Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez gestures to Montgomery County Councilman Tom Hucker at an early voting site in 2018 as Marc B. Elrich (D), now the county executive, looks on. Photo by Josh Kurtz.
When the Republican Party fell apart in 1964 after the smashing defeat of Barry Goldwater, the leftovers recruited a master grass-roots organizer, Ray Bliss, to put the pieces back together again.
After George McGovern was sent packing in 1972, Democrats eased out Larry O’Brien as party chairman and replaced him with a smooth-talking Texan, Robert Strauss, to pull together the clashing factions into a cohesive party.
Bliss’ organizing skills rebuilt the GOP into the effective machinery that led to the election of Richard M. Nixon in 1968. And Strauss’ consensus-building eased the way for the presidency of Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Strauss’ feathering of his own nest with ambassadorships and a lucrative partnership in a blue-chip law firm.
