Kim­ber­ly Ellis ran for chair of the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty at the party’s state con­ven­tion in May. She lost by an offi­cial count of 62 votes, out of about 3,000 cast, but Ellis and her sup­port­ers have dis­put­ed and chal­lenged the results, and she has refused to con­cede. Her oppo­nent, Eric Bau­man, is a long­time insid­er in the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Ellis was the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Emerge Cal­i­for­nia — an orga­ni­za­tion devot­ed to increas­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of women in pol­i­tics — before enter­ing the race.

This continues to be a movement towards forcing power, those who are in power and those who wield power, to share that power in order to empower grassroots activists.

At the People’s Sum­mit in Chica­go on June 10, Ellis spoke briefly at a ses­sion devot­ed to ​“trans­form­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty,” not­ing that ​“the race for par­ty chair was real­ly about the heart and soul of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. It was a cam­paign to rede­fine what it means to be a Democrat.”

Ellis spoke with In These Times at the Sum­mit about the last month’s con­test and her vision for the party.

Theo Ander­son: What are your take­aways from the expe­ri­ence of run­ning for state chair?

Kim­ber­ly Ellis: Well, I think it under­scores the truth that change — big change — is hard, and it doesn’t come overnight. It’s hard-fought. And I think that this is just part of a big­ger move­ment — rev­o­lu­tion — to real­ly change how we do pol­i­tics in this coun­try. And it has also been one of the most reward­ing expe­ri­ences of my life, get­ting to trav­el all across the state and meet the incred­i­ble peo­ple who live in Cal­i­for­nia, who are the activists and the heart and soul of this par­ty. We want a par­ty that is root­ed in peo­ple, that is about jus­tice and fair­ness and equi­ty for every­body at every lev­el. So it’s a con­tin­u­um. This is part of a con­tin­u­um of move­ment for real change in our party.

Theo: On plat­form issues, in Cal­i­for­nia at least, the par­ty is pret­ty much on the same page about a $15 min­i­mum wage and sin­gle-pay­er health­care, things like that. But what’s being con­test­ed is the process. That’s true in Cal­i­for­nia but also in Mass­a­chu­setts recent­ly, which had a big bat­tle. The plat­form was very pro­gres­sive, but the party’s just not very transparent.

Kim­ber­ly: It’s easy to agree — in the­o­ry and in words — with a plat­form that is incred­i­bly pro­gres­sive. It’s anoth­er thing to actu­al­ly agree with a plat­form based on your votes. And I think that’s where we see the most dis­crep­an­cies and dis­con­nect. And it’s one of the rea­sons why I talked about want­i­ng to do away with auto­mat­ic endorse­ments of incum­bents. Incum­bents should be required to come and stand in front of endors­ing bod­ies. I want­ed to work with part­ner orga­ni­za­tions like the Courage Cam­paign, which puts out a report card that shows how our elect­ed Democ­rats vot­ed. And I thought that they should have to come in and stand on their record, and defend their record, and not be auto­mat­i­cal­ly endorsed.

One of the things I talked about was flat­ten­ing out the hier­ar­chy of the par­ty and shar­ing pow­er, as opposed to col­laps­ing and con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er into the hands of the few. We saw that those in pow­er are not as open to the idea of shar­ing pow­er and democ­ra­tiz­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. This con­tin­ues to be a move­ment towards forc­ing pow­er, those who are in pow­er and those who wield pow­er, to share that pow­er in order to empow­er grass­roots activists.

Theo: Peo­ple can see how it’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary, on the plat­form side, to call for a $15 min­i­mum wage. It doesn’t seem that rev­o­lu­tion­ary, actu­al­ly, but in the U.S. con­text it is pret­ty rev­o­lu­tion­ary. But I think peo­ple have a hard­er time grasp­ing why it mat­ters that the lead­er­ship is demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed, and how that sort of fil­ters through the party.

