direction. That’s a huge challenge. You can’t ever let up. The right wing [twists and] turns all the time and you can just never let up. I think the challenge is just getting everything tight enough so we can actually pick up a couple more state Senate seats, a few more House seats, one more member of Congress. Those are going to be challenges.