COLUMN ONE
Behind enemy lines
Fledgling organizers --- a Democrat in Kansas and a Republican in Berkeley --- don the armor of conviction in unfriendly territory. By John M. Glionna /Los Angeles Times /Staff Writer
August 7, 2007
GARDEN CITY, Kan. --- Jacqueline Bujanda proudly plays the outcast in this table-flat farming community surrounded by grain silos and antiabortion billboards.
At age 24, she endures stares, insults and slammed doors as she performs the political version of peddling Coke in a Pepsi town: She sells the Democratic Party in dark-red western Kansas, a state that hasn't elected a Democratic U.S. senator since Prohibition --- the longest streak in the nation.
Some 1,100 miles away in politically blue Berkeley, James Fullmer is also a political dreamer. In a college town that is among the most liberal in the nation, the Fullerton native is a member of the Berkeley College Republicans and is active on the local GOP central committee.
Only 21, he's eyeing a run for the state Assembly in 2008 in an area where Republicans usually garner 10% of the vote: "I relish being the token conservative. I just don't like being yelled at."
Both party neophytes are rare creatures in American politics, organizers operating deep behind enemy lines. Dismissed and often reviled, they aim to defy long odds as they scour for votes in areas most agree they have little chance of winning.
Yet there's purpose in both places.
"It may seem like a fool's errand, but there are often upsides in creating a presence in seemingly unwinnable places," said Scott Reed, a GOP political consultant who ran Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
For one, hitting foes where they least expect it makes for good politics.
"It makes the other side defend their own turf, which means the less opportunity they have to go after yours," said Dan Schnur, a UC Berkeley political science professor who was a spokesman under Republican Gov. Pete Wilson of California. "It can also be motivating for your supporters in other places."
Both Bujanda and Fullmer see signs of a better future. Several leading Kansas Republicans, including the former chair of the state GOP, have switched political affiliation to become Democrats since 2004, signaling a possible sea change in state politics. And with Democratic groups splintering, the Berkeley College Republicans have established themselves as the largest political club on a campus long known for its razor-edged radical liberalism.
Still, for both party foot soldiers, the campaign is lonely work.
Rural Kansas businesses are boycotted for Democratic sympathies. At one county clerk's office, workers stared dumbfounded when Bujanda introduced herself as the new Democratic regional field coordinator. "There was total silence," she recalled, "as if what I was doing was just an unheard-of thing."
In Berkeley, vehicles with GOP bumper stickers risk being keyed.
While Fullmer manned a Republican recruitment table on campus, a chaperon for a group of visiting schoolchildren began throwing stones at him.
"I told him he wasn't setting a very good example for the kids," Fullmer recalled. "He got right in my face and said, 'Yeah, what are you going to do about it?'
"That's the level of political discourse people sometimes stoop to around here."
Just six miles from Garden City, the town of Holcomb is the setting for Truman Capote's novel /In Cold Blood/, about a farm family butchered by two drifters in 1959.
Democrats in Finney County --- roughly halfway between Topeka and Denver --- joke that they get even less respect than the killers, both of whom went to the gallows.
"This is probably the most thankless job you can have in this part of the country," said Lon Wartman, head of the county's Democratic Party, which in 2006 claimed 19% of voters. Republicans captured 50%, with 31% unaffiliated.
Wartman says local "closet Democrats" fear losing their jobs if their true leanings become known.
Gary Whitehurst is one who showed his political stripe: The restaurant owner last year hung a placard supporting the Democratic candidate for governor.
"Customers stopped coming in," he recalled. "One regular said, 'I don't like your sign and I won't be back.' Another told his wife that I was a Democrat and that he wasn't going to eat in any Democratic establishment."
Most Finney County Democrats have given up seeking election. "If there's a Republican running for office here, they don't worry about Democratic opponents," said Republican Party Chairman Ward Lloyd, "because there won't be any."
One candidate who bucked that trend was John Doll, who ran for Congress last year in the 1st District.
"My brother said: 'Are you crazy? Jesus Christ would lose to Adolf Hitler if he ran as a Democrat around here,' " said Doll, who got 20% of the vote.
But with an unpopular war in Iraq, the Republican machine is sputtering here, leaving Democrats with a chance --- albeit slight --- to gain ground in 2008.
