Looking Back at Juliette
Confessions of a Kayyem Delegate, Part One: “#IAm4Kayyem"
The exhibit hall for the Massachusetts Democratic Convention at the DCU Center in Worcester last Saturday, June 14, was filled with glossy brochures, buttons, keychains, and other knick-knacks promoting each of the many statewide candidates.
Photo of Juliette Kayyem from The Boston Globe
Except at Juliette Kayyem’s table. My image of her table is stacks of policy papers. Nicely laid out. Nicely stapled together. Six pages or more apiece.
Policy papers are a passion for me. I’m the kind of person who, as Richard Strout, the legendary liberal “TRB from Washington” columnist for The New Republic, described himself four decades ago, likes to curl up before a fire with a good book of statistics. Or maps, in my case.
Policy papers are one of the reasons I signed onto the Juliette Kayyem campaign for governor six or seven months ago. I liked Juliette's columns in The Boston Globe. I liked the issues she selected for her “Kayyem Plan". I liked her practicality and her nuances. This was a broadly experienced Democrat with a liberal bent and a view of the world based on realism, not solely on hope and desire.
The topics of the policy papers distributed in Worcester, each with details enclosed, were versions of the same papers which attracted me to Juliette Kayyem around the first of the year. Here are the topics of the papers on her table in the Worcester exhibit hall: “Reforming the Criminal Justice System.” “Honoring Our Veterans: How Can We Equip Our Veterans to Succeed at Home?” “Opportunity of Climate Change.” “Data Sharing: Government Is Only As Effective As the Knowledge That Drives Its Actions.” “Growing The Economy Through Connective Infrastructure.” “The Gateway Cities.” “Ensuring Women’s Health and Workplace Equality.””Start Up and Stay [a plan for new and growing businesses].””Providing Education From Birth to Career.”
Bound together, these papers constitute a book about the future of the Bay State.
I began this campaign season planning to support Steve Grossman for governor. I like Steve personally. I like his record in the trenches for the Democratic Party. There is a special place in Heaven for people who make the apparatus of our party go, the people who care about nuts and bolts, paving the way for others, and helping everyone share the road. I admire Steve’s administration of the Treasurer’s office.
Then I switched to Juliette. I liked her freshness and her discipline to identify issues and write about their causes and her proposed solutions. I liked her campaign staff. I thought Juliette would catch fire.
Of course, she did not — at least not enough. The media seemed to like her issues-based campaign. And she did build a network of friends and supporters statement. But last Saturday became the final day of her campaign for governor. She did not win votes of support from at least 15 percent of the delegates to the convention casting votes that day.
It was a surprise, but not a big surprise. The warning signs were evident for weeks. The messages from the campaign became more and more mixed as we drew close to the convention. She had enough votes. She didn’t have enough votes. She was attracting media interest. The media said she was in trouble. (Both were true, actually.)
In early May, the Kayyem campaign tried to mount a masterstroke that would put Juliette atop the “outside” (which is to say, non-officeholding) candidates. The campaign rented Arlington’s Town Hall Auditorium on a Saturday and sent emails to #IAm4Kayyem supporters statewide asking them to come to a rally in Juliette’s support. The rally would show that Juliette was tops about the outsiders, who also included Don Berwick, M.D., and Joe Avellone.
It became the single most disappointing and delusional day of the campaign for me. Arlington’s Town Hall Auditorium never seemed so drained of energy. The clarion call produced only about 150 people.We felt swallowed and tiny on the floor of the big auditorium, which has enough space to seat more than 250 people for the annual Town Meeting. 150 people standing took up only a fourth of the floor space. The stage set up by the campaign also took up a fourth. The other half of the room was hollow. I felt alone and small in my own Town Hall.
The rally was manufactured to introduce’s Kayyem’s “Bolder Today, Better Tomorrow” theme. The #BeBoldMA hashtag was introduced. Juliette made a carefully written speech hoisting herself into the upper ranks of the campaign and clearly criticizing weaknesses among the other candidates, including Grossman and Attorney General Martha Coakley.
I was embarrassed by the small numbers. But the campaign staff was ecstatic. The whole thing was a put-on. We weren’t at a rally at all. We were hapless and kind of dorky bystanders on a set structured to produce visuals that would sustain the campaign to Worcester.
