Ben Ray Luján Leads Push for More House Dems in Trump Era
By Suzanne Gamboa
July 5, 2016
WASHINGTON — Stories about home, family or childhood come rapidly firing from the lips of Ben Ray Luján, who heads the Democrats’ operation to grow the party’s numbers in the House. He spouts tales of his Uncle Gus’s wingtip shoes and sock hop prowess and of digging up worms and fishing with his brother, though they were always outdone on the catch by Tío (uncle) Robert. He also speaks of the family garden shared with his uncles and their families, including the kids.
“All of us worked the garden together and that’s how we came together as a family,” said Luján, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the DCCC (usually said D-Triple-C).
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In the nation’s capital, Luján is tending another sort of garden for his Democratic Party family. As the DCCC chairman he oversees the gathering and sowing of the field of candidates to run as Democrats for the House and the cultivation for re-election of those already planted in Congress, all with a hope of a bounty of seats in the House come Election Day.
He is the first Hispanic to chair the DCCC. A previous chairman, Tony Coehlo, a former chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was of Portuguese descent.
Luján took over the DCCC in 2015, after one of the Democrats’ toughest midterm election years. But what seemed a grim beginning is replaced by a hopeful outlook as the candidacy of Donald Trump has made Democrats think of greater gains in the House and even, if they allow themselves, to consider taking back the majority – although that is a long-shot.
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“Clearly in the House of Representatives, as we look at Congress, Democrats are on offense,” Luján said. “We will pick up seats and it’s only going to get better because of Donald Trump.”
Some of the seats in competitive districts and others that are safely Democrat present opportunities to add to the 29 Latinos now in the House. They include: Salud Carbajal, Michael Eggman, Pete Gallego, Annette Taddeo, Emilio Huerta..
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“Dad always said it was his responsibility and our responsibility to bring voice to the voiceless,” Luján said.
Luján grew up in the rural farming community of Nambé, where his family raised chickens and sheep, milking goats and sometimes a cow or two. His family ate vegetables and fruit from the garden and their chickens’ eggs. In the winter, they relied on food they had canned. The family garden was a central part of the extended family’s survival, he said. Luján recalled being out early in the morning, before school, pulling weeds and learning from his grandparents that thinning the plants wouldn’t deprive them of sufficient stocks of food.
“We didn’t have much money,” he said. “but you didn’t grow up thinking you were poor because there was always food in the refrigerator or food in the cupboard, or better, under the floor where we kept the ground cold.”
Luján is translating those inseverable ties to New Mexico and his discernible connection to family into what he calls a “lasting infrastructure” for the Democratic Party that is locally grown. Campaigns often are staffed with people that are flown in for all over the country to a community that is the hotspot for a congressional race. Once the race is over, they leave and go home, leaving no lasting Democratic staff in place, Luján said. He has opted to go local and boasts that now 86 percent of field staff is local, and 64 percent of that is completely local.
“I made it an effort that we were going to recruit local people, train them to be community organizers and get them involved in local campaigns. So that way after the campaign was over, there was still infrastructure at home,” he said.
“Whether it’s a campaign or an effort to get more support for local school districts — those campaign organizers are going to be in those communities, hopefully to be running more campaigns in the future and running for office themselves.”