Shortly after I wrote a story criticizing Mayor Craig Greenberg’s record, Logan Gatti, the chair of the Louisville Democratic Party, offered to sit down with me for a conversation. The full exchange can be found here.
Louisville Democrats structure
Gatti has been chair of the party chapter since May of 2024, just a couple of months before the 2024 election where Democrats lost three Metro Council seats.
“Someone came after me on it. ‘You lost three Metro Council seats under your leadership load. Why should we trust you?’” he said.
“I genuinely had about four months of my tenure before the elections in November happened,” he said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t solve all of the foundational issues that we had within the party.”
I made a joke about my piece’s strong tone.
“I enjoyed the article. We can’t afford to be in an echo chamber patting ourselves on the back, which is what we’ve done in the past,” Gatti said.
“We lost,” he said. “Why are we congratulating ourselves?”
Gatti and the Louisville Democrats have begun deep canvassing, where they talk to registered Democrats and, eventually, build a party platform around the issues that concern them.
“And then [we] push it out as far as we can, because I’m sure that you would agree one of the things that we are terrible on is messaging.”
He called Democrats’ messaging “convoluted,” and said that he wants to condense the party’s pitch into a couple of issues.
“People ask the question: what does the Democratic Party stand for?” Gatti said. “You could go a million different directions.”
“At the end of the day,” he said, “you need one or two things that you can really push. Republicans have that. It’s lower taxes and anti-abortion and Donald Trump.”
Gatti has focused on people who align with the Democratic message, but are “low-fidelity” — they have voted in one or two of the last five elections.
“What’s really causing [them] to, all of a sudden one year, say ‘I don’t feel like voting’?” Gatti said. “And we often find that it’s lack of interest at the top of the ticket or that they don’t relate to any of the candidates.”
When Gatti began, only about 10% (170 people) of the Louisville Democrats’ 1,881 leadership positions were filled. They began holding meetings online and “pushing it out to everyone that we possibly could.” Now, they have 340 people signed up — double their last number.
“We did lose a lot of historical knowledge, but most of the people that either did not run for their seats or lost their seats are still engaged,” Gatti said.
“At the end of the day, I want to see new people engaged. Because, if we keep ourselves silent, we’ll never expand what we can do as a party.”
The economy and quality of life
“At the end of the day, it’s dollars and cents that people care about,” Gatti said.
He recognized that Democrats care about other issues — immigration, healthcare, civil rights, et cetera — but said that too many focuses can make the party lose a clear message.
“How do we get back to ‘let’s pay people good wages, let’s make sure that they can afford healthcare and be healthy and live longer, and make sure that everyone has an opportunity to succeed in this country,’ which honestly is not the case at this point?”
At the core of their strategy for implementing these ideas is affordability of housing.
“What really creates affordable housing?” he said. “It’s creating density, it’s creating those economies of scale that will ultimately lower the cost per unit for people.”
My article said that Greenberg has not housed as many Louisvillians as he promised to.
“The My Louisville Home plan that [Mayor Greenberg] put together is a great start,” he said. “We look at our peer cities and we see them developing housing and housing and housing all over the place and we think to ourselves, ‘why can’t we do that here?’”
Of the 15,000 homes Greenberg promised to build with My Louisville Home, he has financed 6,400, 4,600 of which are still under construction. Experts estimate that Louisville needs 32,000 new units.
“I think what Craig has done has always been a little bit more behind the scenes,” Gatti said. “Working with Frankfort to pull a lot of money back from the state to the city, I think that’s a big success.”
Taking credit and messaging
I pointed out that those accomplishments are not on Greenberg’s campaign website, and asked how Louisville Democrats plan to take credit for their progress. Gatti clarified that he does not work directly with Greenberg’s campaign staff, but engaged with the question anyway.“Are we taking credit for the things that we’re doing? We’re not,” he said.
“What’s really disappointing for me is when I see all 12 Republican Metro Council people all standing together for a press conference around public safety that’s already been solved, but they just want to make a show of it.” He said that Metro Council Democrats spend more of their time doing work on their own than celebrating their achievements.
“I would love for [Metro Council Democrats] to do a joint press conference. That sounds fantastic. Just to show cohesion, shared goals, things that we can all work on together,” Gatti said.
The state legislature recently voted to make Louisville Metro elections non-partisan, so candidates won’t have a party name on the ballot. When Louisville and Jefferson County merged in 2003, the state voted to make elections partisan because they believed that suburban Republicans would overpower urban Democrats. This did not happen — 57% of Louisville voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
“And so, when that didn’t work out, [Republicans} went to the state and the state said, ‘Louisville, you’re not going to do partisan races anymore,’” he said.
“Of course, a majority of people from Louisville on our state delegation did not agree with that, but who cares what we say, apparently?”
“It’s not going to be partisan races officially. We will make it as partisan as possible so that people understand the people that they’re voting for. We’re not going to let Republicans cosplay as Democrats on certain issues and then run to the right to court those Republican votes.”
They are pushing their message out on social media and with some mailers, but fundraising has challenged them — people have less disposable income than they used to.
“My hope is that people will realize: ‘things have changed, but ultimately I can have the same, basic information provided to me so that I can ensure that my decision is the one that best represents my viewpoints across the board.’”