It made me cynical. The speech went onto Juliette’s website. The photos went into literature pieces. (In many of the photos, you can spot the unmistakably distinctive woodwork of the proscenium arch of the Arlington Town Hall Auditorium stage.) The video became the B-roll for the Kayyem movie shown at Worcester. The camera angles were just right. Viewed through the lenses of the various cameras, the Arlington rally was a stunning success.
The people in the video were not the 150 supporters who came from across the state that day. None of us were pictured. The only “supporters” pictured were those the campaign picked in advance. I felt used, and I lost my faith that day. I swore to soldier on and see if I could bring back my faith. But as the only elected Kayyem delegate from Arlington, the loneliness inside my own Town Hall on that day was disturbing and enduring.
The campaign based increasingly on illusion continued. Juliette was said to be out-organizing the other liberal outside candidate, Dr. Berwick. The Kayyem people whispered that Berwick’s campaign was falling apart and his most able staff people were leaving. We would walk into the hall at Worcester, pick up support from the wreckage of Berwick’s campaign, and get our 15 percent vote.
For a campaign based on adoration of policy realpolitik, this view of the Berwick organization was misplaced, if not utter nonsense. Traditional media and social media showed me that Berwick was clearly as well organized as Kayyem, if not better. (Living in the ultra-liberal haven of Arlington, it was hard for me to tell if Berwick or Kayyem or both were picking up support in more mainstream communities in the state, but clearly Berwick was not falling apart at all.)
At Worcester, I expected to get our 15 percent and have our candidate on the primary ballot in September. Informed by a combination of reading Twitter and listening to the Kayyem political information, I developed a theory that Berwick would prevail in the state’s most liberal areas: inside Route 128, plus Northampton and college places like that. Kayyem would do better with liberals in other places. She was strong on the Cape, in Metro West — especially the tonier towns like Wellesley — and in Central Massachusetts. On Saturday, I stood at a balcony railing in the DCU Center overlooking the main floor and tried to see where Juliette’s support would emerge from.
As we now know, it just wasn’t there. And, as we now know, the Berwick campaign was hardly falling apart. Instead of us picking over Berwick’s pieces, the opposite seemed to happen. He was picking up our pieces and even a few from Grossman and Coakley. Dr. Berwick’s emergence in Worcester was the surprise story of the day. Now his campaign is a legitimate force.
At the last minute, I was honored with the courtesy of a phone call and then a personal visit from Kayyem staffers telling me the votes were not there for Juliette to make the ballot. But even at this last moment, I was also handed an optimistic report. The staff said we’d made it to 13 percent of the votes cast. But we hadn’t. It was just 12.1 percent, a huge difference when you’re trying to get to 15 percent. As the embers of the Kayyem campaign blew out, I was still being handed overly optimistic information.
Losing is tough.
Having talked about being essentially mis-led, I want to put in a good word for people who worked hard and deserved better as they struggled with an engine that wouldn’t start. Juliette Kayyem picked good people to work for her. I think the over-optimism they projected was not so much a ruse as it was a belief that things really would get better. Like many campaigns that lose, they ran out of time; you cannot push back the date of any election. Massachusetts would do well to welcome Juliette Kayyem into another role in public life. And campaigns today and tomorrow would do well to welcome Kayyem campaign alumni/ae. They have been through the throes of weeks of doubt and struggle. Knowing what it’s like to lose usually results in a campaigner more driven to win.
All along the campaign trail, I had continued to admire Steve Grossman’s growth and appeal, as well as the changes in his stump speeches and the issues he chose to speak about. The hardest thing about supporting Juliette was not supporting Grossman, who had been my original choice. As I left the DCU Center, I filled out a Grossman volunteer card. I saw Steve on the street right after he finished a television interview. I told him I would support him for governor.
In Confessions of a Kayyem Delegate, Part Two, I’ll discuss why I’m wondering if I acted too precipitously in rejoining Team Orange.
Doug Davidoff: New Yorker, New Englander, Tar Heel, Hoosier, Chicagoan. Father, Democrat, Unitarian Universalist and Jewish. History Lover, Traveler, Sailor. Writer/Editor. Aspiring Vermonter. Principal Consultant for Straight Talk Public Relations at www.StraightTalkPR.com. Personal website: www.DouglassDavidoff.com.