Dear Democrats:

As Blake said last night, the election returns were bittersweet. Blake won re-election, but Alexandria Searls fell short by 84 votes.

There are those who will try to claim that Schilling's victory grew out of his superior ideas, or out of voter frustration with years of a Democratic dynasty, or out of a sense that "the time had come" for change.

I disagree. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar had it right -- "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

When we win elections, we win as a team. When we lose, we lose as a team. Alexandria's loss was not her loss -- it was our loss. Rob Schilling did not win because he attracted traditional Democratic voters (though he did attract some); he did not win because of Democratic ticket-splitting (though he did benefit from that to some extent); he did not win because of any important stands on issues. Rob Schilling won because we did not do our job of getting our voters to the polls.

We have coasted for too long, and we have gotten away from the grassroots politics that made us a strong party in the 1980's and 1990's. I suspect that we all know exactly what we could have or should have done to put Alexandria over the top.

In each precinct, we can see 85 more Democratic votes that should have turned out -- 85 more phone calls that should have been made, or absentee ballot applications that should have been mailed out, or doors that should have been knocked on.

As Creigh Deeds said last night, this should serve as a wake-up call to all of us. In the coming months, we need to focus our attention on fixing the precinct committee structures. We need City Committee members who are committed to the principles of grassroots politics -- know your neighbors, talk to them, persuade them, get them to the polls.

We will have another election in November -- hopefully, with Meredith Richards running for Congress. Whoever the Democratic nominee for the Fifth District is, we owe to him or her the kind of commitment that has been our key to victory for years.

I don't intend to play the blame game. I know that there are decisions that I made that didn't work; I know that there were things that were done, or not done, by others that lost us votes. I would be happy to talk to or correspond with anyone with specific suggestions for improvement, but I would rather that responses be addressed to me or to Rus as individuals, rather than posted to the entire Committee list.

As I said at the beginning of this e-mail, there is more than enough blame to go around. We all contributed to this loss. More importantly, we all can contribute to the rebound. It could be disastrous if we spend the next month whining and blaming, creating divisions and hurt feelings at a time when we need to be pulling together.

As we move forward, I hope that everyone is planning to be at Burley Middle School at 7:30 PM on Monday, May 13, for the 5th District Caucus to select delegates to the Fifth District Convention.

Lloyd Snook (electronic mail, May 8, 2002)