Kim­ber­ly: One of the ques­tions I would get a lot on the cam­paign trail was the dif­fer­ence between me and my oppo­nent. So I talked a lot about, in terms of pol­i­cy, we actu­al­ly have a lot of the same posi­tions and stances. The dif­fer­ence real­ly was in terms of vision and how we would wield pow­er. And so I talked a lot about chang­ing the way the par­ty oper­at­ed and the way it did busi­ness. The way it’s cur­rent­ly struc­tured, the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty spends a lot of mon­ey on high­ly paid con­sul­tants, and on media ad-buys.

Theo: Your oppo­nent was a con­sul­tant, right? Or has a con­sult­ing firm?

Kim­ber­ly: A con­sult­ing busi­ness, yes. And so, I talked about shift­ing and deploy­ing those resources dif­fer­ent­ly. Instead of con­sul­tants, instead of spend­ing mon­ey on com­mer­cials and mail, I want­ed to invest that mon­ey in peo­ple and groom­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ers. I want­ed to have a per­ma­nent, paid field team at the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty that would orga­nize all across the state — not just a cou­ple months before the elec­tion, but 365 days a year — around issues that were impor­tant to us.

The chair of the par­ty gets dis­cre­tion in how a lot of that mon­ey is spent. And I want­ed to spend that mon­ey dif­fer­ent­ly, want­ed to invest that mon­ey in peo­ple. I want­ed to change the way they devel­op the mem­bers of the stand­ing com­mit­tees. So, under the cur­rent struc­ture the chair gets to appoint every sin­gle mem­ber, every sin­gle chair, every sin­gle co-chair of every sin­gle stand­ing com­mit­tee. I want­ed to change that up, I want­ed to democ­ra­tize that, so the chair would have a per­cent­age that she would appoint, and the rest would be open to the del­e­gates to vote, to the cau­cus­es to vote, to just shore it up — again, shar­ing that pow­er in dif­fer­ent ways.

And I want­ed to open up dif­fer­ent mem­ber­ship cat­e­gories. So, we talk a lot about being a par­ty that sup­ports young peo­ple and sup­ports mil­len­ni­als. I want­ed to add a new cat­e­go­ry of del­e­gates that was specif­i­cal­ly for 13- through 19-year-olds, that real­ly brought them in to the deci­sion-mak­ing table. The biggest dif­fer­ence was in how we viewed the par­ty mov­ing for­ward. I viewed it as a par­ty that didn’t just talk about our val­ues, but lived our val­ues in every­thing that we did. That we are mov­ing with an eye toward mak­ing sure that his­tor­i­cal­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed com­mu­ni­ties — peo­ple of col­or, women, mil­len­ni­als, native com­mu­ni­ties, LGBT com­mu­ni­ties — real­ly had a seat at the table.

Theo: Con­ser­v­a­tives look to Texas as their shin­ing star. And I think pro­gres­sives right now are look­ing to Cal­i­for­nia as a kind of a hope, because of its size and cul­tur­al influ­ence. Should we be hope­ful or despair­ing, or some­where in between, about what’s going on in California.

Kim­ber­ly: Yeah, I think we should be hope­ful. I’m ever the opti­mist. One of the things I talked about on the cam­paign trail is not being afraid to ruf­fle feath­ers and to make peo­ple uncom­fort­able. And that’s what’s going on, and it con­tin­ues to go on — even beyond this elec­tion. And that, I think, gives me hope that peo­ple are not back­ing down, that peo­ple are not afraid, that peo­ple are going to call for the truth. As long as we con­tin­ue to do that, I think Cal­i­for­nia will con­tin­ue to be the pro­gres­sive flag-bearer.

I would get push­back from elect­ed offi­cials who said that Cal­i­for­nia was the bea­con — that our leg­isla­tive cham­bers were Demo­c­ra­t­ic, that all of our con­sti­tu­tion­al offi­cers were Democ­rats, that our gov­er­nor was a Demo­c­rat. They asked me, ​‘What more work is there to be done?’ And I said, ​“You know, that’s real­ly not the atti­tude that I want my Demo­c­ra­t­ic elect­ed offi­cials to have.” Because there are cer­tain­ly many areas that need to be improved. And we should always have the mantra that we don’t stop fight­ing until there is fair­ness and jus­tice and equi­ty for everyone.

Theo: What did your mot­to, ​“unbought and unbossed,” mean to you? Why did you choose that?

