CPAC Attendee Finds Mostly Empty Hall for Minority Vote Outreach Panel

John Hudak, managing editor of the Brooking Institution’s
FixGov blog,
went to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC),
reportedly a convention of Republican conservatives looking to
figure out how to win elections. This year’s conference opened
today. Hudak headed to a panel on minority voter outreach. This is
what he saw:

He later
blogged about the experience:

The panel included Virginia Senate candidate Ed Gillespie and a
panel of Republican political strategists: Jason Roe, Elroy Sailor,
and Robert Woodson. The panel delivered a remarkably pointed review
of GOP voter outreach (largely its failures) and explained, in very
straightforward terms, how the party can (and must) do better.
However, the most revealing part of the experience was not what
happened on stage, but what happened off stage, and reflects the
national electoral struggles Republicans are facing.

About ten minutes into the panel, I snapped a photo (shown
above) of a largely empty ballroom. The lack of attendance for the
panel is a huge loss and missed opportunity for participants. CPAC
brings together some of the Republican Party’s most passionate,
engaged, and eager members. The people who attend the meetings run
campaigns, volunteer for issue-based efforts and candidates’
campaigns. They are leadership in an army of grassroots
conservatism. The panel of Gillespie, Roe, Sailor and Woodson was
there to address a basic question: how do we grow our ranks in
areas where we traditionally underperform?

The advice was solid. Woodson explained that one problem is that
“we don’t have a ground game” particularly in minority
neighborhoods. Sailor eloquently noted a key to Republican success:
“We don’t have to abandon our existing friends to make new ones.”
The message was simple. Republicans don’t necessarily have to
change their values. They have to change how they talk about the
issues and who they talk to. That takeaway is not a tall order, but
something doable, something digestible. And, most notably, there
are people in the party who know how to do it.

I looked up CPAC’s schedule and didn’t see
any particularly amazing counterprogramming to explain the lack of
interest. Hudak noted that the room eventually did fill up, but
only because the panel ran late and people started pouring in to
hear Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle
Association, speak. He was a bit hit, of course.

Over at Reason 24/7 we have
links to coverage of all the major CPAC activity today.