LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : David Wilhelm : Charting a Permanent Campaign for a Changing Democratic Party

This year’s election of a new head of the Democratic National Committee represents more than just the usual post-election changing of the guard. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more dramatic difference in political style and method than that which distinguishes the outgoing chairman, Ronald H. Brown, from the incoming David Wilhelm.

Brown was a polished, prosperous, Washington operator. He stayed out of the party’s ideological quarrels and focused on raising big money for the 1992 contest. Wilhelm, by contrast, is a rumpled, homespun outsider who never looks quite comfortable is a suit and tie. Their common allegiance to Bill Clinton conceals a significant shift from plutocracy to populism at party headquarters.

Wilhelm grew up in Athens, Ohio, and attended Ohio University. After earning a master’s in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, he moved to Washington, where he worked on the staff of his senator, Howard M. Metzenbaum, then at the AFL-CIO and Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that lobbies for progressive tax reform. Wilhelm went on to become a successful campaign manager for Sens. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), and for Richard M. Daley, whom he helped elect mayor of Chicago in 1989. He retains a strong connection to Midwestern politics--Wilhelm prides himself on still being a precinct captain in Chicago’s 44th Ward.

After his successful management of Daley’s 1991 reelection, Wilhelm was hired by Clinton as his campaign manager. His approach was characterized by an emphasis on localism and public participation--many of the campaign’s most effective events, such as the cross-country bus tours and town-hall meetings, bore his signature.

Wilhelm’s ideas for the DNC have been called a fusion of Ross Perot and Richie Daley. He emphasizes the use of modern techniques, like “fax trees” and infomercials, in pursuit of an old goal: building a grass-roots base for the party.

At 36, Wilhelm is the youngest chairman the DNC has had, and also the one with the most pronounced Midwestern accent. He spoke while sitting in the DNC’s office, where newly hired staffers are still scrambling for the good desks.

Question: Has President Clinton gotten off to a rocky start?

Answer: There were a couple of speed bumps along the way, but I think (in the last two weeks) Bill Clinton took the first step toward breaking gridlock. The speech before the joint session of Congress really was Clinton at his best, I think, because he appealed to the best in all of us--the sense that we’re all in this together, that if we pitch in together, we can do something important not just for ourselves and our narrow self-interest, but something important for our country.

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Q: Clinton gave his economic plan an effective presentation in his speech. What is the DNC doing to build support?

A: We’re in the process of contacting a million people. We have sent out a half-million pieces of mail; we’re on the phones to another half-million. We’re encouraging them to get engaged in the debate, call their congresspeople, call radio talk shows, write letters to the editor, to help make a reality what the campaign was all about--which was fundamental economic change. Every piece of evidence we have is that people are excited to be part of it, enthused about their chance to create a stronger economy. The past two weeks have been good.

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Q: There are two sides to the selling job. One is selling it to the public. The other is selling it to Congress. Can you give me some idea how you do each of those things?

A: Well, I think it’s one in the same thing. The people have hired Bill Clinton to be their President. They’re hired their local congressmen to represent them in their districts. The key to this is popular support. The one thing clear from these last weeks is that Bill Clinton understands that if he does not have the support of the people, the special interests might prevail, and this plan could go down. So what we need to do, and what he is doing, is taking the case directly to the people who are going to talk to Congress. . . Those are the folks who ultimately will determine the success or failure of this economic package.

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Q: When you talk about grass-roots initiatives, is that what you mean?

A: Yes. And in fact generally, I think the way to build a party--the party, the Democratic Party--is to organize around ideas. People don’t get involved in campaigns or in politics for the greater glory of the party, or even for the greater glory of the candidates. They do it if the party is saying something that is relevant to their everyday lives. . . . The vision of building a party that is truly a party of the people has to be associated with the promotion of ideas. If not, the party is a pretty dry and uninteresting place.

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Q: You describe a political process that sounds a lot like the campaign we just had.

A: I think there is an element of maintaining a campaign mentality well past Election Day. You can win an election, as we did on Nov. 3, but lose the battle over the ideas that were central to the election if you are not vigilant.

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Q: What effect do you see this kind of politics having on the people who supported Perot in the last election? Will it lock them up for the Democrats in the future?

A: It’s an important goal for us, and I think it will have an effect, ultimately, on Perot voters. The average Perot voter is a frustrated voter, legitimately frustrated, about the fact that they are paying more taxes and getting less in return, frustrated about the fact that they are working harder, and their spouses are working harder, and earning less pay. They’re frustrated about business-as-usual. This President and our party want to reach out and say, “Look, we understand that frustration, we embrace the impetus behind that vote, and we’re going to do things that will address that frustration in very real ways.”

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Q: What things?

A: If we create an economy that creates greater job opportunity for middle-income people, then we will have said something meaningful to the Perot people. If we make progress on controlling health-care costs, that’s going to make politics and government relevant to the Perot people in a way that it hasn’t been for the past 20 years.

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Q: You use the phrase middle-income people. The more common term is middle class. Who are these people? How do you define them?

A: It’s hard to do, because middle-class is a state of mind as much as it is a range of income. . . . It reflects people who work hard for a living, pay the taxes, raise the kids, play by the rules. Those are the people who have gotten the short end of the stick for the past 12 years. And those are the people Bill Clinton was reaching out to in his speech, and which our party must reach out to on a continuing basis if we’re going to become a majority party into the next century.

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Q: How about health care? Have you given much thought to how you will sell that to the people, and to Congress?

A: That is an issue that the Democratic National Committee is going to aggressively organize around. We’ve hired a campaign manager whose job it is to pull together the various facets of the party--Celia Fischer. She is right now doing the initial strategic thinking. It is another step in organizing citizens around issues, and the things that matter in their everyday lives.

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Q: Let me ask you about the DNC. Ron Brown’s sentence in the history books is probably that he raised a ton of money and helped elect Bill Clinton President. What would you like as your legacy?

A: That during Bill Clinton’s presidency we helped create a political climate that hlped cause fundamental economic change, political reform and restored an ethic of public service. That’s the sentence. If we do even part of that, it will be a pretty dramatic departure from what’s happened in this country for the previous 12 years. Ron Brown deserves enormous credit for leading this party out of the wilderness and into the White House. Even when Virginia Kelley (Clinton’s mother) didn’t believe it was possible, he believed a Democrat could win.

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Q: Since he’s been gone, there’s been renewed talk about ethics reform--not an area Brown is identified with. What do you think about campaign-finance reform? And will the Democratic Party be an obstacle to it when it comes to cleaning up soft money?

A: We need campaign-finance reform because we need to reduce the influence of special interests. And we must have a vision of the party in which an ever-greater share of our total funding comes from smaller contributions. That’s got to be the direction we go, and recently I outlined some possible ways of doing that, through more aggressive use of telemarketing and direct mail. We might try out the notion of a telethon again. There was one back in the early ‘80s that didn’t work out as well as it might have.

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Q: David’s kids?

A: Thirty or 40 years from now, I’ll be famous for that. But in thinking about campaign-finance reform, it is important to keep in mind the need to promote public participation in campaigns. We will support--as the President did in the campaign--reforms in non-federal money provisions, or soft money. But one thing that I think deserves a little consideration is the fact that non-federal money was the only money that was used to open up offices, to put in phones, that really allowed volunteers to participate in a meaningful way in the campaign.

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Q: The ideological splits in the Democratic Party, which were at times quite heated during the wilderness years, were also quite creative. Do you think those fights are over?

A: I would imagine we will still have our share of ideological fights. That is not necessarily a bad thing. The worst thing is to have a party that is devoid of energy, walks in lock-step, is kind of tired. That’s not much of a party. I’d like to see us organize around the country with study-action groups. Let’s have this discussion, let’s have this debate. I do believe, though, that sometimes the ideological gulfs appear to be greater than they are. The thing that has always struck me in politics, and certainly coming out of Chicago, is that people who think they dislike each other quite a bit often share the same values, and the same hopes for themselves and their families.

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Q: The criticism has been made that Clinton’s Cabinet doesn’t look like America because there isn’t much representation from urban, white ethnics. How do you answer it?

A: Well, I think we need to wait until the full range of sub-Cabinet appointments are made. There are many more appointments to be made in many powerful positions. I am confident that, at the conclusion of that process, people like those you’ve mentioned are going to be appointed and are going to have major roles to play in this Administration. There are only so many Cabinet jobs.

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Q: How does politics in Washington compare to politics in Chicago?

A: Oh, man. You’ve got 50 wards in Chicago, 50 states in the United States. After this experience, I will probably have the requisite skills to really run a race in Chicago.

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Q: But seriously.

A: I haven’t really worked here long enough to understand what politics in this city means. What I hope it gets to mean is that people who live on the North Side and South Side of Chicago will have more of an impact on the politics of this city. If at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and at the end of my term as chairman of the Democratic Party I am able to say people who live in the 44th Ward of Chicago have more of a say in the way Washington, D.C., does business, then I think we will have succeeded. Ultimately, it is up to those people who live in the 44th Ward, and people who live in cities and in towns all over the country to stand up and speak for themselves. If they don’t, special interests will rule; if they do, they can roll over the greatest apathy and the most powerful interests.