University of Alabama produce two Clinton staffers
By John Hammontree | jhammontree@al.com AL.com
Tuscaloosa, AL /storypackage /#article_inset Article
Reports of the death of the Alabama Democrat have been greatly exaggerated.
To be clear, the Alabama Democratic Party is in disarray and the party's bench is as shallow as it has ever been. The state won't be voting for a Democratic president in 2016... or even 2020. However, there are more Democrats in Alabama than conventional wisdom would suggest. In 2012, nearly 800,000 residents voted for Barack Obama. That's more Democratic voters in the Heart of Dixie than live in Delaware, Hawaii, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Vermont, all states that went blue.
And the University of Alabama continues to serve as a proving ground for political tacticians from both sides of the aisle. On a rainy Saturday in Tuscaloosa – just hours before the Tide's season altering beat down of LSU – two Hillary Clinton campaign staffers with UA ties sat down to discuss the fate of the Southern Democrat, the appeal of the Clinton campaign, the importance of the Avery Johnson hire and how cutthroat Alabama SGA campaigns churn out politicians.
Matt Dover graduated from the University of Alabama in 2007, earned his Master of Public Policy degree at Harvard in 2011, served as President Obama's Deputy Battleground States Analytics Director during the 2012 campaign. He currently serves as a member of Hillary Clinton's Analytics team but is, perhaps, better known in these parts for his former stint as an Alabama basketball analyst for Roll Bama Roll.
Ian Sams is a member of Clinton's Rapid Response team, following two years as a regional press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 2011 – and, full disclosure, was a classmate and friend of mine.
This interview has been edited for length.
Matt Dover (left) and Ian Sams (right), two Clinton campaign aides, traveled from their Brooklyn headquarters to Tuscaloosa for the Alabama-LSU game. John Hammontree | jhammontree@al.com
You guys are white, middle class men from small Southern towns – the types of people that the Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging since the 50s – how did you wind up Democrats?
Ian Sams: Part of it was growing up with parents who were progressives. I grew up watching the CBS evening news every night and becoming politically aware and astute in that regard. But then tying it back to Alabama especially, coming to school here I think woke up the political engagement side of my brain because it's obviously a very politically aware campus in terms of both student politics and actual politics. I think just being involved here and sort of cutting my teeth and getting my first exposure to coursework and real politics. That was the 2008 campaign – and that sort of woke up my senses in that primary with Obama and Clinton. It wasn't so much a partisan sort of thing. It was just like I knew where I was going to fall on the spectrum and just started getting involved.
[My campus experience] led to various opportunities interning and whatnot in Democratic politics and just sticking with it. At the time, pre-2010, the Democratic Party in Alabama was pretty strong and there were opportunities to get engaged at the local level. Whether it was in competitive state level elections or even Congressional elections to canvass or volunteer. Since it has waned a little bit but at the time it was a significant hotbed for even Democratic politics. So it was not farfetched to imagine that Democrats would've emerged from campus then.
Matt Dover: For me, my parents are not particularly political so I came to my political beliefs on my own, I guess. But for me, I remember the moment that turned the light switch on, if you will, was when I was in high school – I'm a little bit older than Ian – was the 2000 election between Bush and Gore. I was always very interested in American history and all that but this was the first election where I was old enough to get it. And to see it come down to 537 votes in a country of 300 million people really just brought home to me how important political campaigns are and how much of a difference people working on political campaigns, and volunteering on political campaigns, can make.
This is not hyperbole, [those votes] literally changed the course of history. You think if the Gore campaigned had turned out 538 more voters in the huge state of Florida, the course of history is changed. There's probably no Iraq War. All sorts of things would be different in the U.S. and in the world. So I think that brought it home and made it real to me.
And I was in college during the Bush-Kerry 2004 election, here at UA. Even then it was certainly a majority Republican state and I was little bit of minority voice but there were certainly a lot Democrats because it was a college campus, right? I remember by that point I had come to terms with my own beliefs and was firmly in the Kerry camp. So I was disappointed with how that turned out but really just couldn't wait after college to participate in the next election.
