Kathleen Gray

Detroit Free Press Lansing Bureau

While Hillary Clinton wasn't at Wayne State University on Saturday to commiserate with fellow Democrats about her election loss, her race for president loomed large over a forum of candidates who want to lead the Democratic National Committee.

The 10 candidates for DNC chair gathered in Detroit for the third of four Future Forums. They told a group of several hundred people that a data-driven campaign was not the way to win elections. Instead, such tactics led to the loss of rural and labor voters that turned out to be key to Republican Donald Trump's electoral victory on Nov. 8 that delivered the White House to the GOP.

"We start by organizing, organizing, organizing. Data analytics are important, but nothing beats house calls and phone calls. If we had done more phone calls we would have won Michigan," said former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, one of the top contenders for DNC chair. "We ignored the basics."

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, another DNC chair candidate and Detroit native who now lives in Minnesota, said the loss of labor votes was a key downfall for the party in November, noting "the Democratic Party is the one that fights for working people all the time."

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More than 300 people attended the forum Saturday, which was designed to examine the losses Democrats suffered in 2016 as well as introduce party activists to the people who are running for leadership posts in the DNC.

“We have some serious work to do as Democrats. What happened to us in 2016 is allowing us to figure out how we move forward. The recovery of the Democratic Party is inevitable; we are going to come back,” said Donna Brazile, the interim chairwoman of the DNC, who took over the party when U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped aside after the party’s e-mail server was hacked and embarrassing messages were leaked to the media.

Those e-mails, which showed a DNC leadership that was more supportive of Clinton than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the presidential primary, was a running issue throughout the campaign leading many Sanders' voters to either stay home, support Trump or vote for a third party candidate.

"So many people thought the primary process was rigged and it’s true," said Sam Ronan, a DNC chair candidate and Air Force veteran from Ohio. "We messed up as a party and we need to own that. We have to offer olive branches and build bridges to Berniecrats."

Chuck Jones, the United Steelworkers local president from Indiana who was on the receiving end of a blistering Twitter attack by Trump, told the crowd that many union members in his state were crazy about Sanders, "But when Bernie got put out of the primary, a lot of our folks started drinking Trump’s Kool-Aid and we couldn’t reel them back in.”

Despite union membership almost always backing the Democrat, they couldn’t make the leap to Hillary Clinton, Jones said.

“We couldn’t argue with Trump when he came out and said keep jobs in this country and we’ve got to do something with NAFTA,” he said, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement. “What the hell is Hillary going to argue on? She couldn’t. Her husband gave us NAFTA. We had a candidate who we couldn’t argue in her defense when our people were affected by trade and loss of jobs.”

As a result, the traditionally blue states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan flipped after decades of voting for Democrats for president and gave Trump slim victories, including a narrow 10,704-vote margin in Michigan.

And now, Democrats are getting ready to select their leadership of the national party and speaker after speaker said the forums are an essential exercise to reverse the policies that have been pouring out of the Trump administration in his first two weeks in office.

“We’ve been unapologetic in our support for President Obama’s refugee program. In the City of Detroit today, we have 50 families who are refugees from the war in Syria who have moved into our west-side neighborhoods,” said Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. “When these families moved in, they weren’t greeted with anger and protest. They were greeted with smiles and hugs, which is what Detroit is about and what America should be about.”

The answer to winning back Trump voters and attracting new Democratic votes is simple, Duggan said.

“We’ve got a lot of folks with high school degrees who want to improve their standard of living, they’re willing to work hard and get additional skills, they just want to know how,” he said. “At the end of the day, our success in (the) Democratic Party is going to be whether we make sure those opportunities are there.”

Building on the success of the Women’s March on Washington and many other cities across the nation and world as well as the protests of Trump’s immigration order at airports is also key.

“Fifteen days into this new administration we’re all aware of the divisive path that’s been taken,” said Sandra O’Brien, a member of Wayne State University’s Board of Governors. “This is why it’s supremely important that the next DNC chair help cultivate a plan of action that can harness the energy of women’s march and airport protests."

The DNC will hold its last forum on Feb. 11 in Baltimore and leadership elections will be held Feb. 23-26 in Atlanta.

Contact Kathleen Gray; 313-223-4430, kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal