In response to criticism of his freshman term as
Michigan Democratic Party chairman (including a commentary posted here on Tuesday),
Lon Johnson has lots of stats to defend his first 2-year trip to the plate.

Johnson told me that he succeeded in broadening the
Democratic base and making the party more tech-savvy. He offered several charts
and graphs to demonstrate that the party is moving in the right direction.
But he also understands that many of the Dem faithful
still point to the bottom line – lots of losses in 2014.

“We did a lot of great things, but it didn’t add up to
victory,” said Johnson, who was unanimously re-elected as party boss at the
Dems’ Saturday state convention.

Johnson, who ousted longtime party chairman Mark Brewer
two years ago, is particularly sensitive to critics who say that his effort to
boost Democratic turnout last November was largely a flop.

Strategists from a broad cross-section of the party, he
explained, set a goal of turning out 180,000 more Democratic voters in 2014
than in the last off-year election in 2010. The end result exceeded the goal,
with 229,000 more loyalists – not newly registered Dem voters – going to the polls last year
than in the disastrous ’10 election.

The chairman is also eager to provide more party stats
for ‘14:

* Some 1.5 million doors knocked and 2 million calls made.

* A 45 percent increase in absentee voting by Democrats,
and a 78 percent jump in AVs among black voters.

* A 400 percent rise in emails sent and a 240 percent
increase in social media posts.

* And a 50 percent increase in party membership, to 21,000.

Johnson said that he hopes to double some of those
figures over the 2015-16 election cycle. And he wants to establish a basic,
positive message that establishes a “bold” brand for the party.

But, while he emphasizes the stats, Johnson concedes that it
takes more than internal metrics to reach the voters.

“We want to do all of that and more,” he said. “The
question is, what is ‘more?’”

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