Budzinski: Dems Should Sell Message to Moderates and Conservatives
Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski (D-Springfield) told DNC delegates they need to work harder to relate to moderates and conservatives. (Photo: State Journal-Register)
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The freshman Illinois Democratic congresswoman who won a rural, downstate congressional district that was gerrymandered to elect a Democrat in 2022 told her Democratic colleagues in Chicago Thursday that they need to learn how to sell their wins to their moderate and conservative neighbors.
Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield, talked of working with a small business that takes corn stalks and husks and turns them into yoga pants.
“I come from a place where we grow some of the most corn and soybean in our country, and out of that comes agricultural waste. But instead of putting that in a landfill, we're repurposing it to create a whole new industry in central Illinois that will make yoga pants,” Budzinski said. “Yoga pants.”
Budzinski’s win came after Democrats drew former Congressman Rodney Davis out of the 13th District, that he had held for a decade, giving giving Democrats an extra edge in the House and noted her status as “frontline Democrat,” though Republicans aren’t making a serious play against her for re-election in November.
Her more metropolitan colleagues need to sell victories from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, to win at the ballot box, like new industry spurred by the semi-conductor and technology-based CHIPS Act.
“In downstate Illinois, we don't always get those opportunities to create new industry, to create new opportunity,” she said. “And because of President Biden and Vice President Harris's CHIPS and Science Act, we are doing that in downstate Illinois, in ‘Silicorn Valley’, we're creating opportunity.”
For the labor-infused Illinois Democratic Party, talking to their ag and rural neighbors in Illinois and in neighboring states at the center of the 2024 may not seem to come naturally with its focus in Chicago, but Budzinski and a raft of other party leaders throughout the week pushed their colleagues to break out of their comfort zones to help Democrats win big in November.
Throughout a week of rah-rah party-building events, energized by Harris’s sudden taking of the Democratic nomination, one message was hammered away repeatedly from the morning delegation breakfast to the convention hall in United Center: Democrats must work hard through election day to convert that enthusiasm into votes.
Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias pressed his colleagues to take that energy into the battleground states of 2024.
“We need people to go to Michigan, to go to Wisconsin, to go to Ohio, to go to Pennsylvania. Help everywhere you can,” Giannoulias said. “We have some of the best campaigners, the best door knockers here in Illinois that I've ever seen in my life, and remember the words of our favorite son, Barack Obama, don't give the kind of help that makes you feel good, give the kind that hurts.”