Prop. 8 mistakes, from the inside

Torie Osborn, former executive director of Liberty Hill and adviser to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — as well as a campaign leader against the LaRouche initiative in 1986 — has been analyzing what went wrong on Proposition 8 from the no side's perspective at the Liberty Hill blog. In part five, her final critique:

Never again should our EDs [executive directors] run our political campaigns! Next time, let’s engage our community’s nonprofit leaders as grass roots leaders, mobilizing their membership, staff and constituencies, and NOT as professional political campaign operatives....

Believe me, the skill-set of a nonprofit executive is NOT the same as that required to run a political campaign. We need to hire the best, toughest political campaign consultant and let them go, not constrain them with a web of bureaucracy: No on 8 had a big committee of 93, then a smaller committee of 25 and, finally, an “executive committee” of seven representatives of nonprofit groups. The tragedy is that this unwieldy structure precluded BOTH a topflight political campaign and a powerful grassroots campaign...

She began part one by writing, "Defeat requires honest, humility and long-term movement building strategy. It's time to learn from others."