"It's important that Democrats fight for states like Kansas," said Thomas Frank, author of /What's the Matter With Kansas?/ a 2004 analysis of GOP superiority. "Kansas has turned a corner since I wrote that book."
In March, Bujanda arrived back in Garden City, where she spent six years as a teen.
She was born in El Paso and became a starter on her high school basketball team. In Garden City, she rode the bench. She believes the move was class-driven. Her mother worked in a local meatpacking plant: "The daughters of wealthy white parents played ahead of me because I was the girl with the single Latina mother."
In college, Bujanda became convinced Democrats were more inclusive for minorities like herself.
And Garden City (pop. 27,000) was now more than 40% Latino, a demographic shift driven by the arrival of Mexican and Central American immigrants to work in the county's meatpacking plants.
When she first began her field-coordinating, she pursued mostly Republicans, challenging a Midwestern tradition of conservative voting handed down over generations.
One day, Bennie Creeden scowled at Bujanda's pitch. "I'm not voting for any Democrat," he said, shutting his door. Nearby, retiree George Purnell had the same response: "Democrat is a dirty word in this community."
Bujanda now thinks her best chances lie not in the area's old guard, but with the Latino newcomers. Here, she reasoned, was an untapped voter base.
Bujanda wants to enlist 1,500 new Latino voters. She knocks on doors, patiently explaining to some immigrants what a Democrat is.
As the morning shift left a local Tyson plant, she collected signatures from Asians, Indians, blacks and Latinos who hurried to their cars. One woman slipped her a phone number, promising to help her rally more support.
Bujanda smiled, finally tasting victory. More than just showing her political flag, here was a chance to make a real difference --- if not for this election, then perhaps for those to come.
"I see my mother in these people," she said. "They all deserve a vote to change the system."
In 2003, after the start of the Iraq war, Schnur got a call from a UC Berkeley student group. It was staging a debate and had a problem: At a school known for its antiwar agitation, the group couldn't find anyone to argue the pro-war stance.
So it turned to Schnur, a conservative razzed for his pro-Schwarzenegger bumper sticker. "You have to be that much better prepared to argue your point of view, because somebody always wants a piece of you," he said.
Berkeley hasn't had a Republican mayor since the 1960s. "Conservative is a very weighted word in this town," said former Mayor Shirley Dean, whom voters ousted in 2002 in favor of a more progressive candidate. "Your opponent will throw it at you and try to make it stick."
Still, John den Dulk wears the badge proudly. The local gadfly ran for Congress last year against Democrat Barbara Lee, capturing 12% of the vote. "The voice of dissent is the American way," he said. "Besides, I like to hear the liberals open their mouths and start screeching."
But some conservatives do see hairline cracks in Berkeley's leftist foundation. "Political affiliations change over time," said John C. Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor and former Bush administration official, "even here."
James Fullmer sat wide-eyed at a meeting of his county's Republican Central Committee as Ron Nehring, chairman of the state GOP, gave a pep talk to frontline troops.
"I know that in Alameda County, we're sometimes considered in enemy-occupied territory," said Nehring, framed by posters of Presidents Nixon and Lincoln.
Fullmer knows. It's one reason he chose to attend UC Berkeley: He liked the idea of thriving as a conservative in this hypercharged liberal atmosphere.
As a freshman, he hung a "Bush-Cheney" poster in his dorm room. "Is that a joke?" students would ask. "Nope," Fullmer responded. "I'm a Republican. Glad to meet you."
Fullmer's strategy concentrates on similarities between the two parties. He starts many talks saying: "I know you think my party is bad for you, and runs counter to everything you believe, but just listen to me and then decide."
He joined the College Republicans and handed out political fliers. Some students threw the pamphlets in his face. They swore and spit at him.
In class, when he supported Bush's foreign policy, he said a graduate student instructor mocked him as "an evil genius."
"I wouldn't want to be at a place where everyone thinks like I do," Fullmer said. "As a conservative on this campus, we're outnumbered, but in terms of ideas we're not outgunned."
Next year, he plans to run for the Assembly. "I don't think I'll win, but my plan is to build a bigger base for the party here."
For now, he endures being the political odd man out. He told the story of a friend whose GOP bumper sticker was defaced with the word "fascist."
Said Fullmer: "They misspelled it."