Kim­ber­ly: I tell the sto­ry about how I first sort of caught the bug, if you will, and it was in third grade. I had to give a report, and I did it on Shirley Chisholm (an African-Amer­i­can U.S. rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Brook­lyn who ran for pres­i­dent in 1972). And learned about her and her life, and I grew up want­i­ng to be just like her.

The more we thought about the cam­paign and got into it, the more that real­ly res­onat­ed. The truth of the mat­ter is, there were a lot of deals and offers that were made along the way — even up to and after the con­ven­tion. And it real­ly just sort of reaf­firmed for me that stand­ing in truth and stand­ing for jus­tice and for what’s right isn’t always the eas­i­est thing to do, but for me it’s always the right thing to do. And so for me the ​“unbought and unbossed” means that you are a truth-seek­er and a free­dom fight­er and a jus­tice war­rior, and you won’t stop until that is actu­al­ized for everybody.

Theo: Your expe­ri­ence in help­ing cul­ti­vate women for a greater role of pol­i­tics — what did you learn from it, and how did it inform your campaign?

Kim­ber­ly: I learned that even here in big, blue, pro­gres­sive Cal­i­for­nia, there’s still a lot of work to be done, there are still many more hur­dles for women to get over, and the play­ing field is not fair. You know, it got even hard­er when you start­ed adding lay­ers — women of col­or, moth­ers, LGBT women, sin­gle women. The more lay­ers you added on, the hard­er it was. And I think it just sort of taught me that fight­ing for women’s polit­i­cal equi­ty and women hav­ing a seat at the table was impor­tant work. It made me real­ly proud of the work that I accom­plished even in terms of get­ting more women, women of col­or, into the polit­i­cal bike lane.

Theo: Your base was a lot of Our Rev­o­lu­tion peo­ple — Bernie Sanders peo­ple. But I under­stand there was a lot of crossover. Hillary Clin­ton sup­port­ers sup­port­ed you as well.

Kim­ber­ly: Just a cou­ple of days ago, in an op-ed in one of the news­pa­pers in Cal­i­for­nia, it was paint­ed as Bernie ver­sus Hillary. I think one of the most beau­ti­ful things that came out of the cam­paign was the bring­ing togeth­er of those two uni­vers­es, to get behind a move­ment for a big­ger, bet­ter, bold­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Most peo­ple know that I was a Hillary sup­port­er myself, and so we were able to facil­i­tate those hard con­ver­sa­tions through­out the course of the cam­paign — of what is meant to see one anoth­er, to hear one anoth­er, and to come togeth­er to work for a greater good. And it also demon­strat­ed the true uni­ty that the par­ty con­tin­ues to call for. We demon­strat­ed that in this cam­paign, and that’s what I was hop­ing to bring to this party.

Theo: And what brought in the Sanders peo­ple was your com­mit­ment to reform­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party?

Kim­ber­ly: Absolute­ly. And also, I was that per­son who was not afraid to call out the dis­crep­an­cies where our par­ty said one thing and did anoth­er, and to talk about the expe­ri­ences that they had dur­ing the pri­ma­ry, at the [Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee] con­ven­tion. I wasn’t afraid to call a foul on the play, and say that there was a thumb on a scale, there was a lot of behind-the-scenes things going on, and that’s not okay.

Theo: Do you know what you’ll do to con­tribute to the par­ty now?

Kim­ber­ly: You know, we sub­mit­ted our for­mal chal­lenge to the com­pli­ance review com­mis­sion, which is the com­mis­sion that will be rul­ing on our chal­lenge. We don’t have a lot of con­fi­dence that we will get a fair adju­di­ca­tion out of that body. All six of them who com­prise the body are sup­port­ers of my oppo­nent. They all vot­ed for my oppo­nent. And so, we def­i­nite­ly have some con­cerns about the per­son­al con­flicts of inter­est that are inher­ent in the make­up of that. That said, we have said that we are leav­ing all of our options on the table. We will not stop fight­ing for truth until all of our options are exhaust­ed. At this point, that’s what I’m focused on. And until we get to the end of the road, that’s what it looks like.