Still, it seems Democrats in the South seem to be a dying breed. What can a candidate like Hillary Clinton do to appeal to Southern voters?
Ian Sams: I think one of the things Hillary Clinton can do – and uniquely does – is she understands that it's not just about her candidacy and her campaign. There's a Democratic Party and there's a bench that has to be developed and supported. She understands the importance of party building and ensuring that the stuff that we're making the case for on the trail everyday are things that Democrats down ballot will embrace and run on. In a place like Alabama, it's Medicaid expansion where you have this vastly rural state where there are a lot of poor voters – whether they're black, white, Hispanic, doesn't matter – that need access to healthcare and you have a governor and a legislature that's standing in the way of that happening. She's willing to make that case and say this is what I'm fighting for, this is why you should support us.
There's voting rights. You have a governor and a legislature who are intent on restricting those and taking us backwards. She's willing to come here, on the ground, and say, "No, we can't do that. We can't afford that. We have to ensure that people have the right to vote, that there's not obstructions in the way of people casting their ballots every Election Day."
Ensuring that we have a higher minimum wage. Ensuring small businesses aren't burdened by tax policy or regulatory policy that weighs them down while allowing big corporations to get away with skirting these rules.
She's talking directly to the people who are maybe disaffected or maybe are unhappy with the Republican governor or Republican legislature but are looking for an alternative... To say that, somehow, the status quo must continue and that these states are going to be locked red and these states are going to be locked blue... like, it's easy to do that but I think you approach everyday by saying we've got to talk to these issues in these states where the majority may disagree with us, you make incremental progress and can start to turn the tide.
Matt Dover: On the Hillary Clinton campaign, our focus is on the primary. And in the primary, Alabama is actually one of the most important states in the country. There are four states that vote early in February – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida – those states are all critically important and we've built a huge operation in those four states for the very reason that they vote early, they set the tone for what comes next.
However, what comes next is that the majority of delegates – it's all a delegate game, that's what decides who the Democratic nominee will be – at stake are in states that vote in March. And Alabama is one of the very first states that votes in March. It's one of eleven states that vote Super Tuesday, March 1st. Believe it or not, although the early states get all the attention cause they go first, Alabama actually has more Democratic delegates at stake than either Iowa or New Hampshire.
So Alabama is a critically important state. There are a lot of Democratic voters in Alabama. It's easy to say, "this state's a red state or a blue state," but let's keep in mind President Obama got almost 40 percent of the vote in both 2008 and 2012 here in Alabama. There's more Democrats in Alabama than in a lot of states that were majority-Obama in 2008 and 2012, right? It's a larger state – about an average size state – and almost 43 percent of the voters are Democrats. It's easy to forget, yes, there's more Republicans than Democrats but there are a lot of Democrats here and those voters have a huge voice in deciding who the Democratic nominee will be.
Matt, I know you used to be a sports analyst for Roll Bama Roll. Can you compare analyzing sports to analyzing politics?
Matt Dover: It was more of a hobby when I was in grad school but I really enjoyed it. Obviously, even more than the average Alabama alum probably, I was a pretty obsessed Alabama sports fan. Also, given what I do professionally with analytics, I like to dig deeper into the stats for a next level analysis of Alabama football, but Alabama basketball particularly was my focus at Roll Bama Roll.
How do you think we're gonna do this season?
Matt Dover: I'm really excited about the Avery Johnson hire. I think he brought a ton of energy to the program. He's already making huge waves on the campaign trail. Granted those recruits that we're signing won't be able to come in and play until next season so there may be some short term growing pains. Although I think we'll be better than a lot of people are predicting this year. I think we're going to beat expectations.
You look at people like Nate Silver and there's a lot of overlap between sports and political prognostication –
Matt Dover: It's easy to just look at the scoreboard. You look at the scoreboard you'll see Ole Miss 43, Alabama 37. But if you look at the next level stuff you'll see, well, Alabama actually outplayed them on a play-by-play basis but Ole Miss took advantage of a bunch of Alabama turnovers, a couple of flukey plays on offense.
