Because the local Democratic Party was in bed with the Republican agenda, and because the local Party decided to fight us instead of winning Demcrats, in 1997, we staged a coup of the local Democratic Party. (It's not has hard as you might think when your local Party is dead from the neck up.) We won. Progressives took charge.

Prior to the 1997 coup, Democrats hadn't held majorities on anything locally in over 25 years.

So first item up: run and win a primary against a long-term "Democratic" incumbent county commissioner with a strongly progressive candidate who ran on corruption in local government. We worked that election hard and won with 75% of the vote. The next primary against a similar "Democratic" office holder was not so successful on the face of it--we lost by around 25 votes. But in order for that incumbent Democrat to win, he broke election law and we dragged his sorry ass down to Raleigh for the offense. He got to keep his temporary victory, but when his term ended and he approached the party with a request that there be no primary, our local Chairwoman told him to kiss her ass. (He's now a Republican--exactly where he belonged from the get go.)

Here now we have a very progressive local party and we run progressive-only candidates. We win some and lose some, but we don't run from the issues of working people--we embrace them. We give a voice to them. We don't cut backdoor deals with Republicans. And we are considered one of the strongest local parties in the state.

So what does all this have to do with the Washington Democrats selling us out? Well, don't you agree it's high time Democrats get the message that votes have consequences? Threats of withholding money or general blog outrage won't win the day much less the war. Only primaries will. Hats off to the Tea Party for taking a stab at it. But we proved it decades earlier.

