Thomas Perez, Labor Secretary under President Barack Obama, was elected Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Feb. 25.
Formerly heading the Justice Department’s Civil Right Division, Perez promised to refocus the party on local organizing and state races. A lack of support on the local level, he believed, caused the Democrats to lose almost 1,000 legislature seats across the country over the last decade, in addition to losing the presidency.
He said he wants the DNC to “organize, organize, organize,” make direct calls to voters, and push for wins in races “from the state house to the Senate to the school board,” he told CNN after his win.
“We lost in states like Michigan because we weren’t talking to people. You can’t show up at a church every 4th of October and call that organizing,” Perez told TV One’s Roland Martin two weeks before the DNC election.
He also wants to convince working class Americans that the Democratic party cares about job creation. He didn’t elaborate on how would the party get the point across, but recognized that the jobs message gave President Donald Trump the upper hand during the election. “What voters heard was, ‘he feels our pain.’ What they heard from us was, ‘vote for us cause he’s crazy’ … that’s not a message.”