Politics can be similar. The scoreboard in that case is just who had more votes than the other person. Examining the underlying trends like voter-by-voter, which voters turned out versus which voters stayed home; which voters actually changed their minds about the candidates or the political parties.
I read a few weeks ago that there are only two schools in the country where student politics matter – University of Southern California and the University of Alabama – I know that Ian was involved with politics on the campus level. What did you learn here on campus that has helped you in your political career?
Ian Sams: One thing is that it matters. I think one of the reasons why it's such a big deal here – and a lot people would roll their eyes about student politics at Alabama – but at the end of the day they have a lot of influence. And people who have a lot of influence make decisions that either benefit or harm the community at large. Because the students here are given that level of power and influence over the campus and the community of Tuscaloosa, you either can get involved and try to change that or you can sit it out on the sidelines and let other people determine how the campus is going to develop. So I think that, for me, it was always about trying to get in the arena and make things better for students.
And obviously it's a nasty political scene down here at times. You have this old guard entrenched interests and you have a changing campus that is growing and the majority of students here now are from out of state. And that's changing the dynamic as we've seen in recent years with developments in the student government that have let an African-American man become the SGA president in a time when we hadn't an African-American president in 40 years.
It's a perfect microcosm, in a lot of ways, of American politics – for good and bad. There's a lot of cynicism that gets bred by the way it works here but there's also a lot of good if you can get in the system and do it right. One of the things I learned too is, if you disagree with your political opponent, it doesn't mean you can't put your arms aside and try to do something good for the campus and the community. I think that's an important lesson whether you're a student or whether you're working in national politics that, you know, a campaign is not the end all, be all of politics. There's something you can work toward together to try to improve your community.
There's probably other campuses that are tough and cutthroat as well but certainly this place, if you want to work in politics, is a pretty good proving ground.
Matt Dover: I was also very involved during my time here. I think, in particular, it is known for being particularly cutthroat here relative to student politics elsewhere. Which, of course, has its downsides but I do think it's a great proving ground for people. It also teaches you, not only, the hard lessons but it also teaches you some good lessons.
It's easy for people to be characterized on campus politics as "this person's pro-Machine" or, "this person's anti-Machine," or whatever. I was the latter and labeled that way while I was here and so a lot of Greek students only knew me as this bad guy because he's anti-Machine. But usually I would find that when people actually had a conversation with me, we would find a lot of common ground and have a lot of agreements about what needed to be done to help the campus once you remove the labels. And I think those are good lessons to learn there. In national and state politics, you have all of this partisanship that seems to be increasing. It's a good lesson to learn to not only deal with it but move past it.
I'm struck by the comparison you made about demographics. Obviously, the shifting demographics at UA have affected campus politics; and the shifting demographics, nationally, seem to favor Democrats. How far do you think we are out from seeing a "purple South?"
Ian Sams: Everyone realistically knows it's going to take time and it's going to take work. A Democrat may not win a presidential election in Alabama next year but the demographics are changing. Young people think differently. We have vast majorities of young people – of young Republicans – that are in favor of same-sex marriage or in favor of immigration reform. I feel like we're at a point where there's a generational change that's coming where the policies of the Democratic Party more align with the vast majority of voters – even in a place like Alabama. And so I think what can happen in this election cycle is to ensure that there are consistent positions on these issues so that voters know where the parties stand.
The Republican Party right now is anti-gay, anti-immigrant, focused primarily on massive tax cuts for the wealthy instead of economic development at the middle class and working class level. And as more young people who are inclined to support socially the Democratic Party age, we're going to see a shift in the politics in a place like Alabama. We're already seeing it in places like Georgia, Texas, North Carolina. As long as we keep making the case, developing a grassroots program, building our bench and doing all the things operationally to support our agenda, these states are going to shift a little bit. I mean, it's not going to happen tomorrow but the more investments you make now the more likely you are to see this change over time as demographics change.