Donna Brazile: The Diva Is In

IOP Fellow 2001 Donna Brazile welcomes students into her office with the sign “The Diva Is In.” Passion is what drives Brazile, a 20-year veteran of political campaigns, who during last year’s presidential election was Al Gore’s campaign manager. In her weekly study group last spring, she encouraged students to become more active in the political process.

“I’ve heard that giving birth is the best experience possible,” she says. “I’ve had about 300 spiritual births during the course of my life. I’ve encouraged about 300 people to run for office and get involved.”

As a fellow, she also taught students how a multimillion-dollar presidential campaign is structured, managed, and organized. The Gore campaign lost, claims Brazile, “because we failed to educate voters, failed to remove structural barriers, failed to have every ballot counted.”

In a Washington Post editorial, published last December, she outlined her five-point action plan, which focused on voter education, voter participation, educating poll workers, getting high school students to hold seminars for other students about voting, and focusing on ways to make voting more accessible to all Americans.

Money’s certainly not what motivates Brazile. “I’m not in this so I can shop at Nieman Marcus, Macys, or K-Mart, for that matter.” She’s motivated, she says, by her mother, who, along with her father, raised nine children in poverty. Her mother worked as a maid, and her father worked as a laborer. “They had no health insurance,” says Brazile. “I got my first Easter basket from IOP Fellow Phil Noble’s son. When I was growing up, we got our Easter candy in shoe boxes.”

She’s also motivated by her belief that this is the “best country on the planet. We can serve as a model democracy for other nations, and I want to work on making this country the best it can be for women and minorities.”

Brazile’s activism and interest in politics began early. At three, she was too young to take part in Martin Luther King’s March on Washington. And after King’s death in 1968, Brazile’s mother wouldn’t let her attend meetings about the riots. But Brazile didn’t let that hold her back. “I asked my mother if we could wear black scarves to show solidarity for King, but she said no. So I snuck out one night and draped my mother’s black scarf in front of our house to show solidarity,” says Brazile.

She may have been too young to march in 1963, but at age 23, Brazile organized the 20th anniversary of the march. More than 750,000 protesters came to the Lincoln Memorial in August 1983, to convince the President and the Senate to pass a bill making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday. In January 1986, President Reagan signed the bill into law.

Though her confidence was at an “all-time low” when she arrived at the Kennedy School, she says, her time here has allowed her to refuel, and she is now ready to return to the “zone” — the constant go-go-go of campaign life. While at the IOP, she’s had a chance to think about her goals and priorities. “I used to give 100 percent of myself — now I can’t do that. I give 100 percent to myself.” There’s been talk that she’ll run for a seat on the city council in Washington, DC, but she’s not confirming any rumors just yet.

Brazile now wants to focus her energies on the themes that have carried her through her life: voter participation, voter education, trying to make the system better, and letting people vote without harassment. “We really need electoral reform in our country. Commonsense changes that don’t cost millions of dollars.”

Whatever she decides, it’s for sure that Brazile will be someone to watch during election season 2002. According to Brazile, she’s going to be “cooking with grease.” And for those who don’t know what that means, she says, with a twinkle in her eye, “Republicans cook with butter.” —AC