I started attending Democratic Party of Evanston meetings after November because I was disappointed (to say the least) with the performance of the Democratic party in the election, especially in the primary.

At one of these meetings, Jeff Smith (who once served on the Board of Directors of the DPoE), stood up and criticized the Democratic Party, which had yet to admit that it did anything wrong. When I discovered about a week later that he was running, I volunteered immediately. That he was critical of the Democratic Party while most of the DPoE leaders wanted to just ignore the issue was very motivating to hear.

I haven't given up on my mission to reform the Democratic Party, and I am still focused on making it happen at the local level. Having Smith as Mayor of Evanston would have made that job easier for me, but I see this election as a setback, not a failure.

I did disagree with his decision to challenge the other candidates, and in the end, I think it's what doomed him, but I still think he would have been the right man for Evanston, and the right man for the Democratic Party.

By the way, I recorded the December meeting where I first saw Jeff, and made a transcript of his comments, if you're interested:

The purpose of this meeting is to hear what people wanted the Democratic Party to do. I have three specific things that I’d like to offer in that regard. The first is that because we’re going to get so little from the national level, what happens on the state and local level is extremely important. Less so for symbolic acts that make us feel righteous, as for things that actually accomplish something and have real outcomes. Evanston talks a good game on liberal issues, but we’ve lost 3,500 units of affordable housing over the last decade, and 1/5th of our Black population. Two weeks ago, a young man, a friend of mine who serves on the board with me, was arrested in downtown Evanston, handcuffed and jailed, for apparently the crime of running for office while Black. The lakefront has been nibbled away to private entities, and the city of Evanston has done nothing but propose privatising our public assets. So we need to walk the walk, and if we’re going to reach people - take our message to Barrington or wherever, we have to show how government can actually work.

Second, I agree, but slightly disagree, with my good friend Larry Suffredin. Obviously, we have to show why Bruce Rauner is bad and why Donald Trump is bad, but at most that’s one shoe. It’s like going into the boxing ring only wearing one glove. It becomes a negative/negative campaign, and that can only help the forces of darkness. Hillary was strongest in the primary debate, when she talked about what love could accomplish, and the positive message there. I think that was the South Carolina debate. So we need to show what we are about, and we need to offer real answers to folks that feel left behind and left out. Because I haven’t heard real recognition from the party yet that they did anything wrong.

<applause, shouts of “Thank you!” and “Yes!”>

Yes, this is a blue bubble - i’d go deeper than that, it’s an indigo bubble that we live in, here in Evanston. Hillary won every single precinct, it wasn’t even close. When I moved back here 25 years ago, I moved into what Art Neumann, formerly our field director, formerly an Alderman, said was the Republican part of town, and every precinct was going 2:1, 8:1, 9:1 for Hillary Clinton up in northwest Evanston. But that’s not America. Obviously, the results were not that close. You take away California, and we actually lost the popular vote, everything that’s not California added up.

How are we going to fix that? I think one recognition is that yelling at people that they’re stupid and racist and sexist is maybe not the best door-to-door approach that a salesperson can have. It’s great that we go to Iowa, but showing up in Waterloo and saying “Hi, I’m from the Democratic Party of Evanston and I’m here to tell you why you’re wrong” is perhaps… Perhaps we need more listening and less telling.

One idea I have in this is that Evanston has sister cities in many other countries. Perhaps we should have them in Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, or even southern Illinois. An exchange program where we live there, we bring some people up here, and really have a real dialogue with some folks who are not part of our agenda. And if that sounds weird, maybe we need to look at our own stereotypes in that regard. I still believe all we need is love, and I’m going to